In an act of incredible guts/chutzpah/cajones/whatever, talented but currently-not-doing-his-own-webcomic Ryan Estrada, has stepped up and made guest strips for – well, just about everybody who ever used guest strips. The depth and breadth of Mr. E’s skillz are clearly on display here, because for most of these he captures the host comicker’s essence without totally ripping off their style and the rest he takes in a new direction that is as good as it is surprising.

And it’s all in promotion of (and a damn good audition for) his new, highly questionable, business venture: Cartoon Commune, in which he is offering to do custom comic books at the below-minimum-wage price of $200 for 12 pages or $300 for 24 pages. Damn! Apparently his services do NOT include drawing what others have written, or else I’d have found my collaborator for “Clowns Around”…

And so we approach the challenge of finding, maybe not all the webcomics Ryan is guesting for, but the few that are NOT using his perpetually-underpriced services. Here goes:

Ryan Estrada Guest Webcomics for September 17, 2007

Astronaut Elementary
Dinosaur Comics (How do you do something different and original with Ryan North’s fossilized format? He does!)
Dr. McNinja (“CUUUUURED”)
Genny (I’m discovering comics I’ve never seen before thanks to Ryan…)
Goats (Valdemort Special Edition)
Hate Song (with blood)
Hero by Night
Joe and Monkey (an earworm)
Joe Loves Crappy Movies (not the same Joe)
Little Gamers (…meet the BIG Gamers)
Multiplex (…in continuity)
Muffin Time
Niego
Nothing Nice to Say (punk elephant sighting!)
Octopus Pie (with special guest ducks)
Overcompensating (doing something I always wished I could. Yum.)
Patches (havin’ fun with the format)
PC Weenies
Questionable Content (haven’t we seen this before?)
Sam and Fuzzy (scroll down for ‘bonus’ strip)
Scary Go Round (a goblin-centric strip)
Scene Language
Starslip Crisis (Memnon meets the Little Art Critics)
Theater Hopper
Ugly Hill
White Ninja (on the ‘fan art’ page…)
Wigu (he’s even guesting for strips that aren’t updating! The man is beyond machine! He is a factory!)
Yirmumah!

MORE! Alien Loves Predator
Beaver and Steve
(and how many times does he use the phrase “Six times!” in dialogue in these guest strips? maybe, SIX TIMES?!?)

No PvP? Well, he’d done something for it before but apparently his Infinite Canvas freaked out Scott Kurtz, so I think I understand.

(HOW DOES HE DO IT? I’ve pretty much exhausted myself just surfing for and linking to his special guest appearances.)

Of course, certain webcomics COULDN’T hand themselves over to Ryan today, because Barkeater Lake, Order of the Stick and You Damn Kid had previously announced today was the day they were returning from hiatus. Tough luck, guys.

The highlight of Cyanide and Happiness’ ‘Drug Experimentation Week’ in throbbing Animated Gif-o-Vision.

“Everyone who’s X-er than me is Y.” Wondermark enjoys a tasty snowclone.

Would it be tacky for me to say that this SMBC panel is a variation on the “72 virgins in Heaven” meme? Or is it tacky enough all by itself?

A rare goody from The Quigmans, not that it’s particularly funny, but the concept of “Playing War-In-Iraq” is far more topical than the usual Quig-fare.

Note: the policy of this blog is to link to comics when a permanent (more than 90 days is permanent enough for The Web) archive is available. If not, a reduced size but hopefully still readable copy of the comic is displayed here along with a link to whatever web resource the comic has. When I wish to make a particular point, individual frames or parts of frames may be displayed. If you don’t think this qualifies as ‘fair use’, I’ll meet you in a dark alley, whimper a lot and beg your forgiveness.

The Lio Diet:

Best of Bizarro:

and because nobody ever has a problem with Anti-crastination…

…gear reverse into shifts webcomic another yet

Cereal Breakfast Morning Saturday

So Kris “Starslipper” Straub is reaching out for crossovers with a weekly side-comic called Alterverse War. The requirements are a space-based comic with a starship of some kind. Now who does that remind me of?

Schlock Mercenary (Let’s just say if Tayler doesn’t participate it will seriously damage the perception of Blank Label unity.)

Melonpool (Something in me suspects that this is all a clever ruse to get Steve Troop back into webcomicking…)

Goats (It already has the alternate-universe thing down pat; but would it be just Neil and Bob in their flying saucer, or Toothgnip too, or The Whole Gang? I must admit, a scene with Mr. Jinx, Schlock and Brock Stalkley is my personal webcomic wet dream. But I’ve said too much.)

Superosity (Assuming Chris Keenspot Crosby has resumed speaking to all those Blank Label turncoats.)

Zortic (Long known as a Crossover Whore.)

Irregular Webcomic’s Space or Martians or Star Wars themes. (An excuse to get Luke and Darth and Yoda into this mash-up? YES!)

Legostar Galactica (I see them making an evil alliance with IWC)

Crimson Dark (Why do I think that anything from that comic would just blow away anything else in two seconds?)

Freefall (Although the characters haven’t been on their ship for like eons, and they probably won’t leave the Robot Maintenance Center Or Whatever until Stanley has inserted cameo appearances by EVERY fictional or real-world robot in existence.)

The dead-tree-based Brewster Rockit (Yeah, we dare you, Tribune Media Services. Show us why you think that THIS is the only Space Comic worthy of newspaper publication!)

This topic prompted me to go out searching for other starship-based webcomics. So far I’ve found:
The freaky-fresh new GoodShip Chronicles (no action, but some of the best designed character faces I’ve ever seen).
The recently partially-resuscitated Blast Asteroid.
Orbits (because any parody of the Star Trek universe that names its ship the USS Regis Philbin is on the right track).

Sci-Fi comics that appear to be missing a starship but would otherwise be good-to-great to get the characters involved: Sluggy Freelance, Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life,Dicebox, Banished!, Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire (yes, I know, it’s a recycled print comic that Foglio hasn’tdrawn for over 10 years, but a guy can dream) and xkcd (JUST BECAUSE!).