Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Girls with Slingshots

Hazel is making her way through life post-college. She's a writer, sort of, when she has work, and she tends to mope, but her best friend Jamie is cheerful enough for both of them. This comic started as a gag-a-day strip, but has developed into a continuity strip about Hazel, Jamie, and their friends. Since the first strip, Hazel has acquired a long-term boyfriend and gone through a difficult break-up; Jamie has found the love of her life, now has an open relationship with her; Thea has gotten over her dating dry spell and found a wonderful woman to marry; and Clarice is finally dating her crush, but still trying to hide her part-time job as a dominatrix. Hazel doesn't always understand her friends' lives and desires, but underneath her prickly exterior she cares about them as much as Jamie does.

It is online at girlswithslingshots.com. Read from the first comic here.

Appeal: Slice of life, making it in the world, family relationships, friendship, queer representation

Art: Shifts dramatically from detailed realism in the first years to the current bright, cartoony style

Text: Conversational, sarcastic, personal

Other: Danielle Corsetto has been cartooning since she was 8 years old. She began Girls With Slingshots in 2004, and it became her full-time job in 2007. Corsetto has worked on the Adventure Time comic book and The New Adventures of Bat Boy for the Weekly World News.

Corsetto, Danielle. "Girls with Slingshots." girlswithslingshots.com. Web. 4 May 2014.

Stone Soup by Jan Eliot

Stone Soup

A strip about the life of a single working mother, Val, raising two daughters in a house with her sister, nephew, and mother. The sister, Joan, dates and eventually marries the man next door, Wally, who is raising his nephew, and they have a daughter together. The strip focuses on the joys and frustrations of family life and single parenthood. 12-year-old Holly wants to be an adult right now and tries to dress like it; Joan's lassez-faire attitude towards life and money management creates conflicts when she owes her sister rent; and grandma Evie is constantly thrilled at the delayed revenge visited upon her children by her grandchildren. It is available online at gocomics.com.

Appeal: Single mothers, family life, children, teenagers, middle grade plus

Art: Flat cartooning a la Charles Schulz, dynamic

Text: Dramatic, exclamatory

Other: Jan Eliot created the strip as a way to connect with and support single, working parents in ways that she did not have access to while raising her children and working. The strip occasionally features a book club consisting of the mothers from For Better Or For Worse, Rose Is Rose, Zits, and Alice from Dilbert.

Eliot, Jan. Stone Soup: The First Collection of the Syndicated Cartoon. Kansas City : Andrews and McMeel, (c)1997. Print.

For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston

For Better or For Worse

A continuity strip covering 30 years in the life of a middle-class white Canadian family and their friends. Babies are born, children grow up, parenthood's ups and downs are explored, and characters experience changes in and conflicts with spouses, families, jobs, children, and lives. Ellie, the mother, goes from being a full-time homemaker to a part-time toy store employee to the store owner. Michael grows from a toddler to a teenager to an adult with a family of his own. Elizabeth spends years figuring out what to do her life, and whom to spend it with. In one infamous story arc, the beloved family dog saves the youngest, April, from drowning in a river and dies in the attempt. This is a comic about family, love, hardship, and joy. It is available online at gocomics.com.

Appeal: slice-of-life, family drama, realism, family-friendly, middle grade plus

Art: Starts off sketchy but expressive, becomes more detailed in the middle years.

Textual style: Lots of exclamations and pronouncements, some sentimentality.

Other: Lynn Franks Johnston was born and raised in Canada, and attended the Vancouver School of Art. Over the course of her career she has been awarded several honorary doctorates, and been made a member of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Manitoba, and been inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame and the National Cartoon Museum Hall of Fame.

Awards: The author has won the Reuben Award, the Gemini Award for Best Cartoon Series, and the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award.

Johnston, Lynn Franks. It's All Downhill From Here: A For Better Or For Worse Collection. Kansas City : Andrews, McMeel & Parker, (c)1987. Print.