Homestuck

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

What will the name of this young man be?

Okay, so today I'm not going to blog about an animated series, but a webcomic called Homestuck. A few of my friends from high school read it and had been bugging me for a long time to read it, but I was put off by its length. About two months ago, I finally set down to read it, and I was not dissapointed.

Homestuck is described by its creator, Andrew Hussie, as "A tale about a boy and his friends and a game they play together". It's basic premise is that four kids receive a game called SBURB, which allows them to manipulate their environment in a way similar to The Sims. It starts off feeling sort of like a deconstruction of The Sims. But then they notice that a certain object from the game starts a countdown when activated. And then meteors start impacting the Earth. Before they know it, the Earth has been destroyed in the Apocalypse and the kids find themselves transported to a new dimension. And as the kids begin to learn the true nature of the game, SBURB, it only gets more and more complicated.

The thing that may put people off about Homestuck is its complexity and length. It's basically the webcomic equivalent of Lost. The thing is though, it gets incrementally better, so I would keep reading more if you're not liking the current pacing. Andrew Hussie writes occasional recaps so readers can grasp everything that's going on but otherwise, it can be hard to follow. As for its length, it updates nearly every day. And it has been updating since April 2009. Since each update is usually multiple pages, its current length is around...5500 PAGES. Yeah, needless to say, it took me weeks to get caught up.

One cool thing about Homestuck is that while the art is pretty simplistic, it uses more media than other webcomics. Andrew Hussie will occasionally create flash animation and even flash games and the result is some of the best flash animation I've seen on the internet. He'll also occasionally release whole soundtracks for the webcomic, made by numerous artists. It ends up drawing you in more than your average webcomic.
For two good examples of the flashes (which don't spoil the plot) watch these:
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001982
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003701
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004478

So, if you have time on you hands, I would definitely recommend reading Homestuck. The first page can be found here:
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/

Oh, and here's an image I found to give you a basic idea of the plot: