My daily trawl, 2025 edition
November 7, 2025
Since I mentioned by never-implemented webcomic tracker I figured it'd be worth it to share what I read on a regular basis.
XKCD
Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Comics for nerds. Randall Monroe has been making his stick-figure comics for quite a while now, and in certain circles posting an XKCD link is the equivalent of "Simpsons did it". It's almost not a comic in a sense; it feels more like Figure 1 illustrating a textual joke sometimes, if that makes sense.
Dumbing of Age
Updates: Monday through Sunday
A slice-of-life comic that takes place at a university. There's a large cast, so the process of following everybody around can take a while. The main couple has finally gotten together, which is a nice but of progression, but now every time they're on screen the plot grinds to a halt. Hopefully Dave Willis has already solved this problem -- he writes a year in advance -- and gotten things rolling again.
The Oatmeal
Updates: OccasionallyIt's hard to pin this one down; sometimes it's single-panel comics and sometimes it's long-form storytelling with pictures. And the art style is... unique. But I've kept it in my bookmarks for years because whenever a new comic goes up, I'm going to want to see it.
Gunnerkrigg Court
Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
An interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy. Mystical stuff is powered by The Aether, which is used (generated?) by godlike creatures from various cultural heritages. The aether also powers (some of) the technology. The artwork has come a long way from the beginning.
Oglaf
Updates: Sunday
As their About page said the last time I looked, it "started as a sex farce." It's still got a good amount of NSFW content, but the comics for the last several years have been more... tame. It's been quite a while since the adventures of the cum sprite.
Cyanide and Happiness
Updates: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday
More stick figures, but otherwise a more traditional web comic. The artists' humor tends toward the dark, which I can appreciate.
Questionable Content
Updates: Monday through Friday
This is one of the comics I picked up from reading Websnark, back in the days of The Talk: Twenty years ago now. (Holy shit.) Unfortunately, these days I'm reading it more out of habit than anything else. The human characters are boring to me for the most part, and Jeph tends to dwell on the aspects of their lives that interest me the least. The AIs are better, but he has a tendency to make every new AI character fit the "adorably [citation needed] incompetent" mold. Which also gets tiresome. It hasn't quite gotten to "You Had Me and You Lost Me" territory, to borrow Websnark's term, but it's closing in.
Something Positive
Updates: Occasionally
At the opposite end of the scale is the comic I've been reading the longest: I started reading S*P in 2003. Randy's update schedule has always been... let's call it "fluid", but he's really lost steam over the years. It's understandable, he has a paying gig (see below) and a daughter with special needs. That's a lot of time to spend, and something's gotta give. But I have a sinking feeling that this one's going to go out with a whimper before too long.
(The Legacy of) Dominic Deegan
Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Dominic Deegan was a daily (depending on time period) comic that I gave up on many years ago due to pacing issues. While I wasn't looking, it ended. When I randomly had the thought to see what Mookie was up to I saw that there was a new comic taking place a few generations later, and with that concluded he's moved on to shorter, more vignette-like comics to fill out the new post-Deegan world.
Popeye
Updates: Sunday
This is technically a newspaper comic, but the number of people who see Popeye in the paper is probably in the dozens -- the online readership is probably a great deal larger. Randy (from S*P, above) has been a fan of old comics and Popeye in particular for quite a while, and it landed him a job writing and drawing new material for Sundays.
Astronomy Photo of the Day
Updates: Monday through Sunday
...at least, when the government isn't shut down to prevent the Epstein Files from being released. A desktop-sized (depending on your desktop) image having to do with astronomy. There's a description to go with each one, as well as links for further reading if you're interested.
