Oglaf

Historically speaking, erotic comics have tended to focus on providing cheap fap material rather than incorporate stories. One of the oldest and most famous examples of these would be Tijuana bibles. While entertaining, those erotic strips tended to rely on parodying other IPs and did not have much re-read value. As the 20th century progressed, some sexually liberated artists and authors began to develop more story-heavy erotica, most notably the (new) hentai artists who began to emerge during the 1980s. While this new genre did expand outside of Japan a bit, it never fully penetrated the West or even other parts of Asia. Further, conservative governmental attitudes in Japan and a culture of prudishness in the West limited the acceptance of erotic comic books and graphic novels. However, with the emergence of the internet and the consequential spread of new ideas and the weakening of censoring regulations, coupled with a new wave of sexual liberation at the start of the 21st century, inspired some new pornographic comic art. While there are a few others worth mentioning, one of the best is the internet-based comic Oglaf.

From Out Of A Couple Minds Came A Graphic YetNovel Graphic Novel Series

Originally intended to be animated pornography, according to its creators, Trudy Cooper and Doug Bayne, the web-based erotic comic has "degenerated" into mere sex comedy. While that may seem to imply that this e-comic has gotten worse over time if anything Oglaf has aged like a fine wine. Originally, Oglaf’s simple storyline featured a male sorceress’s apprentice who – while caught in a cruel and kinky relationship with said war-mongering, magical mistress – has to endure being sexually and physically teased/tortured in each comic installment. But over time, the series flowered into multiple plots with myriad recurring characters plus plenty of standalone stories, all of which are set in a vast medieval-themed fantasy world.

The Format Of The Site Is Simple But Concise

Referring Oglaf website itself, the site follows a minimalist design. Once you click past the age verification screen, you will have access to the entire archive to choose form for free. Adjacent to a preview thumbnail of each strip, you will find the title and number of pages each strip has. In some cases, you will find descriptions of the content you will or will not find in each strip. Since graphic nudity, if not explicit sexuality, is the norm on Oglaf, the authors typically only leave notes if a strip has only minor swearing, is safe-for-work, or are at least "safe-ish." Click on a strip, and on the right-hand side, you will be able to switch between pages with the Next button or between strips by clicking back to the Archive main. As an added comedic bonus, at the top of each strip page, you will find a humorous single statement or question. For instance, one of our favorites is, "To make you passing easier on loved ones, why not be an asshole you entire life?"

Unique Erotic Content In Comic Form

On Oglaf clever puns, dirty double entendres, subtle humor, and general adolescent raunchiness abound, which we are sure most of you will enjoy. To provide some specifics, besides the ongoing plotline between The Sorceress and her Apprentice, there are several other characters who have been added to the Oglaf canon. For instance, there are women looking to find love – though that tends to be in the form of having their hole(s) filled with various fluids. Then there is is the recurring character Kronar, Son of Man – whom we assume is there for ladies who loved Schwarzenegger during the eighties, men who like muscly guys, and everyone else who appreciates a good joke. For those who do not, Kronar is part of a race (or species?) who only give birth patriarchally and parthenogenetically. Moving on, most comics are fairly short though enjoyable. And for context, most comics are one to a few pages, though, some range between eight to twenty-four epic pages. In addition to completely original characters who have been based on northern European mythology and contemporary middle ages-inspired high fantasy, there are storylines and characters based on medieval Japan, the adventures of Ponce de Leon, the works of William Shakespeare, and even stories from the Bible. Lastly, it should be noted that there are new strips released every Sunday.

There Are A Few Guest Comics As Well

While Cooper and Bayne have been pretty diligent at adding new content regularly, sometimes they report being too busy with other projects or want to use their platform to provide exposure to other authors and artists. While these guests have a different style, they are just as talented and still very funny.

You Can Get Linked To Merchandise, Too

The other major link on the main site is to the Oglaf Patreon and e-store. In the case of the latter, Topatoco hosts a page full of merchandise including Oglafs physical graphic novels, comic print outs, pins, and branded t-shirts, all of which have some clever Cooper-Byrne inspired humor. The shirts are a bit on the pricey side, but the original Oglaf jokes make the expense worth it.

Check Out Oglaf Elsewhere On The Net

The other noteworthy feature on Oglaf is the links to the Patreon page. Obviously, if you fell the need to support the creators financially, you can get through that channel. And if you do, for only a single US dollar a month, you not only will be supporting the creation of new Oglaf content, but you will get access to even more original cartoon (and sometimes erotic) content. If you want to keep up with Oglaf developments, you can signup to their newsletter via the orange icon at the bottom right of each comic page and get linked to their Twitter feed through the blue icon in the same location.

You Can Even Give Feedback

We have noticed that many creators do not take well to having their work critiqued, let alone allowing their fans and critics to contact them directly. However, by scrolling to the bottom of the archive page, you can contact Oglaf’s staff via email for tech problems links to either report a problem or provide some support.

Praise And Controversy For Oglaf

With its phenomenal art style, various depictions of sexuality, and whip-smart humor Oglaf has received a bunch of attention from mainline and low-level critics. For example, the massive science, tech, and pop culture publication Inverse, along with the sci-fi publisher Escapist, has lavished extensive praise on Oglaf. Smaller though more specialty periodicals and reviewers like Comics Alliance and Paste Magazine have similarly repeatedly ranked Oglaf as a sci-fi/fantasy comic series which ‘everyone’ should be reading. Speaking of the Comics Alliance, that organization rated Oglaf as the #1 Romance and Erotica comic strip in 2016. Oglaf was awarded the Silver Ledger Award by The Australian Comics Journal in 2016 for its artistic quality and three years before it was rated the Best X-Rated Strip by NJ.com. Furthermore, Oglaf alongside Slip Shine was included by Cosmopolitan magazine as being one of the best publications of porn and erotica for women. However, when researching this site, we did find something a bit disturbing when going back to check a few things. Despite the fact that some videos of the comics have been promoted in semi-animated form on YouTube – and please note, have not been removed – it would appear that Google actively blocks Oglaf from showing up in search results and has for years. Not only does Google but all major search engines, including Yahoo and Bing, even brand-new indie search engines like Ecosia, also prevent Oglaf’s site from showing up. Strangely, on all of those search engines, sites reviewing and linking directly to Oglaf, including Wikipedia, TvTropes, and TheWebComicList, as well as Oglaf's Twitter account, does show up in the top search results. To make things even weirder, the only search engine with a relatively high Alexa ranking (i.e., within a rank of 1,000) is DuckDuckGo and the Chinese search engine Baidu. From what we can tell, this soft censorship has been standard practice since 2014 and seems to be global. However, despite having been a blocked, popular site for so long, we have not been able to find any particular reason as to why.

Which Looks Better – The Original Oglaf Or The Mobile Version?

We cannot reiterate enough that Oglaf is a joy to read, in part because of its art style and consistent quality. The same is true with the website – or, more specifically, the desktop version is. It seems strange to see, but Oglaf.com has in no way been optimized for mobile, and it needs to be. To be sure, you can access the site on mobile, and there are no fidelity problems with respect to graphical quality. However, since each tab uploads as it would on desktop, you will have to extensively zoom in and out to read each panel and switch between pages.

What We Like About Oglaf

There are a number of things to admire about Oglaf. As we have mentioned previously, each strip has exemplary production values, both with respect to illustration, character design, and the marriage of witty dialogue and left-hook punchlines. By that, we mean that not only does every joke (or jokes) land in each strip, but often the reader does not see it coming. To make things better, while there are a few relatively tame comic strips, the vast majority have all kinds of exposed (animated) flesh and the best kind of filth. And on top of that, having been around for years, the archive section is quite extensive.

What We Hate About Oglaf

Honestly, we had a hard time coming up with anything to criticize, other than there site's depiction on mobile devices, though there are a couple of things which we think some people might not like. While we love it, we understand that even members within our readership may not “get” Oglaf’s sense of humor. Further, since there are so many creative and randy ideas which often take shape in all sorts of depictions of sexuality, we imagine that certain readers might be a bit shocked by the stuff that they are going to see on some strips. Our recommendation is that you give Oglaf at least four strips before making up your mind.

How We Would Make Oglaf.com Better

Overall, there is not much to change on Oglaf with one significant exception: the need to improve the mobile version of the website. Hypothetically, it would be easy to do, so we can only speculate as to why Cooper and Byrne have not. If they would like our assistance, let us know. Also, while this is a minor thing – and arguably superfluous since Oglaf is so controversial – there are no built-in tools to allow one to share a strip on social media. However, since there are, in fact, safe-for-work strips as well as "iffy" ones, it would be nice if Cooper and Bayne added sharing buttons on their sites. Besides, sharing erotica (not porn) on Facebook can (hypothetically) happen without repercussion, and you can freely spread smut all over the place on Twitter.

Do We Recommend This Erotic Comic Strip?

Clearly, we certainly recommend that you do look into Oglaf and let us know what you think. Our judgment is that, despite a few technical problems on the site, for its artistic quality, impressive creativity, and impeccable humor, we give Oglaf five out of five hands.