I don’t regret pitching in $5 to support a webcomic I have loved for almost twenty years, but even after years of listening to The Incomparable’s Dark Sun campaign, I just don’t know if I know/like that setting enough to really enjoy this story. Alas.

This is more the kind of thing I’d expect from OOTS “purchase only” content. The additional stories were fun, the author commentary was interesting, and there’s at least one panel I might be able to work into a conference presentation, so that’s nice.

Okay, buying this Order of the Stick collection was worth it for this panel alone.

Webcomics break my reviewing assumptions in interesting ways. I recently spent a lot of time binging the OOTS archives, with over 1,000 pages of material, without writing any reviews, because that wasn’t a “book.” This 75ish-page comic, though, gets a review.

Anyway, that binge reminded me of how much I love this webcomic, which is why I’m kind of surprised not to like this prequel. Maybe it’s because it’s anchored to the beginning, gag-a-strip format, before the story gets really interesting. Maybe it’s because it’s B&W and doesn’t have a lot of depth. I don’t know, but it’s not going to stop me from trying to build up a collection of the PDFs of other volumes in the series.

One of my favorite webcomics is a long runner that began when I was just starting high school, so the archive binge I began this week is bringing back memories in multiple ways.

introduction and history

I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.

I’ve been a big fan of webcomics since I first discovered they existed in the early-to-mid 2000s. I’ve been following Order of the Stick for about twenty years(!), I’ve read the entire web run of Dr. McNinja, xkcd makes frequent appearance in my lecture slides, and there are other comics that I’ve jumped in and out of over time. It hasn’t been that long since I started following Dork Tower again, but last Fall, it did a crossover with Dumbing of Age, which I mentally noted I should check out sometime.