We’ve got a hearty mix of comics for you all this week. From our ongoing “Dr. Frost” ramping things up to a movie-tie in from one of the biggest media companies in the world and a video game tie in from what was, at one point, a very large video game. That’s right, we’ve got “Eternals: The 500-Year War” and PUBG’s “Night of Silence.” What a weird world we live in.
All this and an obligatory nod towards Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow in this issue of The Webcomics Weekly.
Dr. Frost
‘The Trap’ (3) – (7)
Updates: Saturdays
By Jongbeom Lee
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
It may be too early to say this but Season 4 of “Dr. Frost” feels like it’s going to be the final season of the comic; the expanded scope of the season and impending confrontation with Moon has the feel of a final boss fight set at the end of a particularly large action set piece. I don’t want this to be the case. I would love to have more seasons with these characters. And who knows? This may be a lengthy season or even a multi-season arc but the end is in sight, be it close or still over by the horizon.
That has little bearing on ‘The Trap’ though. While Moon’s presence is a constant cloud over the arc, the bulk of it is here to get the characters, and the audience, used to the new status quo, starting with the brand new, yet very familiar, dynamic between a reunited Seonga and Frost. I have to say, when we got to the end of the third chapter, and Seonga saw Frost and Pavlov, I was in tears. It’s a small moment but Lee builds to a reveal we all know is coming with such precision that I couldn’t help but be moved. It’s in the softness of Seonga’s expressions, the closeness of the framing of her eyes and reactions, and the extra spacing between the silent panels as she turns to see Frost standing there, after seven years of silence.
The rest of the arc wrestles with this silence, of how it affected Seonga, of why Frost felt he had to do it, and on the rightness or wrongness of his actions. By the end, Lee tells Frost, and by extension the audience, that this comic is irrevocably different and that’s OK. Frost is no longer a professor. He’s no longer even a doctor, though I don’t think that can be revoked as easily. He’s alone, by choice, and has developed a panic disorder which he manages but not well. Seonga is a professor, working to help solve crimes with Professor Chun’s son, and is far more self-confident than she once was.
At first, the two try to fall into a familiar pattern but seven years have changed them both. By the end of ‘The Trap,’ Seonga tells Frost that not only have their roles reversed but that his lone wolf crusade against Moon cannot continue. It is not healthy for him. Asking for help is not a weakness and while Frost knows this, he needed to be reminded, just as we often have to as well.
The last aspect of ‘The Trap’ that caught my attention was the focus on radicalization and intolerance for the “other” as the central malady of this season. I think it’s the perfect topic to explore for our time and I’m very curious to see how it differs and reflects the same factors we’re seeing play out here in America. Considering ‘The Trap’ was about how a young person’s fears and economic anxieties were exploited, nurtured, and used to turn them against immigrants and “the other” by malicious actors via the internet, I suspect it is all too similar.
Eternals: The 500 Year War
Episodes 1-7
Completed
Written by Dan Abnett, Aki Yanagi, Jongmin Shin, Ju-Yeon Park, David Macho, Rafael Scavone, and Yifan Jiang
Ilustrated by Geoffo, Rickie Yagawa, Do Gyun Kim, Magda Price, Marcio Fiorito, and Gunji
Colored by Matt Milla, Carlos Macias, Fernando Sifuentes, Pete Pantazis, and Felipe Sobreiro
Reviewed by Mel Lake
A new seven-episode webcomic tie-in to Eternals, the globe-spanning MCU movie that introduced many new characters into the MCU has hit Webtoon, subtitled The 500 Year War. DC may have beat Marvel to the Webtoon collaboration game but this comic appears to be set in the MCU canon and may even hint at future characters. Even if it’s just a standalone story, the webcomic brings the Eternals into contact with known human historical figures in a way that’s entertaining, even if the overall story doesn’t add much to what we saw in the movie.
Though it’s ostensibly set in 16th century Babylon as the Eternals are preparing to leave their spaceship Domo, the webcomic moves through much of human history and features several well-known legends and legendary creatures. Written and illustrated by a rotating series of writers and artists, each episode is action-packed, with only the one featuring Phastos and Ajak in Spain dragging the momentum to a standstill. Fitting the story into a “remember when?” type of frame story is awkward, as the Eternals basically all stand around rehashing history they lived through in a way no one actually would. But it’s an effective way to get the cast to tell their part of the story.
Druig and Makkari first encounter a Deviant in Japan, and in the course of the battle, it steals Druig’s power, allowing it to control a series of Deviants over the course of the next 500 years. The “kappa” is defeated thanks in part to real-life warrior, Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Next, Sprite and Kingo travel back to 12th century Korea and tell the story of historian Kim Busik, who recorded the historical record of the Three Kingdoms. There they encounter a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox monster. This detail may point to possible future appearances of the White Fox, a member of the Tiger Division who originated in Avengers: Electric Rain, Marvel’s first foray into the Webtoon format. After Japan and Korea, Phastos and Ajak travel to Spain, and Gilgamesh and Thena fight the Kraken. This all culminates in a final battle in which all the Eternals must use their powers to defeat the telepathically united Deviants.
All the episodes are gorgeous and most are easy-to-read, with my favorite being Thena and Gilgamesh’s underwater battle with a sea monster. The panels are perfectly placed to show you the action and show off the character’s beautiful designs. Plus, who doesn’t love a good sea monster? Unfortunately, the art style of the final battle, while very cool and colorful, doesn’t mesh well with the vertical scrolling format and I had a hard time understanding the flow of the action. It seemed more suited to a traditional page layout. The way it was presented, with action panels and background stacked on top of each other in a big scroll, was hard to read, which is a shame because the artwork itself was great.
As with the Eternals movie and comics, your mileage may vary and will depend greatly on whether you have a favorite Eternal or care about the larger story of the Celestials and the Deviants and how they fit into the MCU as it goes forward. I have a hard time connecting with all of the characters but enjoyed some of them enough to read through and mostly enjoy the 500 Year War even if it doesn’t add anything groundbreaking to the existing canon.
Night of Silence
Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Tuesdays
Written By Dongwoo Han
Illustrated by Q-Ha
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
So PUBG Corporation, makers of Player’s Unknown Battleground aka PUBG, announced a media deal with Webtoon. This makes a fair amount of sense considering the platform-publishers variety of strips that use the visual language of video games to narrate their stories. “Night of Silence” is one of the first three series as part of this deal and probably the most surprising of the trio. “The Retreats” takes the concept of the Battleground and puts it into an obvious class commentary between the haves and have-nots, drawing a line extremely close to Hunger Games. “100” is what you’d expect it thematizes the Battlegrounds scenario in an action series. “Night of Silence” however is a … murder mystery with a dash of “Postal” creepy town that threatens to burst into some sort of Purge-esque violence. It’s a lot to throw at readers in the first episodes and it mostly works.
Continued belowWriter Dongwoo Han’s scripting is functional if a bit blunt as it sets up the main character of Leah, who returns to her small-town America after the death of her novelist father. The blunt qualities of the scripting come more from the uncredited letterer who use the same font for what seems like every occasion resulting in everything reading flat. Overall Dongwoo Han and artist Q-Ha work well enough together. Q-Ha’s art has this Rahsan Ekedal quality to it, it looks more Western influenced like it’s out of the Edenverse at Top Cow. The extended gutters and lack of variety in panel design do contribute to the feeling of flatness as well. But then suddenly a phrase is uttered and the art style shifts with red auras emanating from everyone and their eyes suddenly bloodshot and stressed, a very expressionistic turn for what is a fairly realist aesthetic. These sudden shifts are the most effective tools in this series thus far.
The actual conceit of the mystery, wherein the author Father appears to have been assassinated by the shadowy cabal that runs the Battleground is a surprising and obvious turn. The flashback/imagination of a game of Battlegrounds is an interesting moment of quasi-intertextuality. With this shadowy cabal looming over everything the Resident Evil vibes begin to come through, and that’s before an obvious jump scare from their playbook happens.
This isn’t’ the best series out there, it’s largely fine. But the willingness to go into a different space in terms of genre and the property involved is fascinating and that is what makes me want to read more.
