Recommended Reading: Sheldon Comics

I am a big fan of comic strips, and I've been thrilled over the last few years to see them make the move to the Internet. I follow fifteen or so strips, and among my very favorite is Sheldon, by Dave Kellet.

Sheldon, like most of my favorite comic strips, is all about characters. It revolves around a boy - ten-year-old computer prodigy and billionaire Sheldon - his talking duck Arthur, and the grandfather that raises them. The relationship between Arthur and Sheldon is reminiscent of the relationship between Calvin and Hobbes, with all of the fun, love and sarcasm that made that boy-animal pair irresistable.

The Internet has freed comics to be anything they want to be, giving rise to a large number of styles that would have been impossible to achieve in a newspaper comic. Out here in the wilds of the web, you can find animated comic strips, strips without borders or boundaries, even a strip that features precisely the same images every day, with only the dialogue changing. There's nothing wrong with these experiments, and I read quite a few of them with enthusiasm, but there's something about the traditional newspaper style comic that really resonates with me. Of all the web comics I follow, Sheldon is the one that is most reminiscent of the strips I remember eagerly flipping to the comics section for every morning. It has that simple, powerful line work and good-natured sense of humor that I loved so much in Calvin and Hobbes, and the delightful sense of wackiness and cynicism that I loved so much in Bloom County.

As a bonus, every Saturday Kellet runs a completely separate sci-fi strip called Drive that I am coming to enjoy as much as the main strip.

If you're a comic strip fan, take five minutes to hop over to Dave Kellet's page and give Sheldon a chance to warm your heart. Here's a link for ya.