Free comics: Freakangels, Girl Genius, Planet Karen, xkcd

As many of you know we’re down to a one income family since Sarah got laid off.  It’s a long story, but the financial model of commercial real estate loans involves reselling the loans as commercial mortgage backed securities and not holding them.  The people that bought those securities took a bath on their subprime housing investments, so they stopped buying commercial mortgage backed securities, which means Sarah’s business model came to a screeching halt.  So she got laid off.

We’re fine financially but have had to change our lifestyle, and one of those changes involves my comic buying budget, which has plunged.  I’m now in the business of buying out of the half price comics bin or reading comics online.  The weird thing is that I’m actually reading comics more hours a week than when I bought them because online the comics are so much more accessible.  Also my reading isn’t throttled by whether or not something new has been issued in the shop.  I used to wait for new issues to come out, but no more.  Turns out there’s more comics online than I could read in a lifetime.

Much credit to Billfrog for setting me on this path.  He sent me an undeniably beautiful Flash-based webcomic, and it started me looking for more.

Here are the active serials that I’m reading that I’d really recommend you check out.  I don’t have time to review them now, just go read a few panels and if you like, start back at the beginning or something.

• Girl Genius (It’s Phil Foglio, what’s not to like?)
• xkcd (Nerd humor)
• Planet Karen (A diary in comic form)
• FreakAngels ("post apocalyptic steampunk by Warren Ellis"  That’s five perfect words out of six.)

Inactive but still worth your time to read are:

• Outside the box (Bill’s original recommendation)