Questionable But Essential Content: A Top 5 List

The PKD series is on hold for the moment, so this week I thought I'd answer a question that's been burning in most of your minds for longer than you can remember, a question that you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to scrawl down your thoughts about, only to tear them up in the morning a question that defines the times we live in.

The question I'm talking about is, of course, "What are the best five installments of Questionable Content?"

"Actually," some of you might be thinking, "I've never heard of that before. I guess it's a webcomic or something?"

Read it. Start from the beginning....the plot matters. It's basically a long, involved indie rock soap soap opera with science fiction elements, occasional hilarity, incessant "Dune" and occasional "Neuromancer" references and a steady stream of really solid music recommendations in the liner notes. If that doesn't make you want to spend the next twelve hours getting caught up on the last 1,540 installments while listening to old Fiery Furnaces albums on your headphones, you and I are very different people.

In any case, here's the top five list, in order. I'll just note beforehand that, if you are toying with starting from the beginning and reading the whole epic in sequence, the fact that this list (in ascending order) is pretty well chronologically ordered, says very good things about the way that Jacques honed his craft over the course of those thousand and a half or so episodes. And yeah, the artwork definitely gets way, way better as it goes on.

Well, OK, that and, since the comic does actually have a plot, and while sometimes quite funny, funniness is not always the point, the whole notion of the list is a bit odd--these aren't the best arcs, or the best moments of arcs, but the installments that work best as stand-alones--but in any case, enjoy...

5. No Love For The Emo

Pretty much speaks for itself.

4. A Spoonful Weighs A Ton

...actually sums up something beautiful and human and important for me. Also, funny.

3. Like A Warlock, Only He Summons Organs

...because I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, angry that they don't actually exist.

2. Hampshire, Certainly

(Obviously, as an occasional paid writer of science fiction with some serious lefty subtext, I love this defense of the allegorical potential of my chosen genre.)

And, finally....

1. Never, Ever Wear Such A Shirt

Fuck, yeah.