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Apr 2015

I spend a lot of my time working on my own comic79 that I don't do a lot of reading. I'm interested in webcomics that are:

  • Surreal
  • Unconventional
  • Philosophical
  • Existential
  • Dark/Disturbing
  • Poetic

For reference some artists that I admire are Edward Gorey, Junji Ito, Usamaru Furuya, Nishioka Kyoudai and Kusumoto Maki. I'm interested to add some comics to my reading list so any recommendations would be great. I'm in the process of working on a tumblr website that features surreal webcomics and I would like to get to know any creators that are doing more experimental work. Questions? Suggestions?

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    Apr '15
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    Apr '15
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If you're interested in webcomics that really experiment with the format, HERO: A story169 by Hwei goes down a pretty different route than most comics - using only images, and leaving any narrative and dialogue as hover-text that only appears when you mouse over certain panels.

I'm not quite caught up on it, and the latest chapter seems to have a more traditional approach of dialogue and narrative captions - leaving them visible on the page - but that could be just a one-chapter thing.

It's also pretty dreamy and poetic, IMHO.

Hobo Lobo of Hamelin113 seems pretty experimental and different. It's a side-scroll and the images have that neat 3D effect as you scroll, revealing pieces of the story. There's some animation/music incorporated in some cases, too. I have to admit, it's more of a picture-book than comic. No panels or anything. I'm not sure if it's finished or still ongoing. I think it's beautiful, though.

Thanks for all the suggestions. They're very interesting but not exactly what I'm looking for. Still it's great to hear about these all webcomics that are going beyond conventions and being different.

I know you said webcomics, but I can't help recommend Richard Sala's macabre retelling of the Snow White story in a graphic novel called Delphine. It's certainly very dreamlike (nightmarish?) in a lot of places and I remember being genuinely creeped out at certain points of the story. Here's a PDF preview of it.23 (Sorry if it's still not what you're looking for, haha.)

my webcomic, Beautiful Lies24 is sadly not that dark or surreal as much as I too enjoy that stuff. I think I have a good one for you that is fairly unknown. It's got nudity and strangeness and is very surreal. Hopefull you will like it: Manako's Overly Salted Meat37. Please check his work out. He redid and is redoing his pages so you won't see the
stuff I've seen jjst yet...

Thanks for the suggestions. ALONE TIME COMPASSº seems quite interesting.

25 days later

It's quite intriguing! Check it out, peeps!

Also....just giving this Topic a slight bump. There must be more stuff like this Out There!

I have been working on my horror comic Likho18 It's an experiment for myself.
I wouldn't say it's /different/ but very disturbing. Warning, it has gore.

Maybe it fits into surreal because of the strange story line. Even I don't know whats going on.