Here’s a round up of some of the best and most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.
Beetle Moses, the quirky comic strip featuring a lot of animals and pop culture references by Harris Fishman, has debuted on Comics Kingdom.
If you aren’t familiar with Beetle Moses, well, you probably are, as it’s one of those strips that’s done well on social media and probably went across your feed at some point without you realizing it. It’s typically three stacked panels, so already it looks like a meme from the get go.
Fishman spoke with Canvas Rebel about it just a few weeks ago, and this quote resonated with me: I make webcomics, which as a medium have the benefit of being shareable since they are built for social media. Comics are an interesting artistic medium because it feels like they are often overlooked by creators of fine art, and also not respected as an art form by casual consumers. People who love comics know that neither of these mentalities are true, and that the world of comics is endlessly rich and saturated with incredible writers and artists. Webcomics fall into an even less respected niche, and there is some blame to go around. There’s a lot of same-y looking styles thanks to trends in oversimplification over the last decade. Webcomics are still a very new medium, and they differ slightly from printed comics in a few ways. Webcomic creators are still feeling out the ground floor to see exactly where webcomics can go. I think in some ways this freed me as a webcomic artist, since I had a few viral hits early on that broke the typical conventions of the contemporary “scene”. A lot of casual viewers still look at my social media accounts as a “meme page” and don’t consider that I’m one guy actually drawing these things. But that doesn’t discourage me at all. In fact, I think there are some amazing fine artists who would grow both on socials, and in their own creative journey by trying their hands at comics.
You can find Beetle Moses on Comics Kingdom, and I’ll also point you to Fishman’s online store, where you can buy prints as well as his minicomic, Druzy.
Speaking of Comics Kingdom, congratulations to Francis Bonnet, whose long-running webcomic Suburban Fairy Tales has also been picked up by King Features and will appear on Comics Kingdom.
“Suburban Fairy Tales is scheduled to launch on Comics Kingdom on or about February 28. To prepare, I won’t be able to post any new strips here on my website for a number of weeks. In their place I’ll be posting random sketches, doodles, and unused ideas from my sketchbook, which should start appearing next week,” said Bonnet, who also writes regularly for Archie Comics. Keep an eye out on Comics Kingdom at the end of the month.
Liege Doomveil is a fun webcomic about an evil super villain tyrant who puts aside his world-conquering goals because he wants to find love. LOVE! Happy early Valentine’s Day, BTW.
It’s by Kay King, aka Kayzig, and it can be read on Tumblr. But also, King has made it available as a 35-page pay-what-you-want PDF, giving you a couple of different ways to read it.
Stone Fruits is a new webcomic by Coleman Engle that launched at the beginning of 2024. It’s about a group of queer men “as they rediscover their passion for earnestly creating art,” and it’s got some cool things going on in it. The main character is Gil, whose nationally syndicated comic strip was just cancelled, and he returns to his old neighborhood to regroup and focus on an art book.
Every few days, you get a look at The Grouchy Gargoyle, his cancelled strip, in between strips about Gil and his friends. The other thing I like about it is that Engle does some really cool things with the layouts and colors, especially for the Sunday strips. So go check it out, and also check out Engle’s Hourly Comics Day strips.
To end things this week, I really dug this stand-alone comic by Meredith McClaren, which she says “was supposed to be my Christmas spooky story, but I got a late start. It’s done now though.” So Merry Belated Christmas — enjoy an excellent body horror comic.