The webcomics blog about webcomics

My Aching Eyes

My eyeglass frames recently snapped (in a very unexciting way, having nothing to do with rollerderby) and so I’ve been stuck wearing my contact lenses until the new frames arrive. The contacts are both awesome (Holy crap! I have peripheral vision after all!) and really bad (I mostly feel seasick, unfortunately), never mind the repeated poking-of-eyeball action. I tell you all this because I thought I’d find something short to write about this week, to try to cut down on staring at the computer screen.

My plan completely backfired.

I found Ali Graham’s AfterStrife and fell, hard, for the characters and colorwork. According to his website, “AfterStrife is the story of two completely opposite youths who become spiritually attached to one another in their deaths. Megan, a sharp witted, tormentress and Stitch a dark, brooding goth are forced to work together to unravel the mystery of their being. They are transported into a strange hell dimension by the name of Banteurose, where they must work off their debt to reclaim their eternal souls.” It’s an accurate description, but I’ve really been enjoying reading the archives–despite my aching eyeballs–for the banter between the two and just generally watching the story unfold.

Before this project, Graham published HOUSD; it was a daily comic and is where Stitch (the character you see above) first appeared. What I think’s kind of ingenious about these two webcomics is Graham’s kind of interesting cross-marketing; Stitch has a Livejournal (with a particularly funny post about emo). There’s also a great interview with Graham here, well worth reading.

So, what with the two different webcomics (one of which has a truly enormous archive), some interesting other material including a Scary Go Round guest strip, and some really compelling character write-ups on his cast pages, I think I’ll finish up the reading this weekend when I have a little more time and some new eyeglasses…

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