A web comic – like many venues on the internet – is a way to get your creativity out there without the traditional approval of editors and publishers – whom often care less about your work than the filthy vulgar piles of money it can generate.

Without this level of quality control an artist has free reign to craft the tales they want, but can also suck pretty hard without the critical feedback of co-investors – since any that dislike your work won’t mention it as they leave your site for the hentai page of anthropomorphic school girls sexually exploring themselves at Soapy Massage Academy they originally meant to find when the grace of Google brought your link to their attention. Tarol Hunt’s Goblins may cause a few to stick around, and doesn’t even need fan service to do so.

The art is a good cartoony style with heavy illustrational elements – this shows my ignorance of art terms but click the above link and you’ll see what I mean. Anatomical proportion is generally observed with nice inking and coloring indicative of *gasp* formal art training!?! This is a welcome change for the eye given the abundance of crude etchings and simplistic composition on the net. Those that showcase such amateur skill usually make up for it with good story and dialogue out of necessity, yet Goblins includes both.

The premise is a group of D&D style goblins decide to go adventuring to gain levels as heroes to defend their way of life, as opposed to just being sword fodder like their ancestors. Each are well-developed characters with naming styles that fit them: the big eared Big Ears, Complains of Names who is an internal critique of the comic and the tropes it covers, the comic relief Fumbles, and the rightly neurotic Dies Horribly. Many of the jokes derive from game rules defining reality, which isn’t original but is conservatively placed such that you forget this is a RPG story and it’s funny to be reminded. The tale is closer to an epic saga than most others and highlighted with graphic scenes of ultra violence that often gets narrated in actual games as “You take out his last hitpoints. He dies.” Here is what that statement actually looks like.

Its feature is also flaw however since art that good takes time. Hunt has gotten out a little over a hundred stripsin the past three years. I read through the past episodes in a few hours, got hooked, now I have to wait a week or more for a page worth of advancement. Order of the Stick has nearly six times as many two-page episodes in about the same amount of time on the net. Such exposure and the fan base it creates has let its creator do the strip full time and pen several books of back story that he charges money for. This is just one competitor and there are many others. As good as Goblins is, it’s easy to forget with irregular posting at this pace and the other options available.

Hunt does sell books , has a donation box, and does a fundraising strip - where plot points get reached when donation reach a goal – but would see a lot more revenue with methodically regular updating and a quicker story pace. I hope it works out for him cause this tale is to good to go the way of good strips like …. uh … the kind made so obscure that I can’t even recall their titles anymore.

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