The internet is like the ocean – vast, unending, and filled with life. And just like the ocean, despite how much is out there, there is even more hiding in the depths than we could ever comprehend or discover. Yet we try. We try to seek out the places where the best is found, where gems lay hidden beneath the sand, where previously little known spaces are found and brought to wider attention. There are those who brave the maelstrom of content to find that which not only catches our attention but what ferries us into calm, beautiful waters.
Welcome to our newest column: Webcomics Worth Watching where every month or so we take a look at one webcomic we think you all should be reading. This month we’re taking a haunted train over the river as we explore “Oddity Woods.” Spoiler-free, of course.
INFORMATION:
Name: “Oddity Woods”
By: Kay D.
Updates: Tuesday and Friday at Midnight (ish)
Genres: Supernatural, Detective Fiction, Mystery
Years active: 2016-Present
Age Rating: All-ages
For Fans of: Professor Layton, Filmore, Clue (the movie and the game)
The Basics
Created in 2016, “Oddity Woods” is a supernatural murder mystery created by Kay D. It follows the adventures of Marietta, a twelve year old detective whose love for the profession, and her missing father, leads her to venture forth into mysterious and dangerous Oddity Woods. She’s accompanied on her journey by Wyatt, a fourteen year old paranormal investigator and ghost pup, the dog with a thousand names but no official one. . .yet!
The Comic
The first thing you’ll notice about “Oddity Woods” is that it’s participating in a genre that’s pretty infrequent among webcomics: true blue mystery fiction, specifically of the detective variety. While many other webcomics contain larger questions about their worlds disseminated through long and short term mysteries, there are very few that put solving those mysteries as the driving force behind their narratives. Even fewer are ones that are truly all-ages. “Oddity Woods” sits in that niche and does its damnedest to fill it.
Each of its three main parts (the prologue and two chapters) centers itself around a different mystery formula. The prologue is a whodunit, perhaps the most traditional of all the chapters’ setups, which serves to introduce us to the first batch of supporting characters (the police), our protagonist (Marietta), her personality, as well as to kick off the main thrust of the larger narrative. Chapter one is an escape room, essentially, centered on a test of deduction and puzzle solving while chapter two is focused on deepening our understanding of the woods, it’s inhabitants as well as being a member of my favorite mystery sub-genre, the murder mystery dinner party. Think Clue the movie crossed with The Haunting of Hill House. By operating in different modes for different chapters, the individual mysteries are kept fresh and the narrative can grow and develop around them.
It also gives us the chance to solve them, something that not every mystery bakes into it’s formula. Agatha Christie’s Endless Nights is one such example because she values the twist over all else, obscuring the possibility of a reader solving the case by virtue of the nature of the twist. Christie’s choice would not work in the decompressed medium of webcomics which is why “Oddity Woods’” works so well. The page by page release of a story such as this builds tension and feeds speculation in ways that a more contained, “complete” narrative format, be it the novel or the film, cannot. It is the serialized nature of the webcomic combined with the naturally lower volume of pages per update/release that allows for this. This slowness is also a double edged sword, making pacing key and thankfully, “Oddity Woods” does not disappoint.
Bolstering this pacing is the tone of the comic. It’s earnest but with a playful bent, poking fun at bits of the genre while also reveling in them. The mysteries and the heroes take themselves seriously and don’t crack-wise like the MCU but they are all comedic characters. It’s a balance that’s struck, allowing the story to seamlessly transition from the driving, tense tone of the intro to the madcap antics of Detective Mornings and case of the ‘Cat Manor Mystery.’ And this comic is funny. Very funny. And it’s safe to say that much of that comedy comes from Kay’s artwork. She uses the page turns to accentuate laughs and always pays attention to the interplay between dialogue, character posing, and background events.
Continued belowOn the subject of the characters, even the smallest background creatures are vibrant and unique. Right from the get go, we see that they are expressive and instantly recognizable. She has a knack for character design and naming, oftentimes the two going hand in hand to reflect the characters’ personalities. Her art style is cartoony, with big eyes and rounded faces, which allows for this comedic expressiveness.
Comedy isn’t everything though and her characters, and background work, are also great for the more dramatic, tense, and scary moments. There are moments that slow the narrative to allow for more introspective moments and important, emotional conversations. If you’ve ever played the game Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, the tone is similar. and let the emotions set in, However, this is not a scary or horrific comic. Despite featuring murder and the supernatural, the cartoony-style and all-ages tone makes it so that even the scariest images are more ominous than frightening. That doesn’t mean there are scenes that lack the necessary tension or foreboding atmosphere, just that they aren’t there to scare.
Art Progression
Quirks and Notes
Just as every webcomic is different, so too are their quirks. This is a section for non-comic related oddities (no pun intended) that we think you should be aware of. For some comics, it’s update schedules and hiatuses. For others, it’s site layout or their archive. For “Oddity Woods,” it’s the latter.
The archive is the standard Hiveworks archive wherein there is a drop down menu of updates in chronological order with the page tiles (if each page is titled something other than the page number) as well as links to each chapter’s title page. The only issue with this division is that it makes finding a specific page difficult if you don’t already know the number. Which updates are in which chapter have to be discerned by clicking on the chapter title link, seeing what page number that is, and then either clicking forward, page by page, or jumping back to the archive and attempting to guess how many pages into the story it is.
For those page by page click-throughs, it should be noted that you have to click the arrows at the bottom of the pages to move forward and that if you click any two-page spread, it will appear as a pop up in order to be more visible due to the way the site scales. Beyond this, however, there isn’t much else to note. If Kay has to miss an update, she’s always forthcoming about it beforehand and if a hiatus is planned (be it a week or two long one due to cons or sickness or a longer one), she’s very punctual about returning.
Closing Thoughts
At 263 pages and going strong, “Oddity Woods” is a comic that embodies the spirit of the mystery as well as the all-ages story. It’s a narrative that intrigues you with its setting, hooks you with its characters and wit, and keeps you invested with its questions and world. See if you can solve the mysteries of the woods. I promise you won’t regret it.
