I discovered Shot Glasses via an add on Top Web Comics when I was in there voting for another comic.  The strips is created, appropriately enough, by Team Shot Glasses.  Like many web comics, one guy’s the writer and the other one’s the artist.  Kassim Douglas does a great job with the art style.  And his attention to detail is pretty great for a comic that isn’t too overly realistic.  For example, check out the attention to detail with Gen’s socks in this strip:

This comic is very young with only 25 strips completed as of today.  Like the Chris Cantrell comics I reviewed yesterday the adventures of Rob, Gary, and Gen occur in small, self-contained story arcs.  However, this doesn’t bother me as it did in Please Rewind and I think it’s because this strip doesn’t have as obvious of a reset button.  No one’s been killed multiple times or done other things that are later ignored.  I guess within a continuum from Penny Arcade to Questionable Content I tend to prefer comics at either end.  It’s harder when you try to combine the reset button with a bit of continuity.  At least, that’s my best attempt at understanding why I wasn’t so turned off with Shot Glasses even though they’re, at the most basic level, doing the same thing.  I think it’s also why I enjoyed The Deadlys more than Please Rewind.

Taking a look at the comic’s cast page shows that the writer has some pretty deep plans for the characters.  At least I hope he does, because I’m curious about this relationship between the male characters.  From a story point of view, it’s interesting that there’s so far been no sexual tension between Gen and any of the guys.  That’s neither a good or bad thing.  It’s just interesting that they have a cast of two girls and a guy that are just friends with nothing complicated going on.  That doesn’t preclude them from introducing it in the future, but it’s worth noting compared to all the other strips I’ve read.

They frequently have strips about video games and have taken the same approach as I have done in INM – they have the video game avatars replaced by the characters.  (Like I did in the non-canonical L4D strips here and here)  I really like this style (and not just because I use it myself) because it helps you keep track of who’s who and map the character actions to the characters controlling them.  Not that there aren’t reasons to use the actual characters when the rule of funny demands it.

So far I’m enjoying Shot Glasses.  I’m looking forward to see where they go.  They’re about in the spot we were in with Season 2 where they’re updating only once a week so it’s hard this early on to tell where they’re going to go with the comic; there just aren’t enough strips to know for sure.  But so far I’m really enjoying the art-style and the pacing and topics.  Are video game strips overdone?  I think it depends on the type of strip.  Dual Analogs and Penny Arcade pretty much have the gag-a-day video game/video game industry thing working well for them.  I think another entry in that space would have to do something special to stand out.  But, given that playing video games is a huge part of our lives as geeks (and a large portion of those of us making webcomics are geeks), I think comics like Shot Glasses that comment on games but have their own story on the side can co-exist quite nicely as long as the characters are compelling and the story is fun.  I’m not going to go as far as to say that Shot Glasses is a must-read.  It’s a bit early for that.  But I will say that, of the latest bunch of comics I’ve finished reading through, I’ve enjoyed it the most.  So, my recommendation is to do a quick read through the archives and then add it to your RSS feeder and see if it doesn’t continue to delight you.

I just finished up reading through the achives of No Pink Ponies.  I ended up there after clicking on the Keenspot link off of the Sore Thumbs site.  It was a fun read and only took a few hours.  Something to quickly get out of the way – the author has a weird updating style.  Since the comic is happening in real time, he feels that he needs to backdate the strips.  So it looks as though the comic was abandoned nearly two years ago.  But he’s actually updating it regularly.  He’s done at least six comics and only one was abandoned, so I have high hopes for this strip.  Speaking of the author, he’s Malaysian, but except for a few strange sentence constructions here and there, you wouldn’t be able to tell that English is not his first language.

No Pink Ponies is drawn in a style best described as a mix of manga and Western.  None of the girls are exceptionally buxom nor do they have gigantic eyes, but you can definitely see a manga influence.  The comic is a story-based comic that usually ends on a punchline every strip.  It starts off with protagonist Jess seeing a cute guy working in a comic book shop.  Her friend Lyla puts the idea into her head that she should open up a comic book shop to meet him.  It doesn’t quite make as much sense as it could, but no big deal, most comics have a weird strip to set things in motion like when Faye randomly sets her apartment on fire in Questionable content so she can end up living with Martin.  And never again was shown to be dangerous while cooking or in the kitchen.  (Or Dan/Dave blowing all their money in Japan and needing to room with with Min) Anyway, it doesn’t matter – I’ve seen it in tons of web comics.  The point is, he ends up working at her comic shop.  The comic includes regulars like Layla’s boyfriend, four nerds that hang out there all the time, and Maureen.  For a time, the author was using his Sunday strips to do a Wolverine parody, but that seems to have ended as the story’s gotten more complex and he probably didn’t want to waste time not moving it forward.

As for the story, I enjoyed reading it.  I marked it for putting onto my RSS reader.  I enjoy the characters and the author’s writing style.  It’s funny without being slapstick.  It appeared to get a bit of Cerebus Syndrome for a particularly serious sideplot with one of the characters.  But since then it’s gone back to its pretty comical tone.  The comic is not one of those OMG YOU MUST READ IT comics like Misfile or Sister Claire.  But it is a fun story.  You could probably check it out in an idle afternoon and see if you want to follow it.