Convergence

Today's recommendation combines two of my previously mentioned interests: web-comics, and over-analysis: The Comics Curmudgeon. Josh (the curmudgeon in question) analyses newspaper comics, that weird vestigial area in which soap opera comics appear alongside kids' puzzles and anaemic humour, all seemingly drifting further and further from the world covered by the rest of the paper. As with the other critiques I like, the subject's combination of banality and awfulness inspires the critic to contrasting heights of creativity. One post might concentrate on the art, the next on plots; sometimes he'll use a comic as inspiration for a comic riff, other times he'll just present baffling panels for their own sake. Overall, he's charmingly nonplussed yet intrigued by the continuing existence of so many strikingly irrelevant and/or unfunny strips, which often end looking more like outsider art than mainstream entertainment. Thanks to him, though, you can enjoy them with an ironic commentary, which is how I like to absorb all my culture. And if it wasn't for this site, I would never have seen this:

or this: