Our old links page for comics

Most of the links below worked when I tried them this afternoon, and several lead to sites that are still updating.

Comics

(This page most recently updated 20 January 2019)

Comics

  1. Bad Reporter, what the front page of the newspaper might as well look like
  2. Basic Instructions, “Your all-inclusive guide to a life well-lived”
  3. Black Cat and Star Pilot, interesting comics that look like they are from the American southwest
  4. Blondie, which may be over 80 years old, but is still fascinating to look at
  5. Bug Martini, “random nonsense five days a week”
  6. Chainsawsuit, by the prolific Kris Straub
  7. The City, John Backderf (aka “Derf”) expresses his frustration with the US political scene
  8. Cul de Sac, a strip following in the tradition of Peanuts, by imagining children as less-inhibited adults
  9. DailyKos comics section, including Tom TomorrowSlowpoke, and others who express frustration with the US political scene
  10. The Dark Side of the Horse, which is sometimes over Acilius’ head
  11. Deep Dark Fears, by Fran Krause
  12. Diesel Sweeties, by Richard Stevens III (alias “R. Stevens”)
  13. Dinosaur ComicsT. Rex ‘n’ friends have a series of bull sessions
  14. Doghouse Diaries, no dogs in sight
  15. Existential Comics, “a philosophy comic about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world. Also jokes.”
  16. Foxtrot, updates Sundays
  17. Garfield Minus Garfield, which makes us wonder how they keep “Garfield” from being funny; Arbuckle does the same thing;  the Square Root of Minus Garfield tries a little too hard
  18. “Too Much Coffee Man,” a.k.a. How to Be Happy, by Shannon Wheeler
  19. Imagine This, quietly brilliant gag-a-day strip
  20. Indexed, Jessica Hagy uses charts and graphs to analyze some really important relationships
  21. Junior Scientist Power Hour, by Abby Howard
  22. The K Chronicles, cartoonist Keith Knight (who also does The Knight Life)
  23. Lunar Baboon, a guy who wants you to know he’s a cool dad
  24. Medium Large, cats, comics, and other things that ought to be sharp
  25. Monty doesn’t really stand out as a black-and-white strip in a daily newspaper, but look at it in color and you’ll be a fan
  26. Mutts,  Patrick McDonnell reimagines Krazy Kat and Ignatz in a gentler light, with Ignatz transformed from mouse to dog
  27. Mythtickle, in which Justin Thompson goes places Asterix never quite got round to
  28. Nancy, which has gone to surprising places
  29. The Oatmeal, achingly beautiful stories about dogs mixed in with other stuff
  30. Oglaf, weekly strip that is to sex what xkcd is to math
  31. Please Listen to Me, about how things change when you change your perspective
  32. Raghead the Fiendly Neighbourhood Terrorist, a creation of Biswapriya Purkayastha, who denies that he is “a nice person in any sense of the word”
  33. Retail, which shows that a serial strip can be drawn in the style of a gag-a-day strip and still work
  34. Robbie and Bobby, “about the indestructible friendship of a robot and his boy”
  35. Sarah’s Scribbles, Sarah C. Andersen lays it on the line Wednesdays and Saturdays
  36. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the world of some grumpy grad student
  37. Scenes from a Multiverse, remarkably mild
  38. Super-Team Family, covers of imaginary comic books, in which established characters are teamed in unlikely ways
  39. Ted Rall is a US political cartoonist who opposes both the Republicans and Democrats, just because of their shared habit of murdering defenseless people.  Picky, picky.
  40. Three Word Phrase, Ryan Pequin’s gag-a-day webcomic
  41. Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling expresses his frustration with the US political scene (he also does Super-Fun-Pak Comix, which is great)
  42. Two Party Opera, where dead and not yet dead US presidents hang out
  43. Unshelved, a strip by librarians, about librarians, for librarians.  If you’re a non-librarian and you read it, you’re a voyeur.
  44. Wondermark, looks like 1896, reads like 1996
  45. xkcd, stick figures who enjoy math; and what-if, in which similar figures stand by watching helplessly as physics is used to answer hypothetical questions
  46. Zen Pencils, by Gavin Aung Than, who calls it “a website where inspirational quotes from famous people are adapted into cartoons”

Less Frequently Updated

  1. Sarah E. Laing’s “Let Me Be Frank“; she used to do “Forty Four Ways of Looking at an Apple” also
  2. Lead Paint Comics, by Mike Cornnell and Dana Wulfekotte (it seems that Mike Cornnell’s name actually does have two “n”s in it)
  3. Lucy Knisley moves around a lot, this link worked last time we updated this page (here’s her tumblr)
  4. Marlo Meekins, not for the squeamish
  5. Occupy Comics Shazam, doesn’t include Shazam or the Mighty Isis, but is worth reading anyway
  6. Outnumbered, by Tom Bancroft
  7. Poorly Drawn Lines, by Reza Farazmand
  8. Spiked Math, complex reasoning, simple hilarity
  9. Unwinder’s Tall Comics, a web comic about people who try to entertain themselves without using the web
  10. With Fetus, by D. Murphy and Emily Ansara Baines, who say “It’s About Abortion!”  An interesting strip, but the art is terrible.

News and Comment

An alphabetical list

  1. Cartoon Research, compiled and edited by Jerry Beck
  2. Christ, Coffee, and Comics, Greek Orthodox priest Niko Bekris explores the theological depths hidden in stories about Superman
  3. Comic Book News Service, “a comic book community where fans find reviews, news, special features, and a column for every day of the week”
  4. Comics Curmudgeon, Josh Fruhlinger reads the funny papers
  5. Comics Reporter, “Tom Spurgeon’s Web site of comics news, reviews, interviews and commentary”
  6. Escher Girls, what the comics think a woman is
  7. Fleen, “home of the webcomics Action News Team”
  8. God and Comics, a podcast in which three Episcopal priests demonstrate that, no matter how erudite and accomplished you are, if you’re a grown man talking about why he likes Batman, you’ll start to sound like a stoner
  9. A Good Cartoon, was funny at first, but seems to be heading down a bit of an angry political rabbit hole right now
  10. I Love Ya But You’re Strange and other things by Brian Cronin (the revealer of legends)
  11. Language Log’s “Linguistics in the Comics” section
  12. Shitty New Yorker Cartoon Captions, in which the shittiness of the captions illustrates the shittiness of the cartoons
  13. Stripper’s Guide, revisits newspaper strips and comic panels of days gone by
  14. Team Cul-de-Sac

Archives and Graphic Novels

An alphabetical list

  1. The Bad Chemicals, “a sad and silly comic” by some guy named Brent
  2. Carbon Dating, “a comic strip about science, pseudoscience, and geeky relationships”
  3. Captain Confederacy, which imagines what the world might be like if the Confederacy had won the US Civil War, and superheroes were real, and the ruling elite of the Confederacy manipulated those superheroes into perpetuating white supremacy.  You know, the obvious questions everyone asks when they study the history of the 1860s.  It’s kind of like its contemporary The Watchmen, only with a focus on mass media as a regressive force in race relations.
  4. The Comic Torah, Aaron Freeman and Sharon Rosenzweig reimagine “the (very!) Good Book”
  5. Comics With Problems, comics that address themselves to social problems, but which themselves represent other social problems
  6. DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary, by Erika Moen
  7. Dead Philosophers in Heaven, which would make Lucian proud
  8. Dykes to Watch Out For archive, selections from Alison Bechdel’s great strip
  9. Hark! A Vagrant!”  Canadian Kate Beaton’s “comic about failure”
  10. Ignore Hitler, a title that would have been good advice to voters in the Weimar Republic, a comic that appeals to some people, for some reason
  11. Tony Millionaire’s Maakies, which picks up where the Katzenjammer Kids may someday leave off
  12. Planet of Hats, a Star Trek Recap Comic
  13. Request Comics, which somebody must have asked for
  14. Thinkin’ Lincoln, heads of famous historical figures are associated with improbable remarks
  15. Troubletown, Lloyd Dangle expressed his frustration with the US political scene
  16. “White Boy,” later known as “The Adventures of White Boy in Skull Valley,” later still as “Skull Valley,” was a newspaper strip that artist Garrett Price drew for a few years in the 1930s.  This site has scans of a couple of strips, along with a biographical note about Price; this site has a larger selection of strips;  a 2005 special issue of Comics Journal featuring the first 32 “White Boy” strips is available to Comics Journal subscribers here.
  17. Working at the Death Star, what all those guys in the background probably did on days when R2D2 and his friends weren’t around

Our old “Religion” links page

I stopped updating our links pages in 2016 and they stopped attracting comments and views long before that, so there’s no longer any point in having them up in an extra-accessible format. Here is the final state of our “Religion” links page.

Religion

(This page was most recently updated on 10 April 2016)

Academic and journalistic observers of religion:

  • Religion & Politics, “Fit for Polite Company.”  Leans heavily towards progressive Christianity
  • Religion Dispatches, which declares itself to represent “expert opinion, in-depth reporting, and provocative updates from the intersection of religion, politics and culture”;
  • The Revealer, “a daily review of religion & media” from New York University’s journalism department

Christian ethics:

  • Inward/Outward, each day a brief, provocative statement of Christian ethics, drawn from writers past and present;
  • Godthings, similar in concept to Inward/ Outward, but tends to provide longer quotes and more substantive theology;
  • David Hayward, the Naked Pastor, was ordained as a Presbyterian minister but now spends more time drawing cartoons than filling pulpits
  • Sojourners, progressive Christianity explained by progressive Christians who very much want you to know that they are progressive

Anglicans:

Judaism:

Lutherans:

Mormons:

Muslims:

  • The Long Black Veil and Life Within It,”  by Kashmir’s greatest fan of P. G. Wodehouse, Sabbah Haji.  Not exactly about religion, but she will shatter every stereotype you’ve ever had of a hijab-clad Muslim woman;
  • Love, InshAllah, “the Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women”

Orthodox Christianity:

Quakers:

Reformed Church adherents:

Roman Catholics:

Secularists:

*I am fully aware of the irony of both halves of the word “bigshot” as applied to Quakerism

Our old “Politics” links page

I just looked at our page of links under the title “Politics” and found that it hasn’t been updated since August 2016. There are a number of sites linked there that have been deleted, many that have stopped updating, some that were maintained by people who have since died (Rest in Peace, Will Grigg and Sir Brian Barder.) So I don’t suppose there is much point in leaving it as a page. Here is its final state:

Politics

(This page was most recently updated 3 August 2016)

Feel free to use the comments to suggest other sites we should link on this page, especially to lighten the heavy predominance of USA-focused sites.

Political science and campaign news:

  1. 538, statistical analysis of poll results and sporting events;
  2. The Monkey Cage, political scientists maintain a group blog at The Washington Post;
  3. Politico, news and speculation from the USA’s campaign trail;
  4. Real Clear Politics, indispensable aggregator of US campaign news;

Left:

  1. Abagond, 1966-style black nationalist;
  2. The Angry Arab News Service, “a source on politics, war, the Middle East, Arabic poetry, and art”;
  3. The Arabist, what’s going on in places where Arabic is the main language;
  4. The Baffler, which doesn’t want you to be a sucker;
  5. Box Turtle Bulletin, what happens when members of sexual minorities demand their rights;
  6. Carolyn Gage points out that sexual violence does in fact matter in the lives of women and in the structure of society;
  7. Center for a Stateless Society, anarchists who say that treason is no crime, but war is;
  8. Counterpunch, tells the facts and names the names;
  9. Crooks and Liars, tells you that’s what right-wing politicians are, crooks and liars, all of them;
  10. Current Affairs, which has “two missions: to produce the world’s first readable political publication and to make life joyful again”;
  11. Digby’s Hullabaloo, an outlet for Americans frustrated that the center-left isn’t particularly effective in US politics;
  12. Eschaton, the venerable;
  13. Evonomics, argues that economics is a field in transition, and that the new economics will be attuned to reality than was the old;
  14. the Field Negro, for whom “silence is never golden”;
  15. The Intercept, unmasking militarism;
  16. Juan Cole, “Informed Comment” on the Middle East and Central Asia;
  17. Mondoweiss, mostly about Israel/ Palestine;
  18. More Crows Than Eagles, where Anne Amnesia tells the truth about not getting by in America;
  19. Naked Capitalism, left-wing economic views;
  20. The Nation, premier magazine of the US left;
  21. Sadly, No!,  showing that political satire is not necessary when you can just quote American rightists;
  22. Secretly Radical, calls for the abolition of gender;
  23. Spectre, “as Radical as Reality”;
  24. Spocko’s Brain, which is not Morg, and is not Eymorg (or so I would advise youse);
  25. Stop Imperialism, “stands in opposition to the forces of empire and finance which seek to dominate the word through both overt and covert means”; 
  26. ThinkProgress, popular center-left news aggregator;
  27. TomDispatch, “a regular antidote to the mainstream media”;
  28. Truthdig, “drilling beneath the headlines”;
  29. the Utne blog
  30. War is a Crime, say David Swanson and his friends

Right:

  1. Acculturated, young right-of-center authors, most of them apparently Roman Catholic, all of them clearly exasperated that Western pop culture is dominated by people who refuse to grow the Hell up;
  2. Ace of Spades, where they’ve decided they’re done caring about things so they’re just going to root for Donald Trump;
  3. American Affairs, what Trumpism might become if thought through with patience and wisdom
  4. The American Conservative‘s blog section;
  5. Anti-Gnostic, who is at least as fiercely reactionary in his opinions on politicsreligion, and economics as was his hero, philosopher Eric Voegelin, but is much more readable than Voegelin ever was;
  6. The Beacon, a group blog from the libertarian Independent Institute;
  7. The Federalist, center-right web magazine;
  8. Front Porch Republic, sets out to build a sane conservatism based on the virtue of “placefulness”;
  9. William Norman Grigg’s Pro Libertate, libertarianism with a distinctly African-American inflection;
  10. The Imaginative Conservative, “a forum for those who seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful”;
  11. Justin Raimondo, libertarian editor of antiwar.com, inhabits the place where the Old Right meets the New Left;
  12. Kathy Shaidle, right-wing Canadian, is Five Feet of Fury;
  13. Mapping the Dark Enlightenment, links to the most influential neoreactionary sites;
  14. Michael Brendan Dougherty at The Week; 
  15. The Mitrailleuse, libertarians all of whom value and most of whom practice religion;
  16. The New American, voice of the John Birch Society, a group so conspicuously crazy that it can occasionally get away with being inconspicuously sane;
  17. Peter Hitchens is convinced that British voters would rally to support a conservative party, if only the Conservative Party would disband;
  18. Public Discourse, right-wing Roman Catholics;
  19. Social Matter, which says it is “Not your grandfather’s conservatism,” though some of us had some pretty weird grandfathers…
  20. Spiked, hard-edged libertarians with a technophile side;
  21. Spotted Toad, wishes the bourgeoisie would stop sowing the seeds of its own destruction;
  22. Steve Sailer– I know, I know, but he posts lots of interesting stuff;
  23. Street Carnage, from Gavin McInnes and others;
  24. Taki’s Magazine, if you’re a bien-pensant sort, you’ll need your smelling salts handy if you take a look at it;
  25. Twitchy, a poorly designed homepage, badly thought through politics, brilliantly funny about exactly the forms of left-wing behavior that lefties themselves find exasperating

Center:

  1. The Archdruid, who doesn’t see a future in industrial capitalism or the conventional Left that claims to oppose it;
  2. Brian Barder, a retired diplomat who may well be the most polite blogger on the web;
  3. Club Orlov, where “collapsitarian” Dmitry Orlov explains why the modern world is doomed and wonders why the very people who are doing the most to hasten its collapse are the ones who are least willing to admit that their efforts are bearing fruit;
  4. Clusterfuck Nation, by James Howard Kunstler;
  5. Crooked Timber, by authors who may all be of similar political persuasions, but whose academic research leads them in surprising directions;
  6. Damon Linker of The Week;
  7. Duck of Minerva, “world politics from an academic perspective,” and sometimes academic politics from a global perspective;
  8. Ernest F. Hollings, Acilius’ favorite former US Senator (formerly his favorite US Senator);
  9. Fredrik deBoer, wants a “Left that can win,” which means he’s a persistent critic of the Left we seem to be stuck with;
  10. Head of Legal, the UK’s Carl Gardner tells us what the law says about various controversies of the day;
  11. Heterodox Academy, argues that American academics have become so uniform in their political views that the prevailing ideology is now a severe impediment to their intellectual lives;
  12. Language Log‘s section on “Language and Politics“;
  13. LobeLog, “investigative journalism and critical expert perspectives on US foreign policy, especially regarding Iran and the greater Middle East”;
  14. Pat Lang, a retired colonel who knows a lot of stuff;
  15. The Saker, who declares that “Russia Stands for Freedom!,” which I suppose is why he lives in Iceland;
  16. Slate Star Codex, skeptical about the power of reason in human affairs;
  17. Stumbling and Mumbling, in which Chris Dillow claims to be “an extremist, not a fanatic”;
  18. The Volokh Conspiracy, a project begun by right-wing legal scholars, has moved to the Washington Post and lost some of that focus

Democrats and Republicans:

  1. David Stockman‘s Contra Corner;
  2. Echidne of the Snakes, diehard Obama loyalist with a formidable blogroll;
  3. The Huffington Post, founded by someone who named her cat “Puffington Huffington” and made a vast fortune off people’s willingness to give her content for free; 
  4. Kevin Drum, who beats steadily for the Dems;
  5. Michael Barone, Republican political analyst;
  6. Mickey Kaus, who dislikes unions because they drive up wages, and dislikes immigration because it drives down wages;
  7. Pollways, political scientist Amy Fried analyzes opinion trends in and out of the state of Maine ;
  8. Vox‘s “Policy and Politics” section;
  9. The Weekly Standard‘s Daily Standard;
  10. Wonkette, politics for people with dirty minds

 

More of our old links pages

Below are our old pages of links to news sites (with a couple of things attached,) periodicals and web magazines, filters, and general interest and miscellaneous.   (more…)

Our old page of links to sites about Language and Linguistics

Time to say goodbye to our page of links to sites about Language and Linguistics.  Here’s the last revision, made 1 November 2012: (more…)

Our old Reference links page

As I’ve mentioned, I’m scrapping most of the links pages attached to this blog, but preserving the most recent version of each as a post.  So here is what our links to reference materials looked like when we last updated it, more than four years ago:

(more…)

Our old Science links page

I’ve been trimming down the links pages connected to this site; the idea of a links page is hopelessly old-fashioned, and neither I nor anyone else was using most of them. But I’ve been copying them into posts, as a way of recording what they looked like.  So, here’s what our list of Science links looked like when it was finally deleted:

(more…)

Our ukulele links

As I continue paring down our collection of links pages, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time for us to let go of the one for the ukulele.  I still love the ukulele and still use some of our links pages, but that page hasn’t been updated since June 2012.  So here are the links from it that are still live as of today:

Ukulele Acts (more…)

Our old page of links to sites featuring “Pictures, Artists, and Art Blogs”

Checking over our links pages this afternoon, I saw that the one titled “Pictures, Artists, and Art Blogs hadn’t been updated since 9 May 2011.  So I’ve decided to retire it.  Some of the links still lead to interesting things, though.  I believe all of these are live: (more…)