Welcome back to The Webcomics Weekly!
It’s election day here in the States so I’m going to go and hide in a corner and by hide, I mean I’m working the polls so I will almost certainly be seeing spots after having been up since 4:30AM. To help take your mind off things, have some Webcomics! We got a trip to “The Otherknown,” with a “microHunter” which might be “A Better Place” than here.
They’re rad, I promise.
A Better Place
‘A Child’ – ‘A Door’
Updates: Completed
By Harry Bogosian
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
Hannah has always been a child playing at being a god. Hannah’s conception of reality was limited, and expanded, by her imagination. Not shackled by years and years of how the world is, she could try to imagine how the world could be and, as such, her solutions were fantastical and odd. Confronted by an adult figure in the form of an eldritch mass of eyes, darkness, and sky rope, she realizes this. She realizes that her conception of the world has been limited because she has refused to allow herself to grow.
Through all these centuries as a “god” she has stubbornly refused to move beyond the person she once was; she simply augmented who she was with power. Now, she lets it happen. She lets her conceptions of the world change and grow. She lets the things she has experienced be recontextualized, remixed, and reintegrated into a new her, one which is able to make different connections, to see more, to think more, to comprehend more. Bogosian makes clear that Hannah has, at least not visibly, changed who she is beneath the power, she has simply changed the ways she is able to view her reality, allowing concepts like doors in space-time to have more meaning than “the thing I destroyed to keep the sky rope creature out.”
At this point in the narrative, the story has become The Hannah Show. Sure, the other characters are there but Hannah, by virtue of having all the power, takes center stage. It’s a little frustrating to no longer be looking at things from Nina or Theo’s perspectives, to be delving deeper into their struggles with this moment, but Hannah has always been the central figure, it’s just that the story reflected her own involvement in it: heavy & co-occuring with Theo at the start, missing and apathetic during the middle, and active, antagonistic, and narratively, gravitationally massive here near the end. What will Hannah have learned from this exercise in growing up? Will her perspective on how she’s been acting be more nuanced and considerate? Or will it be simply anger with the understanding of an older person?
All I know is that even in a time of great terror, Bogosian takes the time to pepper in a few laughs. Bless the terrifying sky monster’s little heart.
microHunter
Pages: Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Mondays and Fridays
By B.Y. and JRobin
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
“microHunter” is a good example of how with just enough formal diction anything can go from being fairly generic, in both the lacking in critical esteem and technical standpoint sense of the term, to just interesting enough to hook a reader. “microHUNTER” by B.Y. and JRobin is an obvious mixture of anime/manga like Sword Art Online and to a certain degree from my western eyes the Honey I Shrunk the … franchise. Baekhyeon is on his way to pick his traumatized sister her favorite snack when suddenly he and everyone around them shrink down to the size of ants! Which happens to be the basis for his sister’s forthcoming novel. This new ant sized existence is mediated through the use of video game logics and metaphors. These obvious points of reference are not an inherently bad thing, however, when the artwork is well done but lacking in style and emotion it creates the distinct lack of engagement on my part as a reader. You need to get to the second and to a degree third episode for “microHUNTER” to begin to stand on its own two feet.
The synopsis for this series intrigued me because of what it could do with the vertical scroll webcomic format. A series that is built around the sudden distortion of vertical orientation and small objects appearing very large creates lots of room for interesting visuals. As a vertical scrolling strip, “microHunter” is perhaps uniquely suited due to the nature of its medium to create art and interaction, through scrolling, that leans into and plays with the use of visual perspective and the vertical height of images. Which is why the first episode is a bit of a letdown. The art is overall fine, if a bit dead in the eyes, but it is so normal. That normalcy is a false sense of security as things beging to shrink in the cliffhanger and into the next pair of episodes. Once the ant sized perspective is developed the art JRobin leans into the ways a vertical scrolling comic can play with height difference and scale and the comic begins to come into its own.
Continued below“microHunter” writing isn’t exactly gripping. The structure of the first episode goes through nearly as many emotions as a South Korean film does tones. It throws A LOT at the wall in a very short amount of time. In doing so the strip has a habit of telling instead of showing, but that largely stops after the first episode. From the second episode onward the visuals begin to take the lead as actions demand to be shown. There is just enough here that “microHUNTER” might be worth checking out in a few weeks or now if you want to see some interesting perspective in art.
The Otherknown
Chapter 3, Pages 11-16
Updates: Wednesday/Saturday
By Lora Merriman
Reviewed by Jason Jeffords Jr
Damn, November is here, and we gained an hour with Daylight Savings! That means cold weather and more time to read webcomics everyone! With that in mind let’s get right into the update!
During the previous update, we ended with someone shouting out to Chandra. As she is alone on the bridge I figured this was a transition to a flashback. Well, give me a prize, as I was correct! Awards aside, this was a great narrative transition to the previous flashback that Ajupris was in. Not only is it the same flashback, but it’s the same moment (where Ajupris is hiding from Demeck) but from Chandra’s side. By showing us Chandra’s memory of this event, Merriman gives us a preview of just how others feel about Ajupris. Let’s just say it’s not so pretty.
Although the meat of the update focuses on the flashback, we do get a few pages updating us on the bridge as Chandra becomes emotional. During these few pages, Merriman continues to impress with her skill on drawing emotions. The manner in which she draws the tears looks lifelike, making you feel the weight of how Chandra feels. Yet, Merriman adds an extra layer by including some great sound effects to her emotional breakdown.
In the past, I’ve spoken on her amazing ability to showcase lights and how it affects objects surrounding it. But, in Chapter 3 Merriman shows just how great she is with human emotion by the art, how the characters react/talk and the sound effects near them.
So far Chapter 3 of “The Otherknown” has been a great emotional treat while showing us more of the history of its characters. As usual, I look forward to future updates!
