Monthly Archives: July 2006

Well, that’s it for the guest reviews. Or at least I don’t see any more in my forums or the Tangents e-mail address (at Tangentsreviews at gmail period com). I’m still waiting to hear on what I received for grades for the graduate class, but I got the work finished on time at least, and I really appreciate the effort people put in on those reviews.

Unfortunately, things keep coming up. My roommate’s grandfather died, and to help support his parents he’s going to be moving home. It’s a noble and grand thing to do… but it leaves me without a roommate and as I’m still jobless, without a means of paying for an apartment. (I was living off of debts owed me and on what’s left of an inheritance.)

This means I’m going to end up moving home for a bit. I’m planning on it being no more than a month, as I do not get along with my father at all, and I’ve grown to enjoy my independence. Once I can get a decent job and find a place to live, I’ll be back on my own again. But I have been jobless (outside of substitute teaching) for a while. It’s not going to be easy finding a decent job that I’m qualified for.

As a result, Tangents will be suffering more delays. I’ve ramped back the reviews to a MWF schedule, but when I’m with my folks I’ll be on their computers (which don’t have FTP). I’ll also not be reading new comics (for the most part) as they’re on dial-up, and on a damn slow dialup at that. I mean it. It’s like half the speed of regular dialup. They’ve got MSN, which means they’re spending $23 a month for internet that isn’t even 56K. Thanks to the strong-arm politics of their town, the only high-speed internet is Comcast, which costs $60 per month for internet. (The town owns the telephone poles and had the audacity to try and charge Verizon to let them put DSL on these poles. So, nice cheap high-speed internet is not available thanks to someone wanting a kickback. Small town politics, you know.)

Not that I plan on staying there more than two months at the most. Once I get a job and some savings earned up, I’ll be off on my own again, hopefully with decent internet and a bit of solitude.

And who knows… maybe Verizon will turn around and let a certain small town know that they’re going to take down their telephone lines. I mean, if they’re going to charge for use of the telephone poles… why bother giving phone service. But that’s just my own nasty response to the greed of certain petty town politicians….

Rob H.

Addendum Note: I was unable to keep up with the MWF update schedule due to a variety of reasons. Tangents has been pushed back to a weekly schedule, though the reviews written have also grown in length as a result.

Devil with a Blue Dress on…

(From Casey and Andy. Click on image to see it full-sized.)

Casey and Andy is one of those odd hybrid strips, a combination of gag strip and storyline. It didn’t start out as such. But as time passed, continuity started to appear. Outside of a tendency of Casey and Andy to die at the drop of a ball (and then being alive usually the very next strip, though once Andy came back a couple panels later), the comic managed to at first have character continuity and then later start forming actual storylines.

Perhaps one of the most popular characters is the Lord of Darkness, Satan. She first appeared dating Andy. Yes, the Devil is a woman. Did you guys have any doubts about that? Well, actually the Devil has many forms but she seems to prefer being a girl. And the weird thing is… she actually seems to love Andy. In fact, doing so ends up causing one of the storylines as one of Satan’s worshippers turns on her and usurps Hell because of that one moment of “goodness” on her behalf.

This of course brings us to Quantum Cop, who originally started out as a gag character but then started coming back periodically and taking part in the storylines. QC is sort of a deus-ex-machina in the storylines, with the ability to handle almost any foe but his own counterpart, Quantum Crook. He is an expert shot, keeps getting Nobel prizes, able to defeat the Devil at chess, and is pretty much perfect except for the fact he’s oblivious to the interest of Casey and Andy’s next door neighbor, Jenn. Eventually, though, he starts clueing in on her feelings (or at the very least develops some toward her on his own).

Jenn wasn’t part of the original cast, but seems to have appeared as the “straight woman” for Casey and Andy’s antics. Despite that, she quickly became my favorite character. Her crush on Quantum Cop, the fact weird stuff keeps happening to her (even outside the fact that she’s the next door neighbor of Casey and Andy), even the fact that the longer storylines have started to revolve around her in many ways suggest that this Jenny-come-lately is now the key character to the comic. While Casey and Andy may be essential to the puns and one-shot strips, it’s Jenn who drives the comic and has been the pivotal character story plots revolve around.

And of course, where would we be without mentioning Casey and Andy? These two are… insane. I mean insane as in the Helen Narbon style of insanity. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Helen Narbon the Elder visited these two when they were kids and drove them mad as hatters. Well, it could have happened. I’d not be surprised one bit. I mean, they’re idiots. But they’re inventive geniuses who happen to know a lot.

Andy’s main claim to fame is he’s dating the Devil, and God hates his guts because of it. God feels that Andy doesn’t treat his little girl right (and yes, God cast the Devil out because she tried to take over, but he still loves her as his daughter… which I suppose makes some sense if the Christian God is a loving God (outside of hating Andy)). He’s also the king of saying outrageous and idiotic things. You don’t even have to look hard for examples. He’s best friends with Casey (in fact, they’re pretty much the only friends each of them have) even as he and Casey constantly try to kill each other.

Don’t get me wrong. Casey is also an idiot. He’ll say stupid things as well, and doesn’t always think things through. In fact, as his alter-ego (Dr. X) he’s constantly trying to take over the planet, and fails each and every time. But he doesn’t say quite as many stupid things as Andy, and seems to have a better grasp on reality than his friend.

Casey’s girlfriend, Mary, hates Andy with a passion. I mean, she kills him at one point (though with Andy, that’s not much of a problem). She’s also got an immense hatred of puns (one of the reasons she doesn’t get along with Andy is that he loves to use puns), so severe she’s created the persona of the Pun Police to hurt anyone who puns in her presence.

I couldn’t tell you what lured me over to CaA. While it’s been snarked by Eric Burns multiple times, I never bothered to see what he was talking about. And this is a shame, because while the comic has faltered in places (and even had an early hiatus), it’s quite talented.

It’s also ending in 23 more issues. Andy Weir (the cartoonist) is calling it quits for Casey and Andy and putting the cast through one last Jenn-centric storyline before wrapping things up. We’ve learned some interesting tidbits along the way, such as the origin of one of the strip villains, Lord Milligan. We even have Casey asking Mary to be his wife (and in turn informed Andy that he has to move out).

While CaA may be ending, it’s ending while the comic is still going on fairly strong. This is the sixth major storyline (not including the occasional mini-arc or the guest comics), and as is apropos to CaA’s theme, it’s going out with a bang, rather than the whimper and slow death of hiatus.

Robert A. Howard

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(From No Rest For The Wicked. Click on image to see it full-sized.)

THE STORY:

One day, the Moon up and disappeared; where it went, or why, none can say. Without the Moon’s light to keep them in check at night, monsters, crawling horrors, and other creatures of the dark run rampant throughout the land. But Princess November has much more pressing matters to worry about: she hasn’t had a decent sleep in ages.

“No Rest for the Wicked”, written and drawn by Andrea L. Peterson, is a fairy tale in the vein of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “Fables”. Mixing several fairy tales, ranging from such mainstays as “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel & Gretel” to lesser known fare like “The Girl with No Hands”, Peterson blends her fodder in an imaginative way. While “Shriek” parodies fairy tale conventions and ”Wicked” re-imagine the Wicked Witch of the West as a counter-culture  rebel, “No Rest for the Wicked” is singularly devoid of self-awareness and irony. To the people of its world, getting cursed by an old woman on the side of the road for not sharing your bread with her is the equivalent to driving over a bad pot hole; it’s just something that happens to you when you’re not careful. Rest assured, you can read this webcomic with no worries about being winked at.

One aspect where Peterson really excels is with her characters. Her main trio is interesting and her supporting & minor characters are colorful. For conciseness, we’ll limit ourselves to the main three:

PRINCESS NOVEMBER: “What’s in the grave?”

The insomniac protagonist of the story, Princess November is a girl in search of a good night’s rest. The fact that the search also involves evading her marriage to a commoner is totally inconsequential. November is an interesting character in that while she’s smart enough to notice things others miss she’s unable to get herself out of the trouble she finds herself in. Physically, she’s quite delicate (peas under beds and all that). An errant leaf in the face is enough to give her a sizable bruise. While not worldly, she does possess a moral center, something that puts her at odds with Perrault at times.

RED: “Such a clever little beast. I HATE clever beasts.”

The girl of Riding Hood fame is back, and is by far the most magnetic of the leads. Demonstrating both sociopath outbursts and a wry sense of humor, Red is a darkly humorous character. No naive little girl, Red is an ax-brandishing hunter who skins wolves for… well, not exactly a living, but more because she enjoys it. Red is also popular with the comic’s fan base, judging from the sheer amount of fanart alone that centers on her. She despises Perrault for being what he is. Her reason for leaving the forest to help November is currently unknown, though the two seem to be friends (or just friendly?).

PERRAULT: “A cat has no duty but to do exactly as he pleases.

A lesser known fairy tale, Perrault (Puss, of Puss in Boots) is a Machiavellian schemer who is five steps ahead of everyone else. Drawn as a Catboy, Perrault is most definitely a cat. His personality reflects the nature of his breed; he’s adventuring with November simply because he has grown bored with the machinations of the court. A charmer and a rogue, his silver tongue is perhaps the most valuable of the trio’s tools. He is terrified of Red.

For a story rooted in European fairy tales, its art is decidedly in the manga style. Princess November in particular sports some big peepers. It works though, and it gives November the impression of being a little strung out from her lack of sleep. Background details are sparse in the first chapter, but the subsequent one features complex environments and dynamic perspectives (even if not always 100% correct, as Peterson admits in her commentary). The current chapter, ”A Modest Proposal”, is dark and moody, capturing the feel of being trapped in the woods at nighttime with a monster, with its extensive use of hatching and solid tones. Character design is consistent throughout but it does become more expressive emotionally as Peterson’s style matures. Overall, each page is interesting to look at with lots of details to enjoy, an important point in a weekly serial.

The comic’s presentation is done well, with the option of advancing through the archive by clicking on the “page” itself. While you have to click on a link on the main page to view the comic itself it is justified by the richness of the website itself. In addition to the standard Cast and FAQ sections, Peterson gives links to the original source stories for the material she uses in the comic. Author commentary is also available for chapters one and two. Most importantly, however, is the Fanwork section. While many comics sport a simple Fanart section, “No Rest for the Wicked” sports extensive fanworks such as fanfiction, cosplay, avatars, wallpapers, pixel dolls, and lots of fanart; all of which is cleanly presented and labeled for ease of browsing. Of note is that “No Rest” has inspired its own fanCOMIC, “Nightfall Yonder Bremen” by JZ. Unfortunately, as of this review, that comic’s URL does not function. “No Rest” was also recently adapted as a stage play by a middle school near Toronto, Canada.

“No Rest for the Wicked” is a weekly fantasy webcomic, updated each weekend (give or take a day). It’s a serious story grounded in fairy tale lore but does possess a strong sense of humor. Currently in the third chapter of a projected ten, it has over 160 pages completed. A charming story with interesting characters, its originality and execution make it a strong recommendation for you to read religiously. If you dislike bookmarks, a mailing list for updates is made available on the main page.

Doublemint

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(From Love Me Not. Click on image to see it full-sized.)

Love Me Not started out as a simple Keenspace comic. Art just above, stock characters, and a familiar “hopeless love” plot. As to that plot, a noticeable thing about the comic was that it was afraid to say the word “gay,” or directly express that concept, instead referring to Alex’s “two secrets”; this state of affairs continued almost to the end of the first run. This seems odd for a comic whose main character and author are gay. The plot “thickened,” with more stock characters being added.

In short, it was terrible. I’m not being cruel here – the author has as much as said so. This was about where he realized it, where all the major characters (in the current run) had been introduced. So Alex went to sleep and woke up in an alternate universe.

There were a lot of differences in this universe. To start with, the strip didn’t tell its own main plot through innuendo – that’s always a plus. Also, the art had improved, and continued to do so. It wasn’t (and isn’t) Questionable Content, but it’s a bit easier on the eyes than the old run.

It was a bit melodramatic at first, although it’s a melodramatic comic. The strip had gone from telling everything indirectly to the opposite extreme, giving far too much emotion to the plot. It’s gotten over this to some degree, but, well, if you’re going here, you know what you’ve signed up for.

The characters’ peculiarities and deviations from the creative norm, tacked on in the original, surfaced more clearly this time. Alex, as well as his crush Dorian and Dorian’s girlfriend Cassandra, while their personalities hadn’t changed, didn’t seem as cut from whole cloth as they had. Even Danielle, who had originally been disturbingly obsessed, became even more unnerving, filling Alex’s locker with explicit love letters. Her brother Tobias, originally Alex’s sweetheart, has become a borderline sociopath with apparent psychic powers.

This is one of the most obvious changes to the comic: the introduction of a supernatural element. Danielle, formerly a ditzy schoolgirl, has apparently gained psychic powers, which Tobias seems to share. This has lead to a look inside Alex’s dreams and metaphors, which were previously for his eyes only. Ironically enough, Tobias might be more deeply involved in the story.

One thing I do miss about the old story was its irreverence. The jokes were often childish, but by that very fact they were a welcome distraction from the generally depressed tone…up to a certain point that was regularly surpassed. Perhaps the author felt that they were too distracting, or initially thought that such distraction was necessary but changed his mind. In any case, recently it’s been approching a good mean.

Finally, Dorian and Cassandra now realize Alex’s affections. This was inevitable in either version, that there would be a time before and after this revelation. This is the time after. I get the feeling that Dorian’s known since the beginning, and Cassandra probably should have known.

But enough about the past. This is the kind of comic, if you’d described it to me, I wouldn’t have liked it. It’s the kind of comic one wouldn’t expect to like, but somehow it’s just…enticing. It’s not really to be analyzed, because one would find very little, objectively, to like, but taken as a whole, there’s something very interesting about it.

Leahy

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

It is hard to discuss Megatokyo without dealing with some baggage first. Megatokyo was created by Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston in 2001 and was originally a combination of gag-a-day and story comics. A lot of early comics were poking fun at the game industry, and had humor based on the main characters, Piro and Largo, being obsessed with their own particular corners of the gaming world. Largo is a bioware fanatic, and thus is into RPGs, but he’ll play pretty much any game with focus, enthusiasm, but often recklessness. Piro is obsessed with Japanese Dating Sims, though he is also a killer player of FPS deathmatch games, where his habit of playing as little girls adds insult to injury. Both characters played in a multiplayer online fantasy roleplaying game in the past (Largo as a warrior, Piro as a female fighter/mage) which plays an important role in future storylines.

Rodney (note that while Fred makes use of the name Piro, and Rodney the name Largo in forums and such, since I am discussing the comic, Piro and Largo will only refer to the characters in the comic) and Fred parted ways in 2002, with Fred taking over the reins of the comic completely. This has caused the comic to become much more focused on story and character, and there are many fewer punchlines in comics. Also since Megatokyo started coming out in book form, the comic has shifted from a webcomic that gets collected in books, to an american-made manga series that happens to publish its story a page at a time on the web. One other point, Fred uses a manga style, but since he is an American who is primarily writing to an American audience, he doesn’t use a lot of the stylizations that are found in manga that many American artists pick up. So while the series could be termed manga, there are no chibis, no motion lines, and all nosebleeds are the result of someone getting hit in the nose, not the result of seeing someone’s panties. (The ubiquitous pantyshot almost does not appear in Megatokyo, except in a recent situation where two characters were playing a fighting game which did happen to have moves with pantyshots, and therefore it occurred in the comic as well.)

OK, that’s enough about what the comic isn’t or isn’t anymore, let’s talk about what the comic is. First, the premise. Two americans, Piro and Largo after an evening where Largo gets exceedingly drunk and disorderly travel from Los Angeles to Tokyo, and while there they spend a bunch of money on neat games and toys and find that they don’t have enough money to return home. Their spendthrift ways make getting the money for a ticket home difficult. Piro winds up taking a job in a japanese games store just in time to get cast out onto the street when their japanese host lets his apartment lease expire to pursue his old love in America. They wind up living in the store’s storeroom at the instigation of Erica, one of the other employees there who had also been instrumental in getting Piro his job. Since moving in, the story has progressed at a general pace of one day per chapter, so the current time is only a few days into his time working there.

But before getting into more plot elements, it is worth introducing a few characters. Let’s start with a little more about the main characters. Piro and Largo are somewhat archetypical geeks. Piro is the shy geek. He gets panicked when startled, has trouble starting conversations with girls, and tends to spend so much time in his own head trying to analyze things that he often misses what happens around him. One the good side, he is generally well intentioned, will vigorously defend his friends, and is more competent than he thinks he is.

Largo is the crazy geek. He views life through the lens of video games, and since many of the crazy things in Megatokyo seem to happen to him, it is unclear where reality leaves off and Largovision starts. He intersperses his conversation with L33T. (And one of the jokes of the comic is that it seems to have its own pronounciation that even the English speaking Japanese have trouble with.) He seems rather inexperienced with women, and his initial interaction with Erica mostly consists of making lewd comments that get him hurt interspersed with describing his activities which may or may not be real, but certainly sound like wild fantasies to Erica. Sometimes he seems to be delusional, other times he seems to see things on a level of reality that most others just don’t notice. Largo has somewhat of a paladin mentality, he seeks to battle evil where he finds it, and is quite active in defending those he considers PCs from evil, whether they want it or not.

Kimiko is the roommate of Erica. She is an aspiring voice actress who works as a waitress to make ends meet. She has some self-esteem issues which are probably not helped by having a best friend of Erica, who is tall, blond and buxom. Her strongest quality is empathy, as she cares for even those, like the japanese Otaku, that the rest of society looks down upon. Empathy also can mean you get hurt easily, however, and combined with her low self-esteem she seems at a loss to understand kindness towards her, particularly Piro’s kindness, and she has quite a cynical streak. In a recent story sequence, Kimiko is once again accusing Piro of doing things for her in an attempt to get into her pants, after he becomes unusually violent in defense of her. Of all the main characters we know the least about Kimiko’s past, but it most likely has its tragic elements. Still, the relationship between Piro and Kimiko is central to the story, and it is likely those looking for alternate pairings for Piro or Kimiko will be disappointed, however rocky the road becomes.

Erica herself is a former voice actress who helps to encourage Kimiko. In the early comics she was doing a booth babe stint at the Tokyo Game Show, but her primary job is at the Megagamers store. Erica wears her cynicism on the outside, and seems to have some martial arts training of some sort (I speculate that it is aikido or jujitsu, as she has shown some throws, and breaks Largo’s arm early on which some holds will allow you to do). But behind the violence, the dry sense of humor and the cynical outlook she is protecting a caring heart that wants to do nice things for people, as evidenced by her getting Piro a job and a place to live. Largo seems to have found a way behind her barriers, and while the road is rocky, a relationship seems to be in the works here as well.

The comic has plenty of other characters, of course, there is Ping, the android PS2 accessory who Piro winds up taking care of, Dom and Ed, old friends of Piro and Largo who are now operatives for Sega and Sony respectively, Yuki, the 15 year old girl who winds up with Piro’s sketchbook and gets a crush on him, and her family who have their own connections, Junpei, the ninja who is trying to learn to be 1337 from Largo, and many more. But I’m going to just discuss one more character here, the one who has set herself up as antagonist to Piro and Largo for largely unknown reasons, Miho. Miho is a goth character who is introduced to us following Largo finding and reading the Necrowombicon in an Ancient Cave of Evil (in downtown Tokyo). She is perhaps Queen of the Undead, she is perhaps a sickly goth girl, she is definitely a former adversary of Piro and Largo’s from their days in Endgames, the online fantasy game they used to play.

How evil Miho really is gets heavily debated in the Megatokyo forums, but Miho is as much of a game player as Piro or Largo, and she likes to play at evil at least. She conceives of Piro and Largo as her new game (or rather two separate new games that she can play at the same time) and seeks to mold and shape their lives, often through the medium of Ping who has befriended her, and who she manipulates either psychologically, via hacking her programming or both. Miho is a manipulator, so it is often difficult to judge when she is telling the truth, what her emotions are or what she is planning except for those scenes where she is talking to herself. I believe the signs point to Miho being rather lonely and isolated, and that she is setting herself as their adversary as a means of getting attention. This does not, however, mean she isn’t dangerous.

The reality is that there is a lot of stuff in this webcomic and as of the latest Megatokyo print volume, Fred has given up on trying to summarize the plot. Likewise, while the characters are important to the comic and what makes it great, listing more will not tell you about the comic. So why don’t I get into why I think Megatokyo is worth reading.

The primary virtue of Megatokyo to me is care. Care that Fred takes in crafting his comic, so that a seeming minor character from one comic become important later on. Care that the characters have for one another. And the care that you wind up feeling for the trials and tribulations of the character as you come to watch them adapt, interact and struggle with the strange yet familiar world of Megatokyo. Every frame is meaningful, every statement is closely scripted and sometimes if it is found that the action of a comic is hard to understand, Fred will go back and fix it rather than confuse future readers. It is not that every comic is perfect, or every line works, but when a creator cares enough about getting it right, you care more about the details as well. I spend more time analyzing Megatokyo than any other comic I know, but the reason I do so is that I feel like I understand the characters, and can guess at what they are feeling, what their intentions are and what they might do next. It is perhaps indicative of the comic that some fans on the forum were complaining about the scene shifting from an interesting discussion between Kimiko and Erica to a scene where Ping can’t fit into her school uniform because her breasts have gotten too big. (Mind you, not everyone was complaining)

So what is wrong with the comic? Well, in some ways nothing, but my recommendation has some caveats. First, the comic is steeped in Japanese culture and particularly that of the Anime industry, and if you actively dislike these things you probably won’t enjoy Megatokyo and may miss some references. Second, the comic is 3 times a week and sometimes less, and plots unfold slowly over time, so if you are more about the destination than the journey, or more about action than character, this may not be for you. Third, Fred’s art is pencil art, and black and white for the most part, and while it is strong as pencil art, Fred has chosen to go with the strength of his pencil lines despite some degree of messiness rather than the polish of a sketched, inked and colored comic. Lastily, and probably my only real criticism of Fred and the comic is that Fred doesn’t do many action scenes, and so his action scenes when they occur often seem static compared to more action oriented comics. It isn’t that he isn’t trying to make them dynamic, but I don’t consider it his forte. (And looking at the wind scenes in the extra story in his latest print volume, Circuity, I think he is definitely improving in that respect.)

Eric Stokien aka Quiller

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(From Narbonic. Click on image to see it full-sized in the now-free and absolutely superb archives.)

I was going to try and avoid writing reviews this week. I’ve a lot of work to do, and I tend to procrastinate too much as it is. But today, something happened. Today, something clicked. Today, Dave understood everything. And it drove him mad.

Or at least, I’m betting it did.

Narbonic has, since the beginning, been the story of Dave Davenport and his descent into madness. This trip has taken years. Indeed, it wasn’t until last year that we actually learned the truth: Dave is a latent mad scientist, and Helen’s been researching him to find a cure for the condition.

She succeeded. Yet she failed, too. The side-effects were too severe. (I’m not sure which Helen disliked more: the loss of personality, or the impotence.) In fact, we’ve been able to observe this with Dave’s clone, whom Helen decanted after a power outage at the labs.

Meanwhile, the real Dave has gotten a job working for Professor Madblood. Dave, who could take anything Helen sicced on him with aplomb, is starting to crack. He’s even seeing a new form of Sprite… a mad sprite. One with bizarre suggestions and ideas. But today’s comic might just be the final crack that hatches Dave’s insanity full-blown.

It goes back a ways, to something Helen said when she broke up with him. You don’t want to go among mad people. It was the last thing she said to him, in fact. And the sad thing is, she loves Dave. She was forced to break up with him by Artie and Mell, and that goes back to the time-travel plot, where President Melody Kelly ordered her younger self to kill Dave. Dave ends up betraying Narbon Labs to Madblood, killing Artie, and reducing Helen to a brain in a jar. What’s more, in that dark dire future, he’s still at the North Pole base that Madblood had created.

All Mell and Artie ended up doing was force Dave to the very place where he’d destroy them all.

The thing is, he’s needed there. The hamsters that the mad gerbil Dana created have a plot to wipe humanity off the globe, except for a few hundred of the brightest and best. If Dave hadn’t been forced out of Narbon labs, Artie wouldn’t have had reason to leave. No one would have been available to stop the hamster’s twisted plot, and in all likelihood Dave, Helen, Artie, and Mell would have died, along with just about everyone else. The hamsters probably would have gotten into Madblood’s lair, and their plan would have come to fruition. By forcing Dave out, he’s in the right place at the right time, and in a perfect position to stop the hamsters.

The future Dave told his past self “Try not to lose it at Helen. She can’t help it; she’s evil.” Add in what Helen said to Dave when they parted ways… one of the most significant plot points of the Unstuck in Time storyline was that the future could be altered. Dave did not start smoking because he turned down a cigarette from a girl he had a crush on. He never got hooked. Thus he never smoked, even though he remembers that he did.

It might just be enough. Dave loves Helen. He’s in the right place, at the right time. And he understands now. Everything. Helen loves him. She sent him away to keep him safe. She’s never stopped loving him. He is the one who kills Artie… but that future hasn’t come about. It doesn’t have to happen. Artie can live. He doesn’t have to betray his friends… no. His family. Because that’s what Narbon Labs is. They’re family.

Dave is at an epiphany. The end-game has begun. He has a choice to make. Does he follow the familiar old path, go and walk the path of destruction and insanity? Or does he walk the road less traveled… and forgive the woman he loves?

Robert A. Howard

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I really have to thank everyone who came through with reviews. Next week I’m going to be dropping the Guest Reviews to a MWF schedule. Anyway, enjoy the review! And thanks again to everyone who contributed… and everyone who stuck with me during the two week hiatus. I appreciate it a lot.

Robert A. Howard

WCCA Award Ceremony Now Available…

I’ve been looking forward to the WebCartoonist Choice Awards ceremony for a bit now. Unfortunately, “technical difficulties” of some sort put a damper on the WCCA this year. While we were alerted as to the winners, part of the charm behind the WCCA is other cartoons celebrating their brethren in receiving these symbols of ability.

Fortunately, Ryan Estrada decided to host the WCCA Ceremony on his own site. I must say, it’s worth the wait, even if I’m surprised Shaenon Garrity didn’t win any Wiccas this year. No doubt she’ll sweep them all next year, sort of like Lord of the Rings did with the Oscars for the final movie. You know, to keep hordes of ravaging Narbonites from destroying the Internet…

Anyway, you can find the review here: http://ryanestrada.com/wcca/

Rob H.

Guest Review – The Whiteboard

Give a Polar Bear a Paintball Gun, and You’ll Entertain Him for a Lifetime

(From The Whiteboard. Click on image to see it full-sized.)

Once in a while, you’ll come across a comic that just went from something the artist drew up for fun and decided to put online into a fairly popular comic. Similarly, one can also run across comics who initially started with a theme but have since expanded beyond it. A perfect example of both of these is The Whiteboard.

Originally drawn literally on a whiteboard in Doc Nickel(the author)’s shop, The Whiteboard started out as a gag a day strip devoted to the main intrest of the author, namely paintball. While a lot of the jokes were paintball related, or related to Doc’s work as a paintball shop proprietor , they were simple enough that one could see the humor in them. However, the Whiteboard would definitely extend beyond such simple beginnings to something a bit more involved.

Despite the fact that the main cast are all anthropomorphic animals, the Whiteboard is not a furry comic, as it were. The author himself has commented that he didn’t even know what furry meant originally and simply drew a majority of his main cast as animals because they were easier to draw for him than people. This is fairly visible in the comic’s depictions of regular humans, which have an odd generic look to them, though they do get detail as necessary.

The main cast is colorful and fairly distinctive. You have Doc, the shop’s proprietor and general handyman, a fixer of paintball machinery, an unrepentant tinkerer, and diehard Mountain Dew addict. Alongside him is Roger, who plays the straightman to much of Doc’s absurdity but isn’t above some unorthodox modifying of his own. When these two put their heads together, however, the results can be just a little scary. Snowshoe is a gadget hound galore when it comes to paintball equipment, while Bandit tends to live up to his nickname, and Swampy tries to inject a little nonchalance into the mayhem. Along with these, there’re several more and recent strips have continued to introduce new ones since the main cast was established. And that cast dynamic is where Whiteboard has gone beyond being a gag a day strip.

One of the main arcs that’s popped up has concerned Swampy and Sandy, a random invitee to one of Doc’s annual Christmas/New Years’ parties who was hired on as an office girl after she impressed Doc. Since her introduction, we’ve seen Swampy’s crush on her develop from a random chance at getting a kiss to an unrequited crush, and finally with his introducing her to paintball, to an out and out relationship. But the biggest twist was during Doc’s experimental Four Panel Storyline which followed four of the main cast(Doc, Rainman, Bandit, and Swampy) as they woke up on a given day. In it, we discovered that after Doc’s last Halloween party, Swampy and Sandy had spent the night together in her dorm room, and also were now sleeping together. However, after Sandy left for her classes, we were shown some of Swampy’s introspection afterwards, including a mysterious note. While the storyline was dropped after that particular panel because the author was having troubles getting the format and story to work the way he wanted it, it’s an interesting look at Swampy that suggested perhaps some feelings that he’d jumped the gun, or remorse. While that particular storyline has yet to be followed up on, we’ve seen the two together without there seeming to be any consequences from the situaiton, and their night together is not exactly a secret among the cast, so obviously it wasn’t a world-altering event in regards to their relationship.

With the cast expanding with the introduction of Sandy’s old friend Pirta and hints of potential romance between her and Jake the skunk, it seems unlikely that Doc’s given up introducing serious storytelling elements into his comic, though it remains a joke-a-day for the most part with storyline continuity within the cast.

While some comics like Penny Arcade abandon storyline continuity elements entirely in favor of humor and others like Megatokyo have storyline to spare but have humor fewer and farther between comparatively, The Whiteboard seems a good mixture of both that manages to be entertaining both to those that merely want their daily humor and those that look for a little more. While the previous attempts at a completely serious storyline may have been abandoned, the author has shown that he definitely has skill in that area and that the cast lends itself to it as well. Time will tell if he’ll reach back into that area with the characters, but until then the comic continues to be funny, which has been its main purpose since the beginning.

- Ben “O.M.” Cook

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