Not-So-Wild Review: Wapsi Square

I think I might dedicate this year to Retrospectives and Not-So-Wild Reviews.  So with that in mind, let's look at a comic that's been on my list for a while but I rarely talk about it:

Wapsi Square

I have quite a bit to say about this comic.  Not much of it is going to be positive, but keep in mind it is on my read list, so don't get up in arms yet.

CHARACTERS

As part of writing long reviews like this I go to about and cast pages, to refresh my memory, and when there's a comic as long lived as Wapsi Square (started in 2001) that's a lot of stuff to remember.  So I click the link and am given THIS.  I know older comics like this have big casts, but usually they try to make cast lists, summary pages and the like accessible, but this, this is going to require a whole article to dissect what's wrong.  So let me get beyond that for a bit.  Despite having such a massive cast, most of the characters are fairly well defined.  They have their own foibles, traits and such, and for the most part are easily distinguished from each other.

There are still issues, of course.  While each character has their own arc and personality, the side characters often don't get enough time to develop.  Those that do get very strange developments.  Shelly, for example, starts as just another girl, though she enjoys working in her dad's auto shop and is "freakishly strong."  That's fine for a friend character, then she turns out to be part sphinx because. . . I have no idea.  It spoiled her as a character, and in fact EVERY character seems to have to have some kind of paranormal connection.  It was fine when it was Monica (original main character) who had this weird touch, but when everyone is doing it, it doesn't feel special or interesting any more.  This is even more true with the "New Wapsi Square" cast who are all basically monsters.  Atsali is half incubus, half siren, her adopted sister is a living collection of plants, her friends are werebears, etc etc.  It just lacks a solid anchor in the "real" to make all this fantastic stuff stand out.  It's kind of a shame.  Oh, and there is one other thing. . .

ART

The art isn't bad, really.  Simple in many ways, but not bad.  Characters all have distinct looks and can generally be identified against each other.  There is a tendency to have very large mouths vs heads, but that doesn't break the comic.  That said, it seems Paul Taylor is kind of limited to drawing, well, women.  The majority of the cast is female, often more than well endowed and always projected as being better looking than the comic can really give them.  It really runs the line that the comic is about fanservice more than story, character or art, which may or may not be an issue for many.  The larger images of the last half of the comic's life make this even more prominent as the backgrounds often take a backseat to the characters, who are huge vs the size of the panels.  I don't feel ashamed to read the comic as it is, the characters aren't pushed too far into the fanservice side of the spectrum to cause a distraction, but it's clear that's the general intent.  I have seen much better art, but I have also seen much, much worse, which makes it just kind of average in the long run.

STORY

Wapsi Square has a problem when it comes to story.  I've talked about it before, even if it has been a while.  The problem is show vs tell, and tell wins in most cases with Wapsi Square.  This isn't a new development either, it's prevalent from the beginning.  The characters love to talk to each other, and the action is very limited so it almost appears to be a just talking heads the entire time.  Sometimes it is necessary, but other times it hurts the overall story.

A good example is actually one of the recent storylines where Atsali went to talk to other members of the cast about an incident at the pool where the conservatively dressed Atsali was accused of dressing too sexy.  Of course she's a half-siren with boobs the size of basketballs, so that fits, but it is part of Atsali's overall body image problems and young age, and as a plot point, it's actually quite interesting.  Except that we, as the readers, NEVER SAW THE INCIDENT!  We are only told about it during the discussion.  On top of that, the most recent events included Atsali barely surviving the detonation of an anti-matter bomb, and finding one of the other cast members had committed suicide.  Either of those two events could have triggered a similar discussion, but instead the comic focuses on one that happened off panel.

This is only the most recent issue with the way the story is told, but not the story as a whole.  Some of the plots, including the first half dominating "Calender Machine" plot are quite interesting, and even witnessing Atsali adjust to her new body and how others relate to her is intriguing on a personal development level, but often we're forced to hear the characters tell each other what happened rather than watch it happen, which would be far more effective.  I have seen commentary that the fact that Paul sticks with 3 panel strips as being the root of the problem, and I disagree as it can be done effectively, I've seen it in Wapsi Square itself no less.  But the increased size of the panels, while it makes the art bigger and feel like they have more room, also leaves more room for dialog, exasperating the already existing problem of the characters talking too much.  With so much dialog it's easy to get lost in the events, to the point that I have been more than lost in a few occasions.

Finally there is a large number of smaller stories always going on.  That giant cast page I linked near the top isn't just about the cast, only 10 pages or so are, but almost 60 pages are dedicated to charting out the hundreds of minor plotlines and stories.  Even the recent stories seem to bounce back and forth between events, adding to the confusion on what's going on.  This lack of focus is just another element of the myriad of problems with the comic.

OVERALL

So it pretty much looks like I spent the bulk of this review saying how bad a comic Wapsi Square is, but the thing is, I still read it.  Every comic on my read list I recommend on some level or another, and Wapsi is no exception.  Why?  Well, when it does get things right, I'm very satisfied.  The recent suicide event I mentioned lasted maybe 5 strips, if that, and was exactly what "show" means.  The characters, despite their massive numbers, at least have different personalities, and often act in accordance to them.  The art, while not stellar, at least conveys the emotions necessary for each character to carry, and when it must relate action or show the story, it can and does.  The comic's many failures are often offset by successes, and as a whole I come away still enjoying the comic.  It's not great but it's not really awful.  I would say it's okay in general.  Perhaps if I was closer to my 100 read strip limit, Wapsi would be near the line to be cut, but there are enough comics that are even closer that it won't go anywhere any time soon.  So yes, read Wapsi and if you can get past it's issues, you might find a decent comic to had to your own list.

Next week, I'm going to talk about that damn cast page.  Oh god, will I talk about that cast page.  Until next time kiddies.

Not-So-Wild Review: Kiwis By Beat

My list over to the side there is every comic I read over the course of the month.  I recommend any and all of them to one extent or another.  I also use it in case I'm away from my computer as a way to check said comics.  And all of them have gotten a standard review, except one.  Kind of.  Let me tell you about:

Kiwis By Beat!

By "kind of" I mean that there is a review related to it, about Minus.  Even in my follow up though, I mentioned the full site, so it's kind of a review.  The reality is it isn't one comic, it's an anthology of comics, something that has become a growing trend.  Short Stories built itself on the idea, and several email requests I've received have all been some kind of anthology style site.  Kiwis By Beat is probably the first one I've done any official review on, and will likely become the standard for them.

Which also makes a normal, sectioned off Not-So-Wild Review a little more difficult than most.  In fact, much of it stems from one topic that hasn't shown up in any of the other reviews.  So much so there will only be two topics this round because, well, it all comes down to these.

ART

There is something rather unique about the art.  Ryan Armand's style (that's the artist, BTW) is rather distinctive, though I always get this odd feeling I've seen something similar somewhere.  No idea where though.  While a few stories, Minus especially, are in color, the bulk are in black and white, and he takes advantage of the medium in a way few really do, often swapping between positive and negative space as necessary.

Each of the various comics is different too.  Modern Fried Snake is very flat while Monster Story has layers of shading to make it stand out.  The water color look of The Mildly Inconvenient Journey of Pelen Purul is very different from Minus.  Despite all of them sharing a basic, similar character design, each comic is different enough that it could actually be identified from the rest.  Perhaps that's why I keep thinking I've seen it before, because I'm remembering the other comics in the anthology.

TONE

If there is one thing that unites all these comics is there's a certain tone to it.  The way it reads, the way it looks, the stories it tells, the characters, all of them share the same tone.  Trying to simply describe it is, well, difficult, if not impossible, but I'll try.

In Modern Fried Snake there's a part of the story where the main character and her friend go to the city.  They see a movie, eat at a strange restaurant, possibly kill a man (never followed up on), and do some shopping.  Eventually they get handed a strange book, which was a book written against The Great Leader whose picture is like something out of Orwell.  For any other comic, this would be the jumping off point for a great adventure, discovering good and evil, etc, etc.  In this comic, they throw the book away and head home.

Nearly every story is like this.  The mundane of life is often on display, rarely is there any great battle or adventure, or if there is it's temporary or part of a bigger point.  Other stories take weird twists, like Vampire Story where most everyone becomes a vampire because they always live in mansions.  Seriously.  The Mildly Inconvenient Journey of Pelen Purul has the narrator desperately trying to convince the reader that Pelen will eventually journey home, when she seems happy where she is, and that's just a few.

And the characters follow suit as a result.  They're nothing amazing (even in Great), and they kind of go with the flow of the tale.  They're different from each other but the tone of their actions and words are almost always the same.  The majority just live rather ordinary lives, and the few who don't really aren't that extraordinary anyway.

OVERALL

It's hard to talk about something like a dozen comics at once, and dropping everything into "tone" might seem a bit lazy but there is a unified tone to the entire thing.  It's very easy to see it as each comic is read.  And I recommend reading them all.  They're quirky, different and fun, all the things I love to see in a comic, and there's a bunch of them here, just waiting to be read.  Minus may have brought me to the site, but everything else keeps me coming back.

Next time, um, we'll see.  I've run out of my buffer, but I still have ideas in the queue, so hopefully something.  No promises.  Until then kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Zebra Girl

It's been over a year since I did one of these so let's dive into:

ZEBRA GIRL

Trying to remember when I started Zebra Girl was kind of a challenge, since the most I could remember is recognizing a crossover within the Wotch once, and it turns out I basically started at the same time.  When I started, the comic was already 5 years old, so it was fairly mature by then.  Re-reading the comic for this review though put it's full development into perspective and resulted in me appreciating the comic that much more than I was before.

HUMOR

It started as a humor comic, using odd, narrative generated gags.  I think the goal was to stand out against the rash of comics that were nearing, or just past their peaks at the time, like Sluggy Freelance and such.  The jokes, as such, were more aggressive and took advantage of the fact that it WAS a comic.  So strange gags like "Find the error in this comic" and a whole panel would be turned on it's side would show up pretty frequently early on.  It didn't last forever though, and as time went on, the humor toned down more and more to the point that I almost forgot it was a gag comic at one point.

ART

This change is reflected in the art.  Early on it was very sketchy, slapped together by Joe (the artist) sitting at a table and drawing with a pen.  It got cleaner, but as the comic got less funny, it also got darker.  This caused all sorts of problems for Joe as the dark wasn't just flat black, but built from crosshatching, which took time to do with a pen.  Eventually he found a new way to do it and it comes out regularly every week now.  And it looks GORGEOUS.  It looks amazing, and is definitely the best black and white art I've seen in a comic to date.

STORY

I guess it was inevitable that the comic would shift from gag strip to something more dramatic.  After all, the main character has been turned into an actual demon from hell, that's bound to have consequences.  The transition has gone not quite to full on, supernatural drama, but more toward a kind of fairy tale.  A dark fairy tale, like one of the old ones that No Rest for the Wicked likes to bring up.  Perhaps even darker.  It's interesting how magic is quickly entering the world at large, yet the world doesn't seem to mind.  It's in the dark shadows, but the normal, real world, just looks to avoid these places, or it embraces whole heartedly and changes lives forever.  I know this sounds more like the setting, but really that's what the story has done, established setting for the characters to act out their roles.

CHARACTERS

Above all things, it's a comic about characters, their change and evolution as they find their place in the world, and more.  Jack starts the comic as a bit of a screwball and perv, and with one mistake begins to grow up.  Now he's an ascended wizard with all the power and mystery such beings have.  As Jack's twin, Crystal shared many of his traits, but ended up being more innocent and, well, normal than any of them.  Though without her friends, she would just be a normal person, and she is, in a sense, grateful for it, and eager to see more without ever crossing into that world totally..  Sam starts out in a bad place, homeless, hopeless, and possibly suicidal.  By the current storyline, he's attending fancy parties, which is quite feat for a 5 foot tall talking cartoon rabbit.  All 3 have grown from their starting points to become something more than they ever were, and all pale in comparison to what Sandra has experienced.  She became a literal demon from hell, and carries the weight of that, shifting her personality and desires as she comes to understand her new body, and cease hating it.  Her journey is the focal point, and the rest of the cast kind of sits back and waits for her to get the ball going again.  When they meet again, things will be interesting.

OVERALL

Re-reading Zebra Girl has actually made me like the comic much, much more than I did originally.  Yes, I did like the comic before, a lot, but seeing it evolve, again, and grow, I think it might be one of the best comics out there right now.  With the consistent update schedule, the amazing art, the wonderful fairy tale feel and the great characters, it is far greater than I think I originally rated the comic in my own mind.  I think everyone should read this comic.

Well, that's it for this week.  Hell of a struggle to get time to finish this damn thing, so hopefully next week I'll get more time to do more webcomic stuff.  Until then kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: No Rest for the Wicked

When I started these Not So Wild Reviews, I intended to do them in the order of how I collected the comics.  And then I found this:

No Rest for the Wicked, Chapter 1:  The Moon Rolling in Her Grave

This is the first chapter of one of my favorite comics, done as a motion comic.  There's another comic that had this happen to it, but it was only one strip and I have reviewed it yet.  So in the meantime, let's talk about

NO REST FOR THE WICKED

I'm not big into fairy tales, I know of them, but I know Andrea Peterson, the artist and author, is very much into them.  She knows them quite well, the core versions and such.  There's even a list of links to the stories on the website.  While other comics might refer to these classic stories, she adds knowledge to it, gravitas and a bit of reality.  I also suspect they are much closer to the actual stories then what you might see out of Disney.

ART

The art is very sketch book.  I mean, I could see these pictures, especially the early strips, done in someone's notebook.  It's not bad, not at all, it just feels that way.  As the comic goes one, the art improves, at it must, but it always remains "sketchy."  Great art?  No, but it hits the right points.  Characters stand out, it's easy to identify them at a glance, backgrounds are interesting and well built, and actions are fluid.  From a sequential art stand point, it's more than competent and quite well done.  Many other comics would beat it out in the art department, but it's not bad by any stretch.

SETTING

I don't usually talk about the setting of comics because, well, it's unnecessary in most cases.  Does it really matter that it's implied that Sluggy Freelance takes place in New Jersey?  No, it doesn't.  But for No Rest, the setting IS the comic.  This comic takes place in a literal fairy tale world.  There are kingdoms, vast tracts of wild forest, and not much else from what I can tell.  It's a strange world yet the characters seem very at home in it, which they should be.  They're aware of the issues with this world (including strange old women, witches and curses) and deal with them as they come.  Their relationship with their world is constantly there, to the point that their interactions with each other sometimes take a backseat to it.  It's even hinted that the world is quite vast, but has a literal end, as evidenced by a pilfered atlas which has a page marked "The End," just as all fairy tales do.  This makes the comic kind of unique amongst other strips that might take a similar route since knowing even the basic rules of the setting is vital to understanding character motivations, the jokes, and even the overall plot.

CHARACTERS

A princess, a cat and a woman on the edge of sanity go looking for the moon could easily be the start of a fairy tale on it's own.  As it is, they are reinterpretations of classic fairy tale characters.  November is the princess from Princess and the Pea, Perrault is Puss in Boots, and Red is Little Red Riding Hood (or Red Cap, the things you learn from this comic).  Aside from Red, they aren't far off their traditional mark, November sleeps on dozens of mattresses and has an allergy to peas, for example.  Red is more a post-tale version of the character, one that has gone through significant stress and kind of cracked.  Their motivations aren't strictly hidden, but not laid out completely.  This is not a quest to save the land, that's incidental honestly.  November was told finding the moon is the only way she'll sleep again, Perrault is in it for the chase, and Red, well, I think her reasons are the most enigmatic.  Each has their qualities without being wholly dominate in one or the other.  Red is the muscle of the group, but is smart enough to see through deciptions, Perrault is the brains, but sometimes overthinks things, and November is innocent and fragile, but far tougher than one might initially think.  A fourth member was added in the last couple of chapters, but her presence seems more incidental at this point, and I almost think there's something off about her actions at this point.

PLOT

From what I can tell, the goal is to basically rattle through a lot of different fairy tales, having our central cast meet players from each one and have it lead to their final goal.  This means taking the actual fairy tales and turning them in odd ways so they seem more natural and real, and possibly linking them closer to the original source than normally would be.  At the same time, I think Andrea has taken a few liberties to make some of the tales that much darker than they normally would have been.  The call back to Hansel and Gretel being the prime example of this (and yes, that one grew DAMN dark).  Given that the original fairy tales are dark to begin with, this is pretty damn disturbing.  The result is the pacing is compartmentalized as each tale is partially retold and represented in new and interesting ways.  I hope this continues as they make their way to the end, though I wonder what other fairy tales might be tapped for this.  1001 Arabian Nights perhaps?  Hard to say.

OVERALL

There is always something about this comic that makes it stand out as one of my favorites.  The characters, the setting, the story, the jokes, all make this a comic I want to read and love very easily.  What hurts it is the abysmal update schedule.  There are usually months between pairs of pages, which makes the wait a strain.  At one point, well over a year had passed between updates and I thought the comic was dead for sure.  I dropped Zap! for having regular, weekly strips because of pacing, so why does No Rest get a pass?  I think because it makes every effort not to waste time.  A single page can easily draw one back into it and make it feel like not a beat was missed.  Zap! couldn't do that.  Still, a slightly more regular update schedule could easily move this from being a favorite to being a must read.  As it stands, the comic is more a brief stop on my weekly run rather than a comic I check obsessively.  I wish it was otherwise.

Time to move on to the next thing.  Make sure you check out that video, it's totally worth it.  Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review Special: Blade Kitten

NOTE:  Sorry kids, looks like the damn thing didn't publish on time.  Should have checked it yesterday and forgot.  Sorry.

I don't do this.  Normally, when I find a new comic and am set to review it, I'll put it aside and locate at least 4 more comics to review at once.  These five would be the newest addition to the Wild Webcomic Review.  Not So Wild Reviews follow later, typically in the order in which I originally reviewed the comic, assuming I'm still reading it.  This is how I've done this since the beginning.  Today I make an exception for:

BLADE KITTEN

Before I begin, I also broke another general rule for reading comics because of how I found it.  I found this comic via the Let's Play Archive, and a Let's Play of the game that's based on the comic.  This game was the final nail in the coffin for a major game development studio.  The comic is done by one of the company's founders and creative director.  Watching the LP, I am stunned at how well the game seems to function from a mechanical perspective.  From everything else, I can see why it bombed.  It also meant I HAD to see the comic, I had to read it.  As such, I started this comic with background information I normally wouldn't have had in a dry archive run.  This may or may not color some of my comments.  Let's get on with this.

ART

This is a manga/anime style comic, but not quite as good as it should be.  It's not awful, but I've seen much better comics using this kind of art style.  The issue, I think, is that it leans far too hard on the anime tropes, including, but not limited to, girls in impractical clothing and cat girls.  Specifically the main character who is very much a cat girl, with pink hair and everything.  There's also a trend that rarely does a panel pass without some kind of dialog block interfering.  To be fair, even Errant Story's early strips suffered from this, too much script going in, so this isn't a stumbling block, but it is a sure sign that he's not confident the art can tell the story.  And we'll get to the story later.  It's at least competent, not god awful, but I don't think the overall style and point of the comic is very good.

CHARACTERS

Oh these characters.  The main character is a cat girl, named Kit.  Most of the names are awful.  Alamo, Justice, Kaiser, Gattling etc are some of the WORSE "creative" names I've seen.  And these aren't pets, oh no, these are actual people.  If these were nick names, or code names or something, I might stand them, but no, these are their proper names.  Names aside, that's about all these characters have.  Most are one note personalities, even if they have "a dark past" or some other emotional trauma.  Kit is especially bad as she wisecracks unnecessarily, slips into badass mode at the drop of hat, then goes all teary eyed later.  I've seen characters with LESS character become something greater, so I suppose that with time all of them can get better, but at the moment they're just glorified tropes running around with cat ears.  The worse part?  Dialog dumps worth of character backstory.  Yeah, way to make me care.

STORY

Disjointed.  Incomplete.  I've read comics before where it felt like it was missing whole strips.  I never felt that in Blade Kitten, instead I felt I was missing entire PLOTLINES.  I don't mind mystery in my comics, and there are a couple moments throughout that actually almost worked.  But the mystery here was how vaugue could the artist be for any given story point.  We aren't given any reference points for things.  Alamo, at one point, turns out to be a robot, but there is never any HINT at what was going on, nothing odd to question her nature.  Why?  Because there's no time to learn anything.  She's maybe in a total of 6 pages before ANYTHING is questioned, and it has to be forced because when the non-robot version is revealed, there's no connection there.  Other times the overly dense strips feel like they could have told so much more if they were stretched to 3 or 4 pages.  In the end little is learned about the world, little is shown about the characters and their backstory (shown, not TOLD), and there's no investment in the story as a whole because the mystery and suspense of the tale is drown out by poor pacing and the fact that it feels more like the Cliff notes version of a comic.

OVERALL

I will forever hold that the worst comic I've ever read is the old EarthBeta (which you can't see any more, praise on to any deity that did that), so no, this isn't the worst comic ever.  It is, however, by no means good.  The art direction is annoying, the characters are one note or so trope filled as to topple over under their own "weight" and it almost feels like the artist is speeding through a story rather than building one.  The sad part?  That game, the one that destroyed the game studio?  It's built the same way.  The story in the game is disjointed and rushed, the characters are one note at best, and the art direction is actually about the same.  It's also canon with the rest of the comic, so there are events that don't make sense without the game, and vice versa.

This is a bad comic.  The only reason to even read it is to complete the understanding of the game and what happened after it.  That said, it is doing something a lot of comics can't do.  Yeah, that's right, it still updates.  Looks like about once a week.  It might get better one day, but I kind of doubt it.

This comic will NOT go on the official list because, well, I broke every rule with it.  Hopefully I'll get another batch of reviews up before the end of the year, or at least for the start of next year.  No promises though.  Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Cat and Girl

Most comics have some sort of theme that unifies the various strips.  Sometimes it's absurdest humor, or action/adventure, or even just really great art.  These themes define the comic and aim it's direction, and at the very least they can be identified by the reader early on.  And then there's:

CAT AND GIRL

I think it's meant to be subversive, honestly.  But not quite.  A commentary on the world, without actually saying anything about the world.  Does that make sense?  Probably not, which is kind of how the comic works.  I read this comic thrice a week, but do I LIKE this comic?  Um, yeah, kind of.  In a weird way.  But let's break it down a bit.

CHARACTERS

They're not really characters.  At best they're designated voice boxes for various things.  They have some personality quirks, I guess, but asking "who is Cat and who is Girl" and I'd be hard pressed to say anything (besides Cat eats paint for some reason).  Some characters are there for the joke, like Bad Decision Dinosaur, who makes and encourages bad decisions.  Saying they have "character" would be wrong.  But then, this isn't a story comic in any sense, so not having character isn't a detriment to the comic at all.  It is about the joke, which I'll get to in a moment.

ART

All comics evolve in their art, but I'm not sure how to really label the evolution here.  From a technical perspective, the art, I suppose, has improved.  The lines are crisper, more defined in the current strips compared to the early strips.  At the same time, the art now feels stiffer, less lifelike and effective.  It's almost as if most of the art is copy and paste, though I'm pretty sure it isn't.  Looking back, the comic feels more alive in the early strips, while it's feels more dead in the later ones.  Though not always.  It's a very confusing comic.

HUMOR

Trying to describe the humor of this comic is difficult.  Let me try by quoting from the about page referring to the artist:

Dorothy Gambrell was born in Illinois, and educated at Illinois College and Union College of Law. She was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895, during which time she became the leader of the free silver movement. Her later years were devoted to the advocacy of fundamentalism, most notably as a prosecutor during the Scopes monkey trial.

Yeah, it's that kind of humor.  Is any of that actually funny?  To some it is, because it's silly, but it's not "ha ha" funny.  It's more "huh" funny.  And that's a lot of this comic, it just kind of makes you go "huh."   Oh, it does have some "ha ha" moments, enough that I do consider it a humor comic, but a lot of it isn't that way.  It's like a weird mix between a daily comic and an editorial comic but without necessarily being topical or timely.

OVERALL

I like this comic, but being able to say why has given me issues.  It's not strictly funny, but it is entertaining.  It offers commentary on life, the universe and everything, but doesn't really say much about them.  The art isn't great, but it's not awful.  It's subversive, but not really.  I somehow manage to enjoy it, and while it's not one of those comics I'm looking forward to reading, I'm not dreading it either.  Decent comic, and if you like the odd humor, you'll love it too.

Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Station V3

My newspaper dilemma has had me looking at the newspaper comics I read and figure out which ones are actually worth reading or not.  It also quickly divided them up into groups:  Story driven comics (9 Chickweed Lane, The Amazing Spiderman), classics (Peanuts, Blondie, Garfield) and random silliness (Pearls Before Swine, Mother Goose and Grimm).  This is kind of similar to how I break up webcomics, including the ones that are just silly for silly's sake.  In other words:

STATION V3

Of all the comics I currently read, Station V3 is the least serious of them all.  Even Cyanide and Happiness hits the serious moment point once in a while.  V3 has NEVER been serious, and likely never will be.  This comic is about being silly and not much else.  So why do I read it?  Because it IS silly.  Compared to the more serious comics I read, it is a breath of fresh air that keeps me going every day.  The

CHARACTERS

All the characters are one note, one dimensional characters, typically with one joke built around them.  Floyd never sees a problem and doesn't want to.  The Chef makes tripe into anything and everything.  The Rumormongers are always spreading rumors (which are almost always true).  And the pirates are always trying to take over, well, everything.

ART

The art is, well, dirt simple.  Simple to the point that many would consider it awful.  Yet the nature of it fits the jokes and characters so well that imagining this comic with any other art is damn near impossible.  It isn't high art, at all, but it isn't forgettable.

STORY

Story?  Well, I guess there's an ongoing story, which basically revolves around "wouldn't be funny if. . ."  There's no beginning or ending to many of these stories, they just keep going until from one joke into the next.  Whether it's wondering what the Monolith has planned (it doesn't have anything planned) or why Floyd is now an eel (no idea), it just kind of floats along.  Knowing what came before isn't necessary, but sometimes puts jokes into perspective.  Sometimes.

HUMOR

Have I mentioned it's silly?  It is.  The jokes range from simple puns to sight gags.  The jokes repeat themselves after a time, of course (Rumormonger rumors being true in a weird way gets a little old), but they're never overused.  Light, simple, and worth a chuckle, especially have a string of comics with darkly serious tones or themes.  There are other comics like it (Bug for example), but there's a sense of random sameness that runs through each joke.  The joke's setup and punchline are usually easy to figure out, but WHEN said joke is going to show up in the current "story" or which character sets it involves kind of varies a lot.

OVERALL

All that basically translates to:  I don't know why I like it, but I do.  Other comics have much better art.  Other comics have better stories.  Other comics have better characters.  Other comics have better jokes.  Station V3 isn't a great comic, by any stretch.  One might even argue it's not really even a "good" comic.  It is, however, a fun comic.  A simple strip that really would be at home in the local paper, and perhaps that's what keeps me coming back.  I love the funny pages in my newspaper, and Station V3 is probably the most newspaper comic of any webcomic I read.  I find that funny as many webcomics, like Sinfest or Sluggy Freelance, started the same way, and backed away from the newspaper style as they grew.  Station V3 stuck with it, and the result is a comic that provides the kind of variety I need compared to the others.

Well, enough of that.  Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: The Whiteboard

Several years ago, before I moved to this empty region of New York state, I used to play a bit of Airsoft, which is basically people using pumped up bb guns that look like real weapons.  It's fun, if a touch painful.  Typically, these matches would be played on the same fields as paintball, though I never played paintball itself.  The two are, from what I understand, very similar.  Which might explain the fun I have with. . .

THE WHITEBOARD

This is a comic built around a paintball shop owned by Doc, a genius who happens to be a polar bear.  The jokes typically around his more wild creations, the comings and going of the people who shop, hang out or work in the shop, and playing paintball.  It's very much a humor comic, with little in terms of story or character development.  That's not a downside, I should note, the comic does just fine.

CHARACTERS

There isn't much to say about characters, as they are generally pretty one note.  They don't act ENTIRELY as one dimensional characters though, which is good because the jokes would probably get old after a while.  They do fit obvious roles, of course, and most characters can be identified by sight if nothing else.  Reading this comic for characters, though, is doing it wrong.

ART

This is where some people will be turned off, as the comic would be considered "furry."  As in, the main cast is all humanized animals.  Doc is a polar bear, after all.  There are "humans" floating around, but they are little more than complex stick figures, typically in the form of Doc's customers.  The rest, are all animals, and that turns a lot of people off because of some weird internet thing.  I find it funny since Mickey MOUSE and Bugs BUNNY have been around long before the internet, and no one has the problem with them, so yeah.  The art, however, is very nice, clean black and white art that conveys quite a bit of information and is well done.

STORY

No point talking about this here too much, but there are story lines, kind of a light adventure comic style.  Nothing too great, of course, aside from the episode where they fought zombies (I don't get it either, actually), but it's there.  Right now there's a short bit dealing with learning to play in a paintball tournament, it's kind of interesting, but also played for a few laughs without being too silly.

HUMOR

The jokes are almost entirely wrapped around paintball, the lingo, and the madness that is Doc's creations.  Which are usually nuclear powered paintball guns.  I should note they don't need nuclear power for paintball games.  Yeah.  Things have gotten to the point of ridiculousness.  The pizza teleporter was at one point the most out there creation, now there is a hidden base, mechs and other wild things.  The rest of the jokes are much smaller jokes based on the idiosyncrasies of the cast.  It's not really anything special in the long run, but it's also good in the the small does (3 or 4 panels) that it works.

OVERALL

The Whiteboard started on just that, a whiteboard, but it's become a good, solid comic over the years.  There's nothing particularly "great" about it, but nothing bad either.  It's funny and entertaining and worth the read.  While other comics are much better, I will continue reading this comic for a long time to come.

Review: Friends With Boys

I've been holding off reading Friends With Boys mostly because of laziness.  Well, I have to get to it because the comic has gone to print on the 6th of March, so it won't be available as a pure webcomic after that date.  At the time of this writing, it's the 2nd of March, so I can read the whole thing.  After the 6th, you'll only get the first 16 or so pages and will have to buy the comic to read the rest.  There's only one problem with that:  Those 16 pages lie about what the comic is about.  Mostly.

Lie may be to strong a word.  It sets up two plots that seem to be the plot of the comic.  It seems to be a high school comic (of which there are so many the stars weep at their numbers) at first, then introduces a supernatural/mystery story at the end of those first 16 pages.  By the time the 206 page run is complete, neither of these plots are fully resolved, and what resolution they are given is very limited.  No the real plot of the story is something different, but before I get to that, let's talk about the rest of the comic.

The art is good.  Very good black and white, in fact, and definitely some of the best work Faith Erin Hicks has done and very much in her style.  Characters are distinctive, easy to identify, even if I did forget the names of the twins (for story reasons, however, you CAN tell them apart).  The backgrounds, especially the setting scenes featuring buildings and locations.  I really liked the school maps that show up, as they are both show off various scenes of high school life, while also showing hand drawn circles and marks that give some insight into Maggie's character.

Speaking of characters, I thought they were really well done.   There's a sense of realism with each one that is hard to get in a lot of comics.  They have insecurities, hobbies, habits and personalties.  Siblings act like siblings, friends like friends, high school jerks act like high school jerks.  That said, the jerks have reasons for being jerks (insecurities), and the siblings and family act like they do because of who they are and who they want to be.  In a sense, they're growing up, and in the process they make mistakes, decisions they regret and they look for some sense of absolution for them.

Which brings me back to the story.  As I said, those first 16 pages lie about what the comic is about.  The supernatural thing is essential to the story, but not the center of it.  High school is essential to the events as they play out, but not the center of it.  If anything, the story is rather mundane, which fits the place I am in my mind right now.  Simple incidents are played out that add up, but don't actual do much in the long run anyway.  There's not much of a grand confrontation at the end, mostly because there isn't a villain.  Even the "bully" type character isn't so much a bully in the classic sense.  He's a jerk, yes, but no more so than other people I've known.  That's kind of a relief, as he could easily be turned into one by a lesser story teller.

So what is the story about then?  Well, Faith has actually posted what SHE thinks it's about, and being the author of the story, I can't and won't disagree with her.  That said, I think it's also about family and how they change as we get older.  The relationships remain "the same" but change as time goes on.  That's why I say those early pages lie because you only get the briefest hint that the family isn't quite what it was before and that Maggie is only just starting to notice how different everything has become.  By the end, a new dynamic and understanding is formed and, well, everything is okay.

Now then, is the comic worth paying for?  For me, it would be if I had any extra cash (I am unemployed and poor).  Of course, I'm also a big fan of Faith's work, so I might be a touch biased.  Still, this is a good book and I'd love to have a copy on a shelf, and I don't really collect comics.  Is it worth it for anyone else?  That's harder for me to say.  This isn't a grand adventure or mystery or even a high school drama, so if you're looking for that, go elsewhere.  If you're looking for something smaller, more familiar, and more mundane, it might be worth it.  At the very least read the first 16 pages and see if the tone and pacing appeal to you, just keep in mind that the story presented in those 16 pages isn't the real story, but the real one is just a bit better.

Until next time kiddie.

Not So Wild Review: Schlock Mercenary

Time for yet another not so wild review, and this time I cover a comic I keep calling the best overall webcomic on the internet today:

SCHLOCK MERCENARY

I spoken before on why I think it's the best overall, but I'll say it again.  "Overall" means it does every element of a comic more than well enough to compete with comics that are on the top of their field.  Oh, it's art isn't as good as Dresden Codak, few comics are that good.  It's humor isn't laugh out loud funny as Nobody Scores! can be.  The story isn't nearly as well built as Gunnerkrigg Court or Errant Story.  Yet these comics cannot easily be compared to each other without one looking vastly superior in their personal category.  Schlock can run with all of them and, more importantly, Schlock updates everyday of the week, without fail.  To my knowledge, Schlock has NEVER missed an update.  There are maybe a handful of comics that can lay claim to that title, and to do it as well as Schlock has done is hard to find and pinpoint.

So what makes this comic run with the big boys?  Let's find out.

CHARACTERS

Schlock Mercenary has perhaps one of the largest casts of any comic I read.  And I don't mean just a lot of secondary characters, nearly every one of these characters is nearly a main character and the main characters, especially Schlock himself, are often regulated to secondary roles.

This creates an interesting dynamic as you know who the main characters are (Schlock, Tagon, Kev etc) but they aren't always the focus.  They are usually involved, at least one of them is basically in every story, but the story isn't necessarily about them.  If anything, the comic is more about the cast rather than any small group of main characters.  "Secondary" characters get a lot of panel time, development and backstory, more than many comics even give main cast members.

Even more important though, is that characters die, a lot.  The number of cast members who have shuffled off this mortal coil is difficult to keep track of, though the one that sticks out the most is Tagon himself (he got better after time travel shenanigans).  Still, Tagon is one of the main characters so it's no surprise he came back, but most of the rest have not been so lucky.

ART

What helps keep investment in this rather massive cast of characters is the art.  Each character is different in design, from augmented humans, to the giant elephant men, to Schlock's more unique design.  And I don't just mean the different aliens look different, ALL the characters look different.  They have different profiles which helps pick them out in a crowd.  Being able to figure out who is who, not just from uniforms but from the total package, draws the reader in and allows them to be more invested in the characters.

The backgrounds and other art are just as good.  The Sunday strips, in particular, are usually given far more attention and highlight the skill of the artist.  The designs are also consistent. with ships showing off their "annie" plants almost regardless of type, this is something that a sci fi fan, like myself, notices.  Yet while distinctive and often very good, it is relatively simple.  I suppose this helps production times (again, it's never missed an update) but it isn't going to do more than surpass all by the most well crafted strips.  It's not high art, is what I'm getting at, but it's more than serviceable, and actually very nice.

STORY

The stories in Schlock are all focused on Tagon's Toughs, the mercenary group Schlock belongs to and their adventures.  These scale quite a bit from relatively small contract missions, to galaxy spanning and changing wars.  The focus, though, is almost always on the Toughs, or events that relate directly to them.  The shifting scale of the stories means that you never quite know what's coming next and even when it gets there, it might go somewhere else you didn't expect.

The comic does follow the rule of funny:  If it's funny, absurd, goofy or just plain punny, it happens.  The stories themselves may not necessarily be funny, but nearly every strip has a joke, and if it doesn't, it might just be a set up for one a couple comics later.  From a character left crying in a hallway, unable to move, to awhile later, subverting a small warship to her charms and whims.  It's fun to read, and it keeps you engrossed in what comes next as much as anything.

The comic manages to balance the humor off with more dramatic moments a bit better than, say, Sluggy Freelance has done as of late.  Much of that comes because I don't think Schlock takes itself nearly as seriously, and when the main character is a sentient pile of poo, seriousness is already a distant dream.  The rest comes from knowing when to shift the gear over.  Sluggy is good at it, but I think Schlock is probably better.

OVERALL

Didn't I already say I think it's the best overall comic?  I think I did.  Whenever I think of a great comic, this is amongst the first ones I pick out.  It hits a nice balance of all the things that make a webcomic, from very good art, to very good story telling, and very good characters.  Nothing is excellent, except one thing:  It ALWAYS updates.  With my history of finding comics who die from hiatus or update once a month if not more, I find that a comic I can rely on to update not just when it's scheduled but every single day to be something of a rare and precious flower.  Any short comings the comic has, and it has very few, are made up almost entirely by it's continuous production.  I said early there are maybe a handful that pull it off, and that's just being cautious, I can't actually think of one.  The closest I think is Bob the Angry Flower, and even then there will be double posts if a missed week happens or is planned, and it's history is beyond the recent is spotty at best.  Schlock Mercenary may stand alone in this arena of being not only a very good comic, but one you know will be there the next day, even if you're not.

Well that's enough of that kiddies, next week, I think I'll get back to some newspaper comics.  Until then.

Not So Wild Review: Sinfest

Since I don't want to spend time recreating a post that blogger ate, I guess I'll do a Not So Wild Review.

SINFEST

I read a lot of comics, and as I've said before, I divide them into 4 categories:  Novel, Epic, Adventure and Classic/Daily comics.  Usually I have one or two ideas of what each entails, a prototype for the category.  Sinfest is the prototype for the Classic one.

Once upon a time, Tatsuya Ishida, the comic's artist, wanted to get Sinfest into newspapers.  I think he was rejected about 15 times or so, enough that he said screw it and dedicated himself to the webcomic.  I think that was probably a good thing as the comic syndicates would likely have demanded it be neutered and all the humor of the comic would have been lost.  Sinfest doesn't have an overarching story, but does have character development.  There are no "adventures" but things happen over the course of the comic.

But let's get down to the review portion and start talking about it.

CHARACTERS

The two main characters are Slick and Monique, but even then, the secondary cast has taken a lot larger role in recent years.  For a comic that is built on short story arcs and daily jokes, however, the various characters develop over the life of the comic.  Slick once wanted to be a pimp, but is he really?  Yes, he still has some of those traits, but he's a much better character than he once was.  Monique has done much the same, questioning her own appeal and, very recently, going for a more androgynous look to try do define herself.

Calling the rest the "secondary cast" is hard, though, as they span quite a variety and get reasonable amounts of time.  Li'l E currently is getting a chance to reexamine his life while the Devil seems to be tracking his movements.  Fuchsia, a devil girl, walks out of her job with the Devil to pursue her love for Criminy, a boy who loves books.  Even Squigley, the over eating, pot smoking pig, got a whole storyline where he wondered around as a hobo.  None of these characters are quite what they used to be at the start of the strip (well, God is still a bit of a dick).  At the same time, they are, fundamentally, the same people.  Reading a strip from early on and then fast forwarding to the present isn't as much a jarring change as you would think, though it would leave more than a few questions.

STORY

There are no adventures in this comic really.  There are stories, but they rarely go very far and wide.  Squigley's adventures as a hobo are about as close to a full fledged adventure as the comic ever got, and even then it wasn't quite what would classify as an adventure in comics of the type.  There are no great villains running around (the Devil doesn't count), or quests to undertake.  These are people living relatively normal daily lives, well as normal as having a Reality zone next door, the Devil playing basketball with Jesus, books that attack people and 2010 pulling a Themal and Louise vs Death.

All that sounds exciting, but they are only loosely connected.  The comic isn't about the adventures, it's about the characters and their common foibles.  Sex, drugs, religion, pop culture, popularity and even love all appear in one form or another and the individual vignettes that pepper the strip help to explore them.

HUMOR

Sinfest is, at it's heart, a daily joke comic.  Nearly every strip is punctuated by some kind of joke or twist.  Slapstick is rare, but it happens, and almost never is there a pun involved.  The jokes aren't more about setting up the moment and delivering in the next up.  It's an interesting pacing for this kind of comic as the set up is often as funny as the punchline, if not funnier.  Honestly, as time has gone on, the comic has felt less funny to me, and more insightful than it probably has any right to be.  Laugh out loud moments in Sinfest are kind of rare, but there's almost always a bit of a chuckle to be had.

And when things get too intense, Tatsuya pulls out Percy and Pooch and runs a week worth of strips featuring them.  In a way, they represent a more conventional kind of comic, jokes built around a dog and cat and their interactions with each other, their owner and their limited world.  These moments provide a light moments that are almost always funny, especially from a pet owners perspective.  Kind of like how Garfield USED to be in it's nature.

ART

Comparing the early strips to the later ones really isn't that huge of a leap.  Oh, the earlier strips are cruder, but the basic characters are fairly well defined.  The big difference is shading, as in there's a lot of it in the modern strip as opposed to the early days.  The characters have gotten smoother and more streamlined, and the art has improved, but I wouldn't call the differences radical.  More like a well practiced hand at work.  The art is very good, and stands out even more with the color Sunday strips where Tatsuya gives himself more space to work with.  There are details that aren't detailed, but you can see them well enough.  Once in a while he'll do a calligraphy strip that shows line and form merging from a regular image into a written character (I assume it's Chinese, but I don't know for sure).

OVERALL

Sinfest is one of those comics I've come to expect to just BE there.  And as the comic has evolved from a straight up daily joke comic into what it is now, I find myself enjoying it more and more.  I haven't always felt that way, but even in writing this review I found that I really like this strip much more than even I thought I did.  It's a good comic and one that deserves to be read, long term or short.

Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Bob the Angry Flower

Nice thing about finishing that list last week?  It sorts out what the next comic in the Not So Wild Review is with one simple click.  And that comic is:

BOB THE ANGRY FLOWER

My weekly dose of absurdest humor, Bob has kept me chuckling for nearly 9 years now, and shows no signs of stopping any time soon.  That said, I can't quite review it like the last 3 Not So Wild Reviews.  There is no story element, outside of a short stint known only as Rothgard, and that's fairly recent.  And as for characters, well, there are only 3:

There is Bob, who is an angry flower.  Then Stumpy, who is a bored stump.  And finally Freddie, who is an innocent flying fetus.  Stumpy and Freddie are there to react to whatever weird thing Bob is up to at the moment.  All three do whatever happens to be funniest at the time.

HUMOR

And that's really the point of the comic, whatever happens to be funniest.  Bob's humor is borderline surreal, involving talking punctuation marks, UN mandates and various space aliens.  Why Bob does ANYTHING is the joke, and usually the answer is "because."

Which isn't to say it's always funny.  Like Nobody Scores!, which is based on the same concept, the jokes either hit you in the face like a truck, or miss by a mile.  Bob, however, does it constantly, once a week, every week.  This provides a steady diet of humor that even the funniest comics can't quiet get right.  This once a week scheduling also keeps the comic from going stale too fast.  The final joke of every comic is pretty similar ("just because"), and if it ran daily, or even 3 times a week, I could see myself growing bored of it.  With weekly dose, it keeps it from leaving a bad taste in my mouth for very long, if it ever does create one.

ART

Bob's art is actually really good, considering that the whole point is for a giant flower to do something crazy.  Looking at early work, you can see the basic shapes of the characters easily coming together, but there's a sketchiness to it that indicates it is very early artwork.  A steady progression of development into the current style is easy to see as each strip gets a little be cleaner than the previous one.

Honestly, I would expect nothing less from a comic that's nearly 20 years old at this point.  It's like looking at early Peanuts strips and comparing them to what's being reprinted in papers now.  There is an obvious difference, but it's not so different as to be unidentifiable.

OVERALL

Bob has been a staple of my comic list now for a long time and as long as he keeps making it, I will likely continue to read it.  It's a small, fun dose of zany that keeps me coming back every week.  In a way, it signals the beginning of my weekly updating comic read through, which I usually do Sunday, and in a sense is the front page of my internet funny pages.  It doesn't always get a big laugh out of me, few comics do, but it always gives me a chuckle and prepares me for the rest of my day.  I recommend Bob as a nice break from the massive epic comics and story driven dramas.  And if we're lucky, Bob won't try to open any more cans.  With a tank.

See you next week kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Sea of Insanity

For about 3 years of my young life, I lived in Greece, on the island of Crete specifically.  While I regret my lack of exploration (I was only 11 at the time) of the culture and land today, I did get a healthy appreciation of Greek history and mythology.  So when a comic shows up claiming to have roots in Greek mythology, I sit up and take notice.  That's probably how I found comic 15, Sea of Insanity.

SEA OF INSANITY

So what happened to the Greek gods after they fell out of favor?  They're still around apparently, living and working amongst us, and occasionally causing problems.  Though in general hiding, a few people are let into this world, including Finn, who simply needs a place to live.  There have been other comics that have done this, of course, including Gods and Undergrads, but Sea of Insanity seems to do it better by not going too big.

CHARACTERS

The main human characters are Finn and Gil, our fish out of water characters.  Or fish in the water in Gil's case.  He turns into a fish randomly.  Anyway a fish out of water character is supposed to ask questions and let us get a feel for a story's universe, and they work well here.  Gil works even better as he a psychologist and actually brings a different sort of analysis to the gods and goddess than they normally would get in such a story.  Finn is the main character of the comic, though not the driving force of it.  That said, he is the most grounded of the group, ignoring high minded ideas and treating everyone, even the gods, as just normal people.

On the mythological end of the scale sits Isle and Calliope.  Many of the events in the story center on Isle and all three live in her apartment.  Isle is probably most important and her relationship with Finn is appears to be the main arc of the story.  Calliope acts more as the information board than anything else, but she's been slowly developing a decent character.

There is a hefty list of supporting characters including The Sibyl (an oracle of sorts and her partner, as well as the gods Apollo and Artemis, and more besides.  Apollo plays the roll of antagonist in the comic, but makes few appearances.  The supporting cast enter and exit cleanly, but few get much screen time and thus little development.

ART

The art of Sea of Insanity has always been one of the odd ducks in the bunch.  It's clean pencil, meaning it's been cleaned up, but not inked.  The characters are realistic in design and stature, and the environments rather detailed, but it all feels a bit incomplete. Like the inking would finish it and it would be a regular black and white strip, or it should be rougher and be more like Megatokyo or something.  It's in a weird area that likely would turn off some people.  I'm used to it at this point, and the penciling is so clean it could almost be mistaken for light inks, but it's not the best in the world.  It's also not terrible.

STORY

As I said, the story revolves around Isle, her work, her mind, and her rather strained relationship with Apollo.  And at the same time, there really isn't a main story.  There's no epic tale being told here, just a series of personal relationships that seem to be a story.  Similar in structure to Out There, it runs based on individual events but with no obvious direction.  There are some hints at a larger picture thing going on, but it's hard to pick it out directly.

The personal relationships, though, bring me back and keep me involved.  I want to see what happens to them as the story goes on, and I care about them, but the plot isn't necessary.  If it was more like Out There, where you just have interacting characters, I would still be hooked on it, perhaps more so.  The individual events that drive the comic are rather well done and brief (well, brief for a comic that updates weekly).  They typically focus on a couple of the main characters (or a supporting character if necessary) and try to dig deeper into them as a result.

OVERALL

The comic died for about 2 years at one point, the result of the artist going through some medical hell and became one of the reasons why I insist webcomic artists tell their fans what's going on.  I was surprised when he started updating again, and pleased.  That said, the comic isn't great.  It's pretty good, but nothing exceptional.  I think much of my enjoyment comes from my personal relationship with the mythology it's based on.  It's probably not worth reading for most people, but I do enjoy it and will continue to read it, as long as he doesn't have someone hit his house with a car again (yeah, that happened).

Well, enough of that.  Until next time kiddies.

Not So Wild Review: Errant Story

Back with another Not So Wild Review and this is comic #13.  Which is actually kind of odd, considering Sluggy Freelance was #2.  That means that of the first 13 comics I reviewed, I no longer read 12 of them, for various reasons.  So let's get going.

ERRANT STORY

My first encounter with the work of Micheal Poe came from his previous work, Exploitation Now!  I don't even remember how I came across that comic, but I do know that it's run had more or less ended by the time I started reading the archives.  Upon completing it, the ad came up directing people to follow his new comic, Errant Story.  The comic was, at the time, about 2 months old, and I never stopped reading it.  In fact, it remains the ONLY comic I have ever donated money to, not even Sluggy earns that honor.  So what's so great about it?  Let's break it down.

CHARACTERS

Whenever I read Errant Story, the main cast kind of reminds me of an RPG party, and that's probably on purpose.  Each has a specialty and knowledge the others don't and when they get into a fight (which doesn't happen that often) they know their roles and set goals on the fly.  They're also completely independent in thoughts and actions from each other.  I think often when characters are built for a story, eventually they all come to share the same personality, but not this cast.  Yes, they have the same goals, but they voice their concerns and act as one would expect them to despite all this time.

I guess the important thing is that they act in character without being stupid about it.  When it's smart not to say something smart assed, they usually don't.  But when it's time to, they aren't afraid to do so, at all.  The downside is that we really don't seem to get a lot of time with them.  It's weird, but there is so much going on that seeing the main characters interact with each other is a little rare, they're more often playing off the situation rather than each other.  When they do interact, it's great and tells us a lot about them, but it's usually cut short by the most recent disaster.

Here's my thing, after 7 years of reading this comic, I can't remember all the main characters names.  I know who they are, give me a picture and I would know what they've done, but I don't know their names, little of their backstory and what they're doing at the moment.  Maybe it's the fact that I read so damn many comics and I just simply don't have the memory space for it, or maybe it's how frequently it updates, but the names escape me.  Weird, isn't it?

ART

The art of Errant Story is some of the most detailed black and white artwork you will find on the internet, especially for a comic that updates twice a week (at one point it was THREE times a week, which is even more potent).  Character designs are wonderful, detailed, and it's usually very easy to tell characters apart.  Usually.  The detail of the world is incredible and likely unmatched by anything I've ever read.

It is better than when it started, of course, you don't draw a comic for this long and not improve, but most of it seems to come more in the form of shading and realism than anything else.  The line work has been universally excellent and while there have been improvements it's not such a completely different comic as some others.

STORY

This is an epic fantasy tale, a grand one involving gods, people with the best of intentions and whole governments going nuts.  It has a deep backstory, with a world history running the entire time, but only recently has this really come to light through the off day updates.  I think this is a good thing as dumping this kind of filler description on a young comic would have drowned it pretty quickly, but as the story is nearing it's close, it's nice to finally fit the pieces of the tale into it's historical perspective.  Kind of a nice touch.

The story's basis is that Meji, a half elf with poor grades, has decided for a final project to obtain ultimate power and enslave the world!  So she sets off and runs into various characters including profession assassin Jon, elf ranger Sarine, fellow half elf Ian and Jon's time ninja sister Sara.  They then go play with gods and things go to hell in a handbasket, to say the least.

It's a well told story spanning a good chunk of the world and history.  There's a LOT going on, but it's focused enough to be centered on the few important characters to not let it go spinning out of the control. There are some areas where what's going on is hard to follow, but those are mostly early on and eventually get ironed out.

I do want to compare it to the end of Exploitation Now! which was a bit of a mess at the end.  It went wild and over the top to the point that it was utter madness.  Errant Story doesn't suffer from this as it was actually planned out to begin with, and while I'm sure there have been changes since the comic began, it isn't utterly random and chaotic.  Well, chaotic in terms story lines.

OVERALL

Errant Story is a great comic, and while it has a few flaws, one would be hard pressed to find one that's better that updates as frequently and with such quality.  It's one of the first comics I recommend when asked, and if you're not reading it, you must not like fantasy comics or something.

I've basically been reading this comic since nearly the beginning, and I know I'll read it through the end and possibly into it's eventual and possible sequel.  So go read it already!

A Not-So-Wild Review: Sluggy Freelance

Not so wild?  What is this about?  Well, since eventually I will run out of my old wild reviews, I think it's time to got a bit more in depth with some of these comics.  You know, actually REVIEW them for a change.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Anyway, I'm only going to do the ones I actively read, so this list will be much shorter.  And I'm going in order so the first comic is:

SLUGGY FREELANCE

Sluggy was the first true webcomic I started reading, and I never stopped.  I like this comic, I like it a lot.  I like it so much that it is the last comic I read every day, and has been since I finished my 2 week archive dive (2 weeks because of a 56k modem).  So what makes it so good to me?  Well, let me try to relate it.

CHARACTERS

I suppose it's cliche to say that a good comic has good characters, but I'm not afraid of cliches.  Sluggy has some very well done characters.  The core characters of Torg and Riff play off well each other and grew from their more archetypal origins into reasonably complex yet still fun characters.  Perhaps only secondary comes the female stars of the comic, Zoey and Gwynn who have stories at least as complex as the guys.  And all this from a basic premise that simply threw them together for giggles.

Past them come the various secondary characters from Bun Bun the far to violent rabbit to Oasis the undying.  The cast is so large, in fact, that it's almost impossible to keep track of them all, their comings and going and their own stories.  While they are not, of course, as followed or detailed as the main cast, they are at least recognizable and can add a great deal to the story.

But don't think they started this way.  Sluggy is a 13 YEAR old comic, and much of this development came over these long years.  Many characters have fallen by the wayside in that time, and many more were resurrected in much more potent forms as the years went by.  Such is the long development of the comic.  Despite this, the characters always seem to maintain more than a hint of Sluggy's origins as a gag a day strip.

STORY

This is a funny comic.  It was born as one and continues to be one, despite the more serious dramatic moments.  Pete Abrams is one of the few artists I've seen that can so perfectly balance the hilarious and dramatic within the confines of a single storyline, or even a single strip in many cases.  Even as the comic explores the depths of personal depression, the destruction of entire worlds, or just the death of a single character, there's always a joke lurking nearby.

The stories aren't super wonderful, but just pretty damn good, and have gotten better as time has gone on.  The early ones were just set ups for a string of jokes (or worse, puns!) to fill out strips.  Later they did get deeper and more meaningful, delving into the characters.  Generally, they've been well done and actually damn good.  The issues start building up as the comic generates more and more backstory, and again, keeping track of past characters and plots can be nearly overwhelming.

Which isn't to say their haven't been slip ups.  Oceans Unmoving is a storyline that failed as a Sluggy story.  Not because it was a bad story, it was actually pretty good, but it wasn't Sluggy Freelance.  It was a failure because it didn't include any of the regular cast (outside of Bun Bun and Bun Bun, which you'll have to read to understand) and contained a more fantastic premise than had been attempted before, but mostly it relied on building a new group of characters and readers felt lost without Torg or Riff running around.

To his credit, Abrams picked up and this and ended the story as soon as possible and drew the readers back with the old cast in new clothes and new adventures.  I think had Oceans Unmoving been established as a separate comic from Sluggy Freelance itself, it would still be going on today, but as a part of Sluggy Freelance, it just didn't work.

ART

A lot of comics start with crappy are and get better as time goes on, and Sluggy is no exception.  That said, even the early strips aren't that bad, especially for a web comic.  The characters were identifiable and well proportioned, which is odd praise but considering other comics at similar stages, it's actually high praise.

Yet the art didn't really come into it's own until probably the story Fire and Rain, which also happened to be around the time the comic broke away from the old newspaper comic conventions when it came to layout and schedule.  Today the art is still comic art, but much more detailed and full.  Strips no longer stick to a 3 or 4 panels, but get as large as they need to be to convey the story, show the art, or tell the joke.

I really rather enjoy the art, but it's not the best art I've seen for a comic.  It is more than serviceable though, adding that extra layer of realism most comics need to feel great.

OVERALL


Have I mentioned I really like Sluggy Freelance?  Because I do, and it stands out to me as one of the better comics on the net today.  Which isn't to say it's the best.  There are more than frequent moments when the comic falls to the filler gods or updates are delayed for random reasons (not that they aren't good reasons, they're just all over the map).  The stories sometimes don't quite hit their marks and again, the sheer size of the backstory is bound to bury even the die hard fans.

But when Sluggy gets it right, it gets it VERY right.  Other comics might have better art and stories, but Sluggy is a force of greatness at that moment that is hard to beat.  It would be nicer if the updates were a bit more steady though.  I say go read it, but get ready for a long read.

Well, that's the first long review.  Like it?  I hope so, because I'll be doing more in the future.  Until next week kiddies.