Tag Archives: Anthropomorphic comic

Webcomic News – Precocious Kickstarter

Posted on April 19, 2013 by | 1 Comment

The anthropomorphic childhood webcomic Precocious (which I just reviewed) is currently holding a Kickstarter for its second print compilation. While the primary goal has been met, cartoonist Christopher J. Paulsen has promised some nice extras should the Kickstarter exceed certain levels – including a new comic concept set in the Precocious world if the Kickstarter exceeds $10,000. So please, check it out!

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Precocious

Posted on April 17, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Given the hard work that goes into webcomics, I often feel bad when I end up pointing out the flaws of a comic. While I try to provide constructive criticism in these instances, I’ve often found the Emperor doesn’t want to know he’s wearing no clothes; seeing that authors and artists are often their own worse critics, the last thing they think they need is for someone else to point out the flaws in their works (especially as the tendency lies in ignoring the constructive element of the criticism and just take to heart the criticism aspect). Thus I must admit I’ve been dragging my feet in reviewing the anthropomorphic childhood comic Precocious, by Christopher J. Paulsen.

The start of Precocious lived up to its title: a group of children getting into mischief over various silly things. Eventually, once the hazy days of summer fell behind them we learned that these kids were in fact geniuses and in a school for gifted youngsters. We also learn that these children are spawn of the Devil. Okay, all children are evil. Even the nicest child is secretly an evil imp just waiting for the right moment to come out and play. But in the first storyline, Autumn and Bud get into a water-balloon war over who would make the better supervillain. It only gets nuttier from there.

At first, this works. The first few stories are absolutely fantastic. They are a breath of fresh air that will have you laughing and needing to take a break in order to catch your breath. And while the parents get their day in the sun from time to time, Precocious is primarily about the children… and the antics they get up to both in class and outside. Unfortunately… after the first year the comic starts to evolve in a fashion that left me laughing less and less often. That’s not to say the comic was becoming serious or anything… but rather that the humor was falling flat for me.

Perhaps part of the problem lies with the fact that Paulsen has locked the kids in the same age and year in a perpetual Groundhog’s Day cycle. Oh, I can understand the reasoning behind this: who wants to see their characters grow up? Except it seems more that these children are kept at this age not to retain that sense of childlike wonder and mystery that children often seem to have prior to high school (though trust me, elementary school is no bed of roses and those “young dears” can be far more horrific than teenagers in their abuse of others) and instead provides them with an excuse for nonstop criminal behavior.

And no, I’m not exaggerating this. These kids have lit the lake on fire. Their parents have specific rules including “no dynamite” and “no dying.” The youngest girl has an irrational need to steal her parents’ car (or any other automobile she can find keys for) and go for a joyride that inevitably results in the destruction of the car – to the point that I honestly can’t see why the police haven’t called in the Department of Child Services to remove her from her parents’ home. Or for that matter Bud, whose parents are often not home leaving him to live on his own.

These elements are played for laughs. I’m not laughing. Perhaps it’s my history as a substitute teacher and having studied to become an elementary school teacher getting in the way of my enjoying this… but once the “silly childhood games” aspect was abandoned in lieu of “let’s cause as much destruction as possible and get away with it because we’re kids” came into the fore, the comic lost its charm. Neither are the parents (or teachers and school administration) any better. They deserve one another… and my one regret is that the secondary cast goes on ignored when they could very well be the means of restoring balance to the comic by returning it to the roots of what made it so enjoyable initially: children being children and having fun, be it learning, or just at play.

In short, the comic is stuck in a loop. The stories seem to be repeating themselves in tone: malicious mischief and wanton destruction. What’s worse, they’re not even repeating when the comic was fun and enjoyable but instead the more recent strips. And while the art is good, it hasn’t changed or improved much in the last year. At some point, it just stopped being fun for me. This isn’t to say that you will feel the same; the comic has a strong and vibrant (and protective) fanbase, so many readers seem to be fine with the path the comic has taken. So my final verdict is: read. The first couple of years are quite enjoyable, and you may be fine with its current evolution. As for myself, I just hope that the comic can recapture the feel of those early strips… or at the very least move on from where it has been mired.

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The Whiteboard

Posted on February 20, 2013 by | Leave a comment

For a while now I’ve resisted the urging of several friends to read the anthropomorphic comic The Whiteboard. I was assisted in this by the fact that whenever I clicked on a link to the comic, I’d end up with a broken page; I’m not sure if this was just a bad link or if I just had the worse luck getting through to the comic. Finally my occasional partner in the criminal art of critiquing, Steve Anderson, found my one weakness (TV Tropes) and managed to lure me into the timesink that TW’s archives have become over the past decade. Despite taking me a weekend and several more days to finish, it was well worth my time and has proven to be the perfect comic to come out of hiatus with (though technically I’ve been posting news-related stuff these past few days, you guys deserve a proper review. So why not something new?)

The Whiteboard is case evident of a saying of mine: there’s a webcomic about everything (or just about) out there. I mean, when you consider there’s comics about the Air Force, online gambling, and even drunken bowling leagues (though that one went into hiatus, sadly enough), then it’s fair to say if someone is interested in a topic, a comic will come into being around it. TW’s niche just happens to be paintball playing from the viewpoint of a paintball repair shop up in Alaska that’s operated by a polar bear who, for much of the comic, lives in a very human world. Indeed, it’s only after the first of two zombie apocalypses in the strip that the anthro characters start outnumbering the humans.

And yes, I did say that Doc’s Machine (DM) (the cartoonist behind this insanity) inflicted not one, but two zombie apocalypses on the strip. Nor was this a one-shot that had no continuity to the comic as a whole; zombies came, devoured, the National Guard was called in, and the human population dropped decidedly while a significant number of furballs showed up. At this point, humans seem to be used more for background strips than as even background characters; in earlier strips humans would come into the shop looking to buy paintball equipment or wanting Doc to repair the mess they made of their guns after various “home repair” efforts fell through.

This is a common theme, mind you. Yet it doesn’t really come off as repetitive. I think part of this is due to the insanity that DM drags his audience through, including the multiple instances when Doc and his partner in crime Roger (an anthro raccoon) go on wild inventing sprees, including railgun paintball rifles, wormholes that open up into the past, and mecha. And how do they get ahold of funding to make such wonderful toys? DARPA. (Though finally a number of their toys get snagged by another government agency, this one run by other anthros, once Doc starts meddling with wormholes.)

When the comic doesn’t indulge in inventive insanity it switches to actual paintball games. And I have to warn you that DM is a big fan of paintball and imparts that enthusiasm into the comic. I know after going through the archives part of me was tempted to look up paintball fields and rentals in my area and maybe see if it’s a hobby I could get into. Fortunately, my inherent laziness kicked in and the urge subsided. But if you’re a bit more whimsical and less of a procrastinator, this comic could catalyze an interest in a hobby that involves getting pelted with balls of paint launched at a high enough speed to leave welts through clothing (not to mention paint splatters).

As a brief aside, I do have to applaud DM for stating on several occasions the need for safety equipment (and its proper use) in the sport. He even goes into how slipups happen… though he’s not actually shown any consequences as Doc will duct tape the mask of any player who removes their protective equipment while on the playing field. No doubt having a huge polar bear bearing down on you with a big roll of duct tape is enough to cow any player into letting him duct tape their equipment on. Mostly though I think it’s the Rule of Funny at play.

One of the more interesting elements of the comic lies with the first few strips. It seems DM originally started creating the comic on an actual whiteboard (thus the comic’s name). But considering how much time must have gone into those strips (and how it’s more conducive for a one-panel format which doesn’t do much for storytelling), after a half dozen strips DM chose to use a more traditional format. And more recently DM started doing full-time color for the strip, though when pressed for time DM will switch back to a greyscale format. So, come in for the paintball, and feel free to stay for the insanity. Just, try starting the comic on a Friday night (assuming you work a normal workweek), lest you find yourself up at 2:00 a.m. and struggling to stay awake long enough for one last strip.

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Original Life

Posted on November 26, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Over time, the anthropomorphic webcomic Original Life has been shifting further and further into fantasy. Of course, when you consider that the father of the series, Fisk, is the Gary Stu from Jay Naylor’s prequel comic Better Days (which include his being a part of a private black-ops group and his singlehandedly eliminating a bunch of mobsters), some fantasy elements are to be expected. Still, I must admit to feeling a bit disappointed that Abigail has descended deeper into Sue territory herself, not only with her apparently creating viable robotics using Lego toys, but also crafting a fat-burning drug that has the side-effect of lessening the intelligence of the muscle-bound former nerds who took the drug to begin with.

It’s obvious that Naylor was using the latest storyline to poke fun at the U.S. Government’s War on Drugs. I’m just not sure OL is the best venue for his tendency toward social commentary. Part of the charm of OL is that these are children; yes, Janie might be a talented athlete and Abigail a budding genius (leaving Thomas as perhaps the one ordinary child of Fisk’s brood), but part of the charm of OL was that it abandoned the at-times heavy-handed social commentary of BD. What’s more, Naylor’s use of Abigail as his vehicle of social commentary forced her into a role contrary to previous character depictions; when she first developed the fat-burning drug, she felt the side effects were negative and discontinued the drug’s use.

There is also the disturbing message that Naylor delivered with this storyline: you can be fat and intelligent, or in-shape and stupid. Or rather, men are either fat and smart or dumb muscle-bound animals (with the exception of Fisk, who ends up catching his daughter and putting an end to her little illicit drug empire). If I’m going to be totally honest, I preferred Abigail when I could believe her Lego robot and Lego medical tools were manifestations of a hyperactive imagination. Now I just hope Naylor puts her on the back burner for a while until readers forget how much of an Ayn Sue she’s become and maybe focus on the other children for a bit instead. I can only hope Naylor downgrades Abigail in that time as well; children can be truly brilliant while remaining children. This story came close to forgetting that Abigail is but a child… and should remain so.

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Sequential Art

Posted on October 8, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Back in July Phillip M. Jackson managed to surprise me with a rather delightful plot twist by having the least sympathetic of his protagonists end up in bed with Sequential Art’s occasional antagonist Hilary. At that point I offered a rhetorical challenge (since I’m sure Jackson hasn’t heard of Tangents before and wouldn’t particularly care in any event) for him to take the road untraveled and to reform Hilary (if only a little bit) by having her and Pip remain a couple. In my opinion this would have allowed for a fascinating pairing with an Internet recluse and a social wasp (I’d say “social butterfly” but while Hilary may have looks (in theory), she’s also possessing a rather nasty stinger as well). Even better in my eyes was how this would antagonize Kat, who’d be expecting the worse.

Sadly, the worse is what happened. Outside of that initial encounter, Hilary used (and drugged) Pip and cheated on him while using her “affairs” to climb the business ladder until she found a married man whom she could blackmail after having slept with him. And now, having figuratively screwed Pip over, she took a moment to plunge the knife into Kat and twist the blade by having Kat be the one forced to tell Pip what had happened (though I truly hope Pip isn’t so naïve as to ignore the hints that have slowly accumulated). Not that this is the end of this storyline, of course; Pip has shown a devious side in the past, and I suspect Hilary may have stung the wrong person this time around. In short, the last couple of months have been watching a slow-motion trainwreck in progress.

The only real point to reading was waiting to see if Pip would wise up or if Hilary would screw up enough that she’d get caught red-handed. And to be honest, I’m not quite sure what purpose Hilary serves at this point. She’s an occasional antagonist who’s been shown to be mostly unsympathetic. Even the brief moments of humanity that have emerged are lackluster at best (I mean, declaring vengeance on Kat because of an idiotic lunchbox? Right. That’s a good reason to be antagonistic for most of your life). But perhaps the greatest disappointment is that Jackson had a brief moment to flesh out Hilary into a real character. Instead, he dumped her back into the one-dimensional antagonist bin. Barring some truly unexpected twist, the story seems to be heading to a formulaic ending and a lot of missed opportunities.

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Exterminatus Now

Posted on September 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Given my roots as a gamer (both computer and tabletop roleplaying), I tend to enjoy it when webcomics give shout-outs to gaming tropes. Thus when Alan Graham, Garry Weber, and associates decided to homage the Dead Alewives’ skit “Dungeons and Dragons” in their anthropomorphic parody comic Exterminatus Now while poking fun at the anti-gaming groups, I had to comment. This isn’t the first such reference to gaming in EN; we’ve seen several instances of the Chaos and Order Gods of EN playing roleplaying games. Given the trope of Gods playing games with the lives of mortals, it isn’t really that big of a surprise that tabletop roleplaying would be used by the Gods. No. It was the reference to Mountain Dew that won kudos by me; while I don’t drink it myself, the product placement in the Dead Alewives skit has made it tradition for most gaming groups to include at least an honorary bag of Cheetos and a Mountain Dew in their games. Well, that and the fact they thumbed their nose at 4th Edition D&D, which is pretty much an abomination.

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Sequential Art

Posted on July 18, 2012 by | 2 Comments

I have to admit that of all the plot twists Phillip M. Jackson could pull on readers of his surreal anthropomorphic webcomic Sequential Art, I was not expecting to see Hilary end up in bed with Pip. I mean, I’m not quite sure just what that anthropomorphic elements of the comic represent – are they actually human and represented as animals (giving us a glimpse into Art’s subconscious opinions of people around us), or are they actual humanoid animals? In either case, Pip is pretty much a recluse that you don’t really think of having a social life outside the Internet… while Hilary is one of those people for whom appearances is everything. Yet it does make an odd amount of sense for her to succumb to a moment where she likely would wake in the morning and go “did I just… why did I sleep with him?”

So my hat’s off to Mr. Jackson. It was very well played. Heck, Pip in the last panel reflected my reaction as well, of “what just happened?” Unfortunately I can’t help but think the path from here is more predictable, which is why I’m calling out to him with a challenge: take the unexpected path. Bring Hilary into the main cast by having her become Pip’s lover and girlfriend. This will do two things. First, it will help to mix things up a bit by bringing Kat’s antagonist into regular play, which will shake things up for Kat and move her outside her comfort zone. Second, it will provide an opportunity for character growth for both Pip and Hilary. And let’s face it, having Hilary and Pip continue to date would provide quite a few comedic moments that would be squandered if the two went their separate paths from here.

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