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The Webcomics Weekly #146: Webcomics Now in 720p (7/20/2021 Edition)

By | July 20th, 2021
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life now in pristine HD. This week, we go “Within” and “Beneath the Camphor Tree” in search of our “BFF” who might be “Lavender Jack” in secret. Just typing “Beneath the Camphor Tree” has summoned a non-copyright infringing creature akin to Navi from that popular Nintendo 64 game that wants you to “listen.”

Beneath the Camphor Tree
Pages: Episodes 1-11
Schedule: 1st and 15 Every Month
By funkyfeetart
Reviewed by Devin Tracy Fairchild

When you know you know. Just one look to launch a thousand ships. All of Troy fighting for fair Helen. You see someone and suddenly everything falls into place but also melts into a messy puddle. The blood is rushing to your cheeks your palms are clammy. You lose all ability to form coherent thought around this person. Neurons miss fire in a cacophony that is overwhelming. When you know you know. I am in love. With two fictional characters—in a comic. And the flawless work of its writer/artist. It just so happens to also be a compelling, sweet, funny romance set in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea. The comic is called “Beneath the Camphor Tree.” The creator is funkyfeetart. It drops the 1st and 15th of every month, on WEBTOON. So far there is 11 issues and this is just the prologue.

I assume it is called “Beneath the Camphor Tree.” that because that’s the location of this epic meet cute. Under the camphor tree is where a young woman Eun-ah meets a strange man in simple garb and something warm and fluffy churns inside both of them upon first glance. Eun-ah then rescues the mysterious young man from petty crooks. But nothing is as it seems. In the first episode it is revealed that this young peasant is not a peasant, but the Crown Prince. And he is impressed by Eun-ah’s deft movements of her fists and feet. It also turns out that she is moonlighting as a mercenary (or more like muscle for the defenseless). But in order to safely do that in Joseon society she must dress in men’s clothes.

Who doesn’t like a good gender-bender? Especially ones set in another time, another country? Yet the story slays at capturing modern sensibilities, but also isn’t divorced from the historical detail. They’re not even separated. They’re not even on a break. I am reminded of old classics like “Ranma ½” with it’s face palm moments of awkward hilarity. But emotionally there seems to be a lot more at stake. You root for these two from the beginning. In one episode Eun-ah’s cover is almost blown, when, dressed in women’s clothes, a guy gets too handsy and she kicks his ass.

But the art! Oh, the art. It makes me weak in the knees and turns my spine all invertebrate just thinking of it. It makes frequent use of silent panels but do not breeze through them. The care and the attention to detail stopped me in my tracks too many times to count. The backgrounds are cinematic and sweeping with the right amount of pan shots. The facial expressions are weighty tombs in and of themselves. Like on a comedy-drama show directed by someone who cares about each shuddering. grimace and each quivering lip.

Good shading is difficult to find, especially in a webcomic. The shading in this adds a fifth dimension to this story. Without even seeing the sun, I can tell from the shading exactly where the light source is at that frozen moment in time. The shades of color are also consistent throughout and have subtle palates like a costly bottle of fine soju that the Prince might drink. My only criticism about the art is the comic’s overuse of blush on the detailed faces. But I say that as a connoisseur. Throw a stone into the vast void of cyberspace and nearly every webcomic you hit will have that issue. Another splinter of a bone to pick is the use of white spaces panels instead of black or some other color. A solid color would allow for smoother transitions, but it doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story. I do wish it came out more than twice a month, but only because I want more. But I understand how hard it is to create good art with a full calendar

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This comic promises to capture our attention for the next few months, even years to come. The chemistry between Eun-ah and and the Prince is at the perfect pitch, not a charged moment or a coy glance is misplaced. And the comic is cute as hell. We’re still on the preface and I imagine that funkyfeetart has a lot of fireworks in store for us in the next few months. It will be interesting to see what twists and turns lie around the bend.

BFF
‘The Party’ – ‘The Brunch’
Updates: Season Completed
By Clément C. Fabre, Joseph Safieddine, & Thomas Cadène
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

Normally I review more chapters of a new comic than just three but because everything past the first three are behind a coin paywall, one which would have cost me…maybe $5 total for the whole rest of the season, I decided to stick to what everyone could experience. “BFF” is a French comic about a group of friends and the close knit nature of the group, as well as the secrets between them. Our principal character, at least from what I’ve read, is Olivier. As we find out during the first episode, he is a pianist, though he is always referred to as “the artist,” who is clearly far more successful than he lets on to his friends. The dramatic irony of this situation, right down to him having two phones to coordinate it all, during ‘The Shower’ and ‘The Brunch’ provides a lot of the tension of these early chapters, though not all of it.

What’s really great about “BFF” is the way the creators dole out information. It keeps you invested in the narrative by allowing you to put pieces together of potential puzzles via the normal interactions between the characters and moments like Baptiste dissociating at the dinner table or Olivier sneaking through the closet of a ratty, tiny apartment that’s his to a beautiful loft that’s ALSO his. The art is also deceptively simple, with a very limited palette of mostly greens and yellows and a harsh but still mellow scarlet. I like the simplicity of the art because it forces you to really focus on the characters in the frame and how they’re placed within each panel. It doesn’t always work, with some of the panels feeling empty without backgrounds rather than focused, but more often than not it’s good for the story.

I also am split on the lettering as it can be a little hard to read sometimes, as letters bleed into each other and specifically every time there’s a V, but it’s also got a calligraphic feel to it and the mixed case lettering is jaunty and relaxed even as it has to convey how tense things are getting. There is a lot of drama in this series just waiting to bubble up, even as some of it is starting to already. Fabre, Safieddine, and Cadène have successfully gotten me invested in these characters by showing them as whole people in the short span of three chapters and promising more depths to come. The hook is in its simplicity and sometimes that’s all you need.

Lavender Jack
Episodes 62-64
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Dan Schkade(writing and art), Jenn Manley Lee(color)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane

This batch of strips offers some interesting examples on how to stage an extended talking sequence. Writing good dialogue is hard in comics with the size of word balloons and the use of omniscient narrator falling out of style decades ago. Myself, being a TV person, I love a good walk-and-talk but that isn’t’ exactly lively visual storytelling.

Episode 62 shows a good way to make things visually interesting even if both characters are standing still essentially. Doctor Sampat takes Sir Mimley to the room (building?) where Ocher is housed, and they have that awkward conversation that only former longtime friends who haven’t seen each other in a long while have. When one of your friends from college goes off and becomes a vigilante that boggarts shared technological invention, reunions can be a bit tense. That shared history is what makes this conversation interesting and adds layers to the dialogue, but they are still standing in a large plain room. Writer-Artist Dan Schkade takes advantage of that space by largely omitting it from the backgrounds and replacing it with illustrations of the past or representations of whom they are obliquely referencing. It makes for a series of dynamic images that appear to lack the constraint of a panel allowing for an easy visual flow into one another. The way conversations can just flow from one thing to the next.

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That easy flow is contrasted by a conversation/less than subtle bribe by Golden Eddy Delany, after picking Crabb up from dispatching his thugs. Their conversation is in his cramped carriage. Everything follows a very orderly shot-reverse shot dynamic. Eddy says something and Crabb no sells it. These images are constrained by panels separating them, unlike the visual connection shared by Sampat and Mimley even as the former disavows the latter. The conversation between Crabb and Eddy doesn’t have the easy flow of a shot-reverse shot pattern though, because in-between most panels a blank black rectangle is inserted. It totally disrupts any sort of pitter patter their tête-à-tête would have. It is awkward to read and that’s the affective point. Delany’s painfully obvious bribe falls on deaf ears.

A third conversation in this batch of strips between Mimley and Johnny Summer has lots of visual dividers (or subdividers) that contrast the two off one another as well as some delightful chiaroscuro. That contrasting matches the way the Black Note and Lavender Jack are balanced off one another, the aural villain even coming to mind after an offhand remark by Summer. I doubt that is supposed to be a clue that Summer’s the Black Note, his statement more fits in with the overall transgender coding in their dialogue (the talk of having their own scars, taking great care about how they look/present themselves etc.). And no that’s not unintentional see Schkade’s tweets here confirming a reader’s reading. So just YAY!

This remark has no place else to go but I rather enjoyed Sampat disavowing Mimley, both for perverting Gio’s work in her mind and also the egotistical naivete at taking down the local (but really international) military industrial complex as alt hist-WWII looms in the background. It made character sense as well as the sort of reflexive and realistic reaction to a masked vigilante and their continual escalations.

Within
Volume 1 Bonus Comics
Updates: Tuesday
By Verena Loisel
Reviewed by Mel Lake

This week, we have a series of “Within” bonus pages in the break between Chapters 8 and 9. After Redhead finally leaving the dream house and confronting the mysterious person in his apartment on top of deciding to leave his job as a smuggler in the last chapter, this seems like the perfect place to pause for a breather.

First up, we have Redhead trying out a new look, with Jay being the ever-supportive friend. Jay is a bit like a golden retriever, and I mean that in the best way possible while realizing it sounds bad. She’s enthusiastic and cheerful, and always willing to listen whether or not Redhead is able to talk. It’d be easy to take Jay for granted, thinking she’s a simple ray of sunshine, but Jay shows a remarkable level of empathy, always sensitive to Redhead’s mercurial moods and inability to talk about his past. Throughout the comic, she’s clearly been dealing with her own stuff, though she doesn’t let it get her down. Without Jay, “Within” would be a much dourer comic, and without Jay, Redhead would be alone with only his dreams to keep him company.

After Redhead’s wardrobe change, we get a rare peek at Jay’s backstory and a glimpse of the shadowy organization both Jay and Redhead work for. These bonus pages reveal how Jay came to be a smuggler, albeit a terrible one. Unlike Redhead, who seems perfectly suited for shady operations and gun smuggling, Jay reacts like a normal person would and her antics provide a rare moment of comedy for “Within.”

A beautiful splash page showing Redhead holding the skull mask of his dream self (reminiscent of the gravedigger scene in “Hamlet”) marks the three-year anniversary of “Within,” then it’s back to the story next time for Chapter 9.


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