Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Devil’s Panties

Posted on January 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Comedian Bob Monkhouse once said that growing old is compulsory while growing up is optional. While this could be taken several ways (including suggestions that even the oldest of people can be quite immature), I like to think of it as a suggestion that we can retain our inner child no matter how old we grow. Today’s Devil’s Panties is just such an example, with cartoonist Jennie Breeden taking a little time out to play on a sturdy swing set she noticed while biking. Amusingly enough, it’s not Breeden’s inner devil who suggests taking a break on the swings (no, she’s in agreement with Jennie’s shoulder angel that she doesn’t have time for such antics). No. It’s Breeden’s “Pretty Princess” (that part of her that still has a girlish sense of glee toward sparkly things, and is in many ways Jennie’s inner child) that puts her foot down and insists. Given that even though I’ve passed 40 years I still enjoy going on the swings, I can’t blame Breeden’s inner child in the least.

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Chuckle-a-Duck

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been using an ad-blocker of some sort (or have a selective webcomic reading list that is lacking in Project Wonderful ads), it’s inevitable you’ve stumbled across one of the multitude of Nicky510 advertisements that usually includes some attractive blonde lady who isn’t an actual part of the Nicky510 comic (which focuses more on the surreal adventures of a young hyper-imaginative child named Nicky (obviously)). Rather than the usual bait-and-switch advertising used by some webcomics, the Nicky510 ads were actually using art that cartoonist Crowden Alexander Satz (aka Crow) draws for his other comic, Chuckle-a-Duck (and in fact recent ads have been pointing to the CaD site).

To put it simply, CaD is a gag-a-day strip (or gag-twice-a-week, seeing that the comic updates on the days that the Nicky510 site doesn’t, allowing Crow to update essentially five times a week). As such, it doesn’t have a regular cast of characters (despite the similarity of the various blonde girls who show up in various advertisements) and no real theme. Crow will visit a variety of topics, from global warming to politics to squirrels on coffee to efforts by early man to make various discoveries such as fire, domestication of animals, and the like, all for comedic effect. The jokes don’t always work (and there were several that made no sense at all to me), but with the variety of content, it’s not difficult finding something to amuse.

The content isn’t the only thing to vary. The art will shift from black-and-white to color to greyscale, and from crisp artwork to stuff that honestly looks like it was tossed together quickly just to get an update up for readers. I mean, I feel horrible saying this, but it’s true. Even if CaD is just a filler site meant to increase updates and give readers a reason to visit the site daily doesn’t mean that the art and jokes shouldn’t be of the same quality as the mainstream comic. In short, Chuckle-a-Duck is one of those (usually) single-panel joke comics that doesn’t require much thought or need. If it’s your thing, then it’ll be a fun hour or two to get through the archives. Even if it’s not, the comic’s Random Update button should keep you amused for a short while.

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Namir Deiter

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Given that American society has slowly started to accept gay marriage (which I have no problem with; if marriage is a religious institution, then the government has no right to make laws concerning its legality, and if it’s secular then religious beliefs should not influence who can or cannot marry), it was inevitable for gay marriages to crop up into webcomics. Still, I must admit I was rather surprised to see Namir Deiter’s Gabby’s girlfriend Joan ask for Joan’s hand in marriage. Part of this lies with Gabby’s personality; I always had the feeling she was only dating Joan because Joan was insisting. I’m not really sure if we’ve even seen any moments of intimacy between the two girls. Though when you consider Isabel Marks has a tradition of pairing off her characters (with only Blue and Joy of the old cast having avoided being paired off), I suppose I should have seen this coming. And there is always the remote possibility Gabby will say no… if only because she’s not sure of how she feels. To be honest, I think that would make for a more interesting story than to just pair the spares once more, but I suspect they’ll be the next to succumb to the matrimony bug that keeps biting ND cast members.

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Evil Inc.

Posted on January 25, 2012 by | 6 Comments

Imagine for a moment that after an ill-conceived wish, someone you were dating or married to forgot that the two of you had ever been together… and then went on to sleep with someone else. This is the basic concept behind the latest storyline in the superhero parody comic Evil Inc., with Captain Heroic having forgotten his marriage to Miss Match, and it has left me feeling decidedly cold. Part of this lies with the fact that I have strong opinions concerning the sanctity of marriage… and while Heroic may not “remember” his marriage, he has cheated on his wife. And yet the fact he’s sleeping with another woman (and a superheroine at that) doesn’t faze Miss Match in the least.

Okay, sure. Miss Match is a villain, though as far as villains go she’s not particularly villainous. What’s more, we’ve already seen in the past that their relationship isn’t built on a firm foundation; when Heroic unknowingly was flirting with her alternative-reality counterpart, she was about ready to leave him. And yet now, he’s out-and-out cheating on her and that doesn’t matter in the least. There’s no jealousy. There’s no anger. There’s a brief moment of wondering if letting this continue would let him be “happy” before the typical joke of it being her duty as his wife to destroy his happiness. But that’s all.

I will admit that Miss Match’s ill-conceived wish was responsible for this mess to begin with. But ultimately, she made the wish when backed into the corner by another villain (who she’d thought of as a friend) who was threatening to reveal her marriage to Heroic unless she handed over a dangerous artifact to her. So there’s no blame. And likewise, there’s no point to this. Instead, we have a massive derailing of both Match and Heroic’s characters and for no real reason. Unfortunately, the artifact has vanished, so Brad J. Guigar can’t even just “wish away” this storyline, and pretend it never happened.

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Namesake

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

While I normally don’t care much for webcomic chapter covers (as I’d much rather see the next page of the story rather than a splash page), I have to admit I was taken with the cover page for chapter eight of the fantasy webcomic Namesake. Given that much of the story has focused on the adventures of Emma in the Land of Oz, it’s only natural that the page would focus on these aspects, and a natural progression to depict Emma and her companions similarly to how Dorothy was depicted in the original “Wizard of Oz” story, though Emma has been claiming for a while that she’s not a Dorothy (as one of the oddities of Oz is that most of the humans that visit have been named Dorothy and share a kinship of spirit with the original Dorothy).

Our Not-Dorothy has been joined with a crew as eclectic as the original who sought to visit the Wizard in the Emerald City; while the Scarecrow has stepped back into his old role (if older and wiser than he was the first time), the Tin Woodsman’s grandson, Warrick, has taken up his axe as he seeks to restore Oz and rescue Ozma. Amusingly, the Cowardly Lion is being represented by a rather nervous Munchkin, Agha, who much like the Lion has shown far greater courage than she realized she possessed. There’s even room for a Toto of sorts in the story with Warrick’s father (a shape-changing wizard currently in the form of a winged gumdrop)

The page itself is both artistic and disturbing in its depiction. Given the state of Oz (with its inhabitants having started to age once more after Ozma went missing several years back), having the four heroes travel along a path the color of decay makes some sense. The background image of Ozma, facing away and with a gaping hole in her middle, is likewise reminiscent of the decay of Oz itself… with Ozma herself the missing heart of Oz. It’s an interesting touch, and helps tell a story in and of itself. Interestingly, Emma’s companions are looking to her, perhaps for guidance despite her being a stranger with no ties to Oz. Given that print comic covers often have little to do with the story within, it’ll be interesting to see if this page will have any bearing on the story as a whole.

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Original Life and Real Life Fiction

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | Leave a comment

For the last couple of months, a significant chunk of my time has been vanishing into the ether. This time thief has struck tens of thousands during the same period of time, disrupting productivity and sleep schedules across America. Its name: Skyrim. Naturally, anything this popular would inevitably become the topic of numerous webcomic one-shots, if only to help explain away late updates and the like… but two in particular stand out, if only because of their timing (in that they happened within days of one another).

The first was Friday’s Original Life comic (though to be honest, Jay Naylor started things out a week earlier by introducing the dragon Spike from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic to a Nordic Dragonborn looking for a dragon soul to add to her collection. Okay, it was more chasing the kid sister off the television to play computer games, but it was a fun nod to both popular genres. Besides, Naylor’s glimpse into elements of Skyrim continues a tradition of the comic’s characters playing various games, including Mass Effect and Skyrim.

But what’s especially amusing about the glimpses we’ve been given of Skyrim is how much it strikes to the heart of various oddities. For instance, we have the eating of food in the middle of an armed conflict to replenish health, the inane quests from people too lazy to walk up several stairs to make a delivery (and paying hundreds of gold for this – laziness pays well it seems)… or even the… side effects of the Amulet of Mara (and let’s face it, in real life dating would be sooo much easier if something like this existed). Sure, these comics have had little to do with Original Life… but they’ve still been fun.

The second is a slice-of-life webcomic called Real Life Fiction that defies easy classification. Although I suppose you could call it a combination insanity/gamer comic. Unlike Naylor’s comic, RLF bounces from topic to topic like a hyperactive squirrel hooked on caffeine (which may be ironic, seeing that the main character has a squirrel perched on her head at all times). While the first comic didn’t make any sense to me (seeing that I have no idea who Garrison Keillor is or why Robin would associate him with the god Talos from Skyrim), the second comic on the Dwemer (or Dwarves) was delightfully twisted.

As anyone who’s played the game is aware, the extinct Dwemer (often called Dwarves by the humans in the game, despite the fact the Dwemer were in fact subterranean elves) had a demented interest in death traps and various torments. In fact, this rather delightful group enslaved some of their brethren who begged sanctuary from them and twisted them into a species that, despite the disappearance of their tormenters, wants nothing more than to wipe out every surface-dwelling creature in the world.

The game never does quite explain what happened to the Dwemer. Thus, in the tradition of gamer webcomics everywhere, RLF takes a stab at this mystery by suggesting the death traps that litter Dwemer domiciles in fact became so lethal that they wiped out the Dwemer race when they tried to do such ordinary chores as taking out the trash or checking on the laundry. The last panel, with the hardened warrior staring in shock and horror at the murderous washing machine busy mangling his laundry while charging him, just rings true somehow.

In an amusing twist, a ways back Real Life Fiction also poked fun at MLP:FIM by suggesting the series could “ponyfie” classic literature stories, such as Frankenpony or the Scarlet Cutie Mark. Though considering the series has already paid homage to I Love Lucy, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Besides, the longer a series runs, the more likely that it will attempt to adapt a Shakespearian play at some point. So ultimately, RLF may have been prescient with its suggestion.

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Darths and Droids

Posted on January 19, 2012 by | 2 Comments

It’s kind of odd, but I’ve found I’ve not been able to get into the most recent storyline for the photo-movie rescript webcomic Darths and Droids as I did with previous issues. This is weird seeing I was originally looking forward to seeing how The Comic Irregulars would modify this most classic of the Star Wars movies, but after a little thought it dawned on me what was wrong: I had grown so used to the characters used in the previous three episodes that this new cast were strangers to me that I had no sense of attachment to. The lone exception to this, R2D2, was “run” by a power-gaming twit who I never felt any sympathy for and thus had no sense of attachment to.

Perhaps part of it also lies with the fact that Annie (who is running the character of Leia) doesn’t particularly sound like the Annie of old. Her “voice” seems slightly off-kilter. Of course, some time has passed since the end of Episode 3 (with aspects of the computer game “Dark Forces” being integrated into the comic’s past from the sounds of things), so we’re also starting part way into an ongoing story without a sense of what’s going on. The jump, combined with an entirely new cast of characters, has created a sense of distance between me and the comic.

No doubt with more time the comic will start to make more sense. Once I get used to Annie playing Leia and Jim playing whatever character he rolls up after his current character, Captain Antilles, bites the big one facing down Darth Vader I’ll become more invested in the characters and their story. Undoubtedly, Jim will end up playing Luke, which might make things a bit weird seeing that we know Luke and Leia are siblings; the real question would be if the players remember this tidbit. Though I must admit it would be hilarious if Luke and Han were switched at birth without anyone knowing….

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