The Paperless Funnies…and Not so Funnies: Nerdy Comedies

Disclaimer: This is my definition of Internet Comedy and downright raunchy doesn’t play into it so don’t expect me to recommend a comic that gets its inspiration from a Will Ferrell movie. Oh and some of the links use dirty words.

There would never have been comic books and comic strips without comedy so I decided that the best comic genre to start with would be the “Funnies.” Now it’s kind of hard to compare what you’ll read on the web to what you find in the newspaper because censorship is practically non-existent; so some of the comics, no, excuse me, most of the comics are aimed at an adult audience. For example the first Web comic I ever read was Penny Arcade. With material like this or this it is definitely not for children but then again it isn’t made for kids. Penny Arcade is made for gamers and as a part time gamer myself I can agree with most of the humor in it. However it does go too far sometimes, with characters, like well let’s just call him F.F., and story lines that involve unpleasant situations for all, it can be offensive. So I ended up becoming more of a fan of gamer/nerd comics like Comedity, CTRL+ALT+DEL, and Applegeeks.
Truth be told out of the three CTRL+ALT+DEL, CAD for short, is the only full Gamer comic while Comedity and Applegeeks have nerd attributes. In non-geek that means CAD has more specific video game references than the others. Nerd comics on the other hand make references to a variety of Nerd ideals, i.e. comic books and computers, not just gaming. In other words a Gamer comic can be a nerd comic but a nerd comic isn’t necessarily a gamer comic. Take Applegeeks for instance. Applegeeks is all about a Geek, his friends, and his love for his/anything Mac. There really are not a lot of gamer references here because let’s face it; we all know that Mac Gamers don’t exist. But there is a lot of humor, and some pretty great storylines that has caused the strip to evolve into a really complex comic. Comedity on the other hand is as it is defined “A Comedy of Personae” or “A Slice of Surreal Life.” Even though it has all the nerd elements the main focus of this comic is the artist Garth and the correlation with the world in his head and the “real” world. It is also a somewhat smarter than the other comics, making it one of my absolute favorites, especially since it gave me the means to solve any argument. I hope you enjoy these comics as much as I do and remember “Don’t step on the Penguin.”