Friday, June 21, 2013

Brief Break Wild Webcomic Review

We interrupt the current program, The Standard, for a special:

WILD WEBCOMIC REVIEW

When I finished the last part of the Standard series (which you'll see in three weeks), I realized that it was really, REALLY long, so I figured if I have the time, why not crank out another batch of reviews?  So I have, and here we go.

241.  God Mode - I don't usually read gaming comics because while I was a gamer once, I don't know if I could be considered any more (at least not on consoles).  That and the jokes are pretty much tied to whatever is popular at the time of the strip's writing.  Which means this comic, which started back in 2005 is more than a little dated.  The idea is that God Mode is a game review website and the comic is about the people who work there.  And their deranged, possibly insane, boss.  This comic went through several artists/writers.  The first two really were the best, managing to balance the game end with the cast end quite well and being freaking insane (including where the boss killed her own father, and then he got better).  After that, when Adrian Ramos from Count Your Sheep takes over, it kind of goes down hill.  First there aren't as many strips per artist (low production is why I stopped reading Count Your Sheep), and it loses the edge after Adrian hands the comic off to another artist.  And it hasn't updated since April of 2012.  Stay for the first two artists, then move on.  You'll probably enjoy it more if you remember the games they're talking about, but otherwise, you're not missing out on much.

242.  Dumbing of Age - If I were forced to sum up this comic, I would say it is a college comic staring high school characters.  Which makes sense as most of the major characters are freshmen in college.  The title pretty much gives away the concept of the comic, it's a coming of age strip, where the cast learns what it means to grow up into adults (something I seemed to have skipped, I guess).  It's a good, solid comic.  The art  is well done and characters are distinctive.  Personalities aren't too stereotypical, though occasionally they do get pretty close, but the motivations and reactions of the characters are natural and well done.  It's also hard to say how well this will play out since in the 2 and half or so years since it's been updating, it's only about 3 weeks into the school year, so the actual arcs of the characters have only really gotten started.  I'll probably follow it for a bit, though how long will depend on where things go from here.  Solid comic, worth reading even for a bit.

243.  Derelict - Wow.  Ben Fleuter is the artist behind Parallel Dementia, which ended a while back, and this is the project he started to replace it.  I am completely blown away.  I think a great many artists forget that comics are a visual medium and just dump loads of text to try to describe what we can see on the page.  No such thing in Derelict, where the text is so sparse, I don't think I actually ever learned the main character's name until I visited the TVTropes page for the comic.  And I didn't need to, everything I needed to know about her was in the comic.  Within the first few pages I was hooked and it only got better from there.  Maybe I won't feel the same way later (archive tunnel vision and all), but at the moment, this is everything I look for in a comic, and it's left me virtually speechless.  Wow.

244.  Twokinds - At first look, my thoughts instantly went "oh, it's one of those kinds of comics."  Those being a very general term, of course, but it featured a cat girl, blue hair, and, as I quickly learned, amnesia.  Lots of cliches to start with, so I went looking to see what was done with it.  I found a comic that isn't bad, not great, or even very good, but not bad.  I also found a comic that has come a long way.  This comic is 10 years old, and was started by a high school student (he celebrated his 17th birthday during the comic at one point).  To keep up a comic for that long, from that young an age is actually commendable.  The fact that the comic has taken the cliches it started with and managed to make something with it is remarkable.  It's come a long, long way, both in art and story telling, from the first few chapters, slowly building up a world and collection of characters that is pretty good.  There's mystery and intrigue there, but it feels as if it's been developing rather than outright planned, which is good since any plan made a decade ago probably isn't as sustainable anymore.  I don't know how long I'll read it (there are a few plot lines I want to see resolved), but it's good enough for me to read it.

245.  Bob and George - So I messed up a bit here.  While reading through it, I thought I burned through a 2500+ archive too fast, but I didn't worry about it until I started writing this review.  Turns out, thanks to a "random" button being right next to the "next" button, I managed to skip about 1500 strips worth of the comic.  Whoops.  I did go back and read them, didn't bother me to do it, but I really didn't miss much.  This is a very light comic, kind of like Station V3.  The fact that I didn't even realize I had skipped about two thirds of the comic and didn't feel like I missed anything should tell you a lot.  This is a sprite comic based on Mega Man, and probably the core inspiration for a great many of the sprite comics that flooded out into the world for a while.  I like Mega Man, despite the insanity it devolved into, and this comic takes those ideas and runs with them, and right over an even more insane cliff.  There are laughs to be had here, to a point, and for something to burn some time on it's worth the effort.  That said, the conclusion is pretty damn convoluted for a comic that is based on being convoluted, and I'm not sure I exactly like how it ended.  Oh and keep flash on, there's quite a few flash strips in this comic (with very little actually being done with it, I'm afraid).

And that's it for this.  Back to Sluggy next week.

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