Art Share • May 2012: Aisha Thani
Valentine's Day 2012 from Warrior U.
Copyright Aisha Thani.
Copyright Aisha Thani.
Every now and then someone asks me about webcomics. Do I do them, am I interested in them, what's my favorite to read, are there any that I follow with religious fervor?
The answer is generally no. Not that I'm not interested in webcomics, mind you, but it's hard to find one that updates regularly and is engaging enough to keep an audience interested in between updates.
Aisha Thani has pulled this off brilliantly. Her art is unique, highly animation-worthy style, her characters are nothing short of fantastic, and the storylines she comes up with keep the reader rolling. Her webcomic, Warrior U, remains the only one still present as a link in my topbar, and I think will remain so until the sky comes down.
Warrior U started as a comic in Thani's college newspaper. The strips were printed once a week, often out of order, and some of them were never printed at all. Eventually it was dropped, and here's where the magic happened: While this is where most college-age artists would have left their work to fade into obscurity, Thani instead continued the comic, posting it online at her deviantART account, where it had picked up a few fans here and there. Her perseverance paid off, and the comic eventually earned a fan community, a TVtropes page, a number of tumblr accounts, roleplayers, cosplayers, and finally its own website.
Although she doesn't get a great deal of domestic interest--Thani is from Dubai and the majority of her fans are in the United States or Europe--Warrior U was a recipe for fantastic, and is still going strong. If it's possible to create a comic that is the perfect mix of humor and creep, of brilliance and insanity, then Aisha Thani has absolutely done it.
The answer is generally no. Not that I'm not interested in webcomics, mind you, but it's hard to find one that updates regularly and is engaging enough to keep an audience interested in between updates.
Aisha Thani has pulled this off brilliantly. Her art is unique, highly animation-worthy style, her characters are nothing short of fantastic, and the storylines she comes up with keep the reader rolling. Her webcomic, Warrior U, remains the only one still present as a link in my topbar, and I think will remain so until the sky comes down.
Warrior U started as a comic in Thani's college newspaper. The strips were printed once a week, often out of order, and some of them were never printed at all. Eventually it was dropped, and here's where the magic happened: While this is where most college-age artists would have left their work to fade into obscurity, Thani instead continued the comic, posting it online at her deviantART account, where it had picked up a few fans here and there. Her perseverance paid off, and the comic eventually earned a fan community, a TVtropes page, a number of tumblr accounts, roleplayers, cosplayers, and finally its own website.
Although she doesn't get a great deal of domestic interest--Thani is from Dubai and the majority of her fans are in the United States or Europe--Warrior U was a recipe for fantastic, and is still going strong. If it's possible to create a comic that is the perfect mix of humor and creep, of brilliance and insanity, then Aisha Thani has absolutely done it.
