The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life! This week we’re going to the mattresses for this new romance strip about an elite nanny and the mafia underboss who pays her to take care of his precocious son.
The Mafia Nanny
Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Violet Matter(writing) Sh00(art)roousuu(color) Drawniels(environment)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
This one is for fans of the short lived and forgotten FOX medical drama The Mob Doctor.
One of the joys of webcomics is their ability, due to a lack of physical production and lesser overhead, to just run with bonkers ideas. That runway is similar to the black and white boom of the 80s that eventually brought forward “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and all of its sincere and parodic imitators. Now, do I think “The Mafia Nanny” will be a TMNT style hit? Absolutely not, but the absurdity that is captured in the title: “The Mafia Nanny” is the same energy that turned a Miller “Daredevil” parody into a transmedia cultural juggernaut. I mean this strip begins with the nanny equivalent of “I always wanted to be a gangster”! While that absurdity is part of the strips charm it is also a well put together strip aesthetically. The romance setup of the series is a bit obvious, but that sort of bold-faced text approach also feels fitting with contemporary fandom and romance readers. How can you not stare at underboss Gabriel Angelini’s pretty pretty eyes and broad shoulders and think sure he kills people, but I can fix him. These smoldering embers are made more complicated because it was his organized crime family that is responsible for the death of protagonist Davina’s family!
Sh00 figurework and Roousuu’s warm color pallet help to push this campy strip into a place of respectability. Sh00’s work in facial expressions does a good job playing the conflicted dynamism of Davina off against the stoic Gabriel. Davina is torn between interest in her past and the charge of protecting the underbosses son, Mikey. Child characters can be hit or miss and so far Mikey is the right balance of being a snarky little shit without overstaying their welcome. His introduction in the first episode off panel, demanding twice the chocolate milk for the slight, with an excellent reveal that uses webtoon scrolling, captures the character. By the second episode when he is asking to be called Michelle and not Mikey, you get the amped up percosious nature of the character.
The kidnapping plot that takes place between episode two and three fives the art team a chance to show their abilities to do action and like the plot, they pass. In the first episode there is this fun set of panels as the headmistress of the Elite Nanny Academy goes over the pillars of nanny instruction. The art team compress everything into this montage of banal but routine specialized labor. This is a good montage and one that takes advantage of the webtoon’s unique properties, but that isn’t an action scene. Once Davina is on the hunt after a kidnapped Mikey the art team get to flex their action muscle where they manage to run with the absurdity of the situation but still present it in a readable and engaging matter. It’s absurd but taken seriously.
“The Mafia Nanny” walks that line of irony, the act of being serious but not too serious. That balance will not be for everyone’s taste, and depending on the fuse of this series romance it could get repetitive very fast. But for now “The Mafia Nanny” is worth checking out, it captures the spirit of what makes a romance like “Spy x Family” work.
