Comedity

Comedity

Author/Artist: Garth Graham
Online since: April 20, 2004 (First Comic)

Comedity isn't a comic that I check on religiously, but I do catch up on strips about once a month. Graham's update schedule is all over the place at the moment, so checking every day for a new strip can become tedious. But I do keep coming back to it because it has a very interesting base idea behind it, and I think he could really go somewhere with it.

Comedity is a semi-autobiographical comic. By that I mean that is about Garth and the other everyday people in his life. But it is also done with a fantasy spin on it. A lot of the comic is from the point of view of the different parts of Garth's psyche. Literally, the voices in his head. They all look vaguely like Garth himself, but each with their own facet that determines his actions.

For example, Garth can be "driven" by the Ninja , the Random Trivia , Wit , or rarely, his Inner Cool Guy .

Each part of his personality lends him different traits and mannerisms, but in a small, realistic way, just as everyone has different personality variations.

In this comic, Graham also allows his imagination to become reality. He always wanted to be a superhero? He is in the comic, and no one questions the realism of it. His superpower? Bending probability, allowing him to get into fantastic situations and of course getting him out of them.

All in all, the story is set up to be interesting, the art is steady and well-done, so I should be singing his praises all over, right? Sadly, Comedity fails in a couple key areas.

First, the update schedule mentioned about. Graham has mentioned with his sporadic updates that he also has a professional job in the artist world. While I can respect that, I do wish he could set up an update schedule, even if it was only one day a month. When he has fallen behind of updating, he also tends to post his sketches and other projects that have no relation to the Comedity storyline. It can be a letdown to see an update and then see that it in no way resolves the story from the previous page.

Another aspect that takes away some of the validity of the comic is the cliche of some of his characters. While the personality aspects and his superhero identity are interesting and new, he also followed a couple of cookie cutter webcomic themes. He has the cute random animal that shows up, the Penguin, and he has an anthropomorphized computer that looks like a hot girl. His characters have their own little spins, of course, but they're still a little too close to things I've seen over and over before.

Graham has a great idea to go with here, and awesome drawing skills. He can make Comedity take off if he gives it the time and focuses on his original and interesting ideas.