Monthly Archives: July 2005

(From Anywhere But Here. Click on image to see full-sized image. Warning, the following images contain uncensored obscene language.)

Jason Siebels is insane. Absolutely positively insane.

There’s no other explanation for it. Way back when I first reviewed Anywhere But Here, I enjoyed talking about a comic that seemed a delightful blend of Bloom County, Doonesbury, and a healthy dash of personal creativity. This was a comic that was easily one of the best new web comics out there. It deserves to win awards and accolades. It deserves to be part of the Keenspot lineup. It deserves to be read.

A week later Jason surprised me with a huge 20-panel mega-comic. I’m no stranger to the lure of a mega-comic. Sometimes you want to say something or show something and the traditional format just doesn’t work. Many Mega-Comics tend to be full-page affairs with what are normally 4-panel comics, and you just cannot tell the story with several days worth of strips. (I went through this with the web-comic Tangents, when I wanted to follow two characters as they tried to find an apartment. I could have gone for two weeks with 3-4 panel comics… but I realized it would get old fast. By combining the two into a large strip, I could rush through the encounters while keeping the humor fresh.)

ABH has had two Mega-strips up until now, each being something that had to be told in one sitting. It couldn’t effectively be cut into smaller strips, not without losing something. But with Friday’s ABH, Jason has gone from creating a “mega-strip” to something greater. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if a record hasn’t been set with the comic.

Jason created not one, not two, not even three… but five mega-strips. While they all weren’t necessarily 20 panels each, all of the comics did match in size and scope (and majesty). And he easily could have split this up, running it for five consecutive days next week. Easily. And people would have been wowed and amazed. People would have loved it. And heck, he could have gotten some rest with a little buffer in place, recovering from what had to be a very intensive and time-consuming effort.

Instead, he posted all five pages in one day. Friday’s ABH has to be possibly the biggest update for any web-comic. Definitely it’s the biggest update for a strip that updates five days a week!

What’s more, this has to be one of the most intense and dramatic moments in the comic. We’ve gone from Chris running into an ex-boyfriend, Mark, who is basically trying to get into her pants to her hiding in a bathroom wondering how she can get out of this mess. In fact, she’s trying to fight years of ingrained behavior, where she’d throw herself at guys to gain approval… something that didn’t work on the main character of the comic.

In a way, Chris is fighting not just feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred that leads her to sleep around or try to get in bed with every guy she’s attracted to in an attempt to feel better about herself, she’s also fighting to keep her new boyfriend’s respect. She’s trying to remain faithful to him. But more importantly, she’s trying to remain true to herself.

Part of our hero’s charm with Chris is the fact he’s not tried to get in bed with her, and that he’s resisted her advances even though he’s clearly interested in her. If it wasn’t for him (or more importantly, his sense of personal honor), it’s more than likely that Chris would have just succumbed to Mark’s advances. She wouldn’t have anything to aspire toward.

Of course, I could be wrong. Chris knows her ex is a scumbag. She only went out to the bar with him because he knows what buttons to push… and she might have fled to the bathroom anyway. And without Mongo, no doubt she’d have punched his lights out or caused enough of a disturbance that the cops would have gotten involved (and hopefully they’d have chased that sorry excuse for a human away from her and escorted her home).

The use of spot-color was also well done. Mongo’s eyes glowing yellow when angry… Mark wetting himself when Mongo picks him up, ready to pull an Incredible Hulk on this tit of a man… and the golden halo around the head of the Guardian Devil panel at the end of the comic. (Indeed, several fans have already stated that the “Guardian Devil” bit should be on t-shirts; I could definitely see those t-shirts selling. Hell, I’d buy such a t-shirt. It suits me.)

Once again Chris’s obscenities are uncensored (the poor little censor boxes must have burned themselves out trying to reverse-censor the white text in the “translated dialog” balloons) (or they’re clustering around Chris’s bottom pretending to be black underwear, but I figure it’s more likely they wore themselves out going white earlier). However, the swearing is limited to the first page, and Chris concentrates on her swear of choice, f___, though in this case half of the time Chris uses it properly. (It’s an action, folks, has been for years.)

What’s even sweeter is watching Mongo comfort Chris and assure her that her daddy (who asked Mongo’s boss to help her out) isn’t in hell. We’re talking… upper management here. I mean… here’s this bloody huge demon who’s probably close to 10 feet tall when he straightens out (think Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies), with fingers the thickness of Chris’s arms… comforting Chris, letting her know that her dad is okay.

This has to be among the most powerful moments in all the web-comics I’ve read. This is as powerful as the Kiss over at CRfH, or the final nightmare sequence when Shelly lets Heather in, at Wapsi Square. There is sheer powerful electric emotion here, playing out and dancing across the night sky.

And Chris has her own Guardian Devil. I mean… how cool is that?

Robert A. Howard

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(From WLCD: The News Chicks. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

WLCD: The News Chicks is another comic I started reading thanks to Jamie Robertson’s Clan of the Cats, and to be honest, I almost think of Raven as more of a CotC character than of Bryan Richter’s comic. Raven has frequently shown up in Jamie’s comic (as has Chelsea Chattan appeared at times in LCD), and in fact the majority of the LCD cast starred in the “Ghosts of the Forest” storyline (which ran for three and a half months). (Superb story, by the way. I definitely recommend people read it, especially if they enjoy LCD. While it’s a lot more serious than most LCD stories, it’s quite fascinating, and fun!).

Unfortunately, LCD has suffered from the most dreaded of foes for a web comic: hiatus. In fact, LCD has suffered from this dread bug more often than not, to the point that I’ve taken to checking on the comic once a month to see what’s up with it. I was pleasantly surprised to find today that LCD is actually updating again, and appears to have gotten back on a MWF schedule.

LCD actually started back in 1997, though there were only two updates for that year; I’m not sure if there were other updates that were lost to the ravages of time (and Keenspace crashes; there’ve been some truly spectacular ones, including one that devastated the web-comic Framed). It was not until after mid-1999 before Bryan started regularly updating, and even then updates seemed to run for several weeks and then skip a week or two. Unfortunately, Bryan also seemed to have a tendency to update when he had a comic created, rather than build up a buffer and remain on a regular update schedule.

I’m hoping that the last two weeks of updates isn’t a fluke. While often Bryan seems to react to events in the news and use LCD and his cast of newswomen to comment on them, he’s shown some skill in storytelling, including a very touching Post 9/11 story dealing with his star character, Raven, having a crisis of faith over what had happened.

I remember reading that story when it was running. My only real problem with it was with the intermittent update schedule (which doesn’t matter when reading through the archives) and the fact that Bryan broke up the story with one or two single-shot strips about other things. However, the underlying message of the story remained clear: it doesn’t matter who you follow, as long as you follow them on the path to God. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Pagan… (well, those last two weren’t mentioned, but I’m sure the sentiment follows for them as well) as long as you believe in life, you follow the path to God.

That’s not to say that LCD is a platform for preaching, anymore than it’s a platform for political beliefs (liberal or conservative), or anything else like that. Bryan enjoys poking fun at the media, and uses LCD to do that. And sometimes he feels a good story needs to be told, and he uses LCD to do that as well.

Hopefully Bryan will return to his storytelling roots. The occasional joke strip poking fun at the media and society in general can be fun… but it’s difficult to build a regular strip around it without it eventually getting old (or the cartoonist getting jaded and cynical). However, joke strips and one-shot strips mixed in-between storylines can work quite well. Bryan’s shown he can do just that; it’s a good foundation to build on.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue to read LCD, and hope that it continues to update regularly. It would be a shame if Raven’s only appearances were in CotC, especially as she’s a most intriguing and fun character, and deserving of her own comic. Fortunately, she has one.

Robert A. Howard

A Job Well Done

Last week I mentioned the Save ConnectiCon Drive, and even how donations had started to pour in. Indeed, within half a week, over half of the money required had been donated from fans everywhere; even those who’ve never gone to ConnectiCon and probably never will donated money to help out two people who just wanted to have a convention for the things they enjoyed most.

I still feel that the Connecticut Convention Center acted deplorably and should be investigated for such underhanded business practices. If they treat all of their conventions the way they treated ConnectiCon, I doubt that Hartford Connecticut will be used for many conventions, and tourist dollars and interests will focus more toward Boston or New York rather than Connecticut.

But what’s important is that we did it. Thanks to the web cartoonists who posted about this, the sites like Websnark and Comixpedia, and more… but most importantly to you fans, who put their dollars where it counted, and when it counted.

Unfortunately, the job’s only half done. ConnectiCon is saved. Daigle and Benn will be modifying their business practices in the future, making ConnectiCon into a non-profit L.L.C. so that they can have corporate protection from this type of situation in the future. But there are other web cartoonists in need, such as Jamie Robertson of CotC, or Carson Fire of Elf Life, (or even Amber “Glych” Greenlee, who is doing a Paper Drive so that fans can donate something specific instead of sending money and hoping it’s used for the comic).

Again, I state we should start some sort of Web Cartoonist Assistance Fund, to help out those who suffer a sudden downturn and just need a little help to get their comic up and running again. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to save ConnectiCon with such a fund… but there are so many others we can help out in their time of need.

I don’t know where we’d start with something like this… but I’m sure there are some people out there who will know where we start, and how to move forward with this.

After all, this doesn’t just help out a web cartoonist in need. It helps the fans as well, by ensuring that our favorite comics won’t just vanish because their cartoonist suffered an equipment failure and can’t update the comic anymore.

Robert A. Howard

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(From Exterminatus Now. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

I sometimes wonder just how much I’d enjoy Exterminatus Now if I didn’t understand the basic background behind it. For instance, when I first talked about EN, I commented on the underlying irony of having a humancentric organization dedicated to wiping out mutants and aliens within Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K universe represented by furries. But I suspect a number of readers probably know little about the Warhammer 40K universe. Thus they might not catch some of the intrinsic humor to the comic.

When I think of it, EN could only work as a furry comic. If the characters were all human (or semi-human in the case of Lothar), then several ongoing jokes (such as Shafer’s predilection toward barnyard fowls) would fall flat on their faces. Indeed, the comic would probably take on a dark humor aspect (which goes to show you, if you put fur and tails on your characters, you can get away with almost anything in the name of humor).

Fortunately, the crew writing and drawing the comic realize that they needed to draw on outside references that fans could readily understand. They might not realize who Shaefer is or why it’s so important for the Inquisition to stop heresy from corrupting the populace. But it’s the rare fan who doesn’t catch a Scooby Doo reference (right down to Lothar saying “jinkies”). And of course following the maniacal “mad scientist” laughter (because what lair of villany and evil would be complete without maniacal laughter echoing down the halls?).

Probably the only real problem Exterminatus Now suffers from (outside of being loosely based off of a game, and thus leading to some confusion from those who are unfamiliar with the game) is a problem with updating regularly. Fortunately, for the past couple of weeks the EN crew has been updating regularly and continuing the storyline. I hope they can keep it up; the story tends to suffer when it has gaps between updates. And I’m curious as to what mischief Eastwood, Virus, and the others have gotten themselves into.

But it’s all in a day’s work for the Mobian Inquisition.

(From Exterminatus Now. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

I sometimes wonder just how much I’d enjoy Exterminatus Now if I didn’t understand the basic background behind it. For instance, when I first talked about EN, I commented on the underlying irony of having a humancentric organization dedicated to wiping out mutants and aliens within Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K universe represented by furries. But I suspect a number of readers probably know little about the Warhammer 40K universe. Thus they might not catch some of the intrinsic humor to the comic.

When I think of it, EN could only work as a furry comic. If the characters were all human (or semi-human in the case of Lothar), then several ongoing jokes (such as Shafer’s predilection toward barnyard fowls) would fall flat on their faces. Indeed, the comic would probably take on a dark humor aspect (which goes to show you, if you put fur and tails on your characters, you can get away with almost anything in the name of humor).

Fortunately, the crew writing and drawing the comic realize that they needed to draw on outside references that fans could readily understand. They might not realize who Shaefer is or why it’s so important for the Inquisition to stop heresy from corrupting the populace. But it’s the rare fan who doesn’t catch a Scooby Doo reference (right down to Lothar saying “jinkies”). And of course following the maniacal “mad scientist” laughter (because what lair of villany and evil would be complete without maniacal laughter echoing down the halls?).

Probably the only real problem Exterminatus Now suffers from (outside of being loosely based off of a game, and thus leading to some confusion from those who are unfamiliar with the game) is a problem with updating regularly. Fortunately, for the past couple of weeks the EN crew has been updating regularly and continuing the storyline. I hope they can keep it up; the story tends to suffer when it has gaps between updates. And I’m curious as to what mischief Eastwood, Virus, and the others have gotten themselves into.

But it’s all in a day’s work for the Mobian Inquisition.

Robert A. Howard

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Here’s a scary thought for you… this is our 100th strip. I didn’t realize it at the time, or I’d have done something special. Well, at least I’d have commented on it. When I was posting updates by date, it wasn’t easy to determine how many days I’d written reviews (to be honest, I’m probably a bit over 200 reviews at this point). But it’s scary to think I’ve managed this for over three months.

I feel a bit proud, too. I’ve kept with it. Sure, once Keenspace crashed and I was forced to update on my LJ, things eventually came up that led to a week-long hiatus… but I am still restarting (and even writing up the week’s worth of reviews, slowly enough).

Here’s to another 100 days, and a hundred beyond that and so on.

Robert A. Howard

I guess chocolate can’t cure every woe…

(From Candi. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

College seems to be a popular locale for cartoonists to use for their web comics. To be honest, it’s easy to see why. Many cartoonists creating a web comic often are in college at the time (unless you’re working on the side and studying all the time, college seems to be a period where people have lots of free time). Writers often write about their own experiences; writing about college is immediate, and often the most interesting period of time that a younger cartoonist will have up to that date. And the vast majority of fans reading web-comics are either in high school or college; thus they can associate better with a college-based comic than one set in outer space or following a superhero as they try to make a living while saving the day.

On the surface, Candi appears to be yet another college strip. However, Starline has learned from those who have created webcomics before her, and made her comic not just about college (or more precisely the art classes that our main heroine, Candi, is suffering through) but also about a group of students living together. They’re not all friends per say… they don’t necessarily know each other well enough to be true friends. But they’re friendly associates at least.

The strip itself is more of an ensemble cast, though technically Candi herself is the main focus of the comic. But while Starline might have started out the comic as being about Candi, she’s shifted the comic to be as much about those living with Candi as about Candi herself.

Thus we’ve had comics focusing on Jessica and her problems with an apparently-sociopathic brother (who is on medication now) trying to track her down and become a part of her life again. We’ve had Candi’s roommate Linda who is plotting to break up Candi and her boyfriend Alex just because he annoys her (and because she feels Candi deserves better). And then we’ve Laura, and her stalking Trevor because he was seeing someone other than her.

I suppose that, having been a commuter student the entire time I went to college, I missed out on this type of life. And I’ve never had a “friends with benefits” type of relationship. To me, there’s a bond that comes with sex… and I’ve watched as Laura finds herself fixated on Trevor after they’ve had sex, despite the fact they’re not dating each other.

Laura’s realization that Trevor is seeing another guy was priceless. She herself states it: how is she able to compete against a guy? And it’s rather interesting (and good) to see an actual bi-sexual character… a bi-sexual man at that, and the sudden dawning on Laura’s face that she just might not be able to deal with this.

Her reaction is natural enough, though I’m with “Mr. Coffee Boy” here with his ire at Laura. I mean, he went out and got her an iced mocha… a white chocolate mocha at that, which he guessed as her favorite. In fact, she asked for it… and then when he returns with it (taking time off from flirting with Trevor), she throws it at the window. I mean, how polite of her.

Still, this story subplot has been rather intriguing, and one of my favorites. I’ve no idea where it’s going to go next. But I’m sure that I’ll be pleasantly surprised at whatever Starline puts her characters through.

Robert A. Howard

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(From Elf Life. Click on image to see full-sized image.)

Well, I sit here with a broken website and a Tag board that is down more often than not, and no idea to contact you guys. I’m hoping some of you are going to the LiveJournal… in the meantime, I’ll keep reviewing, even if I can’t update the site. Which is a shame, because the last couple of Elf Life comics just beg for a tangent.

I’ve blathered on about Elf Life in the past. I know some people don’t like the new Elf Life; they want a continuation of the current story; they want to find out about Baughb’s wedding and what happens. I understand that. Honestly. I mean, we know the ending… Baughb’s pretty much admitted he’s a dead elf. But we read and we hope that Baughb is able to avoid his fate somehow; maybe Filis saves him at the end, or the future can be changed, or any number of things come up that allow Baughb a happily ever after.

The problem is that the wedding has gone on entirely too long. It’s boring, it’s overly complex, and it keeps drifting into prose rather than a comic format. (Part of this has to do with Carson’s eyes; they’re not as good as they once were, and it’s difficult at times for him to draw. That doesn’t lessen my dissatisfaction with the comic when Carson starts writing prose updates.)

And I’ll admit that I have rather enjoyed watching Baughb and the two faerie ladies going out. They outwitted the mutant mermaids for at least a short while. Unfortunately… Filis was less than happy to find Baughb living it up with two pretty ladies, especially the ever-so-cheerful Val. (I swear, that girl can’t stand happiness. She was probably half-miserable when she herself was happy. Fortunately, Baughb turned into a bastard at that point and gave her a reason to be miserable again so her world wasn’t completely turned topsyturvy.)

Still, if Elf Life has a problem, it’s that it takes entirely too long to do something. I mean, we’ve been in this pseudo-barfight between Filis and Baughb/Val for what, two weeks now? Of course, Baughb’s been playing both ends against each other this entire time. I mean, he acts like a prat more often than not, but you can definitely see the deliberation in his actions through this entire storyline (and for what? Revealing he knows the two fae for who and what they are? Driving Filis insane? Or maybe he has something else in mind…). But the entire scene could have been wrapped up in two or three updates. I can understand why some fans might be getting annoyed.

And poor Val never even got kissed. I mean, where’s the justice in that?

I’m curious as to where Baughb will go next. He’s been interested in Filis since he first emerged from the Faerie Gate. But he also seems to know what our two fae are. So will he go with our delightful duo? Or escort a worn-out elf-maiden home?

Though I’m sure the trio waiting outside the inn may have other plans in mind for Baughb.

Robert A. Howard

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