The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life as we continue skipping down the road to the Eisner awards. Last issue, we covered the first of five Eisner nominees for best Webcomic, the latest adventure of “Delilah Dirk.” If you haven’t read Mel’s coverage, go do that now! “The Mannamong” will wait.
But not for long.
The Mannamong
Episodes 1-48
Updates: Mondays (currently on hiatus)
By Michael Adam Lengyel
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
To prepare for this review, I read “The Mannamong” in two sittings. If you had asked me if I liked “The Mannamong” after the first, I probably would have said “eh, not particularly.” The comic has a pretty standard start. We’re introduced to Kali and her mom, Kali’s mysterious illness, the fantasy world they live in, and the legend of titular mannamong as well as the central, ongoing dilemma of the comic: Kali’s possession by a fugitive mannamong, who we eventually learn is named Tontorus.
These opening couple chapters of the comic, i.e. episode 1-10, are fine, they just don’t do a lot to stand out from other comics like it. Absent any truly strong hook – be that in the story, aesthetic, visual technique, paneling etc. – the growing pains and weaker aspects are left sitting in the fore, most noticeably in the visuals.
Visually, Lengyel’s art is a throwback to the early days of long-form webcomics, that mixture of the wide eyed, big-headed “manga style” and the anthro/“Sonic comics style. It also feels analog and distant, with colors that are naturalistic rather than neon and full of artificial bloom, hints of pastel with the grit of colored pencils. It’s not an aesthetic I’m overly-fond of. Still, it gets the job done and provides a more unique look to the high-gloss, slicky similar webtoons I’m seeing more and more of.
Lengyel does take a bit of time to find his groove, tightening up his lines to retain consistency across panels and increasing the expressiveness of his characters, However, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Like, the flow of the lettering is all over the place, especially in crowded panels, and there isn’t a consistent usage of when to go up and down, left and right, or where to start reading. Because of that, the comic never teaches me to read it correctly.
A good example of non-traditional lettering, though visually it is quite traditional, is Terry Moore, where he asks you to bounce left and right between characters but leaves the balloons at the same heights while connecting them vertically down to the people talking. Normally a zig-zag would be used to indicate direction and order but because he does it frequently and deliberately, you learn to read panels like that in his works.
Additionally, the paneling is off but not in a way I can put my finger on. There’s just this tiny bit of friction no matter what size screen I read on, except a computer. It’s either too squished so it’s hard to read the lettering, or too tall and I feel way too close to the characters. This has a “regular page deconstructed” feel to it and it really hurts the readability of “The Mannamong.” And I get it. Setting the pacing and sizing of vertically scrolling panels is an unenviable task as you have to fit screens as narrow as a 3” phone to as wide as a 25” monitor, but if the format is going to be for a phone, at the very least it should read well there. Though I appreciate the bespoke website for the comic. I never felt like that was an impediment to my reading experience.
Lastly, beyond the aesthetic growing pains, much of my frustration with these early episodes is the cloying nature of Kali’s dialog and the sheer volume of it. There is a lot of her screaming “mommy” and whinging about her situation. Of course, this makes total sense. She’s a young kid and this is a story for younger kids. Accurately representing a child and then having her learn and grow through adversity is the best way to connect to that audience.
Continued belowIt’s just, if you, like me, have a low tolerance for this kind of stuff, this may not be the comic for you.
To be sure, it gets better after the fourth chapter, with more silent panels, enough character growth and greater worldbuilding, as well as an expanded cast. That’s really when it grows into its other inspirations – “Bone” and other early Graphix titles like “Amulet.” I said that “The Mannamong” was just fine during its first 20 or so episodes, and while I don’t think it reaches their heights in the back-half of what’s out so far, I can see the grand ambition in the narrative and feel like it can get there in a satisfactory manner.
I understand better what this comic is growing into and why it’s getting the spotlight that it is: this is a traditional 2nd order fantasy story done well.
The story expands outwards once the other mannamong start appearing, and as Kali learns more about Tontorus, we feel as lost as her as she’s caught in this larger battle, powerless and powerful at the same time. We delve into her feelings of inadequacy, of being a burden, and the fear of being forgotten by the one person she could always count on: her mom. It’s an exploration of anxiety and the ways the world validates and invalidates those feelings, Gisenes’ “just suck it up” being a prime example of what not to do. There’s also a lot of bible references? Manna and Gisenes being an anagram of Genesis are just the two that come to mind.
The only time I started to check out was when we’re getting lore dumps. They’re interesting lore dumps! But they’re also so. much. information. I wish they all had those storybook, wood-carving cut-aways to accompany them. Those segments are really cool and added a secondary visual that broke up the flow in a good way.
So where does this leave “The Mannamong?” Its latest chapter is a damn effective escalation, placing Kali at her lowest point yet and I want to recommend it, but only with tempered praise; it has yet to truly make the case above the other Eisner noms. This has the potential to be great and is on the path there, but the journey remains a bumpy one with a destination still farther out than I’d like.
