Welcome back to The Webcomics Weekly!
Grab your food processors and stay far, far away from the ice cream machine as we dive back into another week of webcomics. I’m not being extra chipper to hide the existential fear I’m continuing to feel. Nope. Not at all. So let’s all “Trekker” on an “American Road Trip” to “A Better Place” and pray that 5781 is a year when things begin the long road to positive change. Please G-d do we need our systems to be radically fixed.
But hey! We got some good webcomics in the mean time. That’s gotta count for something.
American Road Trip
Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Sundays
Based on the Novel by Patrick Flores-Scott
Illustrated and Lettered by Little Corvus
Produced and Adapted by Quincy Cho
Colored by MJ Erickson
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
There is a timeless quality to the start of “American Roadtrip,” adapted from the novel of the same name by Patrick Flores-Scott. There’s a meet cute on a college campus. Complete and utter dishonesty on one parties part during that meet cute. A feeling of alienation at home and society at large as they transition from teenagedom to adulthood – whatever that is. The opening panels of the first episode to “Roadtrip” literalize this timeless quality as artist Little Corvus welds gutter space together, by using the seamless infinite scroll to create a series of qausi-wipes. This effect of creating these kinds of transitions is my favorite tool of these vertical scroll webcomics.
Than towards the end of the second episode something comes to materially locate “Roadtrip” in time, the Motorola Razr scrolls by. The number one phone until the iPhone came along and stole its lunch money. The date appears on the phone on the screen: 09/10/08. The ’08 Financial Crash is days away from occurring. But for Teodoro “T” Avila that is the day everything changed for them after a chance meeting with a childhood friend spurns him to try and make something of himself and go to college. Having not read the book I’m legitimately curious if the financial crash will be factored into this ongoing coming of age story. It’s funny how these little things suddenly ground “Roadtrip” in a space far too familiar for me and brings a new reality to Little Corvus’s and MJ Erickson’s otherwise excellent, whimsically ennui filled art that I did not expect. Suddenly the title and everything about it feels far more American than I expected.
Where plenty of other artists go arch with their Style, Corvus is restrained, minimalism, fundamentally sound cartooning and construction propelling a diverse American story forward. Their wordless introduction to T sets up Quincy Cho’s necessary exposition dump and allows it to be a dramatically effective moment. Little Corvus is one of my favorite artists to follow so seeing this come across my feed was a welcome surprise.
The opening three episodes of “Roadtrip” are overall good. The sense of alienation on the part of Teodoro is immediately felt in Corvus’ artwork as he rides the bus to nowhere, eventually ending up at the University of Washington. Cho’s dialog is full of life and reads like people are actually talking to one another and have a history, not just a-historically bursting into place. “Roadtrip” is off to a good start and they haven’t even gotten to the titular trip yet, assuming the title is not a metaphor.
A Better Place
‘I Trusted You’ – ‘Good Morning’
Updates: Thursdays
By Harry Bogosian
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
The calm after the storm. When the trees lay broken and strewn about and air has an eerie stillness, as if a single breath is all that stands between denial and the crushing reality. That is what these pages are. After the high-octane, desperate battle for survival from Nina & crew and the emotionally destructive rampage Hannah wages upon her own psyche, all that is left is a cold resolve. They’re quiet pages but not silent, as Hannah gets E.C. to let her out of her confinement and E.C. taunts and threatens Theo to behave when Hannah is brought in front of him.
Continued belowAt first, I thought E.C. was a fanatic, out for the power of the position while fiercely loyal to Hannah but, as the story has developed, and made quite explicit in ‘I Trusted You’ & ‘Wanted My Love,’ it’s clear she only wants what Hannah had instilled in them: Love. She loves Hannah as a child. It is a twisted, malformed love that festers and harms but it is a love all the same. It is a love that enmeshes itself with worship and the worst part is that this can be placed directly at the feet of Hannah and she doesn’t even realize it.
Hannah made it so that her advisors loved her but what she did not take into account were the ways in which love can become toxic, when weaponized or used as an excuse to harm others. E.C.’s love is selfish, a manifestation of the child-like love Hannah felt she had to excise to become God Empress Hannah. Even if Hannah doesn’t realize this exactly, she’s realized that just because someone loves you does not mean they cannot hurt you.
I wonder if she will see herself in the mirror of E.C.’s monitor.
Trekker
Pages: Book 12 “The Train to Avalon Bay” Part 2 Pages 9-16
Schedule: Mondays
Written and Illustrated by Ron Randall
Colored by Jeremy Colwell
Lettered by Ken Brunzeak
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
The second part of ‘The Train to Avalon Bay’ pushes “Trekker” in some surprising places despite the long tenure of the series. “Trekker” as a strip within “Dark Horse Presents” tends to have very specific patterns given the page budgets for each episode. That traditional structure is upended as most of it is dedicated to not just action in the generic sense of an emphasis on bodily movement and spectacle but combat and violence as Mercy rues being right all the time and has to battle off an ambush. Most action set pieces in “Trekker” aren’t very long 1-2, maybe 3, pages at most. The second entry in ‘Train to Avalon Bay’ is 5 with three of them explicitly involving the use of guns. It’s the most action packed edition of “Trekker” yet!
Maybe it is due to the nature of the setting but the action didn’t pop as it usually does for me. Randall doesn’t do anything technically wrong. It’s still a very clear cut well staged action, but it lacks the dynamism I’m used to from his art. There is a staic quality to Mercy blowing anonymous henchmen away like she’s Duke Nukem. The images themselves are dynamic, it’s kind of hard not to be, but in the context of the page they act as these lead anchors. These pages aren’t 90s Image specials, it still takes time to read them. Mercy just isn’t doing a lot despite doing it all herself.
The increased action and emphasis on Mercy’s lethality feels highlighted and important considering its proximity to the death of Paul. That sense of lethality is somewhat undercut by the lack of blood, Randall understandably plays by the logic of action movies: make something look cool, don’t let the audience think about how their hero is killing people.
For all the new territory this entry puts “Trekker” in, Randall does use the series’ long running nature to have a nice visual and textual gag at the start of the strip. Molly chides her best friend about not eating and drinking enough, they are to be pampered after all. Randall draws Mercy with this look on her face like she hates everything implied about the term. There is a stiff unnatural quality to the way she sits in her stool in an evening dress. It’s a nice moment that works for newer readers but really lands for longer term ones.
