Snowman On Fire

I’ll admit to a bit of off-hours entertainment this week that didn’t involve Devils games: I started reading Questionable Content, an aboslutely brilliant web comic, and was so intrigued by the few panels that I saw that I went back to square one (post one, if you must) and began reading the whole strip.

This is the beauty of web comics — unlike something in your local newspaper, you don’t enter storylines without context. You can absorb the crispy goodness of someone else’s warped mind and see the whole thing evolve. I’ve been digesting about 150 strips a day, with a goal to get caught up to early 2008 before I head off to China next week. This is definitely a strong-R rated strip, and there are references that I’d have to explain to more than a few of my friends. But after spending reasonable amounts of time in the 413 area code, and working at a college radio station for a few years, I can say with certainty that QC captures the mash-up of both. Perfectly.

When you’re reading something, and one of the characters reminds you of a good friend in every way, then the illustrator and writer have connected with you such that art imitates life. It makes for a good story, even if your own life doesn’t have the same number of parental warning labels affixed.

Not a reference to the Red Wings, nor a reference to some bizarre Sopranos inside joke. It’s this:

Octopus Pie is a very New York attitude online comic that mixes equal parts Sully Erna, Rachael Ray, Dorothy Hamill and Sean Avery. Seriously. It can’t be explained, so click away. But yes, I did choose those avatars so I could tag this post with “Godsmack” and “figure skating”, a most statistically unlikely skating pair. Click on the smaller image above for the full-sized desktop version.