Slashdot Mirror
Ph.D Webcomic Gets Adapted Into Feature Film
Technically Inept writes with the lead paragraph from a report at Comics Alliance: "To the best of my knowledge, Jorge Cham's Piled Higher and Deeper (better known as PhD Comics) is the first webcomic to be adapted into a feature-length film. After months spent on a college campus screening tour, Piled Higher and Deeper: The Movie is finally available for purchase and streaming. And, like its comic inspiration, the PhD pokes fun at the frustrations of graduate students, those noble folks who enter academia with dreams of changing the world and inspiring young minds, only to be thwarted by indifferent professors, lazy undergrads and the ever-present fear that they'll never graduate." The short review linked makes this sound like a very watchable movie.
Meh. I find faux-intellectually elevated webcomics too tedious. If someone wants to impress, they have to be more than just wikipedia dilettantes.
I prefer the ones that try a bit harder. To name a few that have that extra spark I'm talking about:
Romantically apocalyptic: http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/8
Digger: http://www.diggercomic.com
Erfworld: http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F001.jpg
They are more involved but it is well worth the extra effort.
Are you kidding? xkcd is total shit. Let me sum it up for you: whimsical stick figures white knighting on the internet!!!!! But with pop culture references!!!!! LOLOLOLOL. Penny Arcade is better, but the blogs are frequently better than the actual strips. PhD comics is alright, but it's not exactly what I'd call great.
Let me introduce you to a real webcomic: The Parking Lot is Full.
Honorable mention to Gone with the Blastwave, Sexy Losers, and Perry Bible Fellowship, even though PBF is a pretty much a ripoff of PLIF. Still, it ripped off the best, so it gets an honorable mention.
If you're into insipid, warmed-over Monty Python references and "internet culture", then SMBC is probably what you're looking for. It's alright. It's shitloads better than xkcd, at least. And there's no desperate, low self-esteem white-knighting, which is a huge bonus. There's also Bob the Angry Flower, if you crave nerd humor that's got more substance than someone making fucking graphs.
I could mention a few others, but I was never that big a fan of Ghastly's Ghastly Comic (maybe you need to be a weeaboo to really love tentacle rape jokes... and Sexy Losers did it all first). There's also Subnormality, if you don't mind preachy, TL;DR strips about the totally wacky and off-the-wall adventures of a sphinx that -- get this -- likes to EAT PEOPLE!!!! LOL. What craziness!
But, really, xkcd is total shit.