Review: Pepper&Carrot

David Revoy’s “Pepper & Carrot” is difficult not to love. It’s an episodic web comic with absolutely gorgeous artwork and funny little stories about the adventures of a witch and her cat. Although each episode tells a simple story, Revoy has fleshed out quite a bit of detail for the places and characters, creating a potential backdrop for larger tales.

What’s remarkable about Pepper & Carrot is that the entire strip is under the Creative Commons Attribution License, allowing anyone to build on it – including commercial use. In practical terms, there are a lot of translations of each episode into other languages, and people have made and proposed adaptations ranging from books to animations.

The comic is made exclusively using free/open tools, and David has written a lot of blog posts and created videos to teach others. I conducted an in-depth interview with him a while ago, where he shares a bit of his personal story as well. At this point, more than 700 Patreon supporters are helping him to keep doing this, which goes to show that free culture can be created sustainably.