Some Webcomic Merch

Webcomics as a medium are new, but not as new as they used to be. Gone are the days when the likes of Sluggy Freelance were among the few examples of the field; now it’s a crowded arena which people have made careers out of.

They can also be a very ephemeral medium; one day your favourite one might seem to be nice and secure, the next day it might vanish because the money wasn’t paid on the hosting and won’t be paid again, or the creator took enough DMT to reconfigure their brain chemistry and make them realise they had no interest in sharing it with the public, or whatever.

Of course, the field has created a healthy merch market, including collections of webcomics. Getting a physical copy of an Internet publication might be a more costly way of archiving something you want to be able to look at later than just saving the stuff to your hard drive, but if it’s nicely presented it can certainly be an attractive way of doing so, plus a way of giving something back to a webcomic creator, that absent a Patreon or other subscription setup or other merch purposes, you probably never paid a dime for in return for that free entertainment you enjoyed.

Here’s some collections or associated merch that I have enjoyed.

Hark! A Vagrant!

You probably know and love Hark! A Vagrant! already; it’s highly memeable and as all the rage during its run from 2007 to 2018. Three printed anthologies of its strips have come out over the years; here’s my thoughts on them.