Penny Arcade - Strip Search

Rad fighting game poster-style pic of the cast of strip search taken from:  http://periscopestudio.com/category/ron-chan/

Penny Arcade is currently running an elimination-style reality show for Webcomic artists called Strip Search.  The artists compete in activities and win small prizes, all competing to win the ultimate prize which is a bundle of money and a job with Penny Arcade.

I'm not a follower of reality TV, but I enjoy this show because of the webcomic theme.  Everybody on the show seems really nice, and very talented, and the sub-prizes they come away with are often really great, including a T-shirt design sold on the Penny Arcade website, and some quality electronic tablets for artists.   The stress of the elimination challenges is cut by the playful banter of the two creators.  The creators seem to be genuinely invested in the artists and the field of comics.

One of the best features of the show is a listing of all of the artists with links to their own websites.  So everybody gets promoted, no matter how they do on the show.  In addition, there's a spoilers section, that summarizes the episodes, but more importantly, allows the you to view the art they created each day. 

Right now I'm rooting for all the artists that are around 30 years old.  I find this to be a simple criteria to weed out most of them, and narrow down my preference.  Actually, one of these artists, Maki, does the Sci-ence cartoon to which I have linked in the margin.  The others I had not read prior to seeing them on Strip Search, and I am slowly making my way through each of their websites. 

http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-search/artists
link to artists list

http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-search/archive
link to the episode archive

http://www.penny-arcade.com/strip-search/spoilers
link to spoilers

Simpsons Drawing Club

http://25.media.tumblr.com/90b8b986bca3d5f56fc325e2eea8a843/tumblr_mklckiiBhS1rhf9zpo1_500.jpg

The Simpsons Drawing Club is a tumblr page that collects together different Simpsons themed drawings from a group of different artists.  There is a wide variety of styles represented here, with a striking amount of abstract and even kind of icky art styles.  There are also narrative comics following Simpsons characters, often with rather strange themes, much heavier than what is found in the show itself.

As a longtime Simpsons fan, many of these images resonate with me, as do their differences from the franchise itself.  I think it's great to see how many different ways these artists present these well-loved and familiar characters.  Even if some of it is kind of sick.

There's a real brilliance to this page.  Particularly some of the darker contributions, having Simpsons characters drawn slightly differently goes a long way to set a different tone.  I have a soft spot for post apocalyptic narratives, so I really enjoy Jack Teagle's contributions.

http://simpsonsdrawingclub.tumblr.com/

A lot of really gross art here.  Still pretty cool.

http://jackteagle.tumblr.com/tagged/comics
this is the guy who does the post-apocolypse simpsons