Gift Category: Read some little webcomics

Some of my favorite short online comics

Some of the comics that have been the most important and influential to me have been short comics shared for free online...made with love, in fandom, to explore an idea, to collaborate, minicomics that hit me often feel "zine-y," and these are the ones I keep coming back to and feel new things about every time.

1. Dont Cry for Me, I'm Already dead

by Rebecca Sugar

Archived on The Portal here

Long ago, Rebecca Sugar wrote a beautiful comic about friendship, grief, and Simpsons quotes. It's so rich and soft and painful, and feels extra special if you're just the age to remember all the Simpsons references mentioned.

2. Couple's Therapy

by Panic Volkushka

Read on the original tumblr post here

This is a really lovely fan comic in which characters from three cartoon sitcoms do therapy together. It's just such a special example of how derivative fancomics can use characters with such well-understood cultural connotation to dig deep into the psychological damage they're cartooning. It's heavy and queer but so beautiful (and reminds me why I loved King of the Hill in such a special way. Bobby rocks.

3. The God of Arepo

by Reimena Yee and various collaborators

Download and read for free here

On online collaboration based on a short story written directly to tumblr. Reimena is an excellent cartoonist and brings the story about futility, love, faith, and human nature to graphics in a wonderful way. Another story to shed a small tear to.

4. Smallness

by Ashanti Fortson

Download and read here (It's $3 but it's worth it!)

This is a beautiful comic about mistakes, worthiness, and... importance. Not only do it revisit for its narrative strengths often, I use it to teach color design in comics. The strong and stylized use of color (warms and cools, saturation, value) informs the story both visually and narraatively in really smart, sophisticated ways. It's really solid and technically interesting! I love it.

5. Barren

by Tess Scilipoti

Read here

It's a comic about a specific kind of grief, of being unable to bear a child. All of Tess's little comics are good and poignant, but I always remember this one as being particularly special, as documenting such a specific kind of grief. Such a short comic taught me so many things about special intersections of love and identity and ability and it's always stuck with me.