Welcome back to the Webcomics Weekly!
We begin year two, with nary a hitch or reboot between the numbers, and the continuing adventures of our favorite stick-like adventuring party in “Order of the Stick” as well as the slowly unfolding world of “A Better Place.” Joining them are our new look: a dark and thoughtful piece, “Disorder,” and high school by way of “Fist of the North Star” in “Weak Hero.” Are we already dead? Who knows!
But before we kick things off, a couple more congratulations are in order! The Ignatz were awarded this weekend at SPX and one webcomic & one digital comic — a distinction that, yes, I know, is pretty pedantic — won. So a big congratulations to Hannah Blumenreich for Best Online Comic “Full Court Crush” and Ngozi Ukazu for Outstanding Comic “Check Please.”
Check out the full list of nominees here, and the full list of winners here.
A Better Place
‘Facing Fears’ – ‘Unlawful Speech’
Updates: Thursdays
By Harrodeleted
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
Tyranny isn’t just a product of a single ruler. It is built from the minds of the fanatic, from those who will do anything for their ruler, who worship at their feet, who will destroy, betray, forsake. . .kill everyone and anyone for their ruler. Dissent cannot be tolerated, for if the ruler is wrong, what does that mean for the fanatic’s world? That is what this set of updates is concerned with setting up, in addition to the greater plot machinations at play, with Nina caught in the middle.
Last time, we got a bit of Empress Computer’s cult worship of Hannah but in ‘Forbidden Dreams,’ ‘An Act of Heresy,’ and ‘Unlawful Speech,’ all wonderful titles too, she shows the vast levels of control she holds over the world and its inhabitants. It is frightening and establishes some pretty high stakes for Nina. This is the catalyst for Nina’s journey from here on out. It’s a clever way to twist the narrative from a more traditional hunt and, expand the threat, and more succinctly complicate the narrative to sustain itself.
It’s also a great way to introduce some of the logic behind the world, especially in how, while nobody dies, there is, in fact, a way in which death is possible via The Terrors, who are kept in a rain-soaked shroud, ominous and foreboding. By the by, I love the way Harrodelted draws the rain on ‘Forbidden Dreams’’ first page. It’s a downpour, one that should obstruct all visibility but instead, it highlights the key pieces of each panel while retaining the gloomy, soaked visuals.
I should also mention that ‘An Act of Heresy’ is the first page since the start to have coloring in it. For the most part, it works, though the saturation can come off as a bit strong, the reds on Empress Computer notwithstanding. The intensity of the colors match the intensity of the world, with ‘Unlawful Speech’ being a great example of how color highlights can jack up the terror of a scene to new heights. The reason for the lack of coloring before, and after this, was practical (Patreon pledges drove page coloring,) shortening the update length to one page for the fully colored one and two for the partially colored one.
I say this because the in-and-out of full color pages can be a bit distracting as it doesn’t follow a set pattern. However, they bring a different life to the page, often deepening the visuals, and I look forward to seeing more of it. . .once Nina begins her adventure proper.
Disorder
Parts 1-6
Updates: Very infrequently.
By Erika Price
Reviewed by Dexter Buschetelli
I’m stretching the rules a bit this week to cover a series I’ve been wanting to highlight for a little while now. So before we get started let me break down a couple of things.
This stretches the rules as it is not exactly a new series, per se. “Disorder” by Erika Price saw its first installment hit Tapas back at the end of 2017. However, there are only six episodes currently, with the most recent releasing just a couple of weeks ago.
Continued belowI would also like to note why I chose this series and why I have waited a little while since discovering it to do so. To answer the latter I could have stretched the rules at any time, as I have done so in the past. And, while each strip has a lot of subject material to delve into, I’m hesitant to cover series that are so infrequent with their updates. Thankfully, this newest update makes for a timely opportunity to revisit it.
As far as the former you need to know a little about me, personally. I have a lot of fascinations, two of which are dreams and sleep paralysis, of which I personally suffer. “Disorder” isn’t strictly about these but clearly takes a lot from them.
The last thing about myself–cause God knows at 200+ words in I should probably start talking about the comic itself–is that I happen to be a visual artist as well. Something that has stuck in my craw for many years is that often times when I show some of my work to people they incorrectly label it as “abstract.” Granted, these are generally laypeople but I have encountered it in comics circles as well. This is because many don’t know the difference between “abstract” and “surreal.”
The artist Suzi Nassif would say “There’s only a slight difference between Surrealism and abstract expressionism, yet they both are entirely different forms of contemporary art.” But I would disagree. By definition, abstract art is “art that does not attempt to represent external reality but seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, forms, colors, and textures.”
By contrast, surrealism isn’t even specifically an art style, it is a movement that first came to prominence after the publication of “Manifesto of Surrealism” by a French poet named André Breton and is most commonly associated with the artist and visionary Salvador Dalí. But, at its core, surrealism is simply what its dictionary distinction defines the root word as: “resembling a dream; fantastic and incongruous.”
Price describes “Disorder” as being “a series of dark and surreal short horror comics, created as art therapy.” I quite imagine though, given the content, that she has seen this same improper labeling of her work before. “Disorder” attacks you on a visual level from its opening panels. It holds the chaos of a Jackson Pollock in its line flow and busyness, but there is simultaneously an order to it all. A finger holds a city in its nailbed as the pad beneath crumbles down into the void. A series of buildings, hyperboloid cooling towers, and branching river streams collectively form the larger body of a heart. A broken facade composed half of humanoid features and half of man-made structures floats in space. All of this is just within the first few pages of “Disorder.” It is a mind-bending masterpiece of rot and disgusting appearance, the veritable “stuff of nightmares,” if you will.
When Price states this is a form of art therapy, it is not a simple offhand comment. As a trans creator, her experiences are not just poured into “Disorder,” they are pounded in it with a sledgehammer. The dialogue repeatedly states the author is “trapped” in various ways, with the end of ‘One’ stating “I can destroy myself without your help.” It tells a story of ripping oneself apart to be born anew. “Destroy to rebuild to destroy to rebuild to destroy to rebuild” is chanted as a sea of figures dismember a nun. The metaphor is most apparent in the final page of ‘Six,’ reading: “An effigy, a monument, to all I hate, to all I was. Let it die. Let me live. I want to be something new. I will emerge. I won’t stagnate. I will reform.”
Many readers will connect with this idea of being trapped within a skin, not just those with forms of body dysmorphia or gender dysphoria. Most of us have had the feeling of not simply struggling to find comfort in our own current selves, but feeling that everything is wrong on a level we can’t cope with. ‘Disorder’ scratches as that psychic wound until it gapes open and everything pours out. And, perhaps there is merit to this psychiatric approach. Maybe, for some of at least, we need to be melted down and reformed, incinerated to fertilize the growth of something new.
Continued below‘Disorder’ is not for the faint of heart. It may even deserve a trigger warning as some may find it pulls their own buried traumas back up to the surface. It intentionally prods to leave you unsettled, and it does it effectively. It’s that horrible nightmare you had as a child you’ll never be able to forget. It’s the creeping feeling in the back of your brain that you can’t define but triggers your fight or flight response. It’s the stuff that keeps Stephen King, David Cronenberg, and Jhonen Vasquez up at night.
And it is damned good.
Order of the Stick
Pages 151-155
Updates: Varies
By Rich Burlew
Reviewed by Gustavo S. Lodi
On this latest set of pages, the party encounters a group of low-leveled bandits, and start a lesson on RPG’ing in the only way they know of. It all turns south fairly quickly, and a save & rescue operations has to start to help one of their own.
“Order of the Stick” is often at it’s best when it is making fun of genre conventions (and not necessarily and solely for RPG), and when it bends the rules of comic book storytelling to land humorous gags only this particular medium can convey.
There is plenty to be found of both on this latest batch of pages. One particular panel, and the way it is paced within the broader confines of the page, made this reviewer laugh out loud, with a very simple, yet very effective joke involving a raven. That same raven is also utilized to make fun of how comic books can be often convenient, introducing concepts and elements that had never been established before, but that are required to move the plot forward.
One particular piece of this update of “Order of the Stick” is how character interaction is a bit more intense. Not that it is lacking on past entries, but here it takes more of the center stage, so readers joining in now will have an easier time understanding the motivations of everyone.
All in all, another great chapter on this series, as it continues to poke a stick (pun intended) on every genre convention, from RPG to any form of fiction.
Weak Hero
Ep. 1-3
Schedule: Tuesdays
Story by SEOPASS
Art by RAZEN
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
To cut straight to the point — “Weak Hero” is “Fist of the North Star” the high school years. It’s that simple and great. The strip by SEOPASS and RAZEN takes place in tkhe dystopian high school of Eunjang High, one without unseen teachers and enough bullies to make a side scrolling beat’em up several times over. As the meek Eugene Gale deftly explains, Eunjang has a strict hierarchy (some of which is founded in Korean culture that is translated well visually) between the bullies and everyone else. Somehow he ended up in this hell hole and just wants to spend the next few years head low and not trying to catch any of the bullies attention. Unfortunately he had to get the same class as our titular Weak Hero, Gray Yeon, and things just won’t be that quite.
RAZEN’s art manages to do something spectacular, make the annoyingly large gutter space a meaningful part of the strips pacing and using it to enhance the impact of the action. Gray Yeon soon draws the ire of class bully, Colton Choi, and soon becomes the upstart heroes first victim. Yeon uses superior, dirty, tactics to defeat his larger antagonists. The spacing of the art and the quick, sometimes large, differences between panels coupled with that large gutter space give them a surprising amount of speed if not fluidity. The best example involves Yeon’s dismantling of Choi in a series of unseen face slaps, all we see are the speed lines and after effects of his violence with these panels spaced out enough that each new image lands with surprising impact.
During the conversational sequences the gutter space creeps in as a slight annoyance. The lettering is also a bit overwrought with large word balloons for relatively small amounts of dialog. The lettering in general feels a bit off, but the paneling of these dialog sequences is sound.
Continued belowSEOPASS and RAZEN do a good job of giving Yeon a colorful cast of rogues to battle against. They’re all basically the same character on the inside: toxic jocks who think themselves the alpha of the school. While this is clearly my American reading of it, the bullies all seem like the joke Al Bundy is presented as … they just don’t know it yet. RAZEN gives the characters enough distinctive designs that they stand apart and play their role well enough. This being a nominally realistic strip it isn’t like one of them is a ninja and the other can bend fire. This generic if visually distinctive design is one of the aspects that gives “Weak Hero” that “North Star” vibe.
There’s a fair amount to potentially pick at for this strip in terms of masculinity. The bullies are all shown to be simple minded and overwrought. Yeon meanwhile is this enigma. It reads like a translation thing, but there is a weird emphasis on Yeon as feminine. When even by manga standards the character is barely androgynous much less feminine. He is only feminine in the binary self-other world view of those around him. It’s a potentially fraught path to go down, but also an interesting one that reinforces the characters surprising nature.
“Weak Hero” is simple and effectively executed. Do you want a strip about someone beating up bullies in a school with no teachers or security of any kind? Than this is the strip for you, the creators play that premise for all its worth in these opening episodes and make a strong first impression.
