Horror By Other Means

Last time I talked about horror. As I said last week, horror is a flexible genre, capable of taking on multiple personalities as needed.  In many cases, the "horror" element of the story takes a back seat to the other elements of the genre.  Horror then becomes less a genre and more a setting, which is what I'm going to talk about this time.

I have read a lot of comics that have horror elements, or a horror setting, but not actually what I would consider horror.  I look at suspense and mystery as an essential part of horror, with gore and scares being the final results of those two elements.  Most of the time, though, horror is less about those things, and more about, say, comedy.

Which brings me to the first comic I'd like to discuss, Eerie Cuties.  This is most certainly not suspense or mystery, but almost entirely played for laughs.  Yes, there are vampires, werewolves and even witches (until they moved to their own comic), but they are merely characters in the comedy that is Eerie Cuties.  There are SOME horror elements even with these characters, but they really take a backseat to the comedy.  I find that comedy and horror go very, very well together, but in this case it's more comedy than horror.  Nothing wrong with that, of course, and as a comedy it works pretty well.  The actual horror part of Eerie Cuties loses out in most cases to the comedy.

Further away from pure comedy is Conny Van Ehlsing, Monster Hunter, who leans more towards the horror angle, with actual monsters, but rarely goes into pure suspense.  How Conny deals with the creatures is very thoughtful and practical, but often the motivations of the monsters is rather silly and are put down rather easily.  Here we get more gore, less humor, but not strictly a lot of actual suspenseful horror.  The action, however, is much more prevelent here.

Then we get to Kristy vs the Zombie Army.  Comedy and horror go well together, as I said, so much so that some of the greatest horror movies are actually comedies.  Specifically, I'm thinking of the Evil Dead series, and Army of Darkness, which is where Kristy gets it's inspiration.  Like Army of Darkness, however, the comedy is merged more into action, and the fight with the zombie army takes up quite a bit of the early comic.  Of course, the fact that a little girl is carrying a giant chainsaw is enough to put a grin on anyone's face.  Though calling those zombies actual zombies is hard to do, they are kind of stylized.

Which finally brings us to the other end of the horror spectrum, action dramas, and Dead Winter.  Like the majority of zombie based, well anything, it is about action and killing or running from zombies.  Dead Winter is all about that, with the occasional bout with other humans.  There are tense moments, yes, but calling them horror would be a disservice to horror as a whole.  Doesn't mean Dead Winter isn't good, it is, but it's not strictly horror as I see it.

I've read other horror comics, of course, the direction of each being somewhere between comedy and action with only elements of horror in them.  From Choppingblock to Contemplating Reiko, the variety is there to be had, but I wouldn't call any of them true horror.

One day I hope to find one, until then, I'll just have to make due reading more Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.  Until next time kiddies, happy Halloween.

Horror and Webcomics

Given the time of year, and the fact that I work in a haunted house (and am being paid to do it), I guess we should cover the topic of horror and how it relates to webcomics.

Horror is a weird genre, much like science fiction, it is more a mixture of other genres with a general theme to them.  Horror is about fear, generally, the generation of fear and the final snap that makes fear that exciting jolt many seem to love.

Horror and comics go way, WAY back.  Horror comics are even behind one of the greatest "corrupting our youth" over reactions of all time.  It took nearly 50 years to shed the results of that scare and free the comic book industry from it once and for all.

So webcomics should be able to handle horror really well, right?  Well, actually no, they can't.  At least not the way the majority of webcomics are currently structured.

Let me try to explain.  I used to set up a Halloween display every year until I moved to my current residence (I don't get trick or treaters here, sadly).  Now I never had much, really, but I structured it so what little I had went a long way.  The first thing people heard when they got on the street (within about 4 houses) was music.  Halloween music, of course, a mix CD I made using classic horror music and a few tracks I felt fit quite well.  As they got closer, they would begin to hear something else, sound effects.  I have a great CD of Halloween sound effects and right about the time they could see the enclosure where the display was, the sound effects began to leak out.

At this point they saw the graveyard, and began to see the lights from inside the enclosure.  As they got to the enclosure (I've used tarps and my porch alternatively), the music would fade back and be replaced almost entirely with the sound effects.  The CD player for the sound effects is always in the enclosure.  That's when the display came to full force.  A giant spiderweb on the wall, a skull with glowing eyes and smoking pouring out, pumpkins glowing in the dark, eyes lining the walls, spiders dangling from the ceiling, and in one corner, right next to the candy bowl, was me.

Dressed all in black, with a faceless mask and large gloves and sitting still, oh so very still.  Visitors had to know I was going to scare them, after all no one just lets people take candy.  So they came in anyway, slowly, knowing at any moment I was going to leap up.  I'd let them get closer, and closer until RAR!  Then I give them their candy and they leave.

The point of that?  All horror, all good horror, is built around a notion of suspense, the building of tension until the final scare.  Winding people up is an art in and of itself, and maintaining that tension par for the course.  Webcomics should be able to do this, but can't because of one thing that I have pounded on them for NOT doing:

They update regularly.  As in, they update once a week, twice a week or even every day.  One strip or page each update.  This allows all that tension the artist has been trying to build to be eased up between strips.

The best example of this is Flatwood, a comic that is long sense dead.  When I originally read the comic, I thought it was creepy and looking back on it, I think it was a really well done horror comic.  The art direction was near perfect for this kind of horror, unsettling being the word I used.  It also used gif images to give the appropriate "boo" factor.  The problem came after I finished the archive.  All the creepiness burned away when I had to wait a week between posts.  All the tension, the suspense of the comic was gone by the time the next update came about.  I doubt it would have worked even if it had updated daily, just too much time for the images to settle down.

The only other comic I would classify as horror that I've read is Nightmare World, and if memory served it still updated one page at a time, so it didn't quite pull off what horror comics need to do:  Update in short chunks.  Like City of Reality did for a time, whole chapter/story updates for horror comics seem to be a much better method than even the most generous update schedule.

That said, I'd love to be proven wrong.  Of course, what I consider "horror" for this article is different than what many people would think of, so I think we'll cover some ideas for horror next time.  Until then kiddies.

Wild Webcomic Reviews 150 -154

Hey, some old reviews.  It's been a while with these hasn't it?  No matter, FORWARD!

February 03, 2008

150. Gingerdead and Friends - Gothic cookie people and the things they do. It's different, but not what I would call great. Nothing's really wrong with it, but only the art style really sticks out, and that isn't that impressive. It's kind of like a watered down Reiko, but not really. At least it isn't horrible.

TODAY - Damn, I didn't even REMEMBER this comic.  That's how little impression it left on me.  Still updating though, a bit, but wow did I not remember anything about it.

151. leveL - All I could think while reading this is that someone played WAY too much Final Fantasy (7 or later), or the equivilant at least. Main character with amnesia and latent, but unexplored, magical like powers? Check. Girl with lots of attitude? Check. Terrible secret that secret agency within the government is trying to hide? Check. I could go on, but it would take a while, so I'll stop there. I actually put off reading this one for a while because of the animish art style (which in the first chapter isn't that great), but the art does improve and the story is at least mildly interesting, except for the bulk of Chapter 4 which has a lot of characters just talking about the world. Boring. Anyway, it's not bad, but not really great.

TODAY - The website for this broke a while ago, and didn't have any updates for a while, so I kind of wandered away from it.  The main page HAS been repaired, and redone.  And was last updated August of last year.  Yeah, I think this comic is definitely dead.

152. Luz: Girl of the Knowing - "The Knowing?" Yeah, that kind of threw me to, so I had to read it to find out. Turns out, it's one of those comics with a message, which basically comes down to "Globalization is bad, peak oil will destroy the modern world, learn to live without this stuff or YOU'LL DIE!" Okay, maybe I'm going a bit far with that, but it does seem to HAMMER its message into your skull in a way that is unpleasant. Now I'm a bit of a luddite myself, but this comic takes it all TOO seriously. Though it is funny when Luz realizes that chocolate might disappear and there isn't a damn thing she can do about it. I've got better things to read.

TODAY - Apparently there is now a book for this comic, as well as a stand alone graphic novel.  As much as I don't care for the comic, good for the artist for getting published.  Still not reading it, but that's me.

153. Teddy Bear Trauma - This is a comic about teddy bears doing HORRIBLE things to each other. Lots of violence and death, all done to stuffed animals. Seems the narrator of the comic didn't get that message, but you'll have to see that understand. Anyway, this is a fun comic, except for the interface. Flash, the whole thing. Not a fan of flash interfaces, give me html any day. It doesn't hurt the comic in the least, might even help it a bit, but makes navigating it a bit hard. It's worth the effort though.

TODAY - Yeah, still  a bit of a waste of flash, but the comic has been slowly updating, apparently.  No idea on when (flash interface prevents back dating things), but it's there.  When I was reading  Devilbear: The Grimoires of Bearalzebub for my last review, I thought back to this comic frequently, it's the whole teddy bears doing horrible things to each other idea.  The flash interface, again, encouraged me to not bother with the comic.

154. Just Another Escape - Many comics do flashbacks, some do flashforwards, but few do what Just Another Escape does and jumble the whole thing up into a ball and run with it. It even defines what is the past, present and future via artwork, just to keep things straight as it bounces around between the different time periods and tries to tell the story of the people of Rain House, a fancy college dorm. I think the best part is you KNOW it isn't just being made up as it goes along, and so there is some sense of a destination, which is what many comics (like leveL) sometimes lack. Is the story any good though? Well, it's kind of scattered and trying to figure out where everyone sits, and why things are happening the way they are is difficult to say the least. Probably the result of the comic being relatively young (less than a couple years). I'll be keeping an eye on it.

TODAY - I just did a retrospective on this comic.  Go read that to hear my final thoughts.

Wow, no comics in this one I still read, though the last one was by it's own hand.  That's kind of depressing.  Until next time kiddies. 

Wild Webcomic Review: Late As Hell Edition

No, it's impossible.  This can't happen.  It can't be!

IT'S THE WILD WEBCOMIC REVIEW!

Ten months and I'm ACTUALLY doing a new batch of reviews?  Well, yes, I am, so it's not impossible, just improbable.  Still, time for another batch of reviews, 5 for you, my lovely readers (both of you) to gawk at and wonder "why did it take you 10 months?"  The answer is:  I'm lazy.  Off we go!

221.  Leth Hate - Remember Lowroad?  Yeah, about the same thing.  It actually features the cute succubus character, Giselle, which was featured near the end of Lowroad's run, but the main character is Leth, who is the ultimate asshole that has been rejected by heaven and hell.  There is also a zombie.  The jokes are the same as Lowroad, lots of sexual innuendos that aren't very subtle at all, and things like that.  If you liked Lowroad, you'll probably like Leth Hate, and I kind of do like Lowroad.

222. Devilbear:  The grimoires of Bearalzebub - This comic has one joke, it involves teddy bears going to hell.  And that's about it.  The first "chapter" is very much about that, and it got old very quickly.  Later chapters picked up a bit as they became less about bears going to hell.  Which brings the only other focus of the comic:  scantily clad devil women posing.  They also have pillow fights, seriously.  And it does get a bit deeper, but the core "joke" of the comic remains.  It's weird, I feel like I should really like the comic's jokes, if I were 10 years younger, or more.  I've MADE these jokes before, but something about it just doesn't quite work.  I think there might be a good story developing out of it, what it means to be good or evil and such, but I'm not sure if it will come through that one joke that was old before the first chapter was over.  Not sure if I'll follow it just because of that.

223.  Marry Me - This comic could easily be a romantic comedy.  It's structured like one, has the same jokes and the same wish fulfillment angles that any proper romantic comedy has.  The story opens with one of the most beautiful and famous pop singers getting up on stage, pointing out a guy carrying a "MARRY ME" sign, and gets married, right there on the stage.  Things get weird from there.  It's fun to watch the wacky hijinks, but in the end, it feels like things were thrown at the wall, random events and encounters that get weirder and weirder.  And all this goes back to pointing out that the two main characters, the pop star and her husband to be, are pretty much the most perfect people there are.  It doesn't bother me too much in this case, the comic is very fantastic in structure anyway, but I can see that it could drive some people away.  The main story is Marry Me itself, with a secondary story starting at the end of the original, and hasn't updated since February.  Yeah, I know how to find them.  Fun to read, but I doubt it has any steam to last longer than the original story.

224.  Winters in Lavelle - The first vibe I get from this comic is Narnia.  I've never read any of those books, but I know enough about it to get that Winters has the same basic concept behind it.  It rather quickly becomes a bit more dangerous and complex than I think Narnia ever did, but then, I never read the books.  It's still pretty early, but the seeds of the comic's stars being WAY over their heads has been planted (almost literally).  I won't say the world is complex, but it has some interesting elements and I think I may follow it for a bit just to see where it goes.

225.  Trying Human - I once got to visit Roswell, NM, where that alien space ship that was really a weather balloon crashed.  This comic taps the myth of Roswell to bring a story that is actually about love, of all things.  And love triangles and all the problems that come with them.  I really found myself enjoying the story and how it was built.  It integrates flashbacks throughout, and makes them feel relevant to events in the present story.  A lot of comics might try to shove the flashback storyline in early and not make it relevant or forget about it later.  This one draws it out, giving us the information we need to know as we need to know it.  The art is pretty good, sometimes feels a bit more cartoony than it should, but it still works, especially the various alien designs.  I will definitely be following this one for a while, and I would suggest others do the same.

Well, that's it for this review session.  Will I actually manage to do another review before the end of the year?  Um, probably not, but you never know.  Still, I'll try to get one out before July.  Until next time kiddies. 

Retrospective: Shadowgirls

So with so many comics dying, starting up a series of articles about them was inevitable.  Here I will give a post-mordum on comics that have, one way or another, died.  And this week we'll start with the most recent comic to join the club:  Shadowgirls.

It actually came as a surprise that Shadowgirls outright ended.  There had always been extended breaks throughout the comic, and even the current one didn't exactly phase me and was rather short.  I figured at worst, their 'financial model' plan might lead to a subscription to read the rest of the comic, but the comic would still exist.  Instead, the comic ends.

It's a sad fact that only a handful of lucky comics make any money at all, and even fewer make enough to completely support their creators.  The need to eat is a driving force in many decisions, but in this case I think it was the wrong one.  The artists needs a job, to get money, to eat, I know, I get that, but giving up the comic to do so?  Not sure if that's the best course of action myself.  Working on something, even a pet project or hobby (like this blog) keeps you going, gives you incentive to continue looking for a job.  It also builds a nice portfolio for possible employers, especially for artists.

And this artist is damn good, and has only gotten better with time.  Here, for example, is an early page from the book (yes, she's in her underwear).  Now here's the same character in a similar (though more dressed) pose.  I won't say that's a tremendous improvement, I've seen much greater leaps, but it is a steady improvement that shows the skill of the artist.  The shapes are better, the coloring more subtle, it's less like a quick sketch and more of a well planned image.  That kind of skill takes years of work, and I really appreciate that I got to see it for free.  Why doesn't this man have a job?  Who isn't hiring him?  Those people probably should be flogged.


Still, it's a personal decision to stop, and I won't judge it beyond the fact that, damn it, I want this comic to continue.  It's a good comic, and I enjoyed it for the length of the run, even if the last story didn't quite come together, you know, because it wasn't even half over.  So I implore them to reconsider stopping the comic, for the most selfish reasons possible.

Of course, since no one reads this blog (except for the 3 of you), I guess I'll just have to write about what I thought of it.  The tag line for the comic is "It's like H.P. Lovecraft meets the Gilmore Girls," how close it got to that, I can't say because I never watched Gilmore Girls, and what little I know of it comes from ads on TV.  The gist though is the mother/daughter connection and how their relationship with each other makes them stronger, quite literally in this case of course.  I actually like the relationship between the two, it feels, well, realistic to me.  They argue, yes, but there's never any hatred there.  The daughter knows the boundaries the mother put in place, and is rightful scared when she's been found out, but it's not "shit, she's going to beat me to death," but a proper fear of punishment.  There's love, punishment for breaking the rules, but not hatred and violence.  If Gilmore Girls is like that (and I don't know) then it succeeded at that.

The Lovecraft end, however, I do know about, and it worked DAMN well.  It takes it's inspiration from "Shadow Over Innsmouth," and if you haven't read that or any of Lovecraft's work, go search for it online, it's in the public domain and free now.  When I say inspiration, I mean it took the basic ideas while going in it's own direction.  Still, it captured the spirit of Lovecraft very well, and managed to bring the ideas into the modern world, and the last story even manged to describe how that happened in the first place.

Shadowgirls, however, was never a horror comic however.  A lot of what created the horror for Lovecraft is discovering humans weren't special or powerful, something that is taken more for granted now.  Instead, as I said in my original review of the comic, it is built more like a superhero comic.  It's built and works like one and I enjoy it like one.  There's far more action in it than Lovecraft ever worked on, and almost nothing that we would call horror.

Even so, the comic manages some great character development, though not with the main characters.  Yes, they do change, a little, but some characters, two in particular, change radically between the beginning of the first "season" and the end.  I'll discuss the second season in a moment.  These characters had interesting arcs, one even evolved from a simple, one note secondary character simply there to move the plot along to a key element of the story.  The other was more well planned, I think, and evolved from a personal antagonist to a sympathetic character.  This is brought even more to the point with the second season as we get a much better idea where the characters went following the events of the first season.

The first season of the comic was very well done, and while it might have felt a little meandering at times, it managed to tie it all up at the end.  The second season, however, felt very scattered, like ideas thrown at a wall with no plan.  That's not to say there wasn't one, of course, it was never finished, it just felt that way.  I think it comes from the fact that the first season started with only a handful of characters and plots, while season two had many, MANY more.  It became difficult to follow them all and see how they were all going to tie together.  Again, it never finished, so it's hard to know how it would have all come together, or if it was going to, and of course now we'll never know.

Still, Shadowgirls was a good comic, and one I would recommend to others who want a superhero comic, but without superheroes, if you know what I mean.  I will miss it, and I hope they change their mind before they're forgotten entirely.  At least the last comic features the best way any comic can end:  the image of a character walking off into the distance.  I like that.

Well, that's enough of that kiddies.  Next week, I might, MIGHT, have some new reviews for you.  Isn't that exciting?  Until then. 

Culmination Events

Adventure comics, as I've stated before, are a series of short adventures a cast of comic characters undertake throughout the life span of the comic.  There's no path or goal for these adventures, they are more or less random, though they may be generated by previous adventure.  Epic comics do have a final goal, a final confrontation to look forward to, and an end to the adventure.

But that's not to say there's a moment when things do get tied together in an adventure comic.  These are culmination events, and they can be some of the most memorable stories in a comic.  This comes up as Dr. McNinja is in the middle of one such event, but there are others.  Sluggy Freelance is famous for them, with one of the best being "The Bug, the Witch and the Robot," amongst many others.  These events can often make the smaller stories seem more epic than they really ever were, but also act as a bit of the old fan service.  Giving the comic's fans more of what they enjoyed.

But what goes into making a good culmination event?  There's no real set of rules for it, but here are some rough guidelines.

1.  There should be a clear goal or objective.  Adventure comics can have mysteries in their regular stories, but a culmination event shouldn't have much mystery.  The mysteries of the last few stories are revealed in a culmination event and the characters should have a mission and goal set out before them.  HOW they resolve it is another story entirely, but the goal should be clear.

2.  Something important should be at stake.  Meaning that if the characters don't do something, they will lose something important.  It could be another character, it could be the end of the world as they know it, but it must be important and they don't want to lose it.

3.  Bring in the resources.  Over the course of an adventure comic, many items, powers and people are collected, discovered or befriended and a culmination event should feature as many as reasonable.  Sluggy's repeated culmination events mean resources are usually generated in the intervening period between events and then brought to the current culmination.  Dr. McNinja's current one is only using resources generated during the color phase of the comic.


4.  Don't forget about it.  Culmination events are NOT the end of an adventure comic, just the end of one chapter or book of it.  The comic can, and often does, keep going, but culmination events are so big, they cannot be forgotten by the characters.  It should effect them and their lives in a meaningful way and set up the next story arch.

And that's about it.  Culmination events are more than just another story, they are the peak of the comic artists story telling ability at the moment of the event.  It should stand out and be memorable.  It also can backfire terribly, GPF's Surreptitious Machinations was a culmination event that eventually drove me away from the comic.

At the same time, not every adventure comic needs a culmination event, so artists of such comics should not feel required to do one.  Still, they can be a lot of fun and give the fans something to keep their blood boiling for the strip.

Next time, I'm starting a new article category.  See you then kiddies. 

Second Year Anniversary

Two years?  TWO YEARS?!  Seriously, it's been that long?  How did that happen?

Yeah, I know, the last couple of weeks have been a bit rough, but at least I posted SOMETHING for them, which a lot of sites, comic, blog or otherwise, don't often do.  Still, two years of posting something at least once a week?  That's a feat I didn't think I'd pull off.

I started this blog as a birthday present to myself, I've wanted to do it for a long time and finally had the time to do it.  Because I didn't have a job.  I have a job, at the moment, but it's highly seasonal so soon I won't have a job at all.  Again.

Yet I keep posting something, even if it's to say I'm posting nothing.  This week is more like a nothing week, but it's a happy nothing week.

So when is the next new batch of reviews?  Um, I don't know, I'll try to get some out before Christmas at least.  Champions Online has eaten a lot of my spare time (it IS fun, go try it).  More Not-So-Wild Reviews will be going up as I finally sit down and write them as well as more Newspaper ones.  I'm thinking of starting a "Reflection" batch of articles that will review dead/ended comics (which means I may have to reread them, it has been a while), and the first of these will be for Shadowgirls.

Going beyond webcomics, I'll probably post another book review soon, and maybe get into a few other things.  Don't know about the later, but I went to a book fair and got more books, so maybe some reviews of them are in order.

Anyway, thank you for reading my silly blog about webcomics.  All 3 of you.  Oh, okay, there are probably a few more than that.  Like 5 or 6, but still, thanks.  Until next time kiddies.

PS:  BTW, today is my birthday.  I am old.