These links lead to a small number of comics that I regularly read. The sites have character biographies and other background info to bring you up to speed.
Vern and Dern are two sorta ordinary hick types who happen to get abducted by aliens a lot. Their mailman looks a whole lot like a certain dead King of Rock and Roll. And so on. Good strip, the only major flaw is that the site is a bit slow (like cold syrup), but they've finally added to the archive so it's relatively complete. Unfortunately, the page is kinda
messed up such that a strip can't be fully viewed online with a low-res setup; I had to
download a strip to view it.
A South African comic strip about a woman (Madam) and her maid (Eve), and the assorted relatives. And other stuff. It sometimes has South African things that are a bit confusing to us non-South Africans, but every so often they do explain them. They have a pretty complete and well described archive.
A strip about aliens stranded on Earth, and how they get by. Well, it's not quite that simple; go to the site and find out. There's several shorelines archived; some (particularly the Time Travel story) are pretty long. Wander about the site and find what inspired the characters and stories and find out about their other manifestations.
Argon Zark is "the original, online, all digital, virtual comic book." There about one and a quarter issues online; it isn't on a regular schedule as the creator makes a living doing something else. It's impressive, in the story and particularly visually. Oh, there's also some dinosaur cartoons on the site that originally appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine.
Kind of a "Retro" SF strip. It's very much in the spirit of the old "Flash Gordon" and
"Buck Rodgers" serials in look and feel. One can subscribe to it and get it sent to you
via email, and one can get it on your own web pages. There's another site for it here
that features an animated version (requires Shockwave) that's pretty cool.
Okay, this isn't a comics site, as such. It's an online magazine with a lot of politics and news and stuff. It's been noted recently for pointing out that many of Bill Clinton's critics are hardly exemplars of truth and virtue. But it also has four good, great, or weird comics.
This Modern World
Comments on modern life and politics from what would generally be considered a "liberal"
or "left" perspective, but has had more compelling criticism of Clinton than the various
conservative critics.
Story Minute
Short stories in comic form. Often pretty good.
The K Chronicles
Sort of a comics version of cartoonist Keith Knight's life.
Tom the Dancing Bug
Weird commentary on modern life. No bugs, dancing or named "Tom".
The Dark Hotel
A series of comics with maturish themes (not for the kiddies) set in a fictional San
Francisco hotel.
Note that these are comics for adults as opposed to children.
This is perhaps the most potentially offensive strip Irregularly read. Some sophomoric humor, and some stuff that might offend, but the goal really seems to be funny as opposed to offensiveness just for the sake of being offensive. Anyway, the strip deals with two "geeks" (apparently based on the strip's creators), a goat given to them by Thor, a Satanist chicken, and other bizarre characters. And lots of beer.
RPG COMICS LINKS
These are sites featuring stuff about strips from role playing game mags; if there are some purely online RPG comics I'd like to hear about them, send me the URLs. Also see my article in Eight Track Mind 8 .
The famed comic from the original Space Gamer and currently in Pyramid.
This site features the home of the "Joe Genero, The Average Man" archive. It also has other stuff, but some is only available to members. They're hosted by Fur Nation which is
a "Furry" (anthropomorphic animals) site.
Knights of the Dinner Table Home Page
The strip and comic book from a founder of Shadis magazine.
COMIC LINK SITES
I'm not going to put up links to every comic on the web, as there are folk already doing that.
"Stu's Comic Strip Connection" has links to about all the online comics. It even has a search function! Nifty.
Ctoons Studios has a variety of syndicated (delayed about a week) comic strips on site in full color. If you have Java, they have neat little extras you don't see in your newspaper, like animation and sound; of course for that to work well it helps to have a fast connection and a machine of awesome power. But even on my wimpy beast it works pretty well.
I briefly thought they were gone, but that appears to have been a glitch/interruption. They're still around. And that's a good thing.
The web site of United Features Syndicate, a major comics distributor. There's a lot of newspaper comics here, including such famous ones as "Peanuts" and "Dilbert". The major comics like "Dilbert" have their own "zones" with some extra stuff in addition to the strips.