Monthly Archives: January 2009

Gunnerkrigg Court

Posted on January 28, 2009 by | 1 Comment


One of the most insidious problems faced by webcomics is the balancing of artistic improvements and artistic complexity. While cartoonists can limit the amount of complexity found in their comics, critics of the cartoonist may view the efforts to restrain out-of-control artistic improvements as a lack of skill or even laziness. This often leads the cartoonists to present examples of their better work, sometimes offering the better art as computer wallpapers that donators can access or even in the form of prints that are sold in an attempt to make a profit in what often began as a labor of love.

Another venue for artistic improvements can exist in-comic; Gunnerkrigg Court is but one of a number of comics that utilizes a different art-style to designate a different venue for the comic, in this case when Antimony gazes into a spiritual realm to recover a magical stone. While GC uses highlights in hair (to help give the art a feeling of depth, there is minimal shading in the strip, and details are often minimalistic as a result. A sense of inter-panel continuity is also added with Antimony’s hair when she is glimpsing the other-world, with her hair flowing from scene to scene and literally joining Antimony between panels. The effect is quite striking, and in many ways a poetic flow of visual imagery.

The latest strips also emphasize the intensive planning that went into the comic as a whole. The cut on Antimony’s face (that only appears when she is in a spiritual world, and was inflicted on her by a ghost when she was on the banks of the River Annan) is but one of a multitude of elements that repeatedly appear, often planted in previous chapters without explanation and then glimpsed again and again until finally an explanation is revealed. These Chekhov’s guns not only are used for background and to promote a sense of continuity, but can even be the primary focus of stories themselves (with the very first storyline with Shadow 2 and Robot having not only driven the story that led to Antimony being on the banks of the River Annan, but for both characters to join the cast itself).

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Ctrl-Alt-Del

Posted on January 22, 2009 by | 2 Comments

One problem I’ve noticed in a number of humorous storyline comics is the gradual loss of humor as dramatic elements become increasingly significant to the strip. This can actually kill what made the comic worth reading (especially if you started reading it because of the humor) in the first place. And while Ctrl-Alt-Del hadn’t managed to descend into a level of pathos that would drive me off, I can’t really remember the last truly amusing segment in the comic.

When I read today’s comic, with Ethan looking in horror at a huge pile of paperwork that snuck up on him before he realized it and equating it with Gremlins (from the movie), I heard something alien in the air. It took me a moment before I realized what it was; I was actually laughing at one of Tim Buckley’s comics, something that hasn’t happened in months. And when you consider some of the jokes I laugh at, that tells you just how far afield CAD had drifted from its original comedy roots. To quote a friend of mine, CAD has nearly three solid years of fail, and it’s broken tradition.

I mean, we have a combination of character growth for Ethan (who, after getting married to his fiancé Lilah and gaining ownership of the game store he worked at for much of the comic’s run, is kind of overdue growing up a bit) and actual humor. If Tim Buckley actually sticks with humor for a while and gives his burnt-out audience a chance to recover before adding more drama, then the comic may actually become something I enjoy reading, rather than something I read because it’s in my update folder. Let’s just hope today’s strip isn’t just a fluke, but rather the return of humor to a comic in desperate need of a funny bone.

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Kevin and Kell

Posted on January 19, 2009 by | 3 Comments

While Kevin and Kell might not be the oldest webcomic out there, it is definitely among the oldest constantly-updating webcomics on the internet. Indeed, by my reckoning it is over 4,600 updates (and will likely go over 5,000 updates before the end of 2009), and is likely the largest webcomics out there. As such, I’m left looking at a vast expanse of material and wondering just how the hell I can talk about this comic in fewer than ten pages.

K&K is an anthropomorphic slice-of-life comic with a mixed-race couple and their children. And that’s literal in this case, with the husband being Kevin, a huge rabbit, and his wife Kell, a wolf, and the children including Lindesfarne, an adopted hedgehog, Rudy, a half-wolf/half-fox, and Coney, a rabbit/wolf hybrid that looks like a bunny but is primarily carnivorous. Needless to say, such concepts as genetic incompatibility and the inability of various species to breed are tossed out the window to make way for humor and storytelling.

While many anthropomorphic comics often tell entirely human stories with characters that are drawn as animals, K&K embraces its animal roots, focusing on such concepts as hunting (with the prey as sentient as the predators, down to the level of fleas and the like), communication and relations between animals, and other instinctual behavior. At the same time, it pokes fun at corporate life (especially with the carnivore corporation Herdthinners, which specializes in hunting prey and selling the meat to grocery stores and other contractors), home life, politics, and society in general.

One less-than-amusing aspect of the comic is its depiction of humans as a constantly wasteful and environmentally-callous species, both in the depiction of them in Rudy’s short-lived webcomic-within-a-webcomic, and later in actual depictions of humans in the comic. Indeed, the mere knowledge of humanity is so “dangerous” that animals reading Rudy’s webcomic begin to lose their instincts, and the presence of two humans who were transformed into animals threatened to undo instincts across the globe, even among those who had no contact with humanity or anything to do with them. In short, humans = bad, animals = good. It would be tiresome if not for the fact we seldom get slapped in the face with it.

That said, I found those sections to be the least interesting of the series. Instead what I was drawn to were the character interactions and their relationships with each other. The loving relationship between Kevin and Kell even in the face of social disdain and familial disapproval is one of the great draws of the comic. The varied friendships that form and evolve in the comic are among the best parts of the comic and should be focused on far more than the social messages that Bill Holbrook drives home with a sledgehammer (with humans = evil being the least of the examples of sledgehammer morality used in the comic).

With an archive that inches closer and closer to 5,000 updates with each passing day (by my estimates, Update 5,000 should occur on November 21, 2009), you might wonder if it’s worth reading the entire archive. To be honest, K&K doesn’t rely on plot seeds planted years back. However, it’s this back material that helps enrich the characters and lets you watch them grow and evolve into the beings they are. Whether you spend several days (or weeks) reading through the archives or purchase the print compilations and read them at your leisure, the archives are worth going through… and the comic definitely worth adding to your reading list.

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Happy Medium

Posted on January 13, 2009 by | 8 Comments

Foreword: I must admit I tend to feel a little bad when I write a fairly negative review. I realize that the cartoonist may take it personally, as I’m talking about something they’ve poured their heart and soul into. This review isn’t an attack on the cartoonist (if you want that, there are plenty of wannabe reviewers out there who think personal attacks are kosher) but rather a more critical look at the work itself. And if I get sardonic while talking about it… well, levity helps lighten the mood. Meanwhile, enjoy the review.

As should be obvious by now, I’m rather fond of comics with decent storylines. The best comics for me are those that have an intelligent detailed plot that consists more than just the characters moving from place to place picking up widgets needed to continue the adventure. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy random or gag-a-day strips; I’m quite fond of Penny Arcade for the cast, and xkcd for the sheer insanity and intelligence that goes into the strip. What I don’t enjoy are storyline comics that rely on idiot ball plots and odd coincidences to draw characters together.

Heather Penn’s Happy Medium is this strange little comic about shapeshifting teenagers. We start with Zurui, a foxgirl who wanders into the city (in fox form) and runs into Itochi, a pickpocket and shoplifter who promptly threatens to harm the fox when an outraged parent chases after Itochi because she stole the kid’s candy. Yes, you heard me right, this girl stole candy from a child and sees nothing wrong with this. However, rather than being a petty villain or antagonist, Itochi seems to be one of the protagonists. But hey! I guess we… um… need candy-stealing protagonists? Because hey, stealing candy from kids is funny (as is robbing innocent people on trains so they can’t pay their bills or get food or take the train home as they don’t have their train pass now).

Anyway, Zurui ends up following Itochi home and through canid facial expressions Itochi realizes the fox is actually a shapeshifter. But rather than brains being the reason why she figured it out, we learn that Itochi is a shapeshifting stoat and thus can somehow sense that the fox that snuck into her apartment is a shapeshifter. I kid you not. I’m not making this up.

Naturally enough, when shapeshifters turns into human form, they still have animal ears and (usually) a tail. Yet no one (except other shapeshifters) seems to notice this. And this isn’t always obvious as later on Itochi encounters another shapeshifter who turns into a horse… but he has a ponytail rather than an actual tail. Yes, these shapeshifters start tumbling out of the rafters at this point and I suspect we’ll soon find out that the only five people in this city who aren’t shapeshifters are the ones who got robbed. So we can wave bye-bye to little things that count. You know, cohesive storylines, decent sense of narrative pacing, and of course everyone’s favorite, making sense and being plausible.

Forget about rational. I’m afraid rationality was found swinging from the rafters with a note next to an overturned chair after the catboy got involved. Yes, you heard me right, there is a catboy in the comic named Chesuta, and he’s not the twin brother of a hot catgirl that even the female cast is drooling over. The funny thing is that I actually found Chesuta to be a breath of originality. I’m not sure how many other comics (or manga) have bobtailed tomcat male anthrofelines in them. So I have to take my hat off for that one bit, even if the EMTs are trying desperately to breathe life back into rationality. But seeing that these shapeshifting teenagers seem to live alone without any parental presence at all, I suspect rationality isn’t going to make it.

So, what makes HM worth reading? Well, if you enjoy watching train wrecks as they occur, you might have a morbid sense of curiosity about the comic. And I will admit, I kind of like a couple of the characters, Zurui and Chesuta. I love her reasoning for not going to school, that because she’s a wild animal, she doesn’t need to go to school. Of course, stoats are wild animals too, but I guess Itochi never thought it through, or has several marks there that she shakes down for extra dough. Also, I found the artwork was fairly decent, and avoids the saucer-eyes found in far too many mangas.

HM also is a good example on why cartoonists should not only plot out their comics in advance, but also bounce that plot off of someone willing to give them an honest assessment rather than blithely saying “it’s great, I love it!” while cringing inside. And while it may seem like I’m raining on Penn’s parade here, I see potential here that could have become a genuinely interesting story if a little thought and planning had gone into it. Instead, we have outlandish coincidences and random idiocy driving the story. If you enjoy that sort of thing, Happy Medium is the perfect comic for you. But if you prefer comics that take more care in crafting the story like I do, then you might be happier giving HM a pass. At least until the inevitable reboot.

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Punch an’ Pie

Posted on January 8, 2009 by | 5 Comments

One of the unfortunate problems with short-form reviews is that I end up leaving a lot out. When I reviewed Punch an’ Pie a year ago, I ended up glossing over a lot of detail that went into this multi-layered comic. For people new to the scene, PnP is the brainchild of Aeire, a talented young storyteller and cartoonist who created the quirky and imaginative comic Queen of Wands. PnP is a bit of a sequel to QoW, following the life of one of that comic’s secondary characters, Angela, and her own girlfriend Heather.

When the comic starts, Heather and Angela had been dating for at least half a year and Angela was moving in with Heather. While we’re not given a glimpse really of their relationship leading up to the comic’s start until nine months in, Aeire and Chris Daily (who is PnP’s artist, as well as the artist and writer for the webcomic Striptease) did an excellent job of showing an existing and fairly stable relationship between these two young women. Between little moments of them in bed talking about their day (often with Heather idly playing with Angela’s hair just before Angela fell asleep, replete with odd and cute little comments from Angela as her mind shut down), going out to eat, or just being together, you got a good sense that these women loved each other.

And then Aeire and Daily went and tore that dynamic apart by having Heather and Angela break up as a result of Angela’s jealousy. Looking back (and at more than just the flashbacks of their relationship that Angela went through at that pivotal moment), you could see the seeds of this breakup, with Angela being upset when one of Heather’s male friends would visit and perhaps also with how Angela acted like Heather was her personal property, rather than a person worthy of respect and trust. We also got a good glimpse into aspects of Angela’s personality that had been established years earlier in QoW. It was a heartbreaking moment… and did much to reveal not only Angela’s own insecurities, but also Angela’s tendency to run from problems rather than deal with them.

Nor was this situation rectified rapidly. Angela’s “maturity” in dealing with the breakup is more avoidance on her sake. She stopped thinking about Heather when possible. She put it behind her after the brief revelation that it was her fault Heather broke up with her, because she believes she’s a bad girlfriend (and that Kestrel left because she’s a bad friend). And unlike many stories, realization doesn’t result in her issues being solved. Instead, Angela ran away from the issue again, ignoring her issues until finally one too many cluebats smack her upside the head and make her take a cold hard look at what she threw away because of her own insecurities. She realized that Heather’s friends weren’t to blame for the breakup. Heather wasn’t to blame for the breakup. She is the one holding the smoking gun.

Another thing that crops up occasionally is the theme of boxes in the comic. The very start of the comic had Angela packing up her belongings into boxes, throwing away old clutter, and moving on. When she gets a new job working at a bookstore, she again is working with boxes, organizing things for someone else’s satisfaction. Likewise, when she flees Heather’s apartment after Heather broke up with her, she moved in with her old boss, who is packing up her apartment and preparing to leave for another job. And finally, when she is offered a management position for a new toy store… you guessed it, more boxes.

Each time after the start, she’s packing boxes and moving things around for someone else; and even that first time was partly for Heather. But when you pack things into boxes, you also hide them away. You compartmentalize things, assign labels for them and eventually you’re left with odds and ends that don’t quite belong to one thing or another but that you can’t quite abandon. And Angela… is at the point of her life when she’s opening up one of those boxes and realizing she threw out something she loved dearly. She abandoned something in her old life, did something truly stupid, and for once seems to be taking a cold hard look at herself.

The funny thing about PnP is that while the comic appears to be about two young women, it’s really about Angela and her gradual growth as a person. When the story focuses on Heather, at some point it often shifts focus so that Angela is once again in the spotlight. This can be found several times in Heather’s internal monologues where Heather is talking to an Angela that is still with her, dwelling in her head. She’s even wondered when Angela will go away for good… when she’ll stop dwelling on this waif who she can’t stop loving.

Recent events also let me to realize that Aeire is telling a circular story here. While boxes are a common theme we return to time and time again, we also have friendships that fade and renew (with Heather and Jack, and Angela and Justin), and beloved jobs that end… and are renewed, stronger and with more responsibility. It was Angela taking a job as manager of a new toy store (and not just something Angela jumped into without looking first, but something she thought about ahead of time) that let me to notice the cyclical nature of Punch an’ Pie.

And while I have long believed that it was inevitable that Angela and Heather would get back together, I now see it as something that will happen when the comic wraps up (probably in a year), after both women take a serious look at what they had… and if it’s worthwhile for them to get back together again. PnP will likely end as it began, with Angela packing boxes as she prepares to move in with the woman she loves. But where before we had glimpses of a childlike and childish girl who didn’t think things through, this ending will no doubt be the actions of a young woman packing away a foolhardy childhood and taking her first steps as a responsible adult.

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Shadowgirls

Posted on January 1, 2009 by | 4 Comments

I’m not a particular fan of the horror genre. Much of this is due to Hollywood’s one-dimensional approach to horror that may have started with The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead and proceeded to spiral downward into a multitude of unimaginative violent sequels that work under the belief that copious quantities of blood and violence is scary. This disillusionment with horror movies bled into the literary horror genre as well, with the exception of the surreal supernatural horror of H.P. Lovecraft and his imitators, and even then it’s often hit-or-miss.

I suspect one reason for my enjoyment of Lovecraftian horror is that it is psychological in nature. The horrors are hinted at as often as not, and it is the reactions of the protagonists to the insanity they glimpse that drives the story more than the rending of flesh and bone. It should be no surprise then that the Lovecraftian mythos has attracted the attention of more than one webcartoonist. (Indeed, the first Lovecraftian webcomic I encountered was The Call of Whatever, though TCOW took a humorous glimpse into the Cthulhu mythos.)

When I first came across Shadowgirls, the last thing that crossed my mind was Lovecraftian horror. With an artstyle reminiscent of a number of Image Comics strips and shapely heroines that would end up in various states of partial undress, I blithely lumped it into the same category as Witchblade (with which I felt it bore a fair resemblance), and considered it more of a superhero comic with horrific elements added. It would not be until I was a fair way into the archives and learned that the webbed monstrosities that were tracking Charon McKay and her daughter Becka were called “Deep Ones” and that it took place in Innsmouth that it I realized we were looking at an adaptation of Lovecraftian horror… even if it had the usual blood-and-gore found in far too many comic books and movies.

The thing is, it works. Part of this lies with Charon and her daughter (and with Becka’s best friend Lindsey, who (according to the creators’ notes) started out a plot device for the writer and artist, and ended up growing into a much fuller character with an important part to play in the story and with tremendous courage in the face of something that drove more than one person insane) and the dynamic between these characters. What threatened to be just another superhero comic with the heroines facing down dread fish folk from the deep evolved into a more nuanced story that didn’t rely on the characters transforming into the Shadowchild (which seems to be a black-skinned super-strong entity with the ability to toss around “dark energy blasts” or somesuch nonsense) to destroy the monster of the week.

Unfortunately, there are flaws with the comic as well. Mind you, I don’t have anything against creators David A. Rodriguez and Dave Reynolds dividing up the comic into chapters or for the filler comics that happen between chapters. The “Shadowbabies” minicomics are amusing enough, and the secondary story concerning Rodriguez’s other comic, Starkweather, seems interesting enough. My issue with this is that the filler comics, wallpaper cheesecake drawings, and Starkwater segments drag the reader out of the comic. The first chapter ends with bloody fish monsters staring through a bar window, having identified Charon as their prey, and the very next update has chibi mini-characters in preschool in semi-amusing situations. It kind of kills the mood of the story there.

If there was an easy method of skipping the non-core storyline and filler art, the darker tone of Shadowgirls would be retained. Readers could read those extraneous parts if they wanted (perhaps in their own section on the website) but wouldn’t have to go through filler comics if they were only interested in the main storyline. And it’s this primary story and the stories of not just the McKays but even those of the antagonists that make Shadowgirls worth reading. Time was spent to flesh out not just the protagonists and their close friends, but even the antagonists. Watching one antagonist struggle between choosing what is right and what is easy resulted in my cheering on one of the Deep Ones, even though this monstrosity had our heroines at its mercy. Likewise, watching another antagonist drive a knife through a cultist because of what they had done to her daughter had me cheering on a character who initially seemed a simple two-dimensional foil for Charon, and who turned out to have a fairly tragic story.

While the first season of Shadowgirls is wrapping up, there is potential for other stories with the McKays and their friends and allies. Part of this lies with these allies, some of whom appeared quite recently and haven’t been filled out much at all. What seemed initially to be rushed storytelling now hints to be one of the hooks meant to be described more fully in Season 2 of the comic. Some of the filler comics likewise hint at other story-hooks for the story to follow (more specifically the beginnings of a “crossover” comic between Rodriguez’s Starkwater and Shadowgirls, though my initial reaction to it was recoiling at the stereotypical “superhero accidental brawl” that happens in that segment, and the fact that the McKays appear quite willing to stop fighting at the say-so of an absolute stranger, despite the fact they were attacked first and without provocation). These flaws aside, Shadowgirls appears well worth reading and a good, if bloody, addition to the Lovecraftian horror genre.

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