Welcome back to The Webcomics Weekly!
WE DID IT. It’s the final column of 2020 here at The Webcomics Weekly and we are sending you off in style and by style, I mean with the final instalment of our “A Better Place” reviews, the next letter from “Mr. Boop” and a check-in with a new comic “No Longer a Heroine!” Thank you all for sticking with us during this hell year and here’s hoping that 2021 goes better, as the fight goes on to make the world better, safer, and more equitable for ourselves and future generations.
See you on the other side of the new year. Stay safe y’all.
A Better Place
‘Above the Clouds’ – ‘This World
Updates: Completed
By Harry Bogosian
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
Here we are friends, at the end of a long journey. What began in the grayscale backyard of two children, one with a cruel streak, one with a hopeful naivety, ends in a verdant landscape born from blood and destruction and loss. Where there was once joy and idealism, there is now knowledge and sadness that the titular sentence is a struggle not a goal. It is forever ongoing, never an end state, and that it can be easy to lose sight of that in pursuit of that singular “better place.”
I could have talked about these in two parts, as it splits quite nicely with the end of the era, but I thought it would be nicer to close the year with the closing of my look at “A Better Place.” There’s so much I could get into, Bogosian absolutely crushes it with these final pages, both visually and thematically, but I think I’ve said plenty on both, especially on the nature of Hannah’s power (and power in general) & how her childish worldview affected the way she made it manifest and how she wielded it, which Bogosian reinforces here through the supplemental materials in the descriptions.
Moreover, the motif of the ant and how Bun & Theo treat them differently from Hannah in the opening chapters is a nice touch and a symbol of how things are changing. Hannah’s power is sealed away in the flower — I think — and now the ants she tried to control and burn for her pleasure are walking upon and sustained by the flower. It is not wielded but instead a facet of the world, not the prison bars they once were but something more beautiful and fragile.
These chapters absolutely got me to cry and this is the second time I’ve read them. Damn if they weren’t effective. I do think, however, because of the nature of the comic, it all happens rather quickly. I alluded to this a few updates ago but there was a point when the nature of the narrative changed and the more intricate conflicts began to be shed for the central one of Hannah, Theo, Nina and Bun. This shedding meant that we didn’t get as much time to spend with the anti-theists as I would have liked, making their conflict feel less deep. It’s a matter of a story feeling like it had legs to go another fifty pages in the midst of act two, early act three and instead it didn’t.
All that said, the events that play out are all easy to understand, even if they are gut wrenching to watch, as they are born out of the character’s convictions, beliefs, and personalities as well as the larger themes of the work. There are no easy answers or easy conclusions. Hannah’s world had two possible endings because of her actions. One no longer exists. The other allows for “A Better Place.”
Thanks for joining me on this. It was a lot of fun getting to delve more deeply into the series and I am also FLOORED by the revelation that this is a prequel to his previous comic “Demon’s Mirror.” While less polished than this one, and a bit more uneven pacing wise, I love it all the same and I suggest you go check it out. Come the new year, we’ll be working through a comic I haven’t revisited in a long time and I think might last me a good, long while. See you in 2021.
Continued below
Mr. Boop
Book I: My Wife Is Betty Boop
Chapters: 31-40
Updates: Completed
By Alec Robins
Reviewed by Jacob Cordas
To my dearly beloved Betty,
I am writing this letter to you to tell you of a deep battle being waged in my soul this night. Every night I sit out in the cold staring at the stars till my nipples turn blue with frostbite asking myself a question I have no good answer for, “Would I be okay with you have a threeway with Bugs Bunny?”
I sit here as the sounds of the city of Phoenix echo loudly through the night sky. The noises of people coughing without masks on can be heard in every direction. It’s a hellscape here, Betty. I can’t let my mind sit on these tragedies. I must think about you, about us. I must be the man you need. But I no longer know if I can be.
Over the course of the last few issues, I have seen you and Alec finally develop a real physical relationship. You both have made all sorts of ground together. You both are clearly in love, but I desperately want to say it isn’t true. Can you love your god in a physical sense? Alec creates this story. He draws it effortlessly making every panel a joke that stands so well. He gives this world, that is exactly like ours, the feeling of a half-forgotten wet dream from before I discovered pornhub. Does this make him a god?
If it does, he is a loving god. He cares so deeply about you and your needs, Betty. He satisfies you both emotionally and sexually. He trusts you in threesomes with other cartoon characters, even when that other cartoon character planned his own execution. How much must he love you to share your sex with his attempted murderer? An attempted murderer who works at Amazon, no less!
In the cold Arizona winter, I struggle to fathom this. My girlfriend is inside right now making some sort of spicy dish that doesn’t have name since she made it up on the spot. It will be delicious. I know it will be. It always is. But am I a bad person? For I am sitting outside as a famous Arizona blizzard swirls around me wondering if my murderous tendencies towards Alec so I could win your heart are wrong?
Only two weeks ago, I hid in a dark backroom planning his demise. I would do what Bugs Bunny could not. I would win that great holy war for your love. I would wage a holy inquisition against Alec. He is a false god, I would say. He is not deserving. I am deserving.
But amongst these delightful pages and hysterical encounters, am I truly? Betty, I need to know: am I right to step in the way of your love? I need to know. Tell me if I am deserving of your love.
Do I have the right to step between you and your god?
With sincere if confused love,
Jacob Cordas
No Longer a Heroine!
Pages: Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Mondays
By Maenggi Ki
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
Sometimes all you need is a catchy title, which, “No Longer a Heroine!” clearly is. It is this reflexive statement on the lead characters status in their own story. Which raises a lot of questions, if they aren’t a heroine anymore, what are they? Aren’t we supposed to imagine we’re the leads of our own story. That got me to click on it, which revealed it’s about a former screen idol, Lisa Cheon, who after a fall from grace is reduced to the bottle. (It also gives Heroine a bit of a pun quality.) A quick click of the button later and it turns out Maenggi Ki is an overall effective artist.
Soapy, melodramatic, energy aside, Maenggi Ki’s interior work is visually pleasing and formally interesting in how it expresses our contemporary feelings of isolation despite being hyper connected through the internet. Lisa Cheon’s life is turned upside down after a drug scandal, that may or may not be her fault. The scandal becomes a scarlet letter, and she exiles herself from acting. This self-isolation is visually built up through the use of vertical comic space and repeated imagery. Her declaratory press conference isn’t actually that long, ironically it is fairly long when you think about how large the gutters are and scrolling. For once the irksome gutters served a purpose by spreading out her words and visually denying much sense of continuity. It turns some of Scott McCloud’s ideas about temporality in comics on their head in some interesting ways.
Continued belowAfter a time skip Cheon’s isolation is more visually normalized as she tries to anonymously exist in a modern city, and isn’t doing the best job at it. Ki draws Cheon in sharp focus with the environment out of focus, and often visually isolates them from other people when in conversation.
Recreating modern user interfaces is a bit of a fool’s errand due to how fast they change but turning the comic into a recreation of these contemporary tools becomes this moment of reflexive remediation that helps to reinforce the immaterial of it all. Cheon is surrounded and connected to screens, and people are connected to her through screens, but they don’t really know her.
“No Longer a Heroine!” has plenty of melodramatic charm and solid visuals, but the level of craft in the storytelling is a real surprising and worth looking at even if the subject matter isn’t immediately enticing.
