It’s been some time since I last reviewed El Goonish Shive. Part of it has to do with the direction the story was taking; I have less-than-pleasant memories of my high school years, and watching the persecution Susan was going through for sticking up for her beliefs was not enjoyable. Another part of it had to do with the increasingly erratic update schedule. Much like I’d warned in my article The Cost of Complexity, EGS’s update schedule became a hit-or-miss affair.

Entire months would go by without an update, and after putting EGS in my “on hiatus” folder, I proceeded to forget about the strip. However, every couple of months I’ll go through the hiatus folder to see if anyone’s updated (or if the strips I accidentally put there rather than the “read when it’s more interesting” folder have gotten more interesting). I took a glance at EGS, saw it was updating again, and started skimming through the comic backward. I was five updates in when I was slapped in the face with a color comic, and realized that Dan Shive had gone back to black and white.

To be honest, I was never very partial to the colored EGS strips. There is a certain beauty to greyscale that is in many ways superior to color. Many of the complexities of shading and highlights you find in the most lovingly colored comics can appear in a greyscale comic, and result in a product that is often superior to the colored strips. The odd thing is, greyscale actually takes as much time to “color” as a normal color strip, which is why a number of greyscale comics eventually shift to color.

Black and white comics can also contain a surprising level of complexity in them. Comics like Nukees and Narbonic have remained black and white for years. Indeed, the latest black and white updates for EGS show a level of detail that was hidden or lacking in the colored comics. While EGS still has some flat “spot greyscale” for incidental shading (perhaps reminiscent of the spot color found in black and white strips like Dead Winter and Sluggy Freelance), the comic retains a certain purity of form with the new format.

Indeed, the lack of color helps focus the reader’s attention on the comic itself. This can be challenging for writers, as they have to rely more on the cast and story rather than fancy-looking artwork. Fortunately, Shive has a strong and likeable cast that have come to life and seized the comic’s reins to tell their own story on more than one occasion. The sheer size of El Goonish Shive’s archives may frighten off some readers, but the comic is an enjoyable read that often maintains an effective mixture of drama and humor. With the large number of comics that forget their comedic roots as they pursue dramatic storylines, it’s refreshing to see one that stays true to its roots.