8-10-05

Too Good for the Web
It is my humble opinion that there are three—count them, three—valid reasons a comic should remain entirely web-based for more than a year.  First, and most importantly, it sucks; suckiness is a solid reason half of the comics on the web will never see print outside of a vanity press.  Second, and this affects a solid 75% of the non-sucky comics, the artist is unable or unwilling to maintain a regular schedule (ink-and-paper publishers don't like posting white space where a comic should be).  Third, and this is where the ones that skip the second reason often get nailed, the format or subject matter aren't adaptable to the newspaper format—they have cursing, or they play with the "infinite canvas" in some way (most often a drop format).
          Jason Seibels doesn't have any of those excuses.  His comic, Anywhere But Here, certainly doesn't suck.  It's consistently funny, with a well-thought plot and carefully defined characters.  He gets a lot of mileage out of joking about his Bloomsbury style, referring to the obvious influence that Doonesbury and Bloom County have on his artwork, but there's only an influence, and ultimately, Seibels is neither as preachy as Trudeau nor as mean as Breathed in his writing.  He cares about his characters, all of them.
          In a nutshell, ABH is the tale of a nameless (he probably has a name, it's just never come up) hero, trying to get by while attending his safety college North Dakota University (home of the only marine biology program not within 1200 miles of a seacoast).  When schools in session, he shares his dorm with a surly and marginally psychotic iguana named Mozillas and two demons:  Bill, our hero's personal demon (who has lost faith in his work), and Chuck, a large "enforcer" demon who bears such a striking resemblance to Alex Karras' character in Blazing Saddles that the rest of the cast has dubbed him Mongo.  For the last several months our hero has been pursuing a tentative relationship with Chris, a small-town girl trying gamely to overcome the socialized decision-making that mark her as trailer-trash.  Stir in a huge cast of supporting characters (that somehow manage not to become confusing), and there you have it.  It's a very solid daily.
          That's right, I said daily.  With minor exceptions (because Seibels has to support himself in the real world) ABH is one of the most reliable dailies in the webcomics world.  That's a pretty good trick.  As far as I know, only Howard Tayler and Scott Kurtz have managed to crank out more uninterrupted dailies while holding down a full-time "real" job.  But then, Tayler and Kurtz should be in the papers, too.
          Like Kurtz and Tayler, Seibel's comic is produced in standard 3-panel format.  He even does a large-format Sunday comic most weeks.  The only thing that might come close to disqualifying ABH from newspaper publication is his subject matter.  As odd as they are, the characters are pretty realistic, at least in their reactions to things, and they're very true to themselves.  Seibels keeps the language clean by blacking out expletives, which are very few and far between.  So short of the annoying letters that editors might receive from trailer trash pointing out that they would never open their legs for anyone in a Mustang made between 1974 and 1985 (and of course the obligatory Christian blah blah about demons evil yatta yatta), there really is nothing preventing Seibels comic from being a newspaper daily.
          At least there shouldn't be. 

Anywhere But Here by Jason Seibels

Updates: Daily
Caveats:  Adult themes, language, Demons based loosely on Alex Karras, so good it will make you completely re-examine whether you should waste time on your crappy scribbles
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