What was your gateway comic?

[Dracomax]

I've always wondered what got people into making webcomics, and becoming webcomic addicts.
So, I ask you, what comic was the first webcomic you read? what did you like about it?
What comic inspired you to draw and/or write a webcomic, and why?

Personally, I ot into webcomics with 8bit theater, and only made my way to comics like sluggy freelance, penny arcade and Nukees later on. I liked Final fantasy, and I thought the comic was hilarious. I don't remember when I said I can do that, but I remember thinkinking I have a lot f stories that I could put out.

any other thoughts?

[BionicDance]

I first encountered the idea of webcomics at all with Sluggy Freelance.

Not sure if any webcomic inspired me to make my own; it just seemed the bet format to get my story told with the resources I've got. Originally, I wanted to do what I'm doing as animation, but one person animating a story as epic as the one I have in mind...? Uh...no.

[MixedMyth]

Likewise, my first comic was Sluggy Freelance as well. Man, that was a long time ago when. I also don't think there was anyone comic that made me decide to make my own, but I remember the day I found out that there was a hosting service for comics. I mean, that cuts down on a lot of the work I would have to do to maintain a site and figure out how to do updates and the like. After that it was a no-brainer.

[Laemkral]

Penny Arcade. A friend showed it to me in Cisco Networking 1 in high school. From there, I just kept following links and reading new stuff.

I got into comics because my best friend, Jason, and I got into the habit of identifying "comic moments" in our lives, the kind of thing that just seemed exactly like the situations in our favorite webcomics. Finally, I got the idea of photos since none of us drew. So I hunted down some hosting space, stumbled across this place, listened to PA, PvP, and a few others do a panel on starting a comic at Comic Con, and just went ahead and did it. Not for art's sake, not to build a fanbase and make money, not cause "I had a story to tell", just because my friends and I kept doing stupid shit we felt we needed to capture and share with the Internet.

And that was how I'm Always Right began. When Jason left, there simply wasn't the material, and thus I'm Always Right ended. It made my life happier, it made me some friends, it gave me some stories to tell, and I got to meet you crazy lunatics. All in all, win.

[Nanda]

*Pops head out of prairie dog hole* Jason?

[Phact0rri]

Real life was shown to me by my sister.

[Tellurider]

Well back in my sophomore year of college I went on a ski trip to Austria, and hung out with other ski club people, and then on the last day I had an epic fall where I cracked a rib, partially dislocated my left shoulder, and tore my right shoulder. Then I had a few very nice guys take care of me on the trip back to the states and one of them had a huge jar of ibuprofen which was the only painkiller I could get at the time.

So ibuprofen guy and I started to hang out some and he linked me his website and on THAT website there was a link for something called "college roomies from hell" which sounded amusing. AND LO, I DISCOVERED WEBCOMICS. From the same guy I also found a couple others like S*P and keenspot and since then it's been mostly random discovery. Ironically I no longer read CRFH or S*P.

I started doing webcomics because like many foolish young people I looked at certain comics and went "pft I could do that. I could do BETTER than that. pfffffft."

[Jim North]

The first webcomic I ever read was Penny Arcade.

The first webcomic I ever read regularly, as well as being the one that inspired me to actually get into the scene myself, was Sam & Fuzzy.

[Ahaugen]

Legostar Galactica. I found it while doing an English assignment my first few weeks of college

[Cope]

My first proper webcomic was Kevin and Kell. I liked it, because it was...a comic! That I could read for free! Awesome!! I dropped it from my reading list about five years ago, though.

As for what inspired me to make my own....I'm not sure. Probably every webcomic ever twigged me on to the fact that, hey, I could draw comics and show them to people on the Internet.

[Wrightasrayne]

First ones were Eight Bit Theater and The Wotch, but while I continue to read webcomics plenty I have dropped both of those.

[SergeXIII]

I started making comics after reading Sonic the Hedgehog waaaay back when I was very young, about as early as I could write. I first tried to put something online after reading RPG World, and then Penny Arcade.

[Rkolter]

Something Positive. It's become far less edgy - nothing the artist does now compares to handing a pregnant lady a gift-wrapped coat hanger. But it really made me laugh and I was hooked.

[Mvmarcz]

Stubble and 8-bit but Stubble was first. I liked it cause I was a teenager and I liked 8-bit because though I didn't play video games I did play D&D so I still enjoyed it. I was just starting to draw back then and thought it would be fun, so I sought out a writer and did my first webcomic...I don't work with writers anymore >_>. He was really mean and I had enough of my own stories to tell, I also didn't get alot of the humor in it(it was a gag comic) I tried my own gag-a-day after that but went to story driven soon after.

[IVstudios]

The first webcomic I ever saw was something called Tuesdays Comic or something. A girl in one of my art classes in high school showed it to me because I was into doodling comics.

The first comic I ever read regularly was Real Life Comics. It was funny at the time, but like a lot of things it just went on for way to long. From that I discovered KeenSpot. After a few months of poking around there I started to notice that some of the comics sort of sucked, which lead me to realize that "Wait, you mean that you don't have to be a professional artist to make a comic on the internet?"

And bam, I was making comics.

[Tim]

A Yahoo! search begat Residence Life Comics begat PVP begat Sluggy Freelance begat KeenSpot begat more of KeenSpace begat Alternate Delusions.

[Jesusabdullah]

I think the first one I actually kinda got into was Megatokyo.

It's kinda like admitting you were totally into huffing shit fumes back in the day. Speaking of, I was into CAD for a while, too.

[McDuffies]

College Roomies From Hell.

I liked the fact that freedom from editors allowed her to deal with mature subject without it being too edgy or even dominant. Sexual topics were just naturally there as a part of human life, not as something that's there to define the comic as "adult" or grab readers or pass censorship. I also liked the volume which allowed her to tell many stories at the pacing that suited her, and to really build characters and plots over time. And then I liked how freedom allowed her imagination to run wild. It was the mix of ordinary life and absurdist fantasy, I was a student at the time and the comic was starting with premises from my own life, which then went in great absurd ways.
I think what I liked about webcomics I read was that they were not too in your face, not begging for your attention. Read them if you want, and lots of them aren't even drawn that good. Most of American mainstream and Japanese comics, and a lots of European too, just screem "AWESOME" at you and try to manipulate you to buy them.

[Dr Legostar]

Legostar Galactica. I found it while doing an English assignment my first few weeks of college

wow, cool.

Mine was PvP, but it was Sluggy and 8-bit Theater that inspired me to make my own comic with LEGO bricks.

[Pimpette]

Something Positive was my portal into webcomicland. From there I found Queen of Wands and The Devil's Panties, and from Devil's Panties I discovered Keenspace, and thought "yay another website I can make." I have left a trail of crappy websites all over the internet since grade eight and angelfire, so of course the thought of another one was fun.

I almost didn't end up doing Pimpette, too. It was a tossup between P&A and another one which started out life as an ICQ rpg with a friend.
P&A had more inside jokes though, so it won.