It’s the dank, dankiest time of the year and we here at The Webcomics Weekly…don’t have any comics that involve Jazz Cabbage or feature the Devil’s Lettuce but we do have the return of that good good pulpy space comic “Trekker,” some more heavy shit with “Dr. Frost” and a new comic based on a very old book “The Great Gatsby.” So kick back, relax, and get ready for some webcomic goodness.
All this, and possibly the fixing of the 1919 World Series, in this week’s The Webcomcis Weekly.
Dr. Frost
‘The Desire of Others’ (1) – (6)
Updates: Saturdays
By Jongbeom Lee
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
There is a disappointing lack of Pavlov, the best doggo, in the first half of ‘The Desire of Others’ and thus I give this batch a one out of ten. Why not zero? Well, we get a little Pavlov and it is so freaking adorable. He’s drawn in these little pencil drawings between panels and I love him. I will continue to update you on dogwatch 2021 in the coming weeks.
Moving onto the meat of these chapters, ‘The Desire of Others’ is another difficult topic, and I think it’s fair to say that all of the cases will be difficult in different ways. If ‘Tears of Princess Pyeong-Gang’ was personally difficult, then ‘The Desire of Others’ is societally difficult, though both of those are gross oversimplifications and perhaps misrepresentations. Still, when you have a case about the nature of celebrity, the unique dangers faced by young women in that industry, fan entitlement & possessiveness over people they’ve never met, and the broader discussion around online harassment & suicide, the discussion becomes less focused on Anna, the woman being stalked, and on the structures that shaped her situation.
Lee’s strengths as a storyteller are clearly developed by this point in the story, as he deftly maneuvers us into situations and controls the flow of information such that we have more “Ohhhhhh” moments than “Where did that come from?” ones. The pieces are all here but it’s hard to say what’s important and what’s red herring yet and that’s exciting. While there are some panels that definitely felt rushed, especially some of the chibi panels early in part 1, he has others that are beautifully subtle with their expressions. I particularly love how he set the stage for the end of part 5 as well as how he closes the chapter out with a series of panels reinforcing each important aspect of the moment, culminating on an aspect of the scene I had kind of noticed but hadn’t connected back to a previous chapter’s innocuous moment. It’s visceral, shocking, and the perfect hook to get me to keep reading.
Next time, we close out ‘The Desire of Others’ and answer some of the many lingering questions around Anna’s situation.
Great Gatsby – Webtoon
Pages: Introduction & Episode 1-3
Schedule: Monthly
By Vincent Cecil
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
Vincent Cecil’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald is currently being syndicated on both Tapas and Webtoons, I would recommend reading it on Tapas at the moment since an introductory strip along with several mini comics have been uploaded there but not on Webtoons. The introduction is perhaps the most narratively important bit of content, which deals with the first Gatsby party Nick goes to as well as flashes forward to the novel’s famous ending. I’d preface a spoiler warning on that, but it is “The Great Gatsby ” it has been adapted and read in high school for so long, who doesn’t know the ending? The mini comics are also nice to read and fun little strips unto themselves and a sign of how Cecil develops as an artist. Other than that, there is no difference in terms of content.
Vincent Cecil’s art reminds me of Morgan Beem (“Wolfsbane”) in that it’s appearance is unlike the majority of webcomics on either platform. Unlike Beem’s watercolor, I’m fairly certain this is primarily digital, he just makes it look like it is drawn on colored paper and with pencil. There is a real sense of texture to the strips that make me think it is paper but judging by their social media posts they seem to work digitally. The figure work is primarily done in pencil with only some broad inking, which gives this feeling of life to the characters. Their primary features are not overly sketchy, a mess of repeated lines, but the other bits of them get this little bit of texture too. It keeps everything feeling loose, which is somewhat ironic for the buttoned-up class snobbery of the source.
Continued belowTheir environmental work is similarly wonderful, much of it has this impressionistic vision of lace work and decadence but just out of focus which creates color and patterned texture to the panels without overriding the figure work in the foreground.
He also makes the smart choice of pasting the panels on top of a pure black board, with a golden art deco border. The pure black helps to make the pastel colors pop with a feeling of warmth they wouldn’t normally feature.
As for the content of the comic itself, it is “The Great Gatsby.” The book has been adapted a hundred of different ways in various mediums. Visually Cecil seems to be pulling more from a mixture of the 2013 Baz Luhrmann film in terms of framing but the energy is more understated like the 1974 Jack Clayton film. The story is the story, Cecil appears to be telling it well – with potentially more explicit queer subtext to the character of Nick Carraway. This latest adaptation of the book is a good example of how how something is being done matters just as much to the content itself.
Trekker
Pages: Book 13 “Rites of Passage” Pages 1-7
Schedule: Mondays
By Ron Randall
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
The trek begins again with ‘Rites of Passage,’ which is actually a fairly recent strip originally published by Dark Horse in 2017. Mercy’s own journey might actually be on a treadmill because it’s the same as it ever was for her, hunting down leads and cheap bounties for Uncle Alex and the underfunded police. The opening pages of ‘Rites of Passage’ aren’t direct lifts by Randall, but readers of the webcomic will certainly have seen their general construction before. We get a little bit about the general political instability of New Gelaph, Mercy cracking wise, nearly getting shot, and making friends with the local ne’er-do-wells in order to get the bigger fish.
After an honest tip Mercy finds the boarding house a group of off world hitters are staying at and she does something we’ve seen her do a hundred times: go in loud and high. That sense of normalcy likely wasn’t present when the series was originally published, there was a three year gap between it and ‘Train to Avalon Bay,’ but as a webcomic where the friction is next to nothing everything seems somewhat blasé. Randall’s artwork is still excellent and functional but there are only so many ways you can draw Mercy St. Claire shooting at people.
It lulls the reader into a sense of safety, which is when things begin to no longer feel safe. It isn’t an immediate sense of danger but a slowly growing one. Randall’s artwork creates that feeling of safety. Sure, Mercy is in danger but nothing about the panel content says she is exactly losing this fight. The internal monologue he writes for Mercy, however, does create that feeling of danger as she notes how things just aren’t working out for her. Despite clean hits these hitters are not dropping. Until the reveal on page 5, these aren’t just normal hitters they are cyborgs! The image of the half exposed, Two Face-like appearance of one of the cyborgs is a nightmarish moment of body horror that we haven’t really had in a “Trekker” story before. It puts the cap on that slowly building feeling of dread that has been building.
“Rites of Passage” starts off like most “Trekker” strips have, which is what makes the subversion land so well. What the overall narrative turns into is yet to be revealed but this is a strong introduction.
