What I found surprising here was that in most cases, the comparison goes against Lichtenstein. Jamie calls the compilation "pretty obsessive", which is true but now that David Barsalou done the work for us, it's interesting to look over the results. Via jwz, here's a comparison of Roy Lichtenstein with the original comics he stole, now with attributions to their original artists. Roy Lichtenstein : Various stolen & expanded panels There's three books out already and undoubtedly more to come. And some don't make it even to that low level.) Update: If you can't hack Burlew's increasingly erratic updating, just wait for the TPBs instead. Most of them seem to model themselves, for no good reason, on newspaper comics: cheap and easy gags, quick and static art, and unchallenging storytelling. (By the way, if you're wondering why most web comics suck, I think it's a) underambition, and b) a low entry barrier. It's not about D&D per se, but the nature of the Dungeon will be very familiar to D&D players. If you like OOTS you'd probably like Dungeon, by Lewis Trondheim, now available in English. You end up actually rooting for this little gang, and hoping they make their next Fort throw. It probably doesn't hurt that there's an actual story underneath. The strips are long and expertly colored, and the expressive, cartoony drawing fits the lightness of the material perfectly. Very likely Burlew, like many a web comic artists, can't draw but at least he's not using this as an excuse for lazy production. The characters are drawn much like Fisher-Price Little People, with round heads and square bodies and sticks for arms and legs. (Nonetheless the gloves don't come entirely off- the actual gaming situation stays offscreen.) They're all quite aware that they're in a D&D game, and bicker over the rules much as players do. The strip follows a group of typical adventurers- most notably Haley the rogue archer babe, Belkar the halfling with a 'tude, Elan the near-useless bard, Vaarsuvius the magic user, and Roy the fighter.
(It probably won't make a lick of sense if you don't know anything about the game.) Order of the Stick is a cute, unpretentious comic about D&D. So it's a pleasant surprise to find one that doesn't. (Be sure to check out OOTS and see the Kickstarter project.I don't review many web comics, because web comics generally suck. I don’t know about you, but I have some work to do! I love that a 29 year-old D&D-playing New Yorker can pursue his passion by making stick-figure webcomics, open up a project on Kickstarter, and make $1M over his funding goal. Rich has sent out to the world a powerful message: watch out for the passionate – we know what we want and we’re going to get it! And he still has an entire day to go (Last night I watched his total climb $7,000 over the course of an hour).
Look at that number again: that’s one million, sixty-two thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-three dollars. With 25 hours to go, Rich, the stick figure-drawing, self-published cartoonist asking for $58K, is sitting at $1,062,993. Rich launched his project with the goal of raising just shy of $58K, the largest amount of money I’ve seen asked for as part of a comics project on Kickstarter ( Womanthology, a comics anthology featuring the works of over 140 industry-favorites female creators, only asked for $25K, half of what Rich, the self-published comics-maker is asking). One month ago, Rich launched a project on Kickstarter to raise funds for reprinting his older books – full-color collections of the webcomic that have long been out of print, due to his focus on creating new work. Over the last seven years, Rich has built up an incredible fan base, with over 23,500 fans on Facebook alone – and remember: this is entirely self-published, so Rich isn’t enjoying the benefits of a large publishing house marketing and printing and promoting his comic – he’s doing it all himself.īelow is Rich’s newest OOTS strip, #839: Finding Something, starring a hilarious cast of weapon-wielding stick figures: Rich Burlew has been self-publishing his “comedy-fantasy-adventure” webcomic The Order of the Stick ( OOTS) since 2003.