I discovered Questionable Content while read the Strawman Political page on tvtropes. It linked to this page on questionable Content. I thought it was funny enough so I went to the beginning. I know people grow as they work on a comic (especially one that’s been going for 7 years now), but look at this excerpt from the first strip:

Questionable Content Strip #1

and now look at the latest one:

Believe it or not, that's the same guy in the panel with the red background

Holy smokes! I hope to have evolved the look of INM that much by the time the comic’s been around for seven years. That’s pretty amazing.  I only make a point of showing it because I know some people who won’t read a comic just based on the art style.  I don’t want them to miss out on the fun story just because of how strip 1 looks.

So what’s the strip really about? As you can imagine, that’s a difficult question to answer with a comic that’s been running for seven years. (It’s not 100% true, you can describe it in one or two sentences, but that wouldn’t do it justice)  At the most basic level, Questionable Content is about Marten, a 20-something year old, and his robot, Pintsize. From there it balloons out to a cast that almost rivals that of The Simpsons and I couldn’t even mention everyone without giving away spoilers – both significant and non. The longest running additional characters are his best friend Steve and the coffee shop barristas Dora and Faye. It takes place in a slightly alternate universe. The characters live in the same town as Jeph – he’s always pointing out that a lot of the restaurants the characters go to are real places. And the characters listen to actual indie bands and one of them plays World of Warcraft. But there are things that don’t exist now like sentient AI robots and a few other things I won’t give away.

It starts off as a very heavy Indie Rock webcomic. Although the early story is definitely enjoyable, it is full of references that mean nothing to me. And those references served as the punchlines to a lot of early strips. So I only kept going because of the force of the drama. And boy is there ever drama! Again, this is where comparisons to manga/anime creep in. Faye finds Marten attractive, but they seem to get along as well as Ranma and Akane. You always think they’re just about to admit their feelings for each other and Marten says something that gets Faye hammerspace crazy.  Dora also has feelings for Marten and much of the early run has to do with the love triangle of sexual frustration. If you were cursing the screen waiting for Jim and Pam to get together on The Office, QC is like this for the first bit. Eventually it’s resolved, but I am NOT spoiling that for you. (Unlike wikipedia!) To give you an idea of how large the cast becomes, we end up meeting Faye’s sister and mom, Dora’s brother and parents. Dora’s brother’s friend. Dora’s brother’s intern. The upstairs neighbor. Her mother. Steve’s girlfriend and her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend. Another employee who may or may not be Pizza Girl. Another employee named Raven – whose naivete is the source of many double entendres and other fun. A regular customer to the coffee shop and his roommate and her robot. A therapist. And both of Marten’s parents. And most of those are regular characters with at least a few week’s worth of strips!

Eventually the QC stopped leaning so heavily on Indie Rock references and became a general slice of life comic. And Jeph started to sneak in references to things that I knew about like Terry Pratchet books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and anime. What kept me going, other than the drama, was the witty writing and boy did that increase along the comic’s run. My favorite thing about the comic is the rapier wit of the female characters. The stuff Dora says reminds me of my wife and the stuff coming ouf of Faye’s mouth reminds me of my sister-in-law.

At some point in 2004, Jeph started working full time on the comic and it became a Monday through Friday comic. This allowed things to become even more complex while also making it a very long process to get to read the comic from beginning to end. As of today there are 1731 strips to read. (I read them non-stop during my lunch breaks and it took forever!)  He does a very good job of not relying too much on inside jokes, but to really properly enjoy QC you really do need to know the history of the characters. The pace is a good, considered pace. It’s neither swift nor as slow as Between Failures. His FAQ mentions that somewhere between six months and two years have passed in the comic. (I’m surprised some enterprising OCD reader hasn’t just counted how often the characters change clothes) That’s not bad for a seven year run.

If I had one criticism of QC it would be the fact that the cast has grown so large that sometimes characters can fall to the wayside. The comic is primarily about Marten and sometimes the drama he gets involved in is so complex that it can be months between appearances of certain characters. Over the course of reading, it looks like Steve is most likely to both fall victim to this tendency. Jeph writes about whichever characters and plots are tickling his fancy and it annoys him when the fans beg for characters to come back. I feel that some of the weird situations that Steve has found himself in come from Jeph having a bit of revenge on the readers. (He did have a plotline with one of his other characters that he admitted was a “punishment” for readers that were calling for a certain plotline) Dora’s brother Sven also tends to disappear when he isn’t immediately relevant to the plot. One of the first coffee shop girls we meet disappeared years ago. I think at once point Jeph mentioned in an accompanying post that she was as good as gone. Two other female characters have disappeared, but I don’t want to give spoilers. And Raven may have recently gained the axe although Jeph may merely have wanted to take a break from her antics. But I’d rather have characters excised from the narrative than just hang around impotently in the background. And, Jeph tends to be rather neat about it – few if any have gone away soap-opera style.

Final thoughts: If you like witty, funny, and dramatic comics, you’ll like Questionable Content. If you like love dodecahedrons, you’ll love Questionable Content. Just one small warning: the comic has lots of sexual humor, profanity and some adult situations. I’d say it’s around rated R so check out a few strips in the middle to see if it’s appropriate before recommending it to any minors. Except for one panel there isn’t any sex that isn’t implied sex, but there’s certainly lots of implied sex.

Also, I’m very jealous that Jeph appears to pal around with Randall Monroe of xkcd.

The strip’s title comes from a Larry Norman song from 1972.  Bonus points if you can identify the tune the Devil is playing.