Reasons for the Thing: Scary-go-Round

"Reasons for the Thing" is a series of quick and happy reviews of some of the comics that will be available on the Web and Mini Comix Thing 2006, and which I find worthy of checking-out. It's hosted on my comics blog, which also has posts about my own comics, and various other things.

I aim to get a new "Reason for the Thing" up every week on Friday.

To start with, a longstanding favourite of mine (and about a billion other people):

Scary-go-Round!

John, from ScarygoRound

What is it? It's a five-pages a week webcomic that tells short stories filled with wit and strangeness. The cast is very large, allowing for many different interesting scenarios, which have so far included not only pint-sized vampires and zombies, but also murder mysteries, time travel, alternate dimensions and democratic elections.

It's not a funny, in that there's no punchline at the end of each page, or even the end of each story. Author John Allison claims he doesn't laugh at comics, and doesn't know how to make anyone else do so. The situations his characters land themselves in are humorous though, and they spout the same kind of witty dialogue that worked so well in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so all in all there's plenty to laugh at, and even more to just generally enjoy.

Why do I care? Because John Allison is pretty much worth the trip to London on his own. Not only does he have one of the most well-written, visually distinct and entertaining webcomics around, he must be one of the nicest guys ev4r. Last year at the Thing I had the table next to his, and I have witnessed with my very own eyes how happy he made the throngs of fans that visited his table. They were all from fairly happy ranging to extatic. It's true. Would I lie to you?

Seriously though, come to the Thing and get some books from this guy, cause he ROCKS! Scary-go-Round is both funny and strange, and has stories available only in paper. Also, he can apparently live from his webcomic. That's... like... the holy grail of webcomicking. Fear the man!

Links:

• Scary-go-Round
• The UK Web and Mini Comix Thing

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