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.