The Webcomics Weekly #8: Webcomics Take Manhattan(10/30/2018)

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life, with one final entry in the spookiest month of the year! We continue reading “Blood Stain” and the most horrifying thing of all: job hunting. Other strips include one recently created by Stan Lee, “Backchannel” about a seemingly normal kid recruited into a hacktivist collective. The continuing adventures of the “Order of the Stick” and “Sam and Fuzzy,” which aren’t that scary. But we end this frightful column on a webcomic literally called “Terror Terror Terror” and it sounds terrifying.

“Backchannel” starts with a ticking clock and a percentage calculator of probability of casualties. Both are things this new webcomic created by Stan Lee gets right as they immediately get the reader into the flow of events and a feel for what the protagonist would and wouldn’t do. Read the comic along with the soundtrack for the introduction and it’s hard not to feel excited.

There is a nice nod to The Matrix in the way the color green hugs the outlines of our hero’s digital avatar. Our hero, by the way, is Tom Tanner (of course), your friendly neighborhood high school student in Pineview, California who also has an alter ego as an engineering prodigy and may possess an unexplained superpower. The comic has a few visual flourishes here and there like the ones with the cat and the mouse (you’ll see) and the way scene-breaks have been used.

But there are also certain missteps that “Backchannel” makes. Almost every main character is a deliberate reminder of characters co-created by Lee. The nerdy hero, the redhead (girl)friend, the bully at school. To the point the reader starts to wonder why bother? There are even lines that point a reader towards the famous creator’s famous creations. The panels are dialogue-dense. To the extent that at the end of chapter four where there are a few consecutive silent panels I could almost feel the comic letting out a breath.

There are spots where “Backchannel” decides to engage with the readers, especially the online comments, by breaking the fourth wall. Sadly, such attempts do not make up for rehashed characters and the read-it-before storyline.

Chapters 5-9 of “Blood Stain” are a parade of failure as Elli and her sister go through all the various short lived odd jobs Elli tried and failed at keeping over the years. Linda Sejic creates a series of consistently funny and still different enough strips as they look back at her job history. Rereading these against the collected versions, they work a lot better as strips. In the first collection, they’re treated as these sort of micro episodes that go on for a page or three, but something about the formatting change modified the comedy.

Take Chapter 6, the House of Wax Job, the comedy of the strip is built around Elli’s fixation to the point of distraction over odd things like if that’s really just ear wax coming out of the Boss Man’s ear. Reading it as a horizontal strip, Sejic uses a series of equal size panels one after the other that are largely static save for the arc from intrigue to revulsion coming across Elli’s face. Elli’s constantly cartooning face juxtaposed against the static fore and background imagery is excellent. In the collected edition, the art is reformatted to still be a tight sequence of 3 equal sized panels, but they only take up a rough third of the page and lack the impact of zooming in on the strip and reading it on DA.

Sejic also works in some inventive paneling in strips like chapter 7, the Bakery job, by transforming her sister’s thoughts into a strip within a strip. It isn’t anything major but puts out forms this nice interlude that visually breaks up the normal pace of things.

It wouldn’t be work place comedy without some illusion to I Love Lucy, and while I can’t say for certain if Linda Sejic did the Potato Peeling Job in homage to Lucy’s time on the chocolate line that’s how it played out. The failure of this job becomes this nice encapsulation of Elli’s boredom/distraction coming through without any other eccentric triggers. Just the monotony of peeling potatoes with a paring knife.

This batch of strips does a good job of working both as individual gag strips and narrating to the reader the lovable, if distractable, character of Elli as a whole.

At this point, we’ve established a few things about Order of the Stick:
1. The world’s mechanics
2. The general personalities behind the characters
3. The way the simplified art style suits the story

So without needing to go into those again, we can explore the individual plot points and gags within these five pages.

After Roy’s encounter with his ghost father, we get a little conversation between Roy and Vaarsuvius, constantly interrupted by Durkon using Turn Undead at the first hint of a ghost or ghoul. Rich Burlew cleverly escalates the misunderstandings one step at a time, starting from actually hearing them talk about a ghost, then hearing “aghast” as “a ghast,” before following the “Rule of Three” and hilariously mishearing “which is kind of cool” as “a lich is binding ghouls.” If that last one seems like a stretch, even the characters acknowledge it, but the humor is boosted by V’s reaction, which ends in “Sweet merciful gods, my poor useless eyes!”

Then we get to see more of Elan, Haley, and Belkar. In one page they set up a line about how Belkar could sunder Elan’s rapier by speaking too loudly, then ending the page with him accidentally doing just that. However, this page also introduces us to a Chimera, adding a new character design to the mix. Like the rest of the comic, it’s a simplistic design, but there are still little touches to the shape that make it appropriately monstrous.

As combat begins, we get to see how things like Initiative and Sneak Attack work within the comic. Ever wondered how a character with Evasion can be caught in the middle of a fireball and take no damage? We get to see that play out here. It also sets up the running gag of Elan unsuccessfully using illusion magic to try and distract his enemies with a pretty female version of whoever they may be; the chimera is polite enough to let her down nicely.

Lastly, we get a nice display of Vaarsuvius’s magic. While I won’t recap everything, I may have to spoil the joke by noting that their last spell, “Evard’s Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion,” is likely the end result of one too many people saying “I’ve seen enough hentai to know where this is going” every time someone casts “Evard’s Black Tentacles.” Fortunately, it’s kept off-screen, both to get humor from the characters’ reactions and because Rule 34 Chimera artwork does not belong in this comic.

Overall, the story continues to move forward at a brisk and humorous pace. We get some good gags mixed in with character work, and more humor drawn from the mechanics of “Dungeons & Dragons.” By this point we know what to expect, and Rich Burlew continues to deliver.

After meeting them in our last review, parts eleven through fifteen of “Help Wanted” give us some more time with the titular characters of “Sam & Fuzzy”. Our central protagonists learn more about the problem they’ve been dispatched to deal with at The Touchstone–or “Too-che-sto-nay”–mutant rats…maybe. Whatever is plaguing the ambiance of The Too-che-sto-nay is seemingly big, and loud, and accompanied by sound effects that read like the utterance of Fozzie Bear, or possibly Pac-Man. Who’s to say?

Moments like the revelation of the source of these noises as Dev shows up looking for the heads of N-M-S are what make this series so delightfully irreverent and unpredictable. Each page and panel is played wonderfully for laughs, like Dev annoying the propieter of the delicatessan into sending her likely to her own demise.

Visually these pages offer a lovely visual effect using the tunnel the characters enter. Logan’s use of stark, bold blacks and effective linework create visually engaging contrasts. There’s a beauty in the simplicity of the artwork and the composition of panels and pages.

What horrors have Sam & Fuzzy uncovered underneath The Too-che-sto-nay? We’ll find out in two weeks when we follow up on the rest of the “Help Wanted” arc.

“Star Impact” is a new webcomic which has just delivered the beginning of its first chapter, alongside a prologue. Artist Jack McGee is off to a good start with a story about idols, fans and growing up, in the context of super-powered boxing.

Right off the bat, the art style of “Star Impact” should pull readers in, simply by how kinetic it looks. Reminiscent of the great “Scott Pilgrim” volumes, characters and surroundings are flexible to adjust to each situation, with proportions being thrown off the hook for great effect. It is interesting to observe how the art on the prologue is different from that of chapter 1. There, McGee relies mostly on blacks over whites to give the impression of memories and the past, with the line work being seemingly less consistent. Over at the proper chapter update, despite their cartoony look, characters and settings are strongly defined: that obvious style difference actually adds to the entire package rather than detracting from it.

Plot and the first introduction to lead Aster and her supporting friends is also quite compelling. “Star Impact” wastes no time on quickly bringing a solid roster in and adds hints of their personalities and back stories through interaction and visual cues of how they feel and react. McGee uses lettering intelligently, both to introduce each character’s name as banners in the background, as well as to intentionally clutter speech balloons when characters are babbling.

The plot, so far, follows the conventional tropes of a young, talented lead aspiring to become something more, having an idol that is no longer and inspiration or a presence. It still early to say where McGee will take the story, but there is a lot of possibility, given the engaging characters, the off-kilter world, and the concepts around super-powered boxing.

All in all, “Star Impact” presents a very strong package of art, plot and characters, hinting at a promising run. Hopefully artist McGee will continue introducing new concepts and situations in future updates to keep it as fresh as this first entry.

Bathed in neon pinks and awash in reds and dark blues, “Terror Terror Terror” abstracts the listlessness of a group of teenagers in ‘80s LA, their deeply broken natures dragging them further and further into a murder case. Much of the story is told through the visuals, with dialogue helping to characterize and build the tone of the piece. Because of this, the sense that we are in the moment with these people is heightened, leaving the “greater narrative” to take a backseat, as it would in day to day life. To these characters, the murder was a curiosity that helped to provide a distraction to their lives, only, as the story progresses, we return to it, as it inserts itself back in via Jack & his reckless actions.

These most recent pages see the immediate fallout of the the party in Chapter 3 from our main character’s perspective and while very little happens on these pages, the momentum of the story seems to be picking up. The quality of the backgrounds and of Terror’s control of mood via the paneling is also much stronger. There are still plenty of panels that lack backgrounds but that’s part of the aesthetic of the comic. The neon abstracts the city, adding an additional layer of distance to the narrative and allowing us to float with the main character from location to location.

Not everyone will love this comic. It is a slow burn with very little spelled out, which can hinder the flow of the comic at times. The characters don’t much and, aside from their striking designs, aren’t too fleshed out. However, that’s to the comic’s benefit. By abstracting these characters, “Terror Terror Terror” is able to meditate on what they represent and are channeling instead of on a larger narrative. It allows Terror to seep the comic in a specific moment in time but also untether it from time and place. It’s a feeling I don’t get from much media these days and that is well worth a shot.