Retrospective: It Hurts!

Yeah, I forgot about the Retrospective on this one.  To be fair, I was in the middle of a massive posting arc and contemplating the end of the blog at the same time.  So missing the end of It Hurts! isn't that big of a surprise.

Not that I really have much to say on it really.  I mean, I did like it enough.  My original review had the same issues, I don't know HOW to talk about it besides "it's okay."

It's vulgar, it's stupid, it does odd things, goes odd places.  It tells jokes that you need to read a second time to catch, while others are so obvious you don't eve need to read them.

The story was a weird thing.  It flowed pretty logically, which is weird since it went from middle school, to the apocalypse, to space, to hell, to heaven, to space and then back to the beginning.  Yeah, it did ALL that while making the main characters a cyborg, a zombie, a part of some supreme spirit and a demon.  Weird things, and the ending was, well, trying to say something.

The comic loved to drum up hope for the future, then squash it like a bug on a windshield.  The ending looks to do the same thing, except that DOES give that hope.  After pointing out how shit of a thing it really was that the only way to do it was to UNDO everything (um, kind of, more like remake).

I liked the comic, but I can see where someone else might not put up with it.  It's TOO vulgar sometimes, and TOO stupid other times.  There's an unevenness there that carries all the way to the end.  I guess if you can stand it through the beginning of the apocalypse arc, you'll probably enjoy it, but if you can't, don't bother, it doesn't change much.

Next time, my great round up.  Long enough I had to put it off a week.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: What Birds Know

I've been putting this off trying to finish up the Masterpiece, but it's time to get to it.

What Birds Know wrapped up in August and I only just went back and read through it again.  It's through this that I came to really appreciate it far more than I did on my first read through.

This is ONE story, start to finish, and really needs to be read that way.  Subtle hints and topics lose their meaning over the 12 year publishing span of the comic and I found myself realizing the importance of scenes at the end only after rereading the entire comic.

There is certainly a tragic nature to the comic, and as each of the main characters are given a bit of their backstory it reinforces the finale of the comic that much more.

Ultimately  Emelie Friberg and Mattias Thorelli manage to create believable characters with proper motivations for the actions that build up as the comic goes on.  There's a lot of emotion in this comic and while the story itself is strong, the characters hold it all together.

Artwise, they mention in their final blog post about doing some touch ups for a future published edition and while I suppose that's all well and good, I don't think it's necessary.  After reading through it again I think it managed to have a rather consistent art style and never really started on a bad foot.  Of course they only do say "touch ups" so maybe I'm just not as observant as they are (creators are their own worst critics I have found).

What I'm trying to say is that this is a good comic.  Definitely worth the time to read through and while I think it was probably hurt by the posting timeframe, now that it is complete the full story can and should be experienced.  I highly recommend it and look forward to the next project the pair get to, whenever it happens to be.

Next time, something else I've been meaning to talk about.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

EDIT:  Okay, I'm dumb, I forgot to actually schedule this to be posted.  Only didn't notice until now.  BAH!

Well, I was going to talk about the blog, but wouldn't you know it, Dr. McNinja ended right as I nominated it for Best Overall Comic.

I knew it was ending when I made those nominations, of course.  And by the time the articles were going up, I knew it would end the week of the awards.  Still didn't award it, but not because it failed to win, but mostly because the actual winner did so much more.

I figured 2016 to be the year of all the comics ending, with Dr. McNinja going first, but instead it hung on into the new year.  And it was a great final story.

Much can be said about the run of McNinja, from it's humble beginnings as a joke to a time traveling epic that went from the moon to the Radical Lands, featuring characters from all over the map, and nearly all are memorable.  It's only in the last chapter, though, did all of them come together to make one hell of an ending for such a great comic.

Not that it was always great all the time.  King Radical, despite being the main villain of the comic, got old after a while, and only by revealing who he really was did the comic finally find a good use for him.  And no, I don't mean him being from the Radical Lands.  But the duds were often out shined by the fun and awesome of the comic.  For every repeated King Radical story, there was one where McNinja surfed on an robotic Dracula back into the Earth's atmosphere.

The comic tried to be outrageous, and yet kept things reasonably grounded.  You could believe these things could happen, ALMOST, which is the best part.

The ending, as I said, was perfect.  King Radical died in the most radical way possible.  Dracula finally met his end, thanks to hacking, and Dr. McNinja retired from the ninja life to be just a doctor, with his new name being the perfect choice given the history of the comic.

It'll be hard to fill the space on the list where Dr. McNinja enjoyed his adventures.  I still find myself reflexively visiting the site, even though I know it's over.  Christopher Hastings, the creator, artist and writer and moved on to print comics, including Gwenpool and Adventure Time, and I'm sure his time with the irish ninja who happens to be a doctor helped him immensely to get those jobs.  I wish him the best of luck in the future and I might even try to read some of his books if I get the time.

And money.  Stupid video card is dying.  Bleh.  Anyway, until next time kiddies.

Retrospective: Sorcery 101

Look a post!  That isn't on the first friday of the month.  What sorcery is this?  Well, about that. . .

Sorcery 101 ended last week and I felt I needed to write this up as soon as I could because I have a few things to say about it.

Let me start off by saying it isn't a bad comic, but there was something missing.  Even back in my reposting of the original review (which added a current comments) I noticed I wasn't quite getting into it that much and at the time I couldn't understand why.  I do now because in ending, it made it all the more obvious.

It does have a rich and involved world.  There's lots of characters, interactions, magic, werewolves, vampires, angels, demons, monsters, bureaucracy and all that detailed out and played with to one extent or another.  There's a lot of good characters, their motivations and goals well spelled out, and some with eternal mysteries (what hell is up with Seth anyway?).  It's got a lot going for it and I think when I started reading it I expected it to go somewhere grand.

It never did.

The ending spelled it out because, well, it just kind of happened.  There was no grand battle, or plot to foil.  There was no mystery revealed or legend confronted.  There was some minor fighting, a car crash and a death, but nothing else.  And then the comic is over.

To an extent, I suspect that this is kind of on purpose, it was just supposed to be the daily lives of these people in this strange world.  Urban fantasy without the world destroying plots or heroics.  Just everyday living.  And that's fine, it did it pretty well, but constantly it was being driven as if there WAS more going on, hints and tips abound, mysteries running through, plot threads seemed to be drawing out.  Yet nothing was done with it, and while some ends were kind of resolved, for the most part if the last chapter happened after the first, I don't think anyone would have noticed.

I think the best way to put it is that Sorcery 101 feels more like the prologue to another story.  It's setting up the world, the characters, the major players and their motivations, and in the NEXT comic, that's when the interesting stuff happens.  But there is no next comic, this is it.  And considering it's been going for 11 years, at this point next comic was never going to happen.

Again, it's not BAD because of that, it's just not fulfilling.  The only bit of the ending that was interesting is the reflection of the first and last page of the comic.  Beyond that I think this is a comic I will just remember as one I used to read, and nothing more.

Next time, which should be next week, should see the next part of The Successor.  Until then kiddies.  Oh and happy Halloween.

Retrospective: Skullkickers

Skullkickers' ending kind of took me off guard.  I mean, it made sense given all the zaniness that was happening in the last few pages, but I wasn't expecting it to END.

It also brings me with a dilemma because, well, there isn't that much to really retrospect about when it comes to the comic.  It's not bad, far from it, it's just very, um, light.  There's not much depth here.

There's nothing wrong with that, honestly.  For every deep and meaningful comic like Between Failures, there needs to be something less invested around.  A popcorn comic, for lack of a better term.  And to that end, Skullkickers was an amazing success.  It was fun to read, and reminded me of a certain someone's DnD campaign. . .

There was some character development there, of course.  Eventually the two main characters (Shorty and Baldy) got proper names, and even backstories, which were interesting, but not earthshattering.  They bounced from location to location, picking fights and busting heads.  It was fun watching what trouble they would get into, but that's about it.

Honestly the whole Thool storyline got, um, old.  I was just waiting for them to kick his butt, and that was satisfying in the end, even if they didn't really "beat" him.  The silliness of the whole thing at the end just made it hard to follow, so I guess ending was about the only thing left to do.  Hell, they even fired the narrator.

That said, losing it from my read list, while it will make my T-Th-S category a little slimmer, isn't going to really impact me that much.  I wasn't in dire need for this comic, but it was a pleasant diversion and one that while it would be nice to still have  It isn't going to ruin my week or anything.  Nothing wrong with it, fun in it's own way and worth reading, even if it was only for a relatively short time.

Until next time kiddies.

Retrospective: Punch an' Pie

Last week, Punch an' Pie came to an end.  Yes, it's another entry in this the year of Retrospectives.  And oddly another comic that I've been following pretty much from the beginning.

It also established my general review guideline:  no review until after 1 year or 100 strips.  Because I stared reading it less than 2 weeks after it started, and no, I didn't read Queen of Wands until two years later, so that wasn't a jumping off point for me.  While it worked out, Punch an' Pie proved to be pretty damn good, it could have easily backfired.  So I established the rule some time afterwards, since by then I realized how dumb it was of me to have done that.

Still, the comic did turn out to be quite good, so I guess I didn't screw up that badly.  The result is a comic I can't really straight up call unique, but am actually at a loss to find anything that's quite like it.  I guess Between Failures fits best, but for every point of comparison between the two, there are several that counter it.  Similar enough though, even to the point that the most important moment in the comic is in color, but then it goes back to black and white after that.

It's not a comic about plots as much as it's about characters, mostly Heather and Angela, but also the people around them and their interactions.  There are storylines, I guess, but they're not really divided up into anything distinct.  There are no chapters, no parts, the only markers are the shift from Angela to Heather and back, which makes up the structure of the entire comic.

That structure starts with Angela and Heather in a very loving relationship, then they break up and don't see each other again, directly, until the end of the comic.  Instead the comic follows each of them, jumping back and forth, as they go about their lives.  They never really forget each other, but they never seek the other out.  When they split, I remember thinking that they'll be back together soon enough, but it never happened, and that was intentional.

While Heather and Angela don't directly interact for the length of the comic, the people they meet throughout do cross from one to the other.  Karen, Heather's coworker at the zoo, eventually gets a job at Angela's toy store.  Lucy, who worked with Angela at the bookstore coffee shop, fosters a relationship with Heather (one that is both good and bad for her).  It's interesting to watch all this happen, and the comic does well with it.

I could see the comic going on longer, but the last few years have, um, not been kind.  The comic was a partner strip, one did the writing and the other the drawing, and the writer kind of ran out of time to do it.  Updates extended for months at one point, which is terrible for a comic that started life as a 3 day a week strip.  In the end, the artist took over the final scripting, and finished the comic up.  The ending is satisfying and the fitting for the comic.

Punch an' Pie (which I'm pretty sure I misspelled repeatedly in the past, ah well) is probably one of the better comics I've read and I recommend it highly.  I even went back and reread the whole thing just for this retrospective and found it was just as good throughout it's run as I remember.  While I am sad to see it go, along with so many others, the time had come and I'm glad I had a chance to read it from beginning to end.

Next time, probably Touching Base as I spent all week rereading Punch an' Pie rather than more Errant Story.  Whoops. . .  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Leisuretown

When I started thinking of the Retrospective on Perchance to Dream, I started thinking about other comics I'd like to go back to.  Retrospectives tend to be comics that recently ended, but expanding it out and covering older strips seems like a good idea, and would separate them away from the Not-So-Wild Reviews that are more for active comics.

And the first comic I thought of for this treatment, after Perchance to Dream, was Leisuretown.

Much of it is the fact that I have, until this day, haven't found anything quite like Leisuretown.  I suppose Cat and Girl kind of comes close, but it's only kind of a glimpse that is Leisuretown.  It feels completely unique, and it's probably one of my favorite comics of all time.

The uniqueness starts with the art.  It's a photocomic, which isn't strictly rare, but uncommon enough to make note of, but it's more than that.  It's entirely made up of those gumby like rubber toys with the holes behind every joint that bends every which way.  ALL of the characters are these, and there is quite a variety.  Yes, it will repeat them over the course of the various stories, but they always seem different.  It really is a testament to the artist's skill that emotion and movement can be show with such strangely static figures.

But static figures on a static background would just be pretty good, Leisuretown goes one step more.  They are photoshopped into complex, real world scenes.  Layered images that often feature multiple of the same character puttering about, sound effects that help push the idea of movement and more than a few of the props makes the entire thing almost unbelievable.  It's hard to remember that this is just a photo comic, and an example of an artist's hard work pushing something so simple beyond what most others would.  And not just for one image per page, but several, and for hundreds of pages.

All that hard work produces a, um, interesting comic.  It looks like it should be a humor comic.  The whimsical character designs, the visualized sound effects and the exaggerated movements all point in that direction.  There's even a strain of, well, crass humor, focusing on the words and phrases that would make George Carlin proud.  It's very similar to It Hurts! in that way, but it's not sincere about it.  In fact, most of the time the joke is that the person using this language is, well, an idiot.  Or at the very least, overestimates their worth.  It's more like it's making fun of the people who use this kind of crass humor to try to be funny, or shock, or whatever.  It's funny because they aren't and don't quite know it.

It's also part of the many themes of the comic that the various stories and shorts play with.  Often main characters find themselves with few prospects for the future, often turning to crime, drugs, violence and suicide to ease the pain.  It's dark in that sense, but there's almost always an odd hint of hope in their lives.  Not always, of course, there are some stories that don't quite fit the mold, but they work well in their own ways.  Much of the comic is more like the "best rants" one reads, at least as one reviewer put it.  There is an art form to such amazing rants, and my formative internet years were exposed to it regularly, which is probably why I enjoy it so.

In the end, I recommend it because I do so enjoy it and consider it great, but I know it's not quite for everyone.  If you think you can handle the more rantish nature of the comic and the pre-facebook days of the internet, I do have a couple things to comment on.  One:  The comic was designed for back when 640x480 was still considered standard resolution, so the images might be a bit small, especially with that frame around them (you can open them in a new window without the frame).  Two:  Scroll to the bottom of the list of stories, down to the giraffe hanging itself, and start from the bottom up.  Not because QA Confidential isn't the best story, it is, but because it is the best story and the rest of the comic will feel a bit of a let down if you start there.  Start at the bottom and work your way up.  If you can get through the essays, then you should be able to stand the rest of it, and you're in for a treat.

One last thing.  Last week, I mentioned that this was an "other project," well it is, as the creator of Leisuretown is one of the forces behind Jerkcity's creation and continuance.  I'm amazed that comic is still updating, but seriously, no reason to go back, read one Jerkcity strip, and you've seen most of them.

Next time, um, not sure.  We'll see.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Perchance to Dream

Eight years ago.  That was when I read this comic.  Seems like a lifetime and I'm surprised it's still up, but that's a good thing, because this is one of the better comics I've ever read.

I wrote back in my original review that I wanted to rewrite Perchance to Dream.  It struck something with me and I really remembered it reading through Namesake, thus why I did that article last week.  My first thought, after conceiving of that article, was that maybe I should re-read it.  I braced myself because 8 years is a long time, and despite my memory, I kind of figured it would be disappointed in it.  I discovered not only otherwise, the comic is still pretty good, but also that I didn't want to rewrite it as much anymore.

Why I wanted to rewrite it is still clear, I want MORE.  More to the story, more to the attempt to save the world from imminent collapse.  I wanted to learn more about the world as it moved past the bounds of the fairy tales they were based on, and see Rin become even more of her own person.  I want to know what Wonderland under the iron fist of Queen Alice is like, or watch the pirate town grow, prosper and collapse.  I want to know all these things.

At the same time, though, I understand why there isn't any more.  Time begins flowing strangely almost from the get go.  It's outright stated that no location is more than 5 minutes from the next, but I suspect that it only applies to the traveler.  So when Rin gets lost leaving Wonderland (it's not quite clear in the comic, but defined in the commentary), a GREAT deal of time goes by, long enough for the pirates to build a town and Wendy and Peter to have a child.  It also means that the world takes far longer to collapse than it seems.  But everything is from Rin's point of view, so the world collapses in 3 days to her.

That time skipping, and the world in general, makes since as this is a dream world.  But it is also a tragic story as it all starts when a girl dies.  It's not quite stated why she's dying, though it's hinted that she might have committed suicide.  Or perhaps it was merely an accident, again, unclear.  But in death, Catherine creates a dream world to inhabit based on her favorite books, The Jungle Book, Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.

Not the real ones, her versions of them.  So the characters aren't quite right, the worlds aren't quite true, and some pieces are missing (especially Mowgii from the Jungle Book).  I think they're more based on the Disney versions as well, which means it's just a bit further from the original stories.  From these roots, though, new characters grow.  Smee isn't quite the same, changing quickly as Catherine's influence leaves the world, to the point that he's different the moment we meet him.  All the characters are different, changing quickly as the girl dies and the world falls apart.

The twist on those worlds is the real draw to me, and watching the various characters change and grow into their changed worlds is where the entertainment lies.  It's the reason I want more, and I could easily see this comic lasting a very long time, rather than the scant 3 years.  Even at the end, with the survivors of Catherine's world escaping into the unknown, there is more story to tell.  Maybe I could work on a sequel instead of a straight up rewrite.

That said, I didn't say it in my original review, but there are two other comics here.  The second is a short comic called "Single Vampire" which has less story than the other two, or much of a story at all.  Reminds me a bit of some of the odder comics on Kiwi's By Beat.  Then there's "The Girl with the Golden Hair" which is a quasi-fairy tale, but doesn't finish with the moral of the story, it just stops.  And with it, the comic as a whole.  Both of the last two stories are interesting, but don't really compare to Perchance to Dream itself.

I find I respect the way the story flows in the comic more now than I probably did when I first read it.  I think the pacing is pretty good, there's just enough information to make one thirsty for more, without being strictly frustrated by it (maybe a little frustrated occasionally) and it hits the right emotional notes throughout.  The final sequence is probably the best part as Cathrine's memories, which have taken a physical, if shadowy form, save the last of her creations, but are lost in doing so.  It's fitting.  I do wonder what the author and artist (two people) are doing nowadays, if they have another comic, if they even REMEMBER this comic.  I could do some googling, but I think I'll just enjoy this comic for as long as I can.

Next week maybe a Not-So-Wild Review of a comic that I need to parse out a bit.  Maybe.  We'll see.  Until next time kiddies.

Retrospective: Girls With Slingshots

Another comic ends, and I am sad to see it go.  At the same time, it's not one of the stars of my list.

I did and do enjoy Girls With Slingshots, but not to the great extent as I do say, Sluggy Freelance or Schlock Mercenary.  Despite reading the whole thing, and even rereading parts of it for this, I really didn't remember it as well as I did those two.

I think the point is that it wasn't a beloved comic.  Which does NOT mean I didn't like it, I wouldn't still be reading it if I didn't like it.  I like it a lot in fact, but it didn't stick in my mind as well.  I suspect that some of it was that the stories weren't as clear cut and divided as in the more adventure style comics I read.  They flowed together like life in a way.

There's a good term for it, it's a life comic.  It shows people living rather ordinary lives, ghost cats and talking cacti aside.  I suppose that was originally why I compared it to Questionable Content back in my original review, though I don't think QC ever really stuck with the idea, I don't read QC after all.  A better comparison would be Punch 'n Pie, which does pretty much the same thing, showing the various characters interacting and just plain living.

The result is a series of relationships, which is what I remember more than anything else.  They often felt natural without being overbearing, and I suspect Danielle likes happy endings because most of the couples end up being happy.  I like them too, so I really enjoy them as well.

I could go over them all, nearly did, but really it's worth reading the comic to see them all.  The different characters, how they relate to each other, how they get along, is part of the reason the comic works so well.  They don't go on grand adventures through space and time, they go to the bar and have a few drinks.  Then deal with the ghost cat and the talking cactus.

Live, relationships, and a bit of humor added up to a pretty damn good comic that I've been struggling all week to write a damn retrospective of.  Just go read it, especially as it is going into rerun mode, with the early, black and white strips being fully colored to go along with the rest of the comic.  The art of the early strips is oddly detailed and gets less so, but strangely better, as time goes on, but it won't hurt your eyes or anything.

And Danielle has made it clear this isn't over.  Oh, Girls With Slingshots is over, but the story and lives of her characters is going to continue at some point.  I'll be waiting for it.  In the meantime, it will remain on the read list while it goes through it's rerun, I'm curious what commentary she has to say about it.

Next week, um, we'll see.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Gunshow

When I decided to do this Retrospective, I didn't really think about it much.  After all, the comic was coming to an end, and I do these for those comics.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wasn't exactly sure what to write about Gunshow.  The problem isn't the comic, it's a pretty damn good comic, and I do recommend reading it.  The problem is that it's a Gag comic.  Gag comics are just that, a series of gags, jokes, typically once a strip or whatever.  They are the staple of the newspapers, and what everyone thinks when you say "comic" in reference to print for the most part.

And Gunshow very much is a gag comic.  Oh, there are a few stories over it's run, and I'll get to them in a moment, but for the most part this is just a comic about jokes.  So what is there to talk about really?  The comic is pretty funny, I think, but humor is subjective.

I could compare it to other gag comics, but even that's kind of hard.  Every gag comic is different.  Cyanide and Happiness typically goes for the shock and crude humor, and Gunshow did that, but not all the time.  Chainsawsuit goes for the completely absurd, and Gunshow did that too, but sometimes it wasn't that absurd, and it was clear it wasn't being very serious about it.  Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal often goes for the more cerebral jokes, and, yes, Gunshow did those, but not to the same extent.

Gunshow did it's own thing, as most gag comics do.  It never quite did the same joke twice, or if it did, it tried to put a new twist on it.  Sometimes the gag was visual, sometimes it wasn't.  It wasn't always flat out funny, but often enough that I enjoyed it.  There were some odd experiments, like the series of horror strips this past October, but that was about it.

There were a few storylines, but nothing that would elevate the comic beyond it's gag status.  The Anime Club, the rabbits and the Gravedigger story were vehicles for more jokes, and didn't mean anything to each other or the rest of the comic as a whole.  But they were good, in their own way.  The Gravedigger story, especially, was quite good, especially the ending.

It was a good comic, damn good, and again, I recommend it, and I'm saddened it is gone, but not so much because I love Gunshow so damn much.  I enjoyed it, yes, but it reminds me of the steady disappearance of good gag comics on my read lists.  Oh I still have Bob the Angry Flower and Wonderella (whenever he gets back to updating it), as well as the other three I mentioned, but their numbers are dwindling.  I don't know if it's because I do tend to look for more story driven comics than straight up gag strips or if there are just fewer gag comics out there.  The latter would not surprise me in the least, actually.

But Gunshow also reminds me that even gag comics can tell stories, have good, and interesting art, and occasionally hit that emotional button just right.  The artist is moving on to other projects, including a couple comics, and I will be trying to keep tabs on them.  In the meantime, I will remember Gunshow and maybe reread it at some point, and I think you guys should too.

Next time, I do a Not-So-Wild Review, but this one is kind of different.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Out at Home

I'm really annoyed with this one, so it might be briefer than the others.  Not the comic, the comic was fine and I'll get into that, but the website.  For some reason, just as I'm ready to sit down to write this, the website is MIA.  DNS errors and all that.  Gone.  So I'm doing a retrospective on a finished but GONE comic.  I suspect it will be back soon (I was hoping before I actually needed to write this, alas not to be), but for the moment it is gone.  That annoys me because I use it for reference when I write these things.

Not that I really NEED it, but it is nice to have.  And I've used a lot of all caps today, I'll try to avoid that from now on.

Out at Home wasn't a great comic, but nor was it awful.  I don't like writing this without the comic for reference, but I liked it well enough over the length of the run.  It's odd because I don't think I've read another webcomic quite like it.

Let me set it up for you:  Herman, ex-baseball superstar and richer than god, attempts to raise his two children after their mother left them.  The daughter is in her late teens, the son is nerdy pre-teen.  Wacky things happen because Herman is rich.

That sounds familiar, doesn't it?  I can't think of a webcomic that's done something like that though, but I can think of more than a few sitcoms that have.  And that's part of what stands out for me with this comic, it's a sitcom.  I'd expect something like this to show up on NBC or something.  The last few stories are especially like sitcom episodes.  One has Herman having to retake drivers ed, Kate (the daughter) using a complex scheme to insure she graduates from high school and the entire graduation plot where Herman is part of her graduating class (he dropped out to become a baseball superstar).  These are plots ripped right out of the TV Guide.

And I think it's part of the reason the comic ended.  Yes, the artist claimed it was because he (I think he) was scrapping the bottom of the barrel for stories, but I think he only felt like he was doing that.  Sitcom plots get really old if you've watched a lot of them (and many of us did growing up, I fear for those who grew up on reality TV).  He felt like he was retreading old ground, which he kind of was, but in a new environment, the webcomic.  Once that started happening, he desperately tried to find a way out, which slowed the comic down and eventually ended it.  I don't blame him.

That said, he did have one out:  Penny.  Kate's best friend started as just another friend character (from what I can remember, damn the site for being down) who happened to be smarter than Kate.  Then smarter than everyone else.  Then smart enough to realize she was in a comic.  It wasn't that she was breaking the fourth wall, I don't recall her ever talking to the reader, but she knew it was there and actively played with it.  It wasn't something where the character is hinted at knowing there's a fourth wall either, it was clear she knew, and her actions and character after that discovery are all dictated by that knowledge.

And yet she continued to play the normal role she was expected to play:  the best friend.  Her knowledge may have directed her character growth and development, but it didn't make her into a cynic about her role in the story, she played it straight, right up until the end, when she forced the artist to do something with the comic.

I haven't read much of Living to Death (the quasi-sequel comic) yet, but I suspect that eventually Penny (who along with Kate is back for the comic) will eventually acknowledge that yes, she is still very aware of the world she lives in, if she hasn't already.  I doubt, however, it will effect the comic in any significant way.  I think this one character will make Out at Home stick with me longer than other comics because of this.

Hopefully the links to Out at Home will be fixed soon so that others can read the comic, but for now, it was a decent enough comic with some interesting ideas, and I hope Living to Death will exceed it.

Until next time kiddies when I do, um, something, I hope.

Retrospective: A Miracle of Science

After I posted the last batch of reviews, I got an email from the writer of Tales of Winterborn.  He (I think it's a he) thanked me for the review and agreed with many of my points and asked me to elaborate a bit more, which I did in a very rambling style.  As I thought about it, though, I figured the best way was to present him with an example, and after browsing through my list of links for a moment, I sent him a link to A Miracle of Science.  Then I decided to re-read it because it's been a damn long time.

It's been a while, but it's amazing how well it stuck with me.  I could remember most of the major plot points, though not all.  Character names were more or less forgotten, but not their relationships and some parts of their personalities.  I did remember the on and off again coloring near the end of the comic (at one point the news posts below the comic mentioned it and said they would color it in later, they never did), and the main plot point:  the mad scientist memenitc disease.

And, it's still damn good.  The story isn't just about mad scientist and his plans, but the relationship between Benjamin and Caprice.  That relationship is probably one of the best I've read, it feels natural and there's no stupid moments between them.  I mean, no artificial drama to their growing relationship, just honest moments that take talking and understanding to work through.  It's refreshing.  Even better, both are very aware of what's happening and they're only kind of fighting it because they have bigger fish to fry.

I do wonder if the creators read any of Iain Banks' Culture series as I sense some influence in the way Mars and it's technology are presented.  I love the universe building it has, because while the story is a space sci-fi piece, it's almost completely restricted to the solar system, with only a couple mentions of extra-solar travel.  It feels big, yet small.  The various worlds are different enough to understand, but not so different as to be unrecognizable.  Actually, I think the real influence might be Cowboy Bebop, the anime series that is so damn similar in layout that it's actually quite remarkable.

Despite the influences, it is an original story.  It's a bit of a detective story, a bit of a romance, has some action, and despite following the mad scientist memes and tropes, it manages to not get bogged down by the ideas and even uses them to push forward character development.

In fact, little happens in this comic that isn't about character development.  The first action Caprice does is be annoyed about the time it's taking to dock her ship, so she walks.  Out of the ship, across the gulf of space and into the airlock.  Without a visible space suit.  It shows what she can do, but also a bit of her impulsiveness and misunderstanding of non-Martians.  As she and Benjamin interact, they ask and answer questions about each others worlds, acting as the reader asking the same questions, which grow the universe so much better than walls of text or a giant about page.

Saying much else about this comic is, well, pointless.  It is one of the best comics of it's type I've read.  I recommend this comic whenever I can, and I really should read it more.  I kind of wish this came out a few years later because odds are good it would have a print version I could buy (well, more than the first half of the comic at least).  This is a great comic, so go read it, now.

I mean it kiddies.  Until next time.

Retrospective: Life of Riley

This is a comic I've been meaning to reread for a long time.  Something like, oh, 7 years, give or take a few months.  So why do it now?  Mostly because I don't have the time to read any other comics (job has stupid hours).

Still, Life of Riley is something I've been missing for a LONG time.  And I mean missing it, as I reread the comic, I get this odd joy, like something has been missing from my life and now it's back, even for a bit.

Life of Riley is one of the comics spawned as a result of the success of the second wave of comics, things like Penny Arcade and Sluggy Freelance.  Amongst it's peers is Exploitation Now!, and it's the 8th webcomic I read.  Yeah, I got nostalgia goggles on for this one, and I'm not even going to hide it.  Still, I tried to be objective going into the archive dive and found that I was being sucked back in very quickly indeed.

So what drew me back?  Well, the art is quite good for one.  Considering how old this comic is (it started in 2000), the art outdoes a lot of comics I read today.  What I like to see is distinctive characters, and this has it in spades.  There's also patterns of looks.  Demon characters are in red, angel/good characters are in blue, hell some of the characters have emoticons on their shirts indicating their alignment.  The action sequences are sensible, easy to interpret, and a lot of emotions can be gotten from the actual faces of the characters, even early on.  The art is better than solid, which is something I can't say about a lot of strips.

The writing is, well, dense.  Rereading it, I'm surprised at how MUCH text there is in this thing.  There are reasons, of course, but wow, is there a lot.  I guess I didn't notice it back in the day because, well, there weren't a lot of comics on my read list at the time, so I didn't notice how annoying it was.  And even now, it still wasn't annoying because I already knew everything and would skip large chunks of text.  For a newcomer, it would get old, but it leads to a lot of strip density.

That's one of the positive thing about the comic, strip density.  Every strip has something important going on, except for the silly "no strip today" strips (which are far more entertaining than my "no post" updates).  Between the text and the art, each regular strip adds a great deal to the comic and the universe of it.

Which is what really draws me in, the universe.  It's not a well planned world, but it grew organically over the years, and it feels, well, right, and interesting, and kind of terrifying if one examines it closely.  It's also not restrictive, allowing enough flexibility to expand and tell other stories within it.  I want to write stories for this universe, or even write fanfiction for the main comic.  I'll get to that later.

That said, the comic isn't perfect, at all.  It is partially a product of it's time.  This is when the initial popularity of comics like Penny Arcade were most keenly felt, so the early strips are very much a gaming comic.  It still maintains a bit of this as the comic goes on, but it does fade away, pretty much once the paintball war against the demons of hell gets going.

Which is where the other problem with the comic is, kind of.  I wrote an article a bit ago about Culmination Events in comics, and Life of Riley has two.  One is incomplete as it is at the end of the comic.  The other, is effectively the 3rd story of the comic.  How does that work?  ClanBoB.  What is ClanBoB?  It was/is a gaming community that the artist and writer belonged to at the time, it was even the name of the website when LoR was still updating.

Life of Riley began life as a community comic, so the paintball war story was the culmination event for the community known as ClanBoB.  There's a strip that features the BoBs arriving for the battle, and as just a reader of the comic, I have NO idea who any of them are.  But the people in that picture know exactly who the others are, probably, it has been over a decade now.  The result of this is that the comic feels backwards as the development of the actual comic characters doesn't really start until AFTER the big culmination event.

Once that begins, the comic finally comes into it's own.  It's not a gaming comic any more, it's not strictly a humor comic (Cerberus raises it's head here), but a fun adventure comic that has some great moments.  My favorite is when the narrator of the comic has enough of with the events of the story and starts ranting about how damn stupid it all is.  It's hilarious, at least to me.

So should it be read?  My nostalgia goggles say yes, do it now.  Realistically, though, it is a very niche project.  First for the old ClanBoB, and later for LoR fans, which I am.  I guess if exploring this era of comics, it fills that role really well, and it represents the work of the artist and writer.  Perhaps that is the biggest reason to read it though, as once the rather abrupt ending, right at the climax point of the story, there is no more.  Dan and Arron (artist and writer respectively), to my knowledge, have done nothing else.

I'm glad this is one of the few comics that while dead, is still available to read, and should be read so the guy running the site keeps it up.

Anyway, until next time kiddies.

Retrospective; Serenity Rose

Wait, there's no Serenity Rose on the read list?  Actually it is, under the website name Heart-Shaped Skull.  Technically the name of the comic is Serenity Rose, and back at the end of November it ended.  Which threw a wrench in my plans to have it be on my "Can't Live Without" list.  Guess I'll have to live without it though.

Not that I think it's over for good.  I'll get to that in a bit, but I will say that this phase of the comic's life is over, and that fits a retrospective as well as anything.  The last page is a "Let's Go Exploring" moment for pete's sake! (and if you don't get that reference, I will educate you sometime this year).

I almost want to talk about this more as a proper review than a retrospective because there's so much to talk about.  Little things like a floating teacup near the end, a mysterious villain, awesome characters (I love Tess), and a growth curve most comics only dream of.  If the comic wasn't so relatively short (despite 10 years of being online), I could almost do another Standard on it.  Almost.

There are two phases to the comic, differentiated by a stark difference in art style.  The earlier, "muppet" style and the more realistic style.  When it switches, the basic framing of the comic, a drawn dairy, more or less fades into the background, only coming back for the occasional backstory interlude.  It doesn't feel as jarring as it could because of this. It works so well that during a period when I couldn't read a pair of chapters in the middle of the comic, the brief bits caught me up very quickly that I didn't even really notice I missed it (though actually reading those sections showed how much I actually missed).

I think, though, the best way to describe this comic is to point out that it's not a "growing up" comic.  So many of those are out there, it's cliche and would have been rather easy, but there is no easy way out here.  Sera is 22 when the comic starts, in college, with all her high school days, as awful as they are, behind her.  So the characters are older, but that doesn't mean they don't have growing up to do, right?  Here, no, she's done growing up, the comic goes in another direction, growing into.  Very different things because what Sera's life will be in the future isn't quite written.

It becomes clear after the first chapter that the entire piece is about what she could be if she wanted.  She could be a rock star, a ruler, a pirate and even just go completely mad.  By the end, she choses none of those things, but the journey to that point is the point.

And I suppose that's what makes this comic so good to me.  It's not another high school/college strip, it's not about wacky antics or grand mysteries.  It's about one person finder her place in the world after all that growing up stuff is over, and seeing what the world really has to offer her, and what she has to over the world.

So why don't I really think it's over?  Well, that's easy, the artist said it wasn't over.  He'll do more with Sera in the future, that's clear, but what?  I think I know.  He recently had a kickstarter (which I failed to mention because I didn't notice it until it was basically over, along with the comic, I'm really bad at that), and that ended with a thank you video.

Where Serenity Rose rises up and gives a whispered "thank you."  Looking through some of the kickstarter stuff, she was created as a subject for his animation coursework and moved to webcomics later.  Yeah, I think he's planning a video series.  Whether he gets to it or not, I don't know, but I think it's in the cards at least.

Until then, this comic is over, for now.  I'll put it in Hiatus until it's officially done, or not as the case may be.

Next time, um, not sure.  Depends on how insane my new job is (looks pretty nuts).  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Exploitation Now!

Hey look, something about a comic, a dead one, but a comic nonetheless.  In fact, this is the first of these Retrospectives I've done about a long deceased comic, all the rest died or completed shortly before I wrote theirs.  It won't be the last.

It's also one of those comics I've been meaning to reread for a while, and it's short, so that helps.  Exploitation Now! is one of the earliest strips I read, and is also amongst the first of them to end, which makes it a fine starting point for this leg of the series.  It's also Michael Poe's first foray into comics, immediately followed by Errant Story.  Yeah, it's kind of damn important.

The first thing I noticed was how quickly the art of EN! began to feel like Poe's art style.  He does have a distinct style which combines a bit of the anime/manga look with very heavy lines and distinctive shapes for the head and bodies of his characters, and they start really coming together before even the halfway point of EN!'s life span.  That said, at one point I wasn't sure if the art was as I remember it.  During a certain flash back sequence, the art switched to a dreamy, grey scale shaded nature, which is pretty common, but a specific panel didn't reflect my memory.  Of course, that was back in 2002/2003, so a decade of time might have effected it.  Still, I got a feeling that the art had been redone at some point.  Possible as he has been working on reworking Errant Story for publication, so EN! may have already undergone the same treatment.

What really makes up EN! though is the way it's structured, which is, to say the least, odd.  Do keep in mind that EN! lasted a whole 2 years, and that was it.  Even in the last few months of the year, I'm sure Poe was more focused on Errant Story (it started in November of 2002, EN! ended in September).  It started as a "gag-a-day" strip, featuring a kind of humor I think I'll call "Shock-Snark" and may write a longer article about in the future.  There are a lot of comics that this back in the day, and a lot that TRY to do it now, and fail miserably because it's not so shocking any more (early internet was weird kiddies).  As the comic went on, it shifted to a much more dramatic style.

I've talked about Cerebus Syndrome before (usually with regard to Sluggy Freelance), but in a LOT of ways, EN! is a much better example.  The idea of drama eating a humor comic is blatant and obvious here.  The point when it becomes clear the comic has taken an odd turn is when one character narrates her backstory, in the middle of a fire fight with the police.  That's the joke of course, but the backstory isn't funny at all.  It's not BAD, mind you, but compared to the string of jokes based on sex, drugs and toilet humor that came before it stands out.

The real reason it stands out though is that the two main joke characters were separated from the drama characters at about this point, and never met again.  This allowed the dramatic story to dominate, especially in the last act where there were very few jokes at all.  The thing is, the last act of EN! feels very much like the entire RUN of Errant Story, though it lacks a lot of the real depth Errant Story would have by the time it reached it's climax.  Of course, that's 2 years versus 10+ so that's to be expected.

I guess my point is while Exploitation Now! isn't a great comic, it is good and educational, especially if you've read Errant Story (and if you haven't, shame on you).  It's the foundation on which a greater piece was created, and thus from a historical perspective, it's invaluable.  Of course it ends with a tease for a sequel, but I doubt we'll see it.  Not that it can't be done, I can think of more than a few ways (the first being to actually get Bimbo and Ralph involved), but I think at this point Poe has grown past it.  Does Not Play Well With Others could be considered a quasi sequel (one of EN!'s characters plays a relatively major role there), but it's not a direct sequel, and I think it would be a disservice to both comics to try to turn it into one.  Maybe one day we'll see EN! return, but I doubt it, at least for now.

Well, that's enough for today.  I'll see what I can get together for next week, until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Weapon Brown

Last week, Weapon Brown, the apocalyptic take on newspaper comics, ended it's current run.  Current meaning while the story as it started is over, I don't think he's done telling Chuck's story.  But for the moment, it is over, and thus it's time for a retrospective on it.

Last week, I said I almost wanted to compare the excellent Between Failures to the awful Blade Kitten, but honestly, the comparison wouldn't have been exactly fair.  Comparing Blade Kitten to Weapon Brown, however, is perfect.  A bounty hunter with a past, a world full of villains and virtually no heroes, a badass attitude but underneath a heart of gold?  It's weird how many basic traits Chuck and Kit share, up to and including the loyal pet.  But then, Chuck isn't a catgirl, so can't be a one to one match.

The other area where it doesn't compare?  Sheer violence.  Few comics I've read REVEL in violence the way Weapon Brown does.  It's completely over the top which makes it a thrill to read.  The fact that Chuck rarely gets through a fight completely unscathed gives an air of realism to the violent world around him, but doesn't reduce his badassery any.

The story is, well, just a vehicle for the violence honestly.  It's certainly modeled on The Road Warrior and it works well in that regard.  It's not perfectly a match for that classic post-apocalyptic film, of course.  There IS a civilization out there, it's just run by generally evil people.  Still, the classic trope of a lone hero working to save a small group of good guys is very much present in the second half of the story.  The first half, on the other hand, is more a lone survivor type tale.

As a character, Chuck doesn't really seem to change all that much through the course of the story.  He's a badass and while he may be weakened or beaten down, he keeps going.  About the only change is that he finds someone to love and when it's time to fight to save her, he doesn't back down.  Sadly, I will say that the rest of the characters are rather one note, but reading this kind of comic for character development is, well, kind of silly.  It's there for the violence, the glory of watching Chuck overcome the odds, and the references.

Ah yes, the references.  This is the real reason to read this comic, because it is a post-apocalyptic parody of the funny pages in the local newspaper.  Chuck is a grown up and hardened Charlie Brown.  His love interest is Little Orphan Annie.  His rival, CAL-v.1n is Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.  And that's just the tip of the iceburg.  Everything from Family Circus to Blondie, Gasoline Alley and B.C. gets a reference in there somewhere.  It can get quite obscure in some cases, so tags are often at the bottom of the comic to help point a direction, but guessing is part of the fun.

That's really the rub of it.  Yes, the comic is a good action/violence piece.  Yeah, the characters aren't anything to write home about, but they're based on even more one note characters and given a semblance of life.  It's just a lot of fun, and I'm glad to have found and read it.  Here's hoping that a sequel is in the works so I can watch Chuck and Jeffy carve a path of destruction through the Syndicate.

In many ways, Weapon Brown is the reason I started reviewing newspaper comics, and why I'll do so in the future.  Anyway, enough for today.  Until next time kiddies.

Retrospective: Starslip

The end of Starslip, or Starslip Crisis as I always called it, came as a bit of a shock to me.  I wasn't exactly expecting it until it was, well, there.  I will say at least it was an ending, unlike Road Waffles, but still was kind of surprising.

I'm going to say this right now, Starslip was not a great comic.  Not a bad comic by any stretch, mind you, just not great.  A decently good comic that was entertaining, fun, funny, and had some neat story bits.  The idea behind it was turning a ship refitted to be a flying museum, with artwork therein, into a warship commanded by a curator.  Wild antics ensue.

Funny came from the fact that Memnon was not cut out to be any kind of military commander, and yet, somehow, managed it with the help of his fellow crewmembers and friends.  Initially he held them all at arms length, figuring they were beneath him in some way (he was a curator of a museum after all), but as time and adventures wore on, eventually he changed and grew.  A bit.

In fact, the three major cast members really didn't change that much through the course of the comic, which is not a bad thing, mind you.  Jinx remained subservient to a fault, though was far more competent than even he suspected many times, and Cutter was always a retired pirate.  He even got a peg leg near the end.

The art of the comic changed dramatically between the "Starslip Crisis" and "Starslip" phase of the comic, and for the better.  Characters became more than heads put on copy and paste shoulders.  They felt far more real than in the early strips.  Oh, they were still cartoon characters, but more real ones.  As the art style got better, it got more grand and some of the best moments in the later comic were helped by the amazing art.

The storylines were loose and, possibly a bit confusing.  Typically it involved time and universe travel, which creates lots of weird paradoxes and other things.  The finale actually featured an old version of Memnon, his future son, the villain and HIS clone/son fighting agents from the future who could predict actions because they could see time.  Yeah, that finale was wild.

And again, kind of surprising.  It wasn't that the ending wasn't well done, it was, it tied up the major loose ends very nicely.  No, the issue was that there were a lot of smaller plot lines that were left behind.  Nothing major, of course, but enough to leave a nagging taste in my mouth.  The entire Jovia letter arc was incomplete and could have gone on much longer.  In the move to end, I guess, it was necessary, but I still would have liked to see it.

Why did it end though?  Kris Straub has a recording of a live stream regarding it, but never actually answers the question.  I get the impression that he wanted to simply work on something else, and wanted to wrap it up.  That's a fair answer, and one that some artists need to admit too.  At least he gave us an ending, unlike a lot of other artists.

Again, it wasn't a great comic, but I did like it and read it all the way until the end.  The last three comics of my daily read is Station V3, Starslip and Sluggy Freelance in that order, and now there is a bit of a hole in that lineup.  I'll miss the comic, but it sounds as if Straub is planning another story comic, and I intend to follow it.

I'll probably won't have anything next week as I've got a 10 day work week ahead of me.  I'll try to post something saying I'm posting nothing at least.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Road Waffles

Writing this is going to be a rough go for a couple of reasons.  The first is that I don't trust that in 2 years, Eight won't start updating it again.  Calling this the "end of Road Waffles" is like saying "the end is nigh."  It might be true, but it might not be.  Another reason is that, because of the four year gap in the comic's updates, I don't remember a lot of it (and have been rereading it for this post).  The final reason is that, well, Road Waffles is not one comic, it's more like four of them.

That said, the themes of the comic are pretty consistent, as is the art, so I can talk about all four at once when it comes to those.  As to the specific stories of each comic, well, that's another story, so to speak.  We'll get to that.

Artwise, the comic has, for the most part, been a black and white shaded strips.  All the characters are distinct, which is good since there are a lot of them and they come in and out of the strip fast and furious, but they all follow a simple model:  Thin, big headed, and kind of crazy.  There's a sketchy feel to the entire strip, yet it's all very deliberate, even the earliest strips have this feeling, when the comic is more cartoony.  I really like the art, and find it fits the spastic nature of the comic better than could generally be hoped for.

The major theme of the comic is travel, typically through the desert regions of the American southwest.  Mostly it seems around Reno and Las Vegas, which means the deserts of Nevada.  This makes the landscapes quite empty and stark.  And usually involve cars of some sort.  They serve the story well, creating a sense of isolation through the strip as there are rarely many people around, and when they are, they usually end up dead.

That is the biggest theme throughout the comic, death, pointless, senseless death.  The very name of the comic, Road Waffles, refers to the pattern tires make on road kill.  One of the early jokes of the comic was that the main characters were "unkillable."  This ended up not being true (for the most part) and killing characters, new, old, whatever, became common place.  Typically through getting shot in some odd way.  Or being time traveled to death.  Or being randomly hit by a car.  Or decapitated by a knife wielding lunatic that likes to eat freshly killed pigs.  Or simply drowning.

Which is to say, it's random as hell.  Saying there is an "overall plot," even divided up into the four books, as it were, is stretching a a series of thin premises a bit too far.  The first book is very much this, bouncing from one oddball encounter to another.  First it starts with a hold up of a convenience store (another common theme, convenience stores), then goes into a bit with zombies, random killings, battling zombie hoards, time travel, randomly kidnapping Green Day members, more zombies, and then a multi-universe war, which ends about as fast as it began.  And that's not even counting the chipmunk encounters that are sprinkled along the way.  It's a random, chaotic mess, but a fun ride as a whole.  If the first book was all there was of Road Waffles, it would certainly be memorable, but not necessarily great.

Then the second book starts with a homage to Hunter S. Thompson.  It then gets very philosophical, but it's not anything really all that advanced, not that I've ever taken more than a rudimentary philosophy course.  The entire cast is replaced for the bulk of the story, and versions of the book one characters appear late in the story.  It even comes back to cover the events of the great multi-universe war, which is a solid connecting piece between the two, and I think a bridge throughout the entire series.  The art drastically improves, but the story telling itself remains kind of random.  Some plot lines are started, then stopped, then get going again in time for this section to end.  Seemingly minor characters suddenly become important, then focused, then the entire cast is dumped in favor of the book one ones, and then back again for the finale.

The third book is the most different of all, probably has the least amount of violence, and perhaps had the strongest initial direction.  It still hits on the theme of travel, but skips the desert and car for trains and wings.  I find the third book, up until a certain point, to be the best of the four, and the one I enjoyed most.  Which is why I'm kind of annoyed that, unlike the first two, there was no proper resolution.  There was a lot going for it, and I think it could have supported a proper ending.  Honestly, I forgot the comic continued for some time after the main characters of the book are removed, as that, despite being depressing, felt at least like an ending.  Sadly, at least 3 separate plot threads are started at this point, and never even saw a proper conclusion.  Most potential, but never finished.

The last book is similar to the first, with a lot of the real strangeness squeezed down and condensed, making a much more followable story.  It's still random, it's in a desert, it starts with a hold up of a convenience store, and follows people in cars until something happens with the multi-verse.  It does feel like an abbreviated version of the first book, in some ways, but in others it stands alone.  It is, however really good, less random than the early stuff, and with a stronger direction than even the third book.  I like the third one better, but only because of the characters and how it can stand on it's own more.  Book four needs the rest of the comic to make sense, and in a way, it wraps up the entire comic rather nicely.

I think the real problem with this comic is that, well, Eight always had an idea for a comic, and hints of a story, but never a serious script.  He WANTS to tell a story, that might or might not be important to him, but he can't get it out there.  That's not a bad thing, after all, since the bulk of the comic is built on these half thought out ideas and I enjoy them immensely.  The problem comes when it is time for him to tell a story, at which point, the comic falls completely apart.  At the very end, he sets up an interesting tale about how a musician lost two of her fingers, and the comic looks set to tell this tale, and then, one strip into this story, the comic is ended.  Why?  I think he didn't feel he could do it justice.

And yet, and YET, he did manage a story.  A confused tale, sure, with bumps and curves that, somehow, manages to still link together.  I wouldn't call it well thought out, not in the least, but it all does seem to come together in the "end" of the comic.  Even book three, the most independent of the four, has connections to the others.

This is why I'm not so sure it's over for good.  The randomness, the sudden return of book four, the wild ride, it can't really be over this time, can it?  Maybe it is, and if so, I hope Eight is proud of what he's done, because I do love this comic.  There are comics with better, more coherent stories, with better art, funnier jokes, and all that, but it has a charm that I can't shake.  Road Waffles, whatever the future may hold, whether it be a return someday or never again, is and will remain one of my all time favorites.

Next week looks to be pretty packed for me, so I'll try to get something up, something shorter than this.  Until then kiddies.

Retrospective: Errant Story

Errant Story ended last week.  I've already written a Not-So-Wild Review on it, so go take a look, but I think I'll go over the ending a bit instead, then the epilogue.

The comic ended with a hell of a fight.  As I said in my full review, they really didn't get into too many fights, so when it ends on a big shebang like it did, it made the whole thing rather special.  The main cast all got their moments to shine as well.  Jon got to be useful while magic and time mages ran around making him look like he was powerless and standing still.  Plans were made, implemented and succeeded.  And Ian got beat down in a way that was unexpected but fitting and sad at the same time.

Two things stand out in that fight:  One is how Poe laid out how Ian's final end would come, and a careful reader (not me, I had to reread it) could pick up on what was coming, an almost literal Chekhov's gun, though I suspect that it should have popped up MUCH earlier to really count.  At the same time, though, it was a great way to do it and I appreciate it.  The second is that Ian's defeat actually combined two concepts Jon and Sarine used in their final fights.  I wrote in my review that I always fear characters having the same personalities, but it turned out they started thinking of solutions the same way.  I think it was because it wasn't grand or powerful, but simple and logical, and that won in the end.

Meji's speech to the elves is also one of the best moments of the comic for me.  It's a threat, a blatant one, but one that was tempered by the fact that she really didn't have any reason to kill all the elves, at least at that moment.  It's her maturity coming through at that moment, and showed she had most certainly grown form the little devil girl who wanted godlike power just to graduate.  Of course, she had already made the mages who ran her school look like fools by then, but it was solidified there.

The epilogue, though, proved that Errant Story was NOT Meji's story.  Or Ian's story.  It was Sarine's story.  She opened the comic, and she closed it.  She was tortured by the past, about a life she could save, a love she couldn't have, and finally, by the end, she found her peace.  Sarine was telling the story.  Thus the epilogue is perfect in it's nature and structure.  Epilogues are hard, as so many people have different ideas on how such things should end (see Battlestar Galactica), but I don't think anyone will complain about how Poe ended his comic.  I sure won't.

The future of Errant Story is, well, reruns. Which I think is a good thing.  I hope they get the Errant Tales stories going, but I can wait for now.  I'll still be reading Errant Story despite the reruns, after all 11 and a half years is a long time, and I kind of want to retread old ground.  Maybe I'll have something more to say on it in the future.  In the mean time, comics like Gunnerkrigg Court and Does Not Play Well With Others will have to take up the slack.

That said, there is a piece of good news this week:  No Rest for the Wicked is updating again.  One comic dies, and another rises again.  That's a good day in my eyes.

Until next time kiddies.

Return to Eden Ends

Another comic comes to an end, but a complete end this time.  Return to Eden wraps up a rather long story that in the end I didn't expect to enjoy so much.  I knew the ending was coming, but I really didn't expect it to be here so quickly.

There are so many things that kept me interested in the comic.  The mythology of the comic proved to be, well, incredible.  Partially based on Biblical mythology, it twisted it in just the right way to make it feel unique.  As the comic got nearer the end, I got drawn further in, and found a world far more interesting, and far more human, than I might have expected before.

As I flip through the early chapters of the comic, I'm surprised at how improved the artwork got, while still retaining its style.  The sketchiness of the strips is there throughout, but by the end it proved more controlled and deliberate than the early ones.  There's also a certain level of "chibi" built into the comic's early strips, and that is all but missing in the later comics.  I think it's related to how serious things got near the end, and I appreciate that.

I also noticed there were far more colored pages early on as opposed to later in the comic.  In fact, one of the early key plot points was that the main character's eyes changed color.  Later on though, the number of color pages decreased dramatically.  Some of that is due to time constraints, I think, but also an increase in skill of the artist.  It didn't NEED to be in color any more.  That's a great evolution, though I do wonder what it would look like if it had gone full color instead.

In the end, the oddest thing about this comic is that there really wasn't a central villain until near the end.  Oh, it was a GREAT villain, but the revelation of who it was and why didn't come until the comic was almost over.  Makes me think that there wasn't much of a "plan" for the comic early on.  There may have been some vague ideas, but nothing serious.  At one point, there was even an apology for introducing a new, very important character in the last third of the comic.  The creation of that character, the villain, and the final conflict and story was all late additions to the overall comic.

One of the few faults is the cast:  They didn't have much to do at the end.  A couple were hard to differentiate from the each other, causing a bit of confusion along the way.  Still, the later characters are MUCH more memorable, and stood out in dress and design much better.  Some had arcs, but not many.  Even the main character really didn't have an "arc," she really just became a bit more mature as the comic went on, nothing more.

Even so, I enjoyed the comic for it's entire run.  I'm glad to see a comic come to a natural end like this, completing the tale and showing a true evolution in artistic skill and story telling ability.  There is a new comic in the works by this artist, and I will happily read it as well.  I think it might be really good.

Well, another comic down, but not for bad reasons.  Until next time kiddies.