The Classic: Introduction

Before this universe there was another one. . . a happy universe filled with bunnies. But that one got destroyed in a great cataclysm brought about by a major plot point. Pay attentiion, there will be a test later.

I did my last Special Series, Best Overall, where I talked way too much about Schlock Mercenary, in an attempt to get me through a really crappy work month and it only kind of worked out.  And I only did that because The Standard, where I talked way too much about Sluggy Freelance, I felt was quite a success and I enjoyed doing it.  So with two in the bag, I started thinking about other comics that deserved this kind of treatment..  My first thought was to do Gunnerkrigg Court, as I had just given it a Quasi-award for Best Overall for 2015.  Then I thought about it more and there is a comic a bit more deserving of this treatment, especially as I apparently, and inadvertently, snubbed it in both sets of Quasi-awards.

It's not that I went out of my way to not award Errant Story anything, but I wanted to focus more newer comics because everyone's read Errant Story, right?

RIGHT?

I know that's not true, a lot of people haven't read it, but I feel they should have.  It's like those classic pieces of literature kids get stuck reading in school.  They are classics, excellent works of fiction and examples of the written word, and I feel that Errant Story fits in there.  Oh, it's not as good as Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, but when it comes to webcomics, there really isn't any other comic that does what Errant Story has done.

Errant Story is my model for the High Fantasy epic, a cornerstone of my involvement in webcomics as a whole.  While Sluggy Freelance is my standards by which all comics are measured against, Errant Story is more a model of what I want a particular branch of comics to be.

I started reading Errant Story very shortly after it started, within a few months if that.  I read it all the way through, beginning to end.  I was there when Michael Poe's father died and derailed the comic for a while, and when his wife nearly died.  This remains, for now, the only comic I have ever given money to.  They sent me a button, which I still have.  It's a comic I have done a Not-So-Wild Review and a Retrospective, and now a Special Series all it's own.

I consider Errant Story to be The Classic of all the comics I read.  Some are older, some have better stories, some have better art, but none of them are the quintessential webcomic, the one everyone SHOULD read.

And it's going to take a while to describe why.  After all, the comic went on for a good 10 years, much of it 3 days a week (probably around 1500 pages total), and there's really only ONE story, not several.  The only easy way to handle this is the straightforward way, one volume at a time.  There are 7 volumes, of course, and that would make a long series, so I might combine a few, but I will reread the entire thing.

I will be bypassing the Commentary Track version of the comic, however.  Mostly because it's incomplete (stops halfway through Volume 2) but also because I want to re-experience the original comic, from the beginning.  Finally, I won't string this all together like I tried with The Standard and Best Overall, this one is going to take awhile to get all the way through and I'm sure there are other topics that will come up in the mean time.

So let's get to it.  This is The Classic, Michael Poe's Errant Story.  See you next time kiddies.