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[Link] Starslip Crisis [Comments] 
This is a second comic by the author of Checkerboard Nightmare, which was so boffo that I often couldn't stand to read it continously. However, this new comic is a plot driven SF story, with non-self-referential characters that have a hint of real dimensionality, although fortunately there's still a joke a day. I love it so far, but it's like watching a barely contained nuclear reaction; will the author be able to maintain this fine balance of humor and story or will it eventually get too silly? Update 10/13/06 In the two years since its introduction, Starslip Crisis (formerly Starshift Crisis before the ship blew up) has become one of my top favorites. This is thanks to a reliable update schedule, a universe of endless possibilities with fully thought-out technology and backstory, and characters that just keep getting better and better. Even the dreaded appearance of a character from the old comic ("Vaporware") failed to break the 4th wall. All of this while still continuing to make it humorous every day at the same time. I consider the characters to be the best-written part of this comic; it couldn't have lasted long if the curator had stayed nothing but a stuffed shirt, the alien had stayed just an inscrutable alien, and the space pirate pilot had stayed just a drunken loose cannon. They continue to be these things, but they also slowly grow on each other, and the reader. To me, one comic in particular illustrates perfectly how Kristofer Straub has effortlessly created a world as multilayered as our own. It's a world where a "pleasure planet", in addition to a wide range of bacchanalian distractions, also offers simpler, more touristy pleasures such as a famous waterfall. It's a world where the hard-drinking pilot dragged out to look at the waterfall can know that it's not really his thing, but his boss sulking up on the ship would probably enjoy it. It's a world in which the pilot simply picks up the phone to convince the whiny idiot to come down to see it, because despite their differences they're friends.
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