Questionable Content (abbreviated QC or Q.C.) is a slice-of-life webcomic written and drawn by Jeph Jacques. The plot centers on Marten Reed, an indie rock aficionado, his somewhat troubled and mysterious roommate Faye, and his ex-goth girlfriend Dora. The supporting cast includes Marten's anthropomorphic PC (AnthroPC) named Pintsize, Marten's best guy friend Steve, Marten and Faye's eccentric neighbor Hannelore, Faye's good-natured yet vacuous co-worker Raven, and Dora's ex-player older brother Sven.The comic launched on August 1 2003, originally updating two times a week. At issue #16, Jacques announced that he would start updating Questionable Content three times a week. In September 2004, Jacques left his day job to begin updating Monday through Friday, and kept this schedule even after a knife accident that sliced an artery in his drawing hand in 2005 and the death of his grandmother in 2007. QC's thousandth strip appeared on October 26, 2007. Jacques currently makes his living exclusively from QC merchandising and advertising, making QC one of the few self sufficient webcomics. The comic has been notably used in a New Haven, Connecticut youth literacy program sponsored in part by Yale University.QC's storytelling style combines romantic melodrama, sitcom, humor about indie rock music, and sexual or scatological humor. The artistic style has notably changed over the course of the comic due to Jacques constantly refining and improving his drawing methods. Each individual strip is usually accompanied by blog-like entries from Jeph Jacques touching on various topics, including explanations of inspirations for the accompanying strip, updates on Jacques' life, developments in merchandising and shipment progression, up and coming appearances at conventions, and brief reviews of new music albums or video games, among other things.
Setting
Questionable Content takes place in Northampton, Massachusetts; the most frequent setting locales include Marten and Faye's shared apartment, Coffee of Doom (the fictional coffeeshop Dora owns), and Smith College's (jokingly referred to by its students as "Smif College") Williston Library, where Marten is employed. The comic is mostly realistic, and action primarily focuses on banter between the characters, with slowly-progressing plot developments. Due to the emphasis on inter-character dialogue, Jacques rarely uses thought bubbles in the comic.The comic appears to be set in modern times, though the presence of anthropomorphic robots with individual personalities (called "AnthroPC's" within the comic) implies some sort of futuristic technology. However all music and band references in the comic are current at the time of each individual strip's publishing. The AnthroPCs are the only consistent signs of advanced technology in the series. When other technological advances are referenced, they usually never get developed beyond one or two strips. Some of the memorable technological creations in QC are the Deathbot 9000, a Vespa scooter that transforms into a battle droid, human colonies on the International Space Station and orbital defense satellites capable of conversation. QC's author Jeph Jacques remarked, |color=silver|size=360%}}The duration of the strip is somewhat ambiguous; on January 13, 2006, Jeph Jacques stated on a
QC fan community on Livejournal that he has "never sat down and exactly tabulated," but he suspects the total amount of elapsed QC time at that point was "no more than six months." At least 43 distinct days can be discerned in the first 960 strips, but several off-panel (and often indeterminable) lapses in QC time between strips make the entire history of QC difficult to gauge.Jacques occasionally invites other webcomic creators to do stand-alone strips for QC. The guest comics count towards the total amount of strips on the QC website, but do not seem to be considered canonical, since none of the events in the guest strips are ever referred to again when Jacques resumes authorship. Jacques also breaks from normal continuity every American Thanksgiving with an "OMG Turkeys" strip, featuring pictures of turkeys commenting on the current events of the strip.
Storytelling and artistic style
Both the methods of storytelling and the artistic style of the strip have changed considerably since its inception. At the beginning, the strip was seen mainly as a rock and roll or indie music strip, with Faye and Marten "dropping indie buzzwords left and right." While QC is still seen as one of the main rock comic strips, the story has come to focus more on the character development and humor of the strip. Jacques informed interviewers that he makes sure every individual QC strip "has at least one thing in it that someone who does not know anything about obscure band x would find funny." The one consistent aspect of QC's storytelling from the beginning of the comic up to the present day is Jacques' use of the third-person objective perspective of narration. Jacques has also been cited in his blog entries to loathe breaking the fourth wall and using inside jokes.The strip's art was initially seen as mediocre for a webcomic, but as the strip developed, Jeph Jacques has come to be seen as one of the better webcomic artists working today. The majority of QC strips are four panels in length and arranged in a column, one on top of another. Jacques rarely deviated from this pattern until the end of July 2007, when he began experimenting with different panel arrangements. Jeph's experimentation with split panels became prevalent during the lengthy 'Hannelore's Mom' story arc. The increased number of panels allowed the story to be told in less time while allowing for more comedic dialogue and plot development. QC's official forums showed a lot of positive feedback on this stylistic change, and Jacques continued to use the split panel style.Jacques spoke on the evolution of his art in an interview at Comixpedia:
The art is constantly changing, as anybody who reads the comic for more than two weeks could probably tell you. I'm always trying different things with the artwork- it's been a goal from day one to continually improve my drawing ability, and I think it's finally beginning to get to the point where I'm halfway decent at it. It's basically survival of the fittest- changes that I think fit in with the overall look I'm going for stick around and get refined, and changes that do not fit in get phased out, sometimes in the course of three or four strips, sometimes over a much longer span of time. I'm trying to get better at using different "camera angles" in each panel and doing more involved backgrounds, both of which are really just a matter of being patient and taking my time with the artwork. There's still tons of room for improvement, and always will be, but I think I'm at least making progress.
Jacques uses a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet to draw and Photoshop to color his strips. He cites Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes and the webcomic Scary Go Round as his main influences.Questionable Content was used along with Penny Arcade, Fetus-X and American Elf as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud's 2006 book Making Comics. McCloud, Scott (2006). Making Comics, New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-078094-0. Pg. 227
Main characters
Secondary characters
References
External links
Translations
2000s webcomicsComedy webcomicsDayfree PressWebcomicsQuestionable Content
