OK, we’re not actually doing a crossover. It just feels like one of those things we should be doing here if the Big 2’s patterns are anything to go by and considering DC just partnered with Webtoon, that may be here sooner than later. Get ready for a quick pivot into DC comics y’all! For now – and probably for the length of this column, if we’re being honest – we’ve got non-corporate superhero comics coming your way, hiding in “A City Called Nowhere” where “Dr. Frost” and “The Moth Prince” go for a “Ryder.”
All this and a looming sense of Inception bwahs from Warner Bros in this issue of The Webcomics Weekly.
A City Called Nowhere
Episodes 1-9
Updates: Unknown
Illustrated by Rayno
Written by Merryweather
Reviewed by Mel Lake
Episode five of “A City Called Nowhere” is titled ‘That’s not the moon.’ It’s a perfect title for the bite-sized episode in this anthology comic by Merryweather, whose other Canvas works include titles like “Lovecraft Girls” and “The Crawling City.” It fits the story and it made me curious to click on the comic while scrolling through titles on Webtoons. I’m always up for a good horror comic, especially one with a sense of humor, so I devoured the available episodes of “A City Called Nowhere” in one sitting and was left eager for more.
The summary for “A City Called Nowhere” states that the main character, Sheryl, lives in a city full of dangers that no one else notices. Sheryl, a silver-haired, glasses-wearing anime girl, doesn’t always appear in the strips, though, and the comic gives us very little information about her. Since this seems to be an anthology series focused on the weird happenings in the city, this doesn’t actually matter. But if you’re expecting a story about a character named Sheryl, you might be disappointed.
(I’m personally more interested in the man with goat eyes that appears in episode two. I mean, he’s a man but he has goat eyes. Why? Goats have their creepy pupils because they’re prey animals and need to be able to see predators coming. So why is the effect so disturbing to humans? And why would this random dude need goat pupils? I suppose all of this is neither here nor there but it does give you a taste of the strangeness in this comic.)
Each short episode has a “hook” of some sort that either explains the horror within or stems from a piece of “advice” that Sheryl gives the reader, usually while an unsuspecting person in the background fails to heed it. It’s like if those signs on the subway that tell you to mind the gap included graphic depictions of people not minding the gap behind the words. (And the man with goat eyes. He’d probably be there, too.) The cuteness of the anime character style contrasts with the horror of the content in a way that is not in any way new to this comic or the horror genre. Cute girls in the vicinity of horrible things has been a staple of horror for so long that while it might not be a subgenre in itself, it certainly figures into many different types of horror. So while the artwork in “A City Called Nowhere” isn’t groundbreaking, it’s effective at what it does.
Each episode of “A City Called Nowhere” is very short. There may not be enough content for some but if you’re looking for something like an appetizer instead of a great big horror comic meal, “A City Called Nowhere” is a great place to start.
Dr. Frost
‘Doctor Pavlov’ – ‘Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?’ (6)
Updates: Saturdays
By Jongbeom Lee
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
TW: Suicide
‘Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?’ may not be the longest case of “Dr. Frost” – ‘Persona’ holds that distinction – but it is shaping up to be its most consequential. The title alone is ominous but when we get our first Pavlov centric update right beforehand, you just know Lee was lulling us into a false sense of security. You can’t give us the goodest pupper in between a major cliffhanger and the resolution of that kicking off the next case! I mean you can, but it’s just mean.
Continued belowThe first half of ‘Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?’ feels like a culmination of the webtoon thus far. It’s presented us with a true blue antagonist in Moon, there’s a case with a ticking clock, and Frost, Seonga, and Seon are all involved with the case in different ways and only able to interact with it in the ways they are because of their growth as people over the course of the comic. There’s a sense that things will never be the same by the end of this arc, though how that will manifest itself is still up in the air. Frost’s journey is the most obvious, as he is discovering a greater connection to his emotions and concern for others.
He still struggles with this, but ‘Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?’ does a great job of painting a picture of him wrestling with the way he is used to doing things and the guilt he feels over not only the death of Seon’s sister but in his inability to find the subject of this case, Jungyeon, before her death by suicide. That moment was honestly shocking but handled with tact, balancing the need to convey just how horrifying this moment is for Frost and not turning it into a lurid spectacle. I think I’ll speak more on it, and Moon’s indifference to the fact that he knew someone was getting ready to die, next time. For now, I think I’ll continue to turn over in my head the questions Lee is posing and the ideas he is interrogating as we try to find out the why of it all, if that is even possible.
The Moth Prince
Pages: Episodes 1-7
Schedule: Sundays
By sonderfairy
Reviewed by Devin Tracy Fairchild
I have a passion, no obsession for the obscure. For weird things that are slight anachronisms. I collect and restore old typewriters. I collect rare vinyl of everything from Dick Gregory comedy albums to local out of print proto-punk blues albums. I have an obsession for “discovering” things. I spend hours on a given Saturday at cramped Square Records in my Highland Square neighborhood of Akron, flipping through the entire alphabet and by the time I reach “F” I’ve got five or six unpolished gems, each with its own distinct brew of its own musty smell and probably its own species of mold.
Wednesdays you’ll find me at nearby Rubber City comics surrounded by the friendly faces of people I know intimately, wading waist deep into dollar long-boxes in search of some bizarre, wacky, obscure one-shot or series nearly lost to the passage of time, that I have resurrected like an Easter Sunday of comic pop art. I don’t collect vinyl or comics for the market value, I collect them as spacious echoing cathedrals, erected as monuments to my staunch religion of Creativity. The eternal punk rocker in rears its purple Mohakwed head every time I make a new discovery.
Writing the webcomic reviews for Multiversity has been a great way to scratch that itch in me for continual discovery. The WEBTOON app on my phone is the equivalent of a dusty record bin or comic long-box. So far, I have had some excellent finds. Today I’m spinning 15-60-75 (also known as The Numbers Band), a loud, noisy discordant blues and proto-punk band with some mean horns formed in 1969 in nearby Kent. I listen as I review my latest webcomic find The Moth Prince by artist/creator sonderfairy. Out every Sunday, it’s already got some buzz and a very high rating in WEBTOON. It features Arcade, a 17-year student at Palmbridge Boarding School, who is an awkward kid with no friends. Nothing seems to go right for him. Set in New Zealand, it opens in a science classroom with our perpetually daydreaming unassuming hero being informed by a cute classmate that there are legends of fairies in their New Zealand town. As he’s leaving the classroom, he notices a scrap of paper left behind that has a web address scribbled on it.
Arcade finds a message board and his adventures begin. He’s led into the woods at night with the light of his phone shining bright to attract the elusive fairies. The forests are lush and colorful, in an almost watercolor style and the darkness of the woods is expertly rendered. It is difficult to depict darkness in art without overwhelming the frame. Either it comes out too dark or the darkness isn’t conveyed well enough. Arcade and encounters a real-life fairy. The fairy steals his phone and disappears into the woods. The woods are colorful and trippy and full of a bioluminescent green trail of slime that leads Arcade deeper into the woods. I love the choice of that particular shade of neon green, lighting up the dark woods as Arcade is led into the fairy cave. As the spotlight from Acrade’s phone is shone on him it is also expertly colored, it’s not entirely white, it has traces of color and shading. Another difficult thing to convey in art.
Continued belowI also love the details of the big reveal of the fairy in splash page. The fairy’s hair is thick and green, almost like some psychedelic K-Pop star, a David Bowie Labyrinth childhood fantasy. Fun fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the creator of master logician Sherlock Holmes believed in fairies. The fairy’s backstory is revealed like sketches in a cave by long forgotten beings. The most recent episode is character sheets good for revealing info and stats about the characters including that the fairy’s name is Fern and goes by he/them pronouns. So far, the story has been slow, but certainly not unpleasant in its meandering pace.
The art, particularly the coloring and shading has been quite impressive. Not enough attention has been given to good shading in comics and it is hard to get the angles right. The artist has apologized for some of the delays in the production of the comic, but I hope they are able to keep it going because it shows a lot of promise. But I realize, life happens. I’m still comfortable in my trademark role as a webcomics Magellan, even though this comic has already gotten nearly 100,000 eyeballs on it, because I think the artist is destined for great things. Perhaps the story could be paced better, but the art is as magical as the world of fae that it depicts.
I recommend you like and subscribe and do some deep dives of your own into the newest and greatest that WEBTOONS and other sites like it have to offer. And pick some choice tunes to rock out to in the process. While you’re at it check out the Number’s Band, I just saw them at a small nightclub in Akron and they’re legends in their own right. And always keep your ears and eyes open and your highly sensitive feelers outstretched in the dark caverns of obscurity for great art that gets you as excited as I am about the Moth Prince.
Ryder – Tapas
Episodes 1-4
Schedule: Semi Frequent
By AustenMarie
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
After “Soul on Hold” was put on hold I was curious what writer-artist AustenMarie would do next, that project is “Ryder.” Our titular lead dreamt of making it big in the Los Angeles music scene; one prologue, a title card, and half decade later, she’s barely scraping by in a sequence that is reminiscent of something that happened to both the Young Bucks and my friends. While her cartooning often shifts styles to emphasize the emotion of a panel, AustenMarie’s storytelling manages to find the emotional truth and reality in the moment.
As I was reading the first three episodes, I kept getting this nagging comparison to Felicity of all things, and even if “Ryder” just stuck to being a slice of life in LA strip it would have been solid. And then it really did turn into Felicity, the last season of the show as magical realism seems to come into play. It is a tonal shift, but largely works, it adds a fey quality to everything which both ups the color values and tension.
The setup for “Ryder” may be familiar but there are plentiful little touches from AustenMarie doing skeuomorphic design, using minimalist environments to play with perspective, and little off brand spellings that give this strip an engaging charm. It is both a light fun read and something that could become a bit more.
