Epic Default Productions

I’ve heard a lot of different webcomics tossed around as ones that I should start reading. Being the electro-lit fiend that I am, I always welcome suggestions for more webcomics to check out from friends, acquaintances, people who write me death threats dripping with disdain for my life and anything I’ve written, and the occasional hobo hanging around downtown (which really just leaves in awe for hours pondering which characteristics distinguish a webcomic as pro-hobo). But of course when your girlfriend starts bugging you about a webcomic that you should start reading, you really shouldn’t wait too long before you get started reading. Otherwise, you better be ready to suffer the consequences of your actions.

It took me 6 months before I got started to read Girls With Slingshots and thanks to the fine doctors at Houston Memorial Hospital almost all of my internal organs are still intact. But hey, at least I’m reading it now… right?

First off, I want to draw a bit of a line. I am not a sexist individual. I may make jokes that might seem offensive to women but those are purely because I’m a bastard, not a sexist bastard. Hell, I’m an equal opportunity bastard. I might laugh at and even tell rape jokes but I also laughed hysterically with pure, unfiltered joy during the forced castration scene of “Hard Candy”. Seriously, I scared the shit out of Jonny when we watched that movie. Now I definitely think both rape and castration are horrifically terrible acts of a truly disturbing nature and should never be forced upon any individual, but if you can’t laugh in the fictional realm at the pure horrors that life has to offer… well then you are probably sane but don’t come crying to me when I live to 120 and I’m laughing over peoples corpses because they were dicks.

Yes, I am THAT GUY.

I make this qualifier though in order to gently massage into brain of the reader the reasoning of why it took me six months to start reading this webcomic. Most of the people that told me about this webcomic and suggested I start reading it were females, with at least a bit of a feminist streak, who enjoyed the comic with a particular zest… and by most, I mean all. That isn’t to say I disagree with feminism. I’m all for equal treatment no matter what gender, race, sexual orientation, or other differentiating characteristic. But being a guy for whom it took a number of years before he stopped regarding himself as inherently evil because I have a penis, I tend to shy away these days from anything that preaches to that choir. Having said that I can gladly state that I was very much in wrong.

This is a webcomic that has a plethora of good qualities. For one, it’s funny. It’s not rolling across the floor and shedding tears laughing funny but between the cactus that looks suspiciously phallic, the two main female characters, Hazel & Jamie, randomly breaking out into pillow fights, and the breaking of the fourth wall that happens more frequently then Ike beating Tina you can get a good chuckle going from a number of the daily strips. Two, the characters are great. They have depth, and not depth as in one strip I’m smiling and one strip I’m yelling. There sadness, forgiveness, guilt, remorse, drunken silliness, horniness (mostly from the cactus), confusion (yeah, there’s lots of that), and a slew of other emotions that actually make the characters believable. Third, it’s not pretentious. I guess that isn’t a necessity for most in a webcomic but I find it enjoyable to find a webcomic with emotions that isn’t pretentious.

A telling moment for me in the comic was one of the times that Hazel went into berserker rage mode on a guy that was trying to offer her a ride since she was drunk and without a car. Rather than have her go defcon 1 on a guy that had been really nice to her and had showed no sign of being a snobbish dick and having her experience with zero consequences, she ends up getting a ride from him anyway with him continuing to be nice and her feeling bad for being so rude and presumptuous. After seeing this, I realized this was far from a one-sided webcomic. Like I stated before, I had presumed from the beginning that a situation such as this playing out is it did was about as likely as Sony suddenly realizing that their prices do not match the quality, publicly apologizing for their treachery, and the CEO committing seppuku at E3. This helped me make the leap from thinking this webcomic was okay and never looking at it again after writing this review to getting caught up and checking every day.

Girls With Slingshots is an established webcomic that has a pretty decent following and a good enough sized archive to keep you reading for a few hours over a couple of days before you are completely caught up. Danielle Corsetto, the creator of GWS, started this webcomic back in October of 2004 and continues it on today with updates every weekday. It’s a fun comic as a whole with some good characters and a mostly light-hearted approach that won’t fall into shallow comedy but won’t also make you want to slit your wrists. I hope you can enjoy it.

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