Howdy everyone! Elias here, bringing you that sweet, sweet webcomics content you crave. This week, I got the chance to review “Immaterial,” which is anything but. Read on, fellow webcomics travelers!
Immaterial
‘Material Things’ – ‘A Distant Memory: Scene 3’
Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
By Sarah Ellerton
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
One of the really cool things about “Immaterial” is that it is 100% completed but not fully out. This means I can better judge how the story is pacing itself out at this stage in the game, as it’s about three-quarters of the way complete. It’s rare I’ve gotten the chance to do that here at The Webcomics Weekly so I’m going to take it! Thank you Sarah Ellerton.
For the curious as to why that name seems familiar, Ellerton is the co-creator of Dreamless, a webcomic I’ve yet to read but I’m now very interested in checking out thanks to the strengths of “Immaterial,” though I do worry about going back in time with this art style. See, “Immaterial,” and “Dreamless” before it, is a fully digital, painted comic – think “The Marked” or “Jules Verne’s Lighthouse” over at Top Cow, only less shiny and with significantly fewer ugly browns and greys. Out of all the webcomic styles I’ve encountered, these sadly age the worst, even when an artist is skilled. Going back to a 2009 comic with this approach? 1 Fear.
Tangent aside, “Immaterial” is the story of Alex, who after 19 years of constant movement, has just moved into her cousin’s apartment. While there, she’s (temporarily, and non-lethally) isekaied into the “Island of Lost Toys,” the consequences of which shape the rest of the comic thus far – like how, once back, she finds she’s been flipped. All this is done by the end of chapter 1 too, which already gives the comic high marks for pacing. OK, she finds out she’s writing backwards and the like in subsequent chapters but that’s fine.
Starting in Chapter 2, she’s joined by Ethan, the other roommate in the apartment, who helps provide a counterbalance to the weird world Alex finds herself in. This may seem like a small detail but in doing so, Ellerton reframes the narrative of “Immaterial.” Much as I love a good solo adventurer story, this grounds “Immaterial” and transforms the narrative from a pure adventure-fantasy to a bildungsroman with hints of fantasy-drama, Ethan’s presence swapping the importance of Alex’s desire to get her life back on track & fix the whole “being flipped” thing and dealing with her unresolved traumas around work, usefulness, and attachments, both to things and to people. Both remain key, as we were already primed to explore the latter by the zeroith chapter, ‘Material Things,’ but now Alex’s freak out about the boxes early on in Chapter 1 becomes central instead of just a character moment.
Because of the richness of Ellerton’s character and the simplicity of the fantasy aspects, I devoured everything that was out in two sittings, only breaking because my lunch hour ended before I could. I needed to know what happened next, and to get used to the art style. This is likely to be a sticking point for readers as it did take me a few pages, actually a whole chapter, to get used to it.
Now, visually and structurally, I think “Immaterial” is brilliant, the panel I used as the banner above perfectly capturing everything I love about Ellerton’s visual storytelling. On the one side we have a calm, sunny day, with Alex’s mom promising a bright future of no more moving, the first balloon sitting in that blue sky. The balloon is split in two, with the “I promise” significantly removed from the rest by a fat tail, injecting our first bit of foreboding into the panel.
The rest is all done visually as Ellerton introduces the title of the comic with a wonderful logo that captures the feeling of immateriality we see in fantasy aspects later on but also in Alex’s life, where everything is transient and nothing is ever truly there. Above it is a dark sky, full of storm clouds and wind, the pastoral greens and blues giving way to dark grey-blues and shadowed, nearly black greens. An empty landscape that stretches out for miles away from the implied idealism and comfort of the suburbs into an unknown full of promise that we know is going to be squandered. It’s multi-layered storytelling at its finest.
Continued belowThe actual style, however, is where I struggled.
Ellerton’s art strives to create high visual fidelity and semi-photo-realism which, combined with the digitally painted colors and lack of borders on anything, creates this almost uncanny valley feel to much of the early chapters. Think Ratatouille. There’s enough stylization to create a cohesive world that can be accepted by our brains and enjoyed but it’s close enough to looking “real” that every so often we wonder why something looks off. Not because it looks bad but because it’s not quite right.
You can see this, too, in the restraint Ellerton shows when characters talk or move. There’s little of the hyper exaggeration one would expect of the more cartoonish style of the characters – a style mostly owing to their large eyes and simplified body types. Facial expressions don’t push the bounds beyond what a human face would be expected to do and motion is kept within the realms of an average body. There’s a real weight to every action, or inaction, and this is both a boon and a detriment. It means things can’t be heightened in the way they seem to want to be, like during the cousin’s introduction, but the quieter moments are made more impactful by this restraint, like the flour fight in chapter 6.
One other nitpick I have – other than not being able to use the arrow keys to navigate back and forth – is the interplay between the coloring and the lettering. There are quite a number of panels where tails get lost because of the way Ellerton does her lighting, lighting I love by the way. Since the balloons and tails are borderless and pure white, you can see how it being on top of a light source or simply a very bright, white space can create some confusion in who is speaking or how to read the balloons. Thankfully it is not often and the rest of the flow is clear enough that it’s not a major issue.
Let’s not end on a sour note, though. “Immaterial” is a small and engaging story that keeps its focus squarely on its strongest aspects. That focus and narrative tightness is what sets it apart from many of the other lovely, but sprawling, fantasy/fantasy-adjacent webcomics out there. The work of a seasoned professional, and with a clear, manageable length, “Immaterial” is well worth adding to your weekly rotation.
