Doomsday, My Dear is one of those latter comics. I must admit when I first started reading the comic, I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it. I started reading from the back (as often it’s the later comics that are the best of the lot) and after a couple dozen comics realized that not only was this one comic I’d have to start reading from the start… but that I wasn’t going to be able to stop reading this tonight. (I’m serious on this – I went from reading to reviewing in maybe four hours. There are only a couple of comics that have inspired reviews so quickly.)

The comic focuses on two fugitives (Abner and Cyril) who are trying to survive a government pogrom in Britain against carriers of a “blood plague” that manifests with their children (and, interestingly enough, through heterochromia, or mismatched eyes), and their friends and other people involved with them. Interestingly, the cast of characters includes elements in the government that have seized control and have enacted violent purges against the carriers, while enforcing a media blackout and ceasing all intercontinental travel.

Abner’s your typical male protagonist in this sort of drama, who’s been hiding from government forces with friends while wondering what happened to his girlfriend Poe who vanished soon after Buckingham Palace was blown up at the start of the comic. He does stand out a bit from his protagonist brethren as he has a bit of a stutter (that might be related to having seen someone shot in the head just feet from him when he was young). Outside of that he’s a normal 19-year-old with no special abilities to speak of (outside of being a carrier of a genetic disease, that is).

The second protagonist, Cyril, is the one I find much more interesting. He was a spy in the USSR and helped the current dictatorial government seize control of Britain. Unfortunately, his efforts to hide his blood plague carrier status didn’t quite work out, and he ended up tossed in a government facility. Where Abner is ineffectual, Cyril is efficient. Where Abner is decent and nice, Cyril is an asshole who manipulates those around him – even after being tossed in a facility, mind you. And while you might not exactly like Cyril, you can’t help but cheer him on as he smashes his face into the prime minister’s nose and… well, let’s not completely spoil things now, shall we?

There are some issues with the comic. I would think that after the first few instances of children being born with the plague happened, all new pregnancies would occur in isolation until the newborns are confirmed to be healthy. Likewise, I’m not sure that Britain’s government could be taken over quite as easily as it did in the comic. Though given that Britain has far fewer guns, I suppose it might be difficult for people to effectively protest the overthrow of their government… especially given that the primary target of the government are people who have inadvertently caused widespread suffering and fear.

Cartoonist Cami Woodruff has stated that Doomsday, My Dear is meant to be read from start-to-finish. As such, it’s currently a work in progress and I’m not sure how reading it on an update-by-update basis will satisfy, especially after the initial archive crawl is over. The artwork itself has almost a watercolor feel to it which gives the comic an almost surreal look; the colors are perhaps a bit brighter than you’d expect for the setting, but this might be deliberate on Woodruff’s part. In short, I highly recommend this comic. My only warning is that you might want to wait ‘til the weekend to start reading it, because you might end up staying up late finishing the initial archive crawl.

While the majority of the webcomics I read tend to be fantasies and science fictions (with a growing number of journal comics tossed into the mix), every so often I find myself embroiled in more mundane fiction. Given my issues with embarrassing situations, this isn’t always easy for me and I’ve found myself abandoning comics on more than one occasion when the subject matter hit too close to home. This was nearly the fate that the high school drama comic Bridges suffered; the comic languished in my reading queue for weeks before I finally bit the bullet and forced myself to read through the archives. On more than one occasion I found myself pausing my archive crawl and distracting myself with other issues, but there was something integral to the comic itself that didn’t let me just give up on it.

This isn’t to say that Bridges has a superbly written storyline with characters you will instantly fall in love with. If anything, the characters are quite human, which is part of their charm. The comic initially focused on Quinn, a seemingly shallow and spoiled teenaged cheerleader who found herself forced to go to summer camp apparently because her parents were upset with her because she didn’t make squad captain (though I have to suspect there was more to it than just that; we’re being given the story from Quinn’s perspective at this point, and she admits to being a “rich b##ch”). Interestingly, she strikes a rather unexpected friendship with Maddie, a shy overweight girl who somehow managed to (through a combination of kindness and perception) break through Quinn’s shell and find a kindred spirit.

While Quinn is fairly central at this point to the story (though I suspect as the comic evolves, it will shift to more of an ensemble cast), I have to admit I find Maddie to be the more interesting character. For one thing, she’s overweight and yet still attractive. This tends to be fairly uncommon in literature and comics seeing that it’s culturally acceptable to treat overweight people poorly – seriously, if you were to take any of the fat jokes or snide comments said against overweight people and said something similar to nearly any other minority and there’d be a tremendous outcry against the comments. It’s also fairly clear (at least to me) that Maddie has body acceptance issues, and I suspect she wears long-sleeve shirts for a specific reason besides hiding what her body looks like. While I’m not quite sure why Quinn opened up to her so quickly (given her irritability toward other girls who tried to be friends with her), her status as an outsider has helped her perceive things others would overlook.

Other members of Quinn’s circle of friends includes Harley, her former best friend who’s into the goth and piercing scene and has no problem making a scene if he thinks one of his friends is in the wrong. (He’s also prejudiced against the preppy scene, partly due to losing his best friend for two years as Quinn tried to fit in with them.) On the opposite side of the friendship spectrum is Sarah, one of the few cheerleaders who like Quinn has been living a double life… and who ends up abandoning the cheerleader clique soon after Quinn does, especially once Quinn starts spurning her because she’s a cheerleader.

As an aside, one thing I actually enjoyed about Bridges was that Quinn’s reformation isn’t instantaneous. While it’s apparent Quinn is a very conflicted girl who acts unpleasant to fit in with her social circle (a rather unpleasant group of cheerleaders that seem corrupted by the squad captain’s crude behavior), even after she abandons the cheerleaders and hangs out with Maddie and Harley, who was her best friend until a couple years ago, she still will slip into old habits on occasion (especially when the cheerleaders are concerned). It’s refreshing to see character growth treated as a gradual process, with inevitable backsliding.

This is actually the second incarnation of Bridges; cartoonist Kris Justus initially started the comic back in 2001, and it ran for 400 updates until early 2004. While I’ve not done more than skim a couple of the original comics, I actually prefer the current incarnation, primarily due to the differences in Quinn’s personality (with her being more caustic and imperfect than the quick impression I got from her in the old comic). The artwork has significantly improved from 2004, and while there are some initial stumbles with coloring and art, once Justus finds her pace the art improves significantly. There are some elements that don’t quite work for me (such as her having almost been chosen for the Olympics and turning it down because it didn’t fit her parents expectations of her) but these flaws aren’t fatal to the comic. If you enjoy school-genre comics and stories with flawed characters, then you should enjoy Bridges; I must admit I found it an acquired taste myself, but one I’m more than willing to give a chance.