Welcome back to The Webcomics Weekly! It’s been a hell of a couple weeks and it looks like we’re in for a while more. I hope you’re all safe and healthy, and that your loved ones are too. With the news of Diamond stopping their shipments, it seems as good a time as any to get into some comics built for distance. We got the return of “Wolfsbane” from way back when, the continuation of “A Better Place,” “Order of the Stick” and “Trekker” and a light from the darkness on the edge of town, “Badlands.”
Oh, and “The Contradictions”, you remember Sophie Yanow’s “The Contradictions,” is back and updating every weekday, two pages a day. Help mark the passage of time with these updates.
Badlands
Track 001
Updates: Bi-weekly/Monthly
By Tahni Marie
Reviewed by Jason Jeffords Jr
In these troubling times we are dealing with at the moment, many people out there are going through things for the first time. Well, luckily, this “first time” for me isn’t as harrowing as some other “firsts.” What is this you ask? My first time reading a webtoon. As you already know webtoons are a completely different beast than other types of webcomics. So, let’s slay this beast.
“Badlands” is just that; a beast. In the best way possible. Marie makes the first update vague, yet intriguing at the same time. Even after rereading it three times I feel like I’m still reevaluating what happens and how I feel. That in itself is a great feat, plus it seems this is Marie’s first webtoon/webcomic. Great jobs on all ends. Congratulations aside, let’s talk about the plot. Well, at least my interpretation.
Marie gives only one name, Arianna, yet doesn’t specifically say who’s name that is. As it’s easier to call each character by their hair color I’ll be doing that. The majority of Track 001 is spent on Purple regaling the reader about her mom and their history. Yet, after I reread it I felt like this could be in fact our other character, Aqua (I’m like 70 percent sure this is Arianna). This is due to no word bubbles ever being attributed to a singular character and the flashback never including the younger character’s hair color being shown. Plus, towards the end when Aqua is introduced the words seem to line up, while showing the story may be about her. Nonetheless, you may come up with your own interpretation.
But, before we carry on to the art side – which is gorgeous – there is one other thing I want to note. I believe the frog that follows Aqua around is her inner conscience that is telling her not to trust/believe Purple. Which is where the rest of the story seems to line up with her being the main narration.
Now, art.
Marie’s style was what initially drew me in when I first found her Twitter. She has a unique and beautiful style that stands out. It reminds me of watercolor done with a sponge with hardly any think black outer lines. Plus, her characters remind me of pin-up models while having a Bruce Timm like female anatomy. Yet, the bright colors alone wouldn’t pop on any background, so Marie keeps most of them a simple black that helps amplify the shapes and colors. This helps her style of barely using outer black lines. Another note on the art is her designs; Purple’s dress and the manner that Aqua is dressed in looks gorgeous and eye-catching. Lastly, Marie uses the webtoon style to her advantage by having petals fall throughout some pages which is a nice visual touch.
For an opening chapter, “Badlands” starts amazingly and keeps you invested while only telling a little of its story. Personally, I bookmarked it so I can see how she progresses because I believe it will be amazing.
A Better Place
‘A New God’ – ‘The Ward’
Updates: Thursdays
By Harry Bogosian
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
‘A New God’ completes the scene from two weeks ago. ‘Be More Independent’ gives us another entry into the length catalog of Hannah’s poor leadership. The rest we reside with Arma, Mr. Bun and Nina as their quest takes a turn for the better. . .and then the worst. By jumping between our three principal characters — Theo, Hannah, and Nina — Bogosian displays his strong handle on scene breakdowns and long-term planning. The page of Hannah telling Empress Computer to be more independent is not strictly necessary, as it’s not followed up in any meaningful way in the subsequent pages, nor is it related to the preceding scene of Theo’s battle training/philosophical discussion with Nico. It is, however, vital for the health of the series and for illuminating character.
Continued belowEmpress Computer worships Hannah as God and wants to, not usurp her, but support her in as many ways as possible, which means making sure problems never reach her desk. Hannah is an awful God because she is a child, a disillusioned child thanks to what we saw in ‘The Best Weapon,’ but a child nonetheless, with all the leadership qualities and patience of one. Sure, being supreme overlord of everything sounds great but managing it? Having everything come from her imagination and then operate in the way she wants it to without really knowing how it’s supposed to work? That shit’s hard. Delegating is important but what Hannah does instead is give Empress Computer carte-blanche to do whatever. . .and she doesn’t even realize it. That’s the kind of dread and sharp plotting that makes “A Better Place” so damn good, even at the slower page by page pace.
There’s another question along these same lines posed by the description in ‘A New God,’ and it’s well worth thinking about: If independence and freedom is the ideal, and a god created everything for that purpose but never leaves, then is that a good god. . .or a bad one? This is one line of thinking for some of the anti-theists like Nico, counter to, or at least somewhat different from Tina’s reasons for why Hannah should be deposed. Is this an indicator of infighting or simply making the world more fleshed out by giving nuanced and varied motivations to characters we have yet to even spend much time with? Only time will tell. Oh, and the coloring makes these pages really pop and crackle with a dark and yet still colorful atmosphere.
Order of the Stick
Pages 206 – 210
Updates: Varies
By Rich Burlew
Reviewed by Gustavo S. Lodi
Where can you find a strip that features an angry adventurer making threats to a NPC horse? Or where you can find a meaningful analogy for racism and classicism through the lenses of the RPG class system? Or where can you be amused by characters that are always – always – written so sharply?
“Order of the Stick,” that’s where. It constantly surprises me at the range that this strip has. You can be having an idiotic and mindless fund in one sequence, just to be bombarded by relevant social debate, while not losing temper, atmosphere, or humor.
The series shines the most on chapters such as these ones, where the right blend within that range can be found in full. It does not linger on any particular theme, it does not make any of the jokes longer than needed. It just blows through, page after page, extracting laughs like a machine.
The very last strip on this one had will have a nice surprise for the fans of videogame RPGs, as it finds a way to introduce a way to visually portray the nature of random encounter. For a series that is not so known for breaking boundaries visually, this one was surely an added bonus.
Trekker
Pages: 1-13 Book 03 “The Trail to Scarmen’s Burn”
Schedule: Mondays
Written and Illustrated by Ron Randall
Lettered by Ken Bruzenak
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
There is generally a sense of alienation in bounty hunter stories, their job straddles the line between law and outside it on top of the ethical implications about the use of bounty hunters both historically and the ones Ron Randall raised in “Trekker” last issue. The first pages with their use of omniscient narration furthers that sense of alienation by building an in universe historical angle to the contradiction between man’s want to be social and the desire to be free of society. The prose itself isn’t all that deep, but it is layered with ambivalence on who exactly Randall’s words are talking about. Is it Hilts, a walking slaughterhouse, or is it Mercy?
The first few pages of “The Trail to Scarmen’s Burn” is a really smart sort of trick. Randall frames it around a man we’ve never seen before. This man is walking through a busy New Gelaph street, the use of perspective in each panel creates enough visual space to see the people around him and emphasize the distance between him and everyone else. All the information on this page indicates the story is about him, he is the loner at war with the society that surrounds him. And then you hit next page, the title page, and there’s Mercy bashing on one of the tubes that have gone out, gain. Maybe it’s her that is at war with society, she is violently interacting with it.
Continued belowThat man is Thompson Richards, a historian, and source of our narration. While the character wasn’t around by that point he is in a similar vein as Robert Langdon, good looking, affable, and a nerd. That quality is Mercy’s secret weapon as Thomspon believes he has figured out where Hilts is going to, the secret criminal hideout Scarmen’s Burn! Randall’s art carries this exposition drop. As a sequence it is handled well, it’s using the nature of exposition and how mind numbing and time consuming to demonstrate Mercy’s impatience that elevates it. Thompson is established as a solid supporting character, one that could easily show up again when needed or be dead by the end of this issue. The efficiency at which Randall structures these 13 pages to get everything developed for the back half of the book continues to be the most interesting aspect of this book, besides the copious use of screentones.
Wolfsbane
Ch. 6-8
Schedule: Fridays
Written by Ryan Cady
Illustrated and Colored by Morgan Beem
Lettered by David Stoll
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
The “Wolfsbane” creative team put together a strong series of strips in chapters 6-8. Cady’s scripting and plotting make each chapter work as an episode, while coming together to make a serialized narrative. That sort of structure pushes “Wolfsbane” closer to something in a 2000 A.D. strip than most Big Two books it feels like. Cady’s plotting and Morgan Beem’s art come together to make a addictive but satisfying read.
Chapter six is a training montage, in terms of temporality it might not actually cover as much time as I thought it did which isn’t a bad thing. The training montage is often used as a transition point to speed through the weeks leading up to the Big Game, on a more emotional and narrative level it serves a space for the creators to show readers development and the acquisition of competence. Some media do both, see “Lets Get Down to Business” in Mulan. The focus of the chapter six montage is Adrienne, which creates clear parallels with Quinn’s childhood. Adrienne doesn’t become a master werewolf hunter be the end of the chapter six, but you see she’s on the way. Beem makes good use of using her inhaler as a recurring motif to help pace chapter six.
In this week’s addition of my talking about the nature of gutter space in webtoons, Morgan Beem shows how to use that space to create a strong affect. Due to the montage nature there is a fair amount of gutter space when readers get into this chapter (at least for Beem’s work which actually features fairly tight gutters.) That extra distance makes for enough for each single panel scene to work on its own and within the context of the strip. It is just really nice craft simple craft.
During chapter six and throughout this batch of strips the creative team do a very effective job at balancing tone and expectations. During the training montage readers assume this will be part of some hard bodied training experience for Adrienne that will recreate her and Quinn will emulate her father in turn. Neither really occurs. Adrienne dose not turn into Sara Conner by the end of it. Quinn is shown to be strict, tough, but also caring. Giving readers access to Quinn’s internal monologue helps to show the isolation she feels, but that is also contrasted by little character acting moments Beem puts in like when she flips off a driver in Atlanta. The creative team have done a good job of creating and showing personality in a very short amount of time.
Chapters seven and eight are more tightly connected but still have their own internal structures. Quinn gets a tip that one of the final three wolves is hunting in Atlanta. This one is a real nasty piece of work Shane Montclare is both a werewolf and a hitman. They are good examples of how ending on a cliffhanger can function as an “an than” instead of a “!”. When they are played as an “an than,” there is some pause before the shoe drops. It creates a false sense of security and shatters it. As an exclamation point it is pure spectacle and perhaps a bit to wild to be emotionally effective.
