MEGATOKYO:
The first comic I'm going to talk about in this is Megatokyo, the first webcomic I ever started reading, back in 2003-ish (Middle School). My sister initially brought home the first two collections in book form home from her high school, and I read them after she was done and got hooked rather quickly.
Megatokyo follows the characters Piro and Largo, who fly to Japan to escape an embarrassing situation involving Largo getting drunk and shouting while naked at E3(Electronic Entertainment Expo). Unfortunately, Piro didn't think this plan through all the way and when they max out their credit cards they no longer have the means to return home. They end up staying and working at a Video Game/Comic book store in Tokyo for an indefinite amount of time until they save up enough money to return home. However, each character then finds romance and other friendships that develop that seem to be keeping them in Japan forever.
The problems that arise in this comic are, after the writer Rodney Caston left the comic and Fred Gallagher took complete control, that while the comic started it began as a parody and comedic look at the world of Video Games, Manga, and Anime. Initially the comic parodied anime and manga's sometimes ridiculously convoluted stories and generally ridiculous nature, especially how the cities depicted in anime and manga are often destroyed yet almost immediately rebuilt. Recently, the Megatokyo story has become what it had been previously been a parody of, but recently it has very few comedic moments as of late and an extremely convoluted story that it takes months do fully develop due to the lack of regular updates from the creator.
Another erroneous concept portrayed in the comic is the fact that Largo has a hard time communicating with the general population of Japan due to not being able to understand Japanese, while Piro has an easier time due to the fact that he is somewhat fluent. From what I've heard of several accounts, it would probably be easier for Largo because signs in Japan are all written in both English and Japanese, and most people in Japan can speak English. On the contrary, Piro would have a harder time if he ever tried to speak Japanese because if you start speaking Japanese, people in Japan assume that you are 100 percent fluent, and due to the speed that native speakers talk, it can become confusing for a Japanese-Second-Language person. Something that also might hinder Piro's understanding of Japanese is also touched on in the graphic novel Yukiko's Spinach, where the narrator mistakes the word for Belly-Button, or Navel, for Spinach when describing the beauty of the titular character's body.
While I started reading this comic for its extremely geeky humor, I've since become somewhat uninterested in the comic due to the plot going off the rails of its initial sanity. That combined with the erratic update schedule despite the creator starting to work full time on the comic means that I usually don't remember to check this comic for updates.
GO GET A ROOMIE:
This is a comic that I recently got into at the beginning of this school year. I can't remember how I found it, but its a very good read.
The story involves a girl known only as "Roomie," who got her name due to her promiscuous sexual nature, often going home and sleeping with(after having sex with) people she barely knows, usually after heavy drinking at Jo's Bar. Therefore, she is everyone's roommate at some point or another.
After a night at Jo's she ends up in bed, naked, with Lillian, or "Lazy Tyke" as she is called by her brother due to her hypersomnia, who for all intents and purposes is asexual as well as completely sexually oblivious. Its clear that there was some misunderstanding the night before, and the two didn't have sex but rather literally just slept together. Lillian's hypersomnia stems from the fact that she finds her dreams more interesting than real life. She is able to continue this lifestyle due to her father having large real estate holdings that the surviving family members sold to make ends meet.
While the comic is named after Roomie, the main character is really Lillian in my opinoin, as its more about how Lillian is slowly growing to accept and understand the people that are Roomie's friends and is accepting the new world she's been dragged into. The initial acceptance takes time of course, which leads to many hilarious encounters.
This comic is extremely sexually explicit, but it also has expanded my horizons and my way of thinking about the world vicariously through Lillian, in that I've learned about how human sexuality isn't so well defined with the generally accepted labels. There are a lot of inbetweens and different areas of the spectrum that I never even knew about, such as pansexuality or omnisexuality(Which I confused at first with Bisexuality, though there is a distinct difference) as well as the completely opposite Asexuality, people who are Asexual only make up 1% of the population.
DUMBING OF AGE:
Dumbing of Age is an interesting comic I just recently got into and found through a link on the Go Get a Roomie comic page. The story is a little bit of the same, people being thrown headfirst into a new place and situation, but more of a romance between several characters who are all dealing with their pasts in a new environment: college.
The story mostly revolves around a girl named Joyce who, prior to college, was homeschooled and sheltered intensely by her Christian parents. So much so that she freaks out when she is assigned a black roommate, finds out one of her new college friends is an atheist, and when she finds out that she's started dating a gay man. She eventually, and very slowly, comes to terms with all of this and slowly gets over her prejudices about people who are different.
I liked this comic due to the fact that I can really relate to the subject matter. More recently, one of the storylines came very close to my own experience, where the character Dina(a girl who's absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs) becomes aware that others think poorly of her and that hurts her feelings. She then seeks out to change that, albeit slowly.
