American Elf is an online

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 diary

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

 created by award-winning cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

ist James Kochalka

James Kochalka

James Kochalka is an American comic book artist and writer, and rock musician. His comics are noted for their blending of the real and the surreal...

.
Many critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

s consider these strips to be Kochalka's most significant work. American Elf has won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic Series and Outstanding Online Comic.

Style

Each strip usually portrays one event that happened to Kochalka that day. These events are sometimes momentous (such as the birth of a child) and sometimes relatively trivial (such as eating a slice of cheese). Although the strips document real events, Kochalka's art style deviates from realism

Realism (visual arts)

Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

. For example, people aren't always represented as people; Kochalka and his wife Amy are drawn as elves

Elf

An elf is a being of Germanic mythology. The elves were originally thought of as a race of divine beings endowed with magical powers, which they use both for the benefit and the injury of mankind...

, and Kochalka's friend Jason is represented as Jason X-12, a dog with a robot brain. This is a carryover from Kochalka's long-form works, many of which take place on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

 in a magical duplicate of Kochalka's hometown of Burlington, Vermont

Burlington, Vermont

Burlington is the largest city in the U.S. state of Vermont and the shire town of Chittenden County. Burlington lies south of the U.S.-Canadian border and some south of Montreal....

, and which feature versions of people from his life.

Kochalka considers these strips to be an attempt to document the rhythms of his life, and as such refuses either to edit the strips or to publish a "best of" collection — according to Kochalka, the value of the strips doesn't lie in any individual strip, but rather in the totality.Recently, Mr. Kochalka has hinted in American Elf that he may end the strip at the conclusion of 2011.

American Elf is syndicated online as part of Webcomics Nation

Webcomics Nation

Webcomics Nation is a webcomic hosting and automation service launched on July 29, 2005 by Joey Manley, publisher of the subscription webcomic site Modern Tales. It is a service designed for online cartoonists. Webcomics Nation is not a spinoff of Modern Tales like Graphic Smash, serializer, and...

. The webcomic

Webcomic

Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

 version of American Elf used to be subscription based and only the most recent strip was free to read. In 2007, the archives were made available to anyone. American Elf was used along with Penny Arcade

Penny Arcade (webcomic)

Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic...

, Fetus-X and Questionable Content

Questionable Content

Questionable Content is a slice-of-life webcomic written and drawn by Jeph Jacques. It was launched on August 1, 2003. Jacques currently makes his living exclusively from QC merchandising and advertising, making him one of the few professional webcomic artists...

as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artistic medium...

's 2006 book Making Comics.

Books

The American Elf strips are collected and published in hardcopy as The Sketchbook Diaries and American Elf by Top Shelf Productions

Top Shelf Productions

Top Shelf Productions is an American publishing company founded in 1997, owned and operated by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock and a small staff. The company is based in Marietta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and New York City, New York....

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