Why I Read This: Gunnerkrigg Court

OK, Technical difficulties are sorted out, so let's get started.

Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell is a pretty big part of why I started this blog. When I try to get my friends to read a webcomic other than Sluggy Freelance or Penny Arcade, this is the one I point them at.

Superficially, Gunnerkrigg Court seems like a Harry Potter style story, about a young girl named Antimony Carver who is enrolled in a mysterious boarding school. In fact, the basic premise really does have a lot of similarities with Harry Potter, except inverted. Where Harry is a basically normal boy enrolled in a school that's a bastion of magic surrounded by a mundane world, Antimony is a strange girl enrolled in a school that's a bastion of science (sort of) surrounded by a magical world.

Notice I don't use the word "normal" when describing Gunnerkrigg Court. There's nothing that you could call normal in the school, or in the comic. Even the school camping trip is chaperoned by laser cows. Antimony's true strength throughout the comic is that she is unfazed by weirdness. She's not normal or mundane by any reckoning, but she's relentlessly sensible, like a ginger little Susan Sto Helit.

Just to keep contrasting with that other Weird School story, where Harry Potter is structured like a shonen manga, with the hero encountering greater and greater obstacles as he grows and matures, Gunnerkrigg Court is laid out more like a Dickens novel. It's a story told in episodes, slices of Antimony's life that don't have anything to do with each other on the surface, but over time they start to link together into a complex web. To be honest, I hate Dickens, but Siddell pulls it off well. Characters that seem to be quirky little extras when they first appear will come back a few chapters later and play a significant part in the growing story.

Whenever you're trying to recommend a new comic to someone, the first thing you have to worry about is the comic's art quality. That's just the nature of a visual medium. If the comic has excellent art, that's a selling point, if the art sucks, well, you'd better talk up its other strengths. Gunnerkrigg Court is one of those comics that starts out a little shaky, but begins cranking out some truly beautiful art before you even realize the style changed. In the first comics, the character design is cartoony but functional, certainly not unpleasant. As the series progresses, the characters are drawn with more realistic proportions, a style I much prefer.

Gunnerkrigg Court has about 3 books worth of content posted so far, and the story is just beginning to unfold. It's an excellent time to jump in, while the archive is still pretty manageable.