The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life. This week we’re going down, down, into the dark with the Eisner nominated “Deeply Dave”.
Deeply Dave
Episodes 1-6
Schedule: Complete
By Grover(creator/animator) Eric Michael Robertson (music) Andrew Jensen (web development)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
Note: “Deeply Dave” features flashing lights so if you’re light sensitive read with caution.
“Deeply Dave” is one of the most interesting webcomic reading experiences I’ve ever had. So it’s not too surprising to see that it is nominated for the Eisner in its category, and the second step on our Eisner brick road.
Eric Michael Robertson’s moody dirty electronica score sets the correct audible mood for this eerie strip. Which is the right word for this strip, it isn’t a horror strip but it is one that leans into the strange, the weird, the unfamiliar. Albeit through a deceptively simple-looking cartoon style. Grover’s line work reminds me of Adventure Time meets the old animated sprites of the Gold Box set of games or more recently that retro style in Bolt Gun. The minimalist line work and even sparser color palette keep up this aesthetic of withholding. As a reader, we aren’t given too much to look at, which isn’t to say those images are not fascinating or wonderfully composed. That withholding is fundamental to the eerie nature of the strip, it shows us a creepy underground cavern dominated more by the ink black that makes the rest of the art work legible. In that blackness, we are asked to stare and imagine what horrors lurk in the shadows. A gaze that is much easier to pull off when you have creepy John Carpenter-esque music going.
“Deeply Dave” pushes what the boundaries of what it means to be a comic. Sure, it is in that webtoon vertical scrolling format. It features a musical score, but that sort of stuff isn’t’ unheard of see “1000”. But it is animated with a large amount of the panels acting as animated gifs. Again this isn’t entirely unheard of, motion comics are a thing – that’s practically what you would call The Marvel Super Heroes(1966). Unlike motion comics though, the use of gif animation here is continuous and gives these panels a greater sense of life. The environments tend to be animated more than individual characters. It isn’t much, but it’s enough for this to be one of the more successful digital comic projects I’ve read in years. Also just to reiterate some of these panels and episodes feature flashing lights, where there isn’t a toggle. After sitting and thinking on this for a while “Deeply Dave” feels closer to a fumetti (technically just Italian for comics but outside of Italy it refers to comics composed of photographs) mixed with animation. I wouldn’t want every comic to be this way, but the process involved has me curious about what other kinds of comics would look like in this style. And how Marvel/DC would invariably ruin the form.
None of this technical wizardry though would be worth considering if the story had no hook. At first, I was expecting something closer to Phil Tippet and hundreds of animators Mad God as the titular Dave wades deeper and deeper into the depths of the unknown. While that is the case, the strip isn’t nearly as disgustingly surreal as God, the core of the film is about a son working through his relationship with his Mom. And that Mom’s relationship to her son … and aliens. Look the comparison to Mad God is apt because while it might not be disgustingly horrific, “Deeply Dave” is still mad trippy. The reader never gets lost in that trip because the emotional core of that story never lets them go.
“Deeply Dave” tells a solid well-known story beautifully. Even if it didn’t have all the technical wizardry, it’d still be worth reading. With all the animation and music on top of it, this is a must-read for people who want to look at what webcomics could be.
