Scary Go Round: my shameless gush about it
Friday, September 11th, 2009Today is the last Scary Go Round strip by Mr John Allison. It is a very wonderful comic - if you want to start from the beginning go here, and if you want to see the final one go here instead.
Words I would use to describe Scary Go Round include: delightful, funny, pretty, long, colourful, witty, fun, silly and awesome. It is a comic you probably need to read from the beginning - the cast changes gradually, and besides if you read it all then you get all the awesomeness.
Scary Go Round has been going since 2002, and was the first webcomic I ever read. I clicked on it because the name pleased me. It is almost entirely responsible for me getting into webcomics, and my mornings now having to include half an hour of comic reading. Our internet connection was so bad in 2002 that it used to take about five minutes for each page to load, but I still hacked my way through the two months of archives it had built up by then.
It is a big deal to me that it is ending after seven years. Perhaps too big a deal, but that should tell you something about Allison’s talents. I feel like you do when you move house, or on the last day of school. I started reading this comic when I was 17 and doing my A-Levels, and now I am a nearly-25-year-old grownup. Watching the cast of characters change over time, the art get better and better and better, actually meeting the dude and buying beautiful things off him - it does feel like something important is ending.
Whether or not SGR appeals to you, I urge you to check out whatever the crazy man does next. He’s planning another comic to start on September 21st (which no doubt I will be gushing about in due course), and has been leaving us charming red herrings about it over at his blog. His art makes me bleed real blood with jealousy, his characters are beautiful people, and he is a thoroughly nice guy - even to tiny mumbling women who are just able to squeak “Ireallylikeyourcomic!” at him.
Bye bye, Scary Go Round, you’ve made my world a weirder, more fun place.
