In many ways Abel’s Story is a more mature story than DMFA; Amber has rated it NC-14 for swearing and violence (no nudity, because everyone knows that unclothed fur-covered characters are much more offensive to society’s sensibilities than blood and gore). That’s not to say that the comic is dour and depressing; the early strips showing Abel’s childhood are rather sweet, and while Abel’s first 24 years might not have been idyllic, much of Abel’s childhood was a happy one. Naturally, it is the fall from this Eden that makes Abel’s Story so intriguing… and also gave us a glimpse at aspects of Amber William’s world that is not often seen in the main comic.

While the comic can get wordy at times (with several exposition-filled comics that fortunately do show glimpses of what’s being dictated to both Abel and the readers), there are a number of tidbits in Abel’s Story that are quite interesting. Amber William has managed to flesh out the world that DMFA takes place in, both with the Cubi Academy (which DMFA only briefly touched upon) and the greater world of DMFA. What’s more, this side story also manages to touch upon the greater conflict between beings (ordinary sentients) and creatures (the uber-powered “monsters” that includes the fae, dragons, cubi, and others), which has only recently been coming into focus in DMFA as a whole. Abel’s Story is self-contained and there’s no need to read the expansive archives of DMFA in order to understand what’s going on. What’s more, it’s a well-written and -drawn story, and definitely worth reading.

When I started reading the anthropomorphic comic Better Days (found thanks to a TV Tropes link), I had no idea of the ride that was waiting for me. The TV Tropes link seemed innocuous enough, and I’ve encountered teachers who let their beliefs bleed through into their teaching (I suspect many of us have). Unfortunately, those strips were the brief breath of levity in what was going to be a long and bumpy ride. BD has rape, tweenage sex (and that’s not a typo!), consensual incest between siblings (well, one instance that we know of), adultery (on more than one occasion), the depiction of armed military conflict, a man going into a mafia safe house and killing pretty much everyone there to save family, and more. If you’re easily offended, religious, or not conservative, you’re probably going to get offended by the content of the comic.

And yet, even with the growing Sueification of one of his main characters (Fisk) and the multiple injections of Drama in the comic (to the point that the mother once shouted “Is my life just a big lighting rod for drama!?” which I must admit I found quite amusing), there are some decent elements to the comic. For instance, when Sheila (the mother) was attacked and raped by an ex-boyfriend and her son (who was nine, and just starting to get his Sueification injections) went after the guy with a baseball bat, both Fisk and Sheila went into counseling afterward. Likewise, the incident of incest between Fisk and Lucy was intelligently done, and had long-lasting consequences, though perhaps not as severe as they could have been.

As for the adultery? Each time adultery occurs in the comic, divorce follows. Friendships are destroyed by it. Less realistically (perhaps) is how each incident results in a new stable relationship (Sheila ends up marrying the guy she slept with, though it takes a while for Fisk to forgive his eventual stepfather, and Elizabeth and Fisk end up together after she catches her new husband in bed with another woman… and possibly cheats on him in turn with Fisk). Likewise, while not technically adultery, when Lucy steals away a guy from his cheating girlfriend, that relationship ends up stable and happy. It’s a minor quibbling point, I know. The situation behind the adultery in the first story was logical, reasonable, and sad. The marriage wasn’t depicted as a healthy one, and the story itself was handled with considerable maturity. It’s just the end-result almost seems to say “adultery results in happily-ever-afters” which I’m sure was not the cartoonist’s intent.

Less forgivable is the “Sueification” of Fisk. He went from a “Crowning Moment of Awesome” in defending his mom from a rapist to James Bond (and I kid you not on this). The presentation of him fighting both in Desert Storm and in Bosnia were fairly well done, though the depiction of him in Ranger training fighting off a bunch of Marines in a training exercise was… pushing the boundaries. But once Fisk got recruited into a private intelligence agency to literally become a Bond-type… well, if you turn off your brain and go along for the ride, then you’ll probably enjoy it. Just… don’t think about it too much or you’ll start to find it annoying. Fortunately, outside of his initial recruitment into this corporate intelligence group and his taking out a bunch of Mafia (who admittedly were not expecting an ex-Ranger to invade with guns and grenades) to save a cousin they were using as a prostitute, we don’t see anything about his Bond activities. That’s likely for the best.

Amusingly enough, a couple years back cartoonist Jay Naylor pulled an April Fool’s prank by stating he was going to recast the crew as humans. The drawings he did were quite good (Naylor’s a talented artist who makes a living on his art, though sadly enough it’s the porn he draws that is how he makes his money) and I’m left to wonder just how much of an impact Better Days would have had if he’d drawn his characters as people instead of anthros. There is a degree of separation (similar to that found in science fiction and other forms of fiction) that comes with drawing the characters as non-humans. Just imagine the impact of seeing a nine-year-old boy taking a baseball bat to the man raping his mother… or of the brief images of the twins when they had sex that one time? Or the utter anguish of Fisk as his best friend was forced to move away because his mother slept with his best friend’s dad? Would these not have deeper meaning and more immediate impact if these characters had been human?

Then again, that degree of separation might help readers from becoming too offended by the story. It’s easy to say “it’s just a story” when you’ve cat-people and mice-people and the like as your cast. But seeing them as people… and it might have been too much for Naylor’s readers. And that’s a shame, because even with this degree of separation the stories hit hard. Better Days is one of those comics you’re either going to love or hate. It’s not easy remaining ambivalent about it. And while some aspects of the story could have been told better, and Fisk seriously could have been toned down… it’s worth reading. (Small note – Better Days concluded last year. Its sequel, Original Life, focuses on Fisk’s three kids and is a far more light-hearted tale which I’ll review later.)

The problem with these relaunches occurs when the cartoonist has a considerable backlog of story already existing. Retelling the old story risks alienating readers (unless there are fairly significant alterations, such as those found in Picatrix and Earthsong). This is especially true when the current story is at a fairly pivotal point, and fans are eager to learn what comes next, which can lead the cartoonist to start burning a candle at both ends, revamping the early story while continuing the comic.

Starship Moonhawk, one of a small number of science fiction webcomics, is a prime example of this dual-burn approach to cartooning. When I first stumbled across the comic, I soon stumbled across a holder page explaining the “jump” in the archives, and the presence of over a hundred pages of older archives. Considering several chapters of the story were not yet drawn with “version 3.0,” I opted to read through the old archives and get a feel for what’s going on.

One of the first things I noticed was the anatomy differences between the anthrofeline aliens in what is probably “version 2.0” of the comic, and their current appearance. Current artistry for the cat-aliens has a fairly traditional catgirl design, while “version 2.0” actually took a rather innovative approach to the cat-aliens to be far more feline in structure, with hind legs that had similarities to the design of the hind legs of real-life felines. While it is undoubtedly considerably easier to draw the cat-aliens with human-form legs and very short fur, I actually regret seeing this element of uniqueness abandoned with the more modern art.

Unfortunately, the comic hasn’t been updating long enough for me to determine if changes have been made to its basic plot (in which the protagonists are striving to stop the machinations of a provocateur who is trying to start a war between two stellar empires). There were some problems with that initial plot (including how easily the other aliens were duped into breaking a peace agreement, and the presence of a third group of aliens whose allegiances weren’t fleshed out very well) that hopefully will be dealt with in the relaunch.

These issues also highlight a flaw in relaunches that attempt to continue telling the existing story while retelling the old story; the cartoonist may find that the old story is too constraining, but be unable to break from older aspects that don’t work very well. This is a very good reason why relaunches should often drop the existing story, and just start anew. The cartoonist can then tell a story that evolves naturally and can change (sometimes significantly) from what came before.

There are some elements of “version 2.0” of Starship Moonhawk that work quite well, and the older story is worth reading. However, I’m left wondering how long it’ll take cartoonist Michael C. Prokop to fill over a hundred back pages of archive while continuing the current storyline, especially with a weekly update. Prokop would probably be better off to focus on revamping the archives and adjusting the story when it needs to, than attempting to burn the candle at both ends.