Welcome back,you webcomic aficionados, to The Webcomics Weekly!
I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to come up with a series of puns to introduce the comics this week, as Mike pulls double-duty to review both “Punderworld” and the sporty “Dorktown,” but Kieron Gillen’s Twitter I am not. So, instead, take my litany of titles and join our merry band as they take a gander at “Tom ‘N Artie Tales,” “Order of the Stick,” and our penultimate look at “The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn.” I promise these comics don’t bite. . .much.
Dorktown
Rick Carlisle and the Best-Coached Series in NBA History
Schedule: Unknown
Written by Alex Rubenstein
Illustrated by Jon Bois
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
This latest addition of “Dorktown” a long running video series from SB Nation by Alex Rubenstein and Jon Bois that analyzes various sports teams/moments in historical and statistical terms is pretty novel. It isn’t a video. Instead, it has been re-imagined as a mix between an educational and multimedia style comic like the “Nova Girls.” While not as entirely effective as the video series, “Dorktown” #1 is an interesting example of multimedia digital comics and adaptation.
This time, they are looking at the NBA 2014 playoffs and the series played between the Spurs and Dallas Mavericks. The difference in skill, on paper, couldn’t appear greater. It’s here that the educational side comes through as scrolling through the various charts that show just how much better, statistically, the Spurs were made me think about what those lines an graphs meant in a way the video series does not and makes the viewer take as a given. This disparity is further established by visualizing the Mavericks in a series of humorously edited photos.
The dorky crew make liberal use of gifs, which makes this multimedia and runs into the rough confines of internet standards and fickle technology. A good chunk of the gifs were stuttering and hard to read due to blurry imagery. Others failed to load, resulting in an entire page just appearing blank – though I was able to load it in a separate tab. All 22 pages are just laid out in a single vertical column that appears to put a heavy strain on the multiple web browsers I tested with.
As far as page layouts go, Bois shows a solid fundamental understanding of how to make easily readable pages. They aren’t the most beautifully things in the world, “Dorktown” often echoes a sort of Windows 95 aesthetic, but they are readable and understandable which is what you need.
I wouldn’t call this first foray into comics an entire success, but if they could fix some technical issues this would be an interesting space to explore and document smaller moments in sports history that don’t require the laborious production of a full video.
Order of the Stick
Pages 131-135
Updates: Varies
By Rich Burlew
Reviewed by Gustavo S. Lodi
“Order of the Stick,” being so flexible in the type of story it wants to tell, in terms of duration and theme, can either present chapters that are chained together for longer arcs, or more episodic, done-in-one in nature.
This time around, there is a mix of plot points that will surely bleed into future installments, as well as more contained story beats, used mostly for the humour of it. What might be most surprising, especially on a more comedic series, is how some of these pages bring relevant discussions to the table.
First of all, there is a bit of true character development (not only leveling up, mind you,) as readers learn more about the backstory of one of the Order’s members and problems for their families. Next, there is quite a bit of social commentary on the selection process of landing a job, and how ludicrous some of the associated rituals (in RPG fashion or otherwise) can be. Finally, and played mostly for laughs, the audience experiences a bit of mindless debate on how unreal side-quests would be on an actual world, and also some fun on the impenetrable world of small shop economics.
Hopefully, this summary highlights how eclectic “Order of the Stick” really is. It truly is the series’s main strength, as it reinforces the surprise factor and never allow characters or situations to become stale. The sharp nature of the situations and dialogues are certainly an added bonus, with the cartoony style of the world and its inhabitants never coming in the way of how entertaining this series is.
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Punderworld
Pilot Episode
Schedule: October
By Linda Sejic
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
After months of public teasing and testing with various strips and bits of art, Linda Sejic of “Blood Stain” fame, has released her first properly formatted strip for her next project “Punderworld” with the ‘Pilot Episode.’ “Punderworld” is her take on the mythic romance between Greek deities Hades and Persephone. This opening episode isn’t so much a episode of romance in and of itself as it is a montage of micro strips and images that tease the strip out and give the readers an idea of what they’re getting into. The idea of the teaser strip is something more comics are doing, notably with “Die” and “Crowded,” and the ‘Pilot Episode’ is another good example why pretty much most comics should do them. I gave this strip to a friend to read who has no real connection to this series or Sejic’s work and they were engaged and wanted to read more, because they knew what they were getting themselves into. So much of comics marketing is promotional hype that fails to actually explain what the product is about.
The pace of ‘Pilot Episode’ feels comparable to the intro song and credits sequence of a sitcom. Scenes and sequences are fairly brief, about 5-6 panels each, they land their joke and move on. You get some punnery from Hades and some double entendre flirting from Persephone. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, is on the hunt for where her daughter went. These scenes are all brief but get the basic beats of the characters across so that the readers can understand the dynamic of the strip proper.
As always Sejic’s expressive cartooning and facial designs bring life and uniqueness to these well-trod characters. How Sejic has worked in their godly crowns as essentially mood rings is simple and effective.
The most interesting aspect of ‘Pilot Episode’ is how it forced me to do something no other strip on Line has: turn my phone horizontal. After that change in orientation, I instantly realized the need to also turn on the rotation lock since the Line app just adjusts to horizontal mode (and looks understandably much worse for it.) At several points in this strip Sejic breaks up the infinite vertical scroll for wide angle landscape pieces that bring with them all the power of a double page spread. Twisting it in this way furthers the differentiates and illustrates how spread like moments are created through seamless transitions and strong perspective in the infinite scroll scenario. In the horizontal position the reader is intimately aware of the width of the image. It should go with out saying, these moments are pretty much DOA if you read the strip in a desktop web browser.
The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn
Chapters 91-95
Updates: Completed/On Hiatus
By Tri Vuong
Colored by Irma Kniivila
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
The penultimate set of chapters brings us a few new tidbits of lore for our skeletal main character as the high intensity energy continues to ramp up. This energy, driven by the madness of Kenny and Doctor Corpus, is well maintained throughout these five chapters, although by the end, it seems to have fizzled out. Yes, while I loved ‘The Ghost of Witch Lake,’ this is where I start feeling the length of the story wearing a bit thin.
Part of the reason for it is that Walter, and to some extent Maddy’s, stories were the interesting and engaging ones while Oscar’s was entirely dependent on them. It’s not that Doctor Corpus isn’t a good villain, I believe he is, but he is underutilized and the tragedy of his story is cut short before it really had a chance to blossom. Because of the highly narrow focus on the personal stakes of the town, the looming threat of a giant hellmouth full of angry spirits doesn’t elicit the same level of terror as Maddy’s father ramming into Walter’s boat, knocking him over into the lake.
Which, by the way, was a stellar set of scenes.
Chapters 92 and 93 are the highlight of this batch. Kniivila knocks it out of the ballpark, capturing the oppressive reds that compliment the darkness and the orange of the candlelight. The underwater lighting is particularly isolating, heightened by Vuong’s framing, with ample distance all around the characters in the deep, dark, with only a candle to light the dead gathering around them. If I had to pick one moment that showed Vuong’s growth as a storyteller, and as an illustrator of the dead, from ‘The Last Soldier of Somme’ to now, it would be the middle of Chapter 93.
Continued belowIt’s a classic set-up and delivery, executed with precision, and delivering on the terror and tragedy of Kenny’s actions thus far. And while I am a bit down on the Doctor Corpus & the hellmouth scenes, despite the tragedy there as well, the strength of the rest is the only reason it feels lesser in comparison.
Also, I really missed Vuong’s comments below each chapter. Webcomics are an interesting medium in that the creators really can exchange informal bits of information and jokes with the audience with each installment, making it feel like a process, or a friend showing you their work in progress, rather than a work delivered from on high. It’s nice and I am a fan of alt-text in my comics. (Shout out to Ryan North on Squirrel Girl and Molly Ostertag & Brennan Lee Mulligan for preserving that into print!)
Tom N Artie Tales
Bounty Huntin’
Updates: Fridays
By Robert Livingston and various artists (Bounty Huntin’ drawn by Vanessa Cardinali and lettered by Micah Myers)
Reviewed by Dexter Buschetelli
“Tom N Artie Tales” is a companion series to “Tom N Artie,” a series about a military unicorn and animated rabbit from different dimensions who take on mercenary and bounty contracts. Yeah, I picked a weird one this week.
‘Bounty Huntin” is a fun little installment, and it isn’t really necessary to know anything about the core series to enjoy it. It opens in a “Dimension-459” with the titular characters casing a mark named Troni, apparently from a “Dimension-040.” As they’re getting ready to make their move and take Troni alive they’re interrupted by a sniper who blasts Artie’s non-lethal weapon out of his hand and chaos ensues.
Italian artist Vanessa Cardinali makes the chaos insanely fun as the duo are separated and the failure of their mission is rapidly escalating. The cartoon hare punching out a monster that looks straight outta Boneville is an especially entertaining moment.
The installment is accentuated by some lovely lettering work by Micah Meyers, whose superbly superfluous sound effects gave me quite the chuckle with “PERIL INCREASES,” “ATTEMPTED HOMICIDE,” and “INTENSE STRANGLING.”
Overall, ‘Bounty Huntin’ does a fantastic job of making the reader interested in checking out the core “Tom N Artie” series as well as keeping up with the rotating artists working on “Tom N Artie Tales.” Robert Livingston has an intriguing premise with this pair, and I’m glad I found them this week.
