MemeMachineGo!

Pete's back! After a month-long vacation, Pete Abrams, the writer/artist of Sluggy Freelance, my all-time favorite Internet-only comic strip, has returned to active duty. I like comics and this is the only one I reliably check daily.

It's been around since '97, so sitting down to read the whole thing takes some time. If you start from the beginning, be aware that it took the author a little while to find his own voice... it begins with a long Star Trek/Aliens parody that's much less interesting than the original situations he comes up with. One of my favorite storylines is Kitten (but that seems to be one people either love or hate.)

Something that continues to impress me is how he tells a coherent narrative and comes up with something really funny as a punchline for the last panel day in and day out. That said, his best work was immediately prior to his recent sabbatical in which he dropped the punch line and did a wholly dramatic story.

To get an idea of how fanatic a devotion the strip has garnered, check the Sluggy Statistics, in which one reader maintains a chart of the characters' frequency of appearance. Don't believe him? Go ahead and use the Sluggy Search Engine to double check. Or check out some of the foreign language translations, Latin being the most recent.