Gunnerkrigg Court
My favourite webcomic is now a book. Buy it!
I don't read very many web-based comics. I don't find many of them are very good. So it's come as a surprise to me that I'm totally hooked on Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court, a Gormenghastian saga about a very strange school/factory/city and the enchanted and often sinister forest that lies next to it.
Antimony Carver is a new student at the school called Gunnerkrigg Court. She's come from the hospital where she spent much of her sheltered youth watching her mother slowly wane and die. Now, at the Court, she has the chance to make friends and learn how the world works.
Except that Antimony's world is far stranger than she (or we) could have imagined. It's a madhouse of ghosts and robots, forest spirits and virtual classrooms; a school so huge and labyrinthine that whole neighbourhoods of it have remained unexplored for who-knows-how-long. The story unfolds at a rate of three pages per week (updated on mondays, wednesdays and fridays) but as it's up to Chapter 22 and the chapters average 30 pages in length, there's plenty of reading to do to catch up.
I'm completely addicted. I'm also delighted that you can now buy the first volume of the series on Amazon. Siddell's work deserves wide recognition and praise. Gunnerkrigg Court brightens up at least three days of my week, and for a writer and artist to be able to sustain such a high quality of output for so long is itself a feat worthy of recognition.
All hail the Court, and three cheers for Antimony Carver!
Agreed, and a recommendation
Have you ever taken a look at Dresden Codak? I think you'd find something to like there--particularly in the "Hob" storyline.
The strip is here: http://www.dresdencodak.com/index.html
A little thing I wrote up about it is here: http://www.chrismclaren.com/[…]/