Inspiration...

...comes in some unusual places for me. Maybe I think it's unusual because it doesn't really come to me often. Or there's the third option, that I'm mistaking inspiration for enthusiasm. Regardless, occasionally, I find something that makes me want to get up and go and get something done. One of these things lately has been Gunnerkrigg Court. It's a fantastic webcomic done by Tom Siddell. It's a fantasy story about a girl named Antimony Carver who attends an unusual school, Gunnerkrigg Court.

I love webcomics. The list of other webcomics I check daily:

Ctrl+Alt+Del
Goblins
Penny Arcade
Questionable Content
Least I Could Do
Darths & Droids
Anders Loves Maria
KinokoFry
Octopus Pie
Basic Instructions
DAR
Sarah Zero
DigitalPimpOnline (has a number of different comics by the same artist)
Dueling Analogs
Three Panel Soul
Minus
Striptease

The latter few of this list I've only found recently. You may think it's a lot but it doesn't take fifteen minutes to check out the latest strip of these, though not all of them update daily. Regardless, I read a lot of webcomics, and have read a lot more over the years. Some of them ended (Shaw Island and Mac Hall, now Three Panel Soul) and some I just fell out of touch with (VG Cats and Real Life Comics - still great webcomics however). Some I enjoy more than others, some I like to keep up with to find out the fate of particular storylines or characters, some are one shot comics that are a good laugh. However, there are none that I had read that have made me want to really better myself. Usually, I'd look at comics such as Penny Arcade and wish I could be as eloquent as Tycho Brahe in his articles and humour, as taboo smashing as Ryan Sohmer of Least I Could Do, as original and imaginative as Rebecca Clements of KinokoFry, or create characters mould breaking like Meredith Gran, least of all being able to draw anywhere near as well as Gabe of PA, Lar DeSouza of LICD, and Rebecca and Meredith of Kinoko and OP respectively. (Special mention also to Jeph Jaqcues for Questionable Content, Erika Moen for DAR, Rene Engström for Anders Loves Maria and Tarol Hunt for Goblins, all great and original comics.) I've always looked upon these with a level of awe and somewhat jealousy, wishing I could create works as good as these.

Now where does Gunnerkrigg Court come in against these aces of the webcomic world? I hadn't heard of Gunnerkrigg Court until I found a link within someone else's webcomic. Within the first Chapter, even the first few pages, I was hooked. This was something different. I read through the entire archive in one sitting. The artwork is nice and simple - nothing ground breaking - but retains it's own style, and improves as the comic goes on. What struck me about this webcomic though, was that it contained everything that I used to love about comics and cartoons. The unique characters, the continuing plot with interjecting storylines, the mythology... all seems to fit together seamlessly. Even when things don't quite make sense, they're still believable. Tom Siddell has written this in such a way that robots, mythological spirits of nature and virtual reality seem to live comfortably together.

Although the above mentioned writers and artist do great work and still inspire me, Gunnerkrigg Court makes me want to do something about it. Why? Writing this has made me understand why. It's because it gives me hope that there's still room for the old generation of the great storylines and adventure series that I grew up with. And that's something worth fighting for, right?