Anders Loves Maria

Anders Loves Maria
Rene Engstrom
Real Life
R

So I haven't posted in a while. I do have good excuses, of course, as I just graduated from University, moved off to an unknown city to take a job and had to deal with the general settling in. But now, I feel I can keep up with this blog without skipping weeks. (I feel as bad as a neglectful webcomic writer!)

So! Anders Loves Maria is essentially a story of a couple of twenty-somethings who are on the cusp of becoming real, live adults. I know, I know, this is a story we have all heard before. And I must admit, this comic does have its share of angst. But the approach to this theme is done so well in this comic that I can honestly admit that I was suprised when I hit the most current update. I was so swept in the flow of the story that nothing else existed for about an hour.

The story revolves around Anders, a lovable if flawed rich boy and his equally lovable if self-destructively impulsive girlfriend Maria. They are living a care-free life as a couple of Stockholm artists when, oh dear, Maria discovers that she's pregnant. And so kicks off the story.

Sometimes Anders Loves Maria is a little over-the-top with the amount of cliched (or unrealistic) situations the two main characters face. I'd go as far to say that when you discover that one of our heros's mother is a closet lesbian, my first reaction was to roll my eyes and say "of course she is." But the characters are played so well (no reaction too flamboyant, every sentence uttered feeling like what one would hear in real life...) that I forgive the cliches. While the situations may be something found on "Dawson's Creek" or "One Tree HIll", the characters are not the typical cardboard cut-outs one would find in Clicheland. And I genuinely like the characters. Every single one is flawed, and some are downright unpleasant, but they feel real.

The art is another plus, here. The flowing roundness of the artwork is nice on the eyes. The artist sticks with a cartoony style, but is not afraid to show us some of the most awkward cartoon sex I've ever seen. Not that I watch a lot of cartoon sex. *Ahem*

Anyway, this comic pleases me very much. It's nice to step away from the scads of humor and genre comics swamping the internet and read something with a little reality every now and then.

xkcd

xkcd

Randall Munroe

Gag strip

PG-13 to R

xkcd is something a little different from the usual comic fare that I run across. It is not a beautiful comic in the sense that the artwork is beautiful. But it is a great comic. I have to admit, I am enamored with xkcd.

The author has a way of meshing a cynical viewpoint of the world with mathmatics, coding and a little bit of love poetry that makes it absolutely hilarious. As with most gag comics, sometimes an idea works and sometimes it doesn't. But the hits far outnumber the misses. My favorite repeating gag is the poetic, lyrical "Yo Momma" jokes.

One of the comic's strengths is something that many would think of as a weakness. The artwork is very simple. This is a stick-figure comic. But if the artwork was more complex, I think a lot of the jokes would fall flat.

The only weakness in the comic is that sometimes the author likes to get on his soapbox. When he does, the comic gets text-heavy, and the joke (and the soapbox point) plods to the end without having the same effect as staying simple. Also, some of the earlier comics don't really have a point to them. But this was when the author was just beginning and hadn't found his voice yet, so don't drop the comic if you don't get the first few months of comics.

I will mention one more thing about the comic. It is very math -- and coding -- heavy. I am a liberal arts major, and anyone else who hasn't been through years of mathmatics and CS courses may be like me: I get all of the comics not featuring math, and at least the gist of most of those that do, but sometimes the joke will fly over my head as I have no idea about mathmatic principles beyond simple trig, geometry and algebra. However, feeling stupid sometimes doesn't keep me for coming back for more.