Comics: Oglaf

I'm always interested in a good online comic strip, but there really aren't that many that really grab my attention. My chum Matt pointed me at cracker though: Oglaf. It's set in a sort of medieval fantasy universe with other bits and pieces (like that Ponce de León strip above). There isn't an over-riding story as such, more a collection of small storylines, although there are times when there is a longer story arc.

It's frequently dodgy (in a not safe for work manner) but it's damn funny. And when I say it's a bit iffy... well, you probably wouldn't want your kids to be reading it. I've avoided posting any of the more explicit ones here - you'll just have to pop over to the website to see those.

What's quite surprising is that it's drawn by an Australian. Even more surprising is that the author is female. Trudy Cooper is a cartoonist, illustrator and animator and Oglaf is just one of her strips. She also publishes Platinum Grit, which has a different art style and is nothing like Oglaf.

If you're wondering about the title... it's actually the name of one of the characters in the strip. Oglaf is a young farm boy and also happens to be The Chosen One although it's never exactly clear for what he's been chosen.

There are a whole pile of recurring characters and sometimes the strip will follow one for several weeks, but just as often it'll skip back and forward without settling on a particular one. A new strip is published every Sunday and, if you read it via the RSS feed, it'll even tell you if it's 'clean' or not.

Some stories are just one page, but most have two or three. Be sure to click "next page" until you can't any more. Then you can click "next story" to move on.

When you reach the end of a story, the bottom right hand panel corner is cut off just so you're sure you haven't missed anything.

That's got to be my favourite one. The joke is just spot on and so underplayed that I find it brilliant.

Head on over to oglaf.com to catch up. There's about 250 strips for you to read (at the time of writing).
http://oglaf.com/

You might also want to check out Cooper's other comic here:
http://www.platinumgrit.com/

There's an interview with Trudy Cooper about Oglaf and other stuff here:
http://www.yuhmm.com/post/434279932/trudy-cooper