Best Webcomics of 2005
by Stuart Robertson on December 6th, 2005 | Uncategorized
It seems to be the time of year when the “best of 2005” lists start appearing. Most of the “best webcomics of 2005” lists are basically, whatever the people working on that site happen to like. If they don’t like the genre or the artwork themselves, it won’t be on their list. I guess in that way they’re like mini Academy Awards… with a lot less glitz and glamour.
That got me thinking about del.icio.us, the social bookmarking tool I’ve been using this year. It lets you check how many other people have bookmarked a particular site. If you think of a bookmark as being a vote for a particular website, then the info from del.icio.us provides a fairly good listing of the Top Webcomics of 2005 as selected by the audience. I guess in some ways that makes this the Webcomics People’s Choice Awards.
I’ve only included sites that have received at least 50 bookmarks / votes from del.icio.us users. If I’ve missed your comic, please email me and I’ll add it to the list—however, because of the changing nature of del.icio.us, I may choose to start adding new sites in an appendixes rather than putting them into the list. The list will be finalized at the end of 2005, which means after that I’m happy to hear about your site, but I won’t add it to the list for this year.
So here they are—
Top 10 Webcomics of 2005
- Penny Arcade
- Dilbert
- Mega Tokyo
- PvP
- Perry Bible Fellowship
- Ctrl Alt Del
- Questionable Content
- Diesel Sweeties
- User Friendly
- Sinfest
Webcomic Runners Up—In order
A softer world
Something Positive
VG Cats
Order of the Stick
Real Life
Daily Dinosaur Comics
Scary Go Round
Mac Hall
Achewood
Apple Geeks
Toothpaste for Dinner
8-bit Theatre
Alien Loves Predator
Calvin and Hobbes
Blambot / Atland
MNFTIU.CC
PhD – Piled Higher and Deeper
Little Gamers
Cat and Girl
Goats
VG Cats
Sexy Losers
Bunny Suicides
Copper
Wigu
Schlock Mercenary
A Lesson Is Learned
Queen of Wands
Errant Story
Bee Comix
FoxTrot
Ornery Boy
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
Chugworth Academy
Doonesbury
Overcompensating
GU Comics
Sluggy Freelance
Girl Genius
Sore Thumbs
Wapsi Square
College Roomies From Hell
Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic
Sam and Fuzzy
Irregular Webcomic
Shortpacked
American Elf
The Pet Professional
Get Fuzzy
Cthulhu Circus
Jellaby
Joe and Monkey
Count your Sheep
Strip Tease
Bob the Angry Flower
Punks and Nerds
Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life
Ubersoft
Whispered Apologies
Normal Life
Yirmumah
If you want to take part next year—sign up for a del.icio.us account and bookmark your picks for webcomic of the year. I’m off to the after-party now, or as we in the late-night blogging biz call it—bed.
Stuart Robertson
Christopher B. Wright on December 7, 2005 at 11:36 am
How are you counting the bookmarks? Are you looking at all the entries in one category, or are you looking at each comic in turn?
I ask because people don’t always use the same category when linking. My comic, for example, shows up in two separate categories if you search on “Ubersoft” (most of my readers refer to Help Desk by its URL rather than its name) and received two items, one with 49 people and one with 18. These are not the same people (my sample was small enough to check each in turn).
Searching on “Something Positive” actually returns 212 different search results, but using only the first four (the ones that most obviously refer to S*P) you get a total of 598 different links (409, 91, 81, and 17 respectively).
I think trying to get an accurate sample for each webcomic linked on that site would be nigh impossible…
Using only the first page of search results, and confining the results to those that used the tag “comic” or “comics” somewhere in it, User Friendly got 1,155 results. Using the same benchmark, Sinfest got 714… but that doesn’t include links that don’t specifically mention the comic by name but point to the site (i.e., there’s an entry for Sinfest called “Strips Page”) or that point to the site but don’t use the “comic” or “comics” tag.
If I decided to compare the two of them based solely on whether or not a search result links to their respective sites, and limit the comparison to the first page of search results only, I get:
User Friendly – 1155
Sinfest – 738
Yet User Friendly is listed under Sinfest in your top 10 list.
Anyway, just my $.02.
Stuart on December 7, 2005 at 11:50 am
You’re correct that it’s based on multiple URLs, not just single ones. In most cases it was pretty straightforward, but in a few others there a lot of URLs listed which added a bit of confusion—if I missed one for example.
Looking over the results for both User Friendly and Sinfest we see…
http://www.userfriendly.org/ 684
http://userfriendly.org/ 172
http://www.userfriendly.org/static/ 262
http://www.sinfest.net/ 423
http://sinfest.net/ 259
http://sinfest.net/index.htm 30
Which means I’ve made an error and User Friendly steps ahead of Sinfest.
When I published this list I knew there would likely be errors and omissions, and I’m happy to make corrections up to the end of December.
Christopher B. Wright on December 7, 2005 at 11:52 am
Open Source statistics! I love it!
DJ Coffman on December 7, 2005 at 4:22 pm
This list is pretty cool, because it is like a people’s choice for webcomics with no bias either way. I don’t use delicious but I know many many people do, so this is definitly an interesting way of ranking something and seeing actual data.
Tyler Martin on December 7, 2005 at 8:44 pm
The bias is that a lot of people don’t use del.icio.us and some comics are more developed there as it is a community. I’d call it Del.icio.us’s top 10.
And Dilbert?! Where’s Garfield.com then if you go that route.
Here’s the top 10 webcomics (no Dilbert) according to Alexa traffic ratings. Daily visitors per 1 million internet users. Kind of puts some things in perspective, I built a pretty full list too just out of curiousity.
248 Penny-Arcade
184 Ctrl-Alt-Del
150 PVP Online
132 VG Cats
128 Megatokyo
102 User Friendly
97 Questionable Content
94 Something Positive
94 Sluggy Freelance
81 Diesel Sweeties
The only fault here is Alexa’s accuracy and the fact that some comics update more frequently. To take it a step further, multiply these numbers by 7 and then divide by how many comics they do a week to get an idea of per strip readers per 1 million internet users.
Steve Troop on December 7, 2005 at 8:45 pm
I love how Calvin and Hobbes is on the list. I don’t believe that Watterson has ever even been on the web, let alone ever published a webcomic. Besides, there are one or two omissions on the list that would be more deserving of recognition over a strip that’s been over for a decade…. well, one, anyway….
Stuart on December 7, 2005 at 9:25 pm
del.icio.us isn’t really a community in the sense you’re suggesting. Garfield should be added to the list though.
Webcomics from Blank Label Comics » Blog Archive » Shortpacked! almost nearly makes 2005 Webcomics Top 10! on December 7, 2005 at 10:19 pm
[...] Columbus-area cartoonist David Willis is proud to announce that Shortpacked!, his smash hit webcomic about working in a toy store, was nearby somebody’s list of the Ten Best Webcomics of 2005. [...]
Krishna Sadasivam on December 7, 2005 at 10:22 pm
I think Steve Troop’s Melonpool should be on the list. And, out of curiousity, how do the PC Weenies stack up against the others?
Steve Troop on December 8, 2005 at 3:03 am
Thanks Krishna. Your check’s in the mail.
Joe Zabel on December 8, 2005 at 12:36 pm
Hey, Stuart— It’s been pointed out to me that my response over at Comixpedia wasn’t completely friendly. If so, I apologize. I was merely trying to comment on some issues raised by your feature.
To complicate matters, when I read your feature, I only read about half of it, ending with the top 10 list. I thought I saw a banner of advertising following that part, and so I scrolled down no further. Now I’m looking at the page and I don’t see that ad banner. So I don’t know what was going on.
In any case, your list is worthwhile, if for no other reason than bringing Cthulhu Circus to light.
Stuart on December 8, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Thanks Joe.
I moved the adsense block after reading your comment that it caused some confusion about where the article ended.
If you liked Cthulhu Circus you might like this comic too: Who Will Be Eaten First?
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Zach Miller on December 8, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Where the hell is Nothing Nice To Say? It should be on this list.
Joe Zabel on December 8, 2005 at 6:45 pm
That’s pretty funny! There’s a thing called Disfunctional Family Circus out there, but it’s not really that good. I think there used to be another similar thing, but I can’t find it.
Five Card Nancy ( http://www.7415comics.com/nancy/index.html ) has some incredibly funny juxtapositions—Nancy as a drug dealer, a murderer, etc.
Mary Worth, Threat Or Menace is completely random, but it can be pretty funny too — http://www.7415comics.com/maryworth.shtml
Joe on December 10, 2005 at 6:35 pm
WTF????? Ctrl Alt Del is the most nerdy unfunny peice i have ever read! sure it has great drawings but like omg its just not that funny! common!
ophy on April 19, 2006 at 11:19 am
next time please take a look to my fantasy webcomic nelshael.
StumbleUpon » Your page is now on StumbleUpon! on April 3, 2007 at 8:08 am
Top 10 Webcomics - Dogpile Web Search on January 27, 2008 at 2:21 pm