It is a column of webcomic reviews. Multiversity reviewers, writing from their hidden computers, have put together another column for Multiversity Comics.
Found in the column, these Multiversity reviewers have managed to talk about the thematic nuances of webcomics like, “Adventures of God,” a comic that can “Trekker” with the best “Dr. Frost.”
Read by Multiversity’s loyal readers, The Webcomics Weekly reviewers furiously type out more words on “Stagtown” and “Dungeons and Artifacts,” knowing these reviews will bring joy and nuance to a readership in need…
Adventures of God
Episodes 1-12: ‘Answering Prayers’ – ‘Miracle’
Schedule: Tuesdays & Saturdays
Written by Matteo “Teo” Ferrazzi
Illustrated by Corey Jay
Reviewed by Devin Tracy Fairchild
“Don’t you know there is no devil/it’s just God when he’s drunk.” So goes the famous line from Tom Waits’ gravely 1980 classic song “Heart Attack and Vine.” To me, this prospect always sounded a bit horrifying. Imagine an all-powerful being who can literally create and govern entire universes with his mind. Imagine that being getting blackout drunk and forgetting that he created (and destroyed) the dinosaurs. Sounds terrifying to this reviewer.
But Italian writer Matteo “Teo” Ferrazzi and American artist Corey Jay explore this territory (even the aforementioned blackout) with irreverent larger social commentary and precision nuance in the Webtoons comic Adventures of God. But unlike Tom Waits’ classic song there is a devil in this comic, God’s son Lucy (Lucifer) and brother of Jesus. And there is so much development between all the characters, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. In fact the work is so chock full of bonkers jazzy jokes that it makes this reviewer cautious. I also want to still find a way to urge you to at least read the first 12 episodes like I did and read beyond episode 442 and beyond like I most definitely will.
So here goes nothing. There are some running gags that make this comic not just comedy gold but biting satire on Western Religion and society as a whole. A common scene of the comic is someone fresh to the afterlife either sent heaven, hell, or limbo at the capricious whim of God or his underlings. Probably the funniest is God sending gay people to hell to fix them up with the man bun wearing queer Lucy. God is a fickle, egotistical, drunk who is always revising and changing his mind and course of action, even going as far as presenting the “New Old Testament” to the world because he is appalled by what he wrote and forgot. Needless to say, it did not go over well. God attends AA at the behest of Jesus, who threatens to go to his mom, and God finds a hilarious loophole in the 12 Steps.
Corey Jay’s art style has been frequently compared to Family guy, but I think that, while it is certainly has some striking similarities, his style is also his own and consistent throughout (each character has their own distinct design). It’s rich color palate is also distinct and sets it apart from other webcomics.
The comic is immensely popular, has over 1.4 million subscribers and over 100 million views on Webtoons, a print version of the comic is available and it is set to be adapted as a stage play in the Czech Republic. Teo is also behind the creative team behind “My Dictator Boyfriend” (also on Webtoons) which is also hilarious and is zany, irreverent, and fun just like “Adventures of God.”
Dr. Frost
‘Desire of Others’ (7) – ‘The Psychologist in the White Room’
Updates: Saturdays
By Jongbeom Lee
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
The conclusion to ‘Desire of Others’ is not what one would expect from the start of the case, as is tending to be the case with “Dr. Frost,” though I’m sure there are some eagle-eyed readers who called this ending from the start. The transition from (6) to (7) is not the smoothest, which may be due to the two weeks between me reading that chunk and this one, nor is the ultimate reveal of what’s been up with Anna’s “stalkers.” I suspect, however, it simply had to do with the jarring nature of the way we cut away from the final scene of ‘Desire of Others’ (6), with Lena, to the opening scene of (7) in order to mask the ultimate reveal of those conversations and the gathering of the group.
Continued belowFinding out that Anna is beginning to develop a Delusional Disorder puts a lot into perspective while also complicating our relationship with the perspectives in the comic. There’s always information being hidden from us – that’s the nature of a mystery – however, in this case a lot more was being withheld and deliberately obfuscated via the red herring of the manager, the relationship with Woojin, and the first stalker. The title should have been a dead giveaway but it is just as multifaceted as the rest of the comic. Yes, this is a story of how celebrities become totemic of the desires of the people who they’ve never met projecting onto them, it is also about how celebrities (and regular people) subsume their own desires for others and how that can be harmful. We never really learn what happened to Sena, though reading between the lines we can put a story together, but that ultimately doesn’t matter as she, too, is a projection. Quite literally, in fact.
Lee continues to blow me away with his pacing and paneling. He’s gotten the use of gutter space down, using it to extend or shorten pauses and action, and I especially love how the panels are built for both phone and computer screen. Many modern webtoons are not optimized in this way and it is killer to me as someone who swaps back and forth. And that entire first person perspective chapter in ‘The Psychologist in the White Room?’ Excellent. I was tearing up by the end and I need to know more. Maybe we’ll find out more next time. Or maybe we’ll just get more Pavlov. I can live with either.
Dungeons & Artifacts
Pages: Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Mondays
Written and Illustrated by UMKY
Original Story by Zerowater
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
Webtoon has a spat of either meta video game strips like “The Strongest Florist” or “Mage & Demon Queen” to more straightforward fantasy strips. What all those strips do is use the canvas of the infinite scroll to create a sense of space. That sense of space is important for these types of series; it helps to generate the sense of tension from coherent spatial relations, which in turn allows for the action to have greater urgency because readers understand where everything is. The art in “Dungeons & Artifacts” does not do this. UMKY’s art is functional without ever being exciting. As Stetch Atelier the A-Rank explorer leads the Prince and his guard deep into the dungeon readers aren’t given a sweeping vista of the underground layer, it’s a bunch of small panels with generic stone walls or plain color gradient backing. To say nothing of the overly large gutter space which further disrupts even the semblance of spatial cohesion. The scripting and HUD display tells the reader Stetch is a master explorer with high level skills. But it never really shows us how they make dungeon running easier because the paneling is so disjointed. To say nothing of a lack of cool factor.
And then the Tarask appears. The monster seems to be a nominal homage to the dungeons and dragon monster Tarrasque. Except, it just looks like a rocky blue Lion. Due to the previously mentioned art problems the battle with the Tarask lacks impact. It spits fire. Stetch shoots it really well, but the precise shooting involved is never made to look as exciting as the moment thinks it is. Artis UMKY does fantastic reaction shots, it would have been nice to see what everyone was reacting to within the giant gutter.
The art gets a little better when the betrayal occurs, and our protagonist is cursed with a demonic spirit/partner. Mainly the spatial relations of everyone is so locked in space and orbiting around the key piece of loot, readers would know what they’re reacting to.
“Dungeons & Artifacts” reads like a first draft. There are strong narrative bones and instincts in there, the execution of it all is just unfortunately short. Especially compared to other recent series on Webtoon.
Stagtown
Episodes 1-9
Updates: Tuesdays
By Punko
Reviewed by Mel Lake
In Stagtown, the horror webcomic by Punko (creator of the Tokyopop original English manga “Bizenghast,”) recent college grad Frankie returns to her hometown only to find herself at the center of several bizarre and horrifying events. First, her apartment is infested with surveillance cameras with spider-like legs that look both old-school analog and mega creepy, like technology that could’ve designed by Invader Zim. She initially brushes off her neighbor Jeremy’s paranoia about the cameras, but when they proliferate and no one can find their source, she and Jeremy decide to skip town. A confrontation with masked citizens also determined to find the source of the video feeds ensues and when they do find the source, none of Frankie’s questions are answered. Her large manga-style eyes widen in horror many times over the course of the ten issues available on Webtoons, as Frankie tries to live a normal life in a town that clearly isn’t normal.
Continued belowAfter the incident with the cameras, Frankie, understandably, moves to a new apartment. To make ends meet, she starts giving piano lessons to creepy children in animal head masks, only to find the masked children and the nice old lady who cares for them are hiding a dark secret. And, honestly, you’d be more surprised if kids in animal masks weren’t hiding something, right? The secret underneath Marble House is terrifying and a grotesque spin on the phrase “I’ve lost my marbles.” Frankie’s escape from the horrors of Marble House is tense, even if we know she’ll ultimately escape to finish telling us her story.
The artwork in Stagtown is outstanding. Perhaps not surprising given Punko’s extensive experience in the comics industry, this series looks like it would be right at home on the bookshelf next to other Tokyopop titles. Punko uses a limited color palette, big faces with expressive features, and detailed architecture to create a moody atmosphere that primes you to expect spooky things are going to happen. (Spooky things definitely happen.) You can practically hear the horror movie background music as you scroll. Instead of traditional page breaks, Stagtown’s pages bleed into each other with a creative use of black space. It makes the experience of scrolling through each page one where you both dread and eagerly anticipate what will happen as the black recedes to show the next panel.
Frankie spends the first two story arcs (9 episodes) frequently surprised by the goings-on in the town she supposedly grew up in, which makes me wonder if there’s something newly nefarious happening in Stagtown that will provide an overarching storyline. Or maybe she just never noticed that she was growing up in a town creepy enough to merit the Stephen King treatment? Either way, the creepy atmosphere and consistent frights make “Stagtown” worth visiting.
If you like small-town mysteries and can stomach a medium amount of horror imagery, “Stagtown” is well worth checking out.
Trekker
Pages: Book 13 “Rites of Passage” Pages 1-7
Schedule: Mondays
Written and Illustrated by Ron Randall
Colored by Grace Allison
Lettered by Ken Bruzenak
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
Reading “Trekker” has been one of continual engagement with remediation as the series publication has gone from anthology strip to crowdfunding and webcomics. ‘Rites of Passage’ is recent, first published by Dark Horse in 2017, and not made for a webcomic format like that of Webtoon or Tapas. And yet even with its one page-at-a-time presentation, something that creates a fair amount of friction and theoretically exposes a functional disconnect in how the page functions as a unit of storytelling, it still reads well in this format. The eighth page is a micro episode that places the reader in Mercy’s head while also showing us how she looks at Molly – even if she isn’t even aware of how she is looking at Molly. Which leads to a moment of realization. Not every page in this batch is as episodically contained, but it makes a case for there being stronger, but not universal, formal ties between mediums and distribution methods than previously theorized.
The page as a space that can connect seemingly random events and throw a narrative sideways is shown a couple pages later as Mercy tries to walk it off. Until she walks right into the hitters from the other night during a shootout. It is the sort of narrative coincidence that is awkward, but also works because of the page construction. The logic of the page and the page turn is what also allows Mercy to quickly flee only to discover the return of Jason Bolt. The larger plot comes into view as Bolt is protecting a girl from these cyborg assassins and once again throwing Mercy’s life sideways.
“Trekker” has had moments of ultra-violence before, but there’s something that reads as truly excessive as Mercy blows their heads off at point blank range from behind. Neither the linework or Grace Allison’s coloring renders the panels excessively gory, but there is a bluntness to the violence that cannot be denied.
