#narbonic

[thewebcomicsreview]

I think we've all encountered media that starts off strong but then loses momentum or goes completely off the rails later on, but how about the opposite? Has there ever been a series that you went into with low expectations but ended up being impressed by?

God, this question makes me feel so old! It used to be considered standard that all webcomics sucked ass at the beginning because they were all made by nerds with minimal artistic or writing skills, and part of the appeal of webcomics was seeing that improvement. It wasn't until the 2010s that you started regularly seeing webcomics that started out good. And, y'know, not to be mad at people for making good webcomics, but I think something was lost when "A webcomic will be garbage for the first 100+ pages at least" stopped being the default assumption. I think it made rookies less likely to start making their work themselves, because of the idea that you have to be good to start. Hell, I'm like that myself, where I've been noodling at working to draw for years without making something myself. Hm.

Anyway, to give you an answer, the webcomic with the most dramatic improvement is Narbonic, which is a webcomic I've praised a lot.

The first few arcs in 2000 are almost literally unreadable because of how wordy they are

Just a year later and it's still a little wordy but far more legible.

And by 2003 they're doing "Professor Madblood and the Doppelganger Gambit" which is where Narbonic really starts getting good.

It only goes on for three years after that, but the final arcs in 2006 are the best ending of any webcomic and I've yet to see it be topped.

[obseletrix]

so just to add to the recent revalations, I was playing spot-the-reference with old Narbonic extras, and guess who I found:

so this has been narbonic background canon for a while, apparently. i choose to believe that Narbonic Europe has the exact same amount of bullshit going on as Europa does, give or take some gerbils.

[shaenongarrity]

These two. Still love drawing them.

[appendingfic]

Love when a writer is like "here is a man with a substantial attachment to his car, we are going to destroy it SO MANY TIMES"

[alienated-youth]

One of the earlier pieces I did this year. I had been reading through the entire run of the Narbonic webcomic by Shaenon K Garrity and felt it only right to draw the mad scientist herself, Helen B Narbon!

[evilmidnightlurker]

Ships of The Culture

GOU You Cross This Line You Die

ROU Stark Fist of Removal

GOU Have You Considered a Career Change?

GCV Sativarg

ROU Really Quite Angry

GOU You Need a House to Go With This Doorknob

VFP Disturbing Palindromic Song of the Mutant Gerbils

GCU No Jury in the Universe Would Convict Me

GCU Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles

ROU Your Kung Fu is Weak

GOU WITH CATLIKE TREAD UPON OUR PREY WE STEAL!

GOU Continuation of Diplomacy by Other Means

ROU Consider an Iceberg, its Every Form and Aspect

GOU My Powers are Weak, my Intellect Feeble

ROU You Just Lost the Game

VFP Centipede's Dilemma

GOU Very Special Blend of Psychology and Extreme Violence

[worst-mother-throwdown]

BRACKET 2

Round 1

TW: child neglect, sexual harassment, violence, murder

Feel free to add propaganda in the replies and reposts!!

The Pale Tree propaganda

Helen Narbon Alpha propaganda

[halloweencatsart]

It is frankly a crime that I haven't seen this crossover yet. They'd get along so well!

[artataliaf]

@girlgeniusevents day three- crossovers! narbonic and girl genius are so close together it feels like this barely counts, but...

[jewishdragon]

The fuck school even hired professor lupin madblood

These are question I have

[thewebcomicsreview]

What are the main influences that you drew upon for your comics?

So the biggest influence would have to be ASequentialArt. The guy who makes it is the artist of Saffron and Sage and thus his influence is rather more direct; any kind of meta-fuckery in Legend of the Hare or Saffron and Sage is either Carlos' idea or something I thought he'd like. The big parallax finale of Legend of the Hare was his idea, and one of the low-key reasons I'm dragging my feat uploading that comic is that I don't want to have to figure out how to set it up again!

Kill 6 Billion Demons inspired the idea of having "Lore" under the Legend of the Hare pages, though that idea crashed because no one cares about my lore.

Gunnerkrigg Court inspired the idea of making Saffron and Sage episodic, an idea I actually regret a little, which is an essay I've been meaning to write.

It's a small thing, but Homestuck inspired my character writing just a little by making me think of "rules", like how every sentence out of Liri's mouth ought to deserve an exclamation mark or how Saffron often talks in sentence fragments because she's a busy woman and doesn't have time for superfluous words.

Prequel Adventure, Narbonic, and Latchkey Kingdom are all comics I like that have similar vibes to mine in one way or another, but the comic whose writing feels closest to my own might actually be Cassiopeia Quinn. If you take Cassiopeia Quinn and you mix in a bit of Katia Managan you get something not entirely dissimilar to Liri Bloom.

Final Fantasy XIV (specifically Shadowbringers and Endwalker) isn't really an influence, but it is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Those expansions are very thematically dense in a way that both inspires me to try better and makes me want to give up and quit. That's sort of tied in to why I regret the way I wrote Saffron and Sage episodically, and perhaps one day I'll write that essay. I'm pretty consistently on the precipice of quitting Saffron to try to start a new comic; I'm a notorious dilletante.

But if you look at how horny the characters in my comics tend to be when the comic itself dares never show a boob, you can probably see the deepest influence of all, the one I dare not speak even to myself, which is all the trashy quasihorny shounen manga I read in high school, and the early webcomics like The Wotch or Misfile that had a bit of that energy that stuck to me indelibly no matter how much I try to pretend otherwise.

[obseletrix]

every single day i think about the world trigger/narbonic crossover fic that i have 500 words of in my drafts that i really want to write and i sigh and write down a few more plot ideas. I can't figure out how to get from point a to point b but by god the version of it that exists in my head is massively entertaining.

[shaenongarrity]

This month's Patreon wallpaper is inspired by Leonora Carrington, one of my favorite Surrealists. I got to see some of her work this month in Mexico and I plotzed.

https://skin-horse.com/extras/

[mellkellyismyhero]

Okay I literally allude to Mell in a She Ra post. That is kind of amazing. It's so nice to meet another Shaenon Garrity fan!

You did? That's awesome!! I agree, it's great to meet another Shaenon K Garrity fan!!

[mad-scientist-showdown]

I can't believe I only just now learned about this poll :(

I totally would have submitted my favorite mad scientist, Helen Narbon (even though she definitely wouldn't get far, or probably even make it into the poll in the first place)

well at least you learned about it in time for round 1! better late than later :)