The Webcomic Weekly reaches an important milestone in our illustrious publishing career, issue #120. Just 300 more of these and we’ll be at 420 and you know what that means. In the meantime help us count down by reading what we’ve wrangled up for you today. We have the return of “Chickenface” as well as continuing coverage of “Lavender Jack.” There is the “Con Job” which seems to be referencing famous well known fight manga tropes. The whimsical “sedna.” And our continued journey up the “Tower of God.”
Chapter 2 pg 16-20
Updates: Sundays
By KJ Murr
Reviewed by Dexter Buschetelli
We’re still getting morsels of a mystery about our titular fowl and his abuelito in “Chickenface” but these five pages once again focus more on his mother and father as they first meet back in 2002. I’m going to need to send my aforementioned strongly worded letter to KJ as we still have yet to see any Cronenbergian monsters but what we are treated to is some wonderful character beats as he sets up the backstory of ol’ córneo and his bride-to-be.
What is most striking about these entries is Murr’s use of two Spanish-language tunes, “La Diferencia” and “Eres Muy Bonita Pero Mentirosa.” As someone who doesn’t speak Spanish I enjoy properties like this that require me to do a little googling to better understand. The lyrics set a bit of a tone and further fill in the story as Horny McHornhead is now wooed by his future esposa.
As always the art here has an endearing style, even if there are no tentacles coming out of anyone’s eyes. I hope to further learn just what the heck is happening with Abuelito Córneo Pollo as something nefarious is clearly afoot; but simply looking over KJ Murr’s pages is always a delight and I am ecstatic to be back here at Webcomics Weekly reviewing “Chickenface”.
Pages 14-19
Updates: First and Third Fridays
By Reuben Baron and Darian Jones
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
I know this may seem silly but I nearly cried when I read Riley & their mom’s conversation about the Seder and Shabbos. This isn’t a chasidic orthodox household, it’s a religious Jewish one, modern and current. It’s so rare to see, not boiled down to a yarmulke or set in “The Old Country,” which is a fine mode of storytelling, let’s be clear; it’s just nice to see one that feels closer to how I experience it, which is true of many aspects of “Con Job” in fact.
Capturing the joy and excitement of these characters without succumbing to the irony of Heldogg & “OMG that’s so cringe,” “Con Job” is able to portray the wide variety of people and relationships you find in an anime club/the fandom and is thus able to successfully simulate being there. Everyone on Page 9 is a person I would recognize from my college anime club or from conventions, including, unfortunately, Heldogg, who is emblematic of a much darker side of the anime fandom specifically, and many nerdy fandoms writ large. It’s also unfortunate to note that had this been an early 2000s comic, Heldogg would almost certainly be the protag and Riley would be the “wacky person to scoff at and deride,” which is, putting it mildly, messed up.
While I have some quibbles with “Con Job” — the penchant for telling rather than showing, dialog that’s just a little too on the nose, — the biggest barrier to entry for people might be that this isn’t paced for page by page. I think the webcomic will benefit from having more pages than it currently does because thus far, it’s all set up and foreshadowing. I know what Baron & Jones are lampshading with Mark, which is one reason why I’m willing to overlook it being set in 2018 rather than, say, 2005, which is when much of the aesthetics re: anime/anime fandom in “Con Job” would be a much better fit. I think glomping has been long out of style but I could be wrong.
Continued belowAll that said, I’m excited, with that undercurrent of dread, for what is next for Riley and “Con Job.” I can see the coming conflicts, and how they will play on themes of belonging, community, and the complex intersections of identities. But there will also be moments of connection, in unbridled, unashamed joy in the things we love and identify with. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go text my friend so we can yell VEGETA!. KAKAROT! back and forth for an hour.
Pages: Episodes 16-18
Schedule: Tuesdays – currently on seasonal hiatus
By Dan Schkade
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
I’m rather used to serialized narratives and all their miniforms. This batch of strips for “Lavender Jack” ‘Obversion & Review’ and the start of ‘America’ push the notion of serialized narratives and sequential art into a bit of a different space. Episode 16, ‘Obversion & Review’ is effectively a clip episode as Inspector Ferrier and Officer Crabbe review the facts of the case thus far. As a clip episode Schkade just remixes previously new art to condense the plot-narrative of the prior 15 strips into a single one. It’s a macro level view of things, but also the sort of thing you could give to a new reader as a tease to what the series is about. At the sametime, the easy free access of “Jack” makes the use of this strip as a tease for new readers not as obvious a marketing tool. What’s an easier selling point than: Free at the flick of a thumb? Whatever function it serves for new readers it is still a delightful bit of craft as Schkade uses there in world retrospection to mark time, as signified by the two clocks that bookend the episode, as they wait for the Lord Mayor to show up. And as readers we know he isn’t going to show up well at all.
That hanging thread of the Lord Mayor’s condition, is he dead or just severely beaten, is left up in the air as the strip transitions to the next arc ‘America’ which serves as an origin for how Sir Mimley met Ducky. Readers journey back to roughly five years ago as Mimley journeys to America to see an old friend.
His old friend seems to be like his new friends in Gallery, corrupt and very self-satisfied by it all. At the same time there are hints of a pass between them and an emphasis on physical contact that we haven’t seen before. Lavender Jack might be known for his color and the faint lavender smell, but maybe it’s code for something else. Systemic corruption and the abuse of the working class seem to be a thing across both sides of the pond as Mimley leaves his friends estate certain of where he must go next to begin to fix things.
Schkade gets a lot out of the manorial setting. The high ceiling plays well with the vertical scrolling and helps to both shrink and isolate Mimley in the frame as he tries to hide away from the world. The environmental storytelling complements Schkade’s typical cartooning very well. The setting also has some fairly obvious – if not intended to be mimetic – similarities with Wayne Manor that helps to further the retro pulp feel of “Lavender Jack.”
The type of storytelling involved in these two strips, a clip episode and sudden prequel narrative, are the kind of structural zigs only a comic strip could effectively pull off. A monthly comic could do this, but the release cadence of “Jack” is what makes leaving the Mayor in an assumed pool of his own blood effective. Instead of it being a month’s long wait for what happened in the present it’ll be a couple of weeks with tons of other strips you can read in the meantime.
Updates: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday
By Thomas L McDonell
Reviewed by Jacob Cordas
At my kindergarten graduation, all of the students had to walk up and say what they were going to be when they grew up. A bunch of children still struggling to pick out their own clothes in the morning saying how they are going to be firefighters, police officers and spies. But when it was my turn, I went up and said with a terrible speech impediment, “A paleontologist.”
Continued belowThis is a long road to walk to say that reading “sedna” was like wandering through the highlights of my childhood, if represented by a sci-fi minded Bill Watterson. Each update follows the same four-panel structure serving as an excuse to see Sedna elaborate on a new element of the cosmos, always with a cute twist by the end on the idea. It’s always fun, always informative and always delightful. Even without an overarching plot in the slightest, each update carries you over to the next one.
The element that most wins me over with “sedna” though is the character design. Her father’s design is warm and friendly. Her best friend is adorable with a malicious warmth that feels like a prankster that always ends up accidentally helping instead of being silly. The stand out is our titular character, Sedna. With hair made up of stars, she bounces around the panel. There is such energy and exuberance whenever she is there. It feels like a little kid being excited about the things they love.
It makes it just so much fun to read. It captures the energy I had as a child desperate to talk about dinosaurs with any adult who was willing to listen. With a humor and charm, “sedna” is everything I could want from this kind of webcomic. As a way to pass the time, it’s wonderful. As a means of learning about space, it’s a delight. As a depiction of childhood, it’s just wonderful.
Tower of God
Tower of God: Season 1 Eps. 51-58; Episode 10 – “Beyond the Sadness”
Updates: Mondays (Currently on Hiatus in English)
By SIU
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
What do you desire? Money and wealth? Honor and pride? Authority and power? Revenge? Or something that transcends them all? Whatever you desire—it can be yours if you climb the tower.
After a short rest, and a longer than usual break between reviews, we’re back with the Final Four episodes Tower of God season one. Last time, if you remember, there were a ton of changes between the comic and the show (“Tower of God” and Tower of God) and that remains true here. In fact, it feels like this might be the episode with the most consequential changes thus far. The adaptors really did a lot of cutting and rearranging and editing to fit all of these chapters into a single episode. I should note that chapter 58 alternates scenes between Bam facing Evankell, I think, and the “fight” to support him, while in “Beyond the Sadness” the two are presented as a whole, one after the other, cutting off Bam seeing the big spooky eye.
“Tower of God,” actually, is far more disjointed and frenetic in its presentation of scenes throughout, as if it’s unable to remain focused long enough on one thread for it to conclude. While this choice does keep things from getting stagnant or stale, as there’s always the promise we’ll return to finish the conversation/fight/whatever, it does get very convoluted very fast. Like, Khun’s plan is so fucking complicated in the comic and reliant on coincidences and while he’s a master manipuator, even that felt like a bridge too far. It also adds unnecessary drama into the aftermath of Endorsi’s fight against Quant. And that’s a problem with “Tower of God” as a whole: it’s so fucking convoluted and every new plot thread tries to make it even more complicated. Tower of God, on the other hand, tries to streamline these complications by aligning them with character motivations, dropping extraneous details, and all-in-all creating a more cohesive story.
In the past, this meant cutting out characters, combining them, removing scenes or changing dialog to carry a more “serious” air and thus removing the comedic asides that characterize “Tower of God” but would feel wildly out of place in Tower of God. It also meant removing concepts like Baang or the tedious discussions of rules that are way too complicated for their own good. It also meant taking what was once explained text and turning it into subtext or communicated through the visual language of the show.
Continued belowUnfortunately, “Beyond the Sadness” shows the cracks in this approach. Because the show has done its damnedest to pair down the exposition, moments that really, really need it don’t get their due and the episode becomes a slog, feeling like a drawn out lull rather than a pause or an arc in and of itself, like in “Tower of God.”
For example, Tower of God cut out that scene of Khun talking to Rak about his family and why he supported Bam & Rachel. It doesn’t quite line up with the Bam of the show — he’d never open up like this — but the ensuing chewing out Khun gets by Rak is textbook Shonen motivation fodder and would’ve done a lot to help the episode feel less empty. It would’ve also been great to have that scene of Hansung Yu explaining what the deal with Urek Mazino was and why he’s so special.
The other two moments are ones that both “Tower of God” and Tower of God fail to seed and sell due to the weaknesses of narrative clarity but somehow Tower of God failed even more at selling them. The first is the “reveal” that Bam is an irregular. I was convinced this was common knowledge, by Khun and Lero Ro at the very least, and so when everyone is shocked, the moment does not carry the same narrative weight as it should have. I know I’m slipping into simple critique of the whole now but the distinction between Regular and Irregular has been so poorly established beyond “one good, one dangerous” that it’s essentially meaningless beyond a signal that our main character is special.
It’s never been properly illustrated what a regular entrance to the tower looks like so we, the audience, have no frame of reference. “Tower of God” never took the time to do this and because Tower of God wanted to wrap up the entire “first season” in its first season, it didn’t think to structure the show with that in mind and slow down. I’ll probably do a moratorium of the entire thing at the end of episode 13, “Tower of God” (yeah, that won’t get confusing,) so I’ll save my thoughts for there.
The “irregular reveal” was sold better in “Tower of God,” interestingly, because of the interspersing of the scenes and the comedy, as well as the aforementioned Khun family scene. Since it’s less serious all the time, the scene doesn’t carry the same dire weight and so when Bam is revealed to be an irregular and they have the conversation afterwards, it feels less consequential, and less like a twist. Plus, Khun centering his objections around potentially being kicked out of the family adds another layer to him, one which is left ambiguous in Tower of God.
The other major moment is when the teacher of the Wave Controllers (I think that’s what Bam is) is revealed to be a spy for the Imperial Court, essentially. However, it’s implied that the actual teacher was, I dunno, hollowed out or something and taken over at some point during these sets of tests, which does not track in the slightest. Both Tower of God and “Tower of God” play this up like it’s some grand reveal but I could name the amount of times I saw this character on one hand. Hell, he appears ONCE, maybe twice, in Tower of God beforehand. This is why, despite it being one of those eleventh hour twists that don’t mean jack, “Tower of God’s” worked better.
We actually have a sense of who the character is, and even their name before “the reveal,” whereas he’s just a funny background extra in the show. Well, that and the tongues and emphasis that this is indeed a person wearing a weird sheep snowball skin who talks out of its mouth and not just eyeballs inside a mouth. That’s just nasty and helps sell the uniqueness and threat of the character. His conversation is also more enlightening in “Tower of God” as to some of the larger questions of the nature of the Tower’s hierarchy and whatnot.
Continued belowThe last two changes I wanted to bring up were show originals (as far as I’m aware) that I really liked. Were the season to have been paced differently, I think they would’ve been more impactful, but I digress. The scenes revolve around the change in the relationship between Hoh & Serena. Hoh’s funeral and Serena deciding to leave the Tower (or the tower tests? Again, the larger picture is really, REALLY poorly established) allow their arcs to conclude in a way that makes me wonder if this wouldn’t have been a better place to either 1) close the season or 2) been the midpoint instead. It’s a clear end point and I appreciate how it illustrates the comradery between these competitors turned friends.
Hoh was kinda a dick in the show but clearly tortured and consumed by his demons. In the comic he’s just a homicidal ass. Serena is deeply affected by Hoh’s actions and passing and, considering she also knows she failed the test, this prompts her to take her leave in a bittersweet moment that preserves the connection between her and Shibisu that’s in the comic without having to do another isolated drinking scene. Instead, we get that group scene and it’s hilarious, contrasting with the lengthy and sad burial of Hoh.
I do have to mention again, though, that death in this show (and comic) is just…such nonsense. This is maybe the first confirmed death we get because what does and does not cause death is nebulous at best in this universe. The stakes of death are never clarified because characters don’t treat it as such and so it’s weird that Hoh gets so much time spent on him when we don’t know who of the others were straight up murdered by contestants/test administrators and who were just seriously injured and failed.
Anyway, there were a lot of other rearranges and small changes as per usual, like how the Yuri scene, which is a short, pointless diversion, was moved from right after the end of the test in Chapter 51 to slightly later in the events of the episode or how they changed the name of the test to Guardian’s Test from Administrator’s Test, which was a bad choice since it just added more confusion even though it is technically more accurate, but there were too many to talk about individually. In two weeks, it’s the home stretch with the first of a two-parter, “Underwater Hunt, Part 1.” See you then!
