Thursday, February 20, 2014

Order of the Stick

Today I want to briefly talk about what long-ago became my favorite web-comic: The Order of the Stick. Named for the "stick-figure" artwork of the humanoid occupants of the world, this comic strip tells the tale of a stereotypical band of adventures out to save the world. However, what began as a light-hearted tale to poke fun at the popular 3rd edition of the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying system quickly evolved into an epic tale of love, drama, triumph, and tragedy, all the while still retaining its comedic voice. Now, with seven story-arc books available for sale and an eighth story-arc that just wrapped up, Order of the Stick has become one of the premiere webcomics in existence, with nearly 1,000 individual strips available online and hundreds more in the print-only prequels.

But don't just take my word for it. About a year ago, the author created a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to reprint some of the older books. With an initial goal of less than $60,000, the campaign raised over $1.2 million dollars, with nearly 15,000 participants. If that's not success for a free webcomic, I don't know what is.

If you've never experienced this great series, I strongly encourage you to check it out. You can get a quick introduction to the characters here, then check out the beginning of the latest story arc here. And if you like what you see, you can't go wrong with going all the way to the beginning to see how this great comic got off the ground. You won't be disappointed.

...at least not until you find out that the comic is on hiatus until March 31st. These sorts of breaks are typical when the current arc ends. So maybe this wasn't the best time to plug it. Deal with it.

Thanks for reading!

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