Between Failures, one of my favorite comics these days, recently started its third story arc.  As you may remember from my review, it’s a comic about a bunch of guys and girls at work.  And, as I mentioned it has a real “Clerks” vibe to it.  I am REALLY enjoying the fact that the author decided that for this story arc, he was going to reveal the lives of the characters outside the store.  You might think that in a comic that revolves around the antics of a bunch of cynics working at a store might flounder outside the store, but the last few strips have proven that this comic isn’t about a bunch of quick-witted people at a store, but about a bunch of quick-witted people.  If you routinely loved Carol’s lines at the store (as I do!), you’ll love her even more outside the bounds of work.  So far the story has only visited a few of the characters outside of work, but I’m already hoping he goes back to Carol’s storyline.  He really left that on a bit of a cliffhanger and I’m dying to see where he was going to go with that.  I do wonder if some or all of them will end up meeting up somewhere outside the store and be unable to relate without the structure of the store defining their roles, but I don’t know what Jackie has in mind.  On to Atomic Laundromat!

Today I discovered a new webcomic:  Atomic Laundromat.  I found it via tvtropes.org, but I don’t remember which trope mentioned it as I had it as something to check out for a few days and just got to it today.  This is another GOOD webcomic.  The premise is a super hero world – say the Marvel or DC universe – filled with tons of super hero.  This comic is about none of them!  It’s about a guy who works at the laundromat where they take their supersuits to get cleaned.  It’s funny writing that sentence because either you’re a deconstructionist who automatically thinks that’s amazing or you think it’s lame as heck.  Well, if you thought it was lame, let me tell you that it is way better than it sounds.  Basically he gets to make all kinds of wonderful jokes about working in such a laundromat along with some great affectionate parodies of super heroes we know and love, but it’s not just a gag-a-day comic.  No, it’s a combo gag-a-day/story comic.  The hardest kind to pull off well!  But Armando does a great job!  If you’re into super hero comics or if you were into super hero comics (basically if you thought The Incredibles was great) you’ll probably get a huge kick out of this comic.  The art style is great and the story telling gets better as the series goes on (as is true of all webcomics).  He’s implied in some of his comments that he used to work as a comic book artist as a professional, and it shows.  His opening strips are better than most people’s mid-story strips.  It’s been going for a little over at year at a 3 strips a week pace, so there’s a decent amount to read before you get to the end.  Definitely worth checking out!