Pornokitsch

Jamie's back with more recommendations! 

Canadian writer/artist Jeff Lemire is a comics creator whose work is bound together by a strong thematic consistency. Lemire really proves – as if there was still doubt – that comics are a serious literary medium, but he doesn’t forget the power this medium has to engage with our emotions.

I tried, really, really hard to resist these things. Why are they popular?! Why are they fun?!! They're slabs of plastic! They have zero points of articulation! They don't do anything!!!

And yet... here we are.

Say hi to Jamie, who is leading us through the wicked world of webcomics...

Webcomics, they’re a tricky beast.

The spiritual successors to daily newspaper strips, given the entire scope and resources of the World Wide Web in which to spread their wings. Just keeping up with a tiny fraction of what’s available can amount to a full time job and, for luddites like me, they represent a unique problem: I want to read them, but books are just so darn nice!

Luckily, some very nice people (publishers, mostly) have collected some of top webcomics into print editions. Here are five of my favourites:

Ellerbisms by Marc Ellerby (published by Great Beast) 

Ellerbisms came out in 2012, but the comic itself began way back in 2007 and charts Marc Ellerby’s own life, specifically his relationship with Anna: the girl he never thought he could have, then had and ultimately lost. Autobiography is a common genre for webcomics, the daily, or near-daily, nature of them being a great way to chart day-to-day experience. What sets Ellerbisms apart is the charming honesty of its warts-and-all storytelling. Ellerby himself is not always the hero here, but that doesn’t mean he’s the villain. There are no villains in this story, there’s just life. This honest account is tied together by Ellerby’s disarmingly simplistic artwork: simple lines construct amazingly expressive faces, with quirked eyebrows and slight frowns saying so much more than words could, the art belying the raw emotional punch this comic carries.

1. Charles I was executed on Whitehall, right about where the Earl Haig statue is placed. Charles was led out to the scaffold on a walkway from the first floor of the Banqueting House rather than via the street.

It’s usually some warped remix version that plays at the studio I work out at, but then, hey, aren't we all some warped remix version of ourselves when we work out?

Today's post is from Special Operative Fleur, who is serving in the front line in the battle against furry armageddon. We have only ever known war. /eats bacon sandwich

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One of my favourite film scenes has always been the battle scene in the cartoon version of Animal Farm (1954). Goats being camouflaged as walls, geese ambushing people from haystacks and donkeys kicking people in the face – it's great. I'm a bleeding heart pacifist, war films bore me and you couldn't pay me enough to go paintballing, but there's something about animals reigning terror on man that makes me very happy. 

Animals have always challenged the rule of man, but in 2015 they escalated hostilities. Tell your family you love them, go out and stock up on catnip, and prepare for the animal apocalypse.

With the new generation of consoles finally coming into their own this year, it's been a great 12 months for blockbuster games. Here's the five which gave me the most fun - and in return, I've given them good write-ups. It's actually about ethics in end-of-the-year listicles.

This week's guest is author Kim Curran, helping us end the year with a bang! Take it away, Kim...

2015 has, in many ways, been goddamn awful. Just an endless barrage of humans being utterly shit to each other. Quite often social media is criticised for bringing out the worst in people, of stoking the already ravenous fires of hatred and fear. Studies have shown angry posts spread the fastest across social channels and we all know there’s something about the anonymity offered by the internet that turns even reasonable people into trolls. And then there’s the smuggery. Oh, god, the smuggery.

Agent Carter

Well, OBV.