Welcome back to The Webcomics Weekly!
Next week sees us celebrate, just four issues after reaching 100, our two year anniversary. Wow. I cannot believe we’ve been doing this for two years. Finding new comics, taking long running ones a few pages at a time, and sharing all these wonderful and sometimes very weird comics with you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This week, find yourself in “A Better Place” as you “Trekker” on with your “Remarried Empress.” And remember to tip well when you can. You never know who might need the kind gesture.
A Better Place
‘Who Are You’ – ‘Fix This Mess’
Updates: Thursdays
By Harry Bogosian
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
*whispers into the void of the internet* Ace’s chin is so defined and I absolutely love that one close up panel. *AHEM*
After the great success of their last tussle with the Ward of a city, Nina and crew find themselves up against their greatest foes: themselves but better. Well, I say better but the exact phrasing is “the you that you wish you could be.” This normally manifests as someone with more muscles, more brains, more charisma, etc who makes you question whether or not it would be better to let the other exist or one who is simply unbeatable because they are superior in the trait you most value. In this case, part of that is true, but the “best” versions of Arma and Bun show that this isn’t exclusively an offensive version of themselves.
‘I Like Myself’ is brutal because it absolutely wrecks Arma with one line. . .and then a superpowered smack into the ground but that’s a physical representation of the emotional destruction that one line creates. “I like myself.” There’ve been hints of Arma’s insecurities, usually with respect to his love of Nina, but this takes those moments of minor insecurities and reframes them, weaponizing them, and I can’t say I wasn’t also chilled by this. Self-loathing is powerful and when you see a version of yourself without it? That’s enough to destroy the will to fight.
These pages are an excellent example of how full Bogosian makes his pages and how meticulous he is in getting to the emotional core of a fight scenes, transforming it from beat-em-ups into storytelling through action. It’s focused, careful and intense. The way Mr. Bun is destroyed without even one punch being thrown? Gorgeous. Many DC & Marvel comics could take a note from this.
The Remarried Empress
Episodes 1-4
Schedule: Sundays
Written by Alphatart
Illustrated by Sumpul
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
I can be an incredibly simple man, the pitch for “The Remarried Empress” a new series written by Alphatart with art by Sumpul, had me at the title. What does that even mean? Only for me to discover this series is equal parts romantic break up story and courtly intrigue, two things I can get behind. It helps that Sumpul’s art has this lush shojo art that immediately creates a highly aestheticized, romantic, surface for this drama about two people who are not as committed to one another as they’d thought to play out on.
This all comes through in the first episode as you scroll through a romantic façade to the relationship between Emperor Sovieshu and Empress Navier. They were part of two aristocratic households, put in a marriage of political convenience, but they seemed to like each other well enough. Sumpul technically contrasts the highly decorative panel gutters with cuter cartoon version of them in their younger days, however, in reality they are two refracted aesthetics that create a simplistic revision through excessive style and plaster over the cracks in their relationship. Only for the next image to be a literal sundering of that relationship, their portrait, by Navier’s own hair! While more normal wants about the gap between panels remains, Sumpul packs in a flair for drama and a willingness to compose in a vertical orientation that works perfectly for the phone.
Alphatart’s writing is largely fine, the pace of the episodes feels a little slight like someone is writing a “2000 AD” strip and they haven’t quite figured out the 6 page rhythm yet. It isn’t wrong from a plot perspective and as episodes the first four work well, they just feel a little thin. This could also be due to the large sized imagery Sumpul employs that frankly eats up a lot of space and so it cuts into the panel count of a given episode. The dialog is a little arch, but for a melodrama like this it fits. The creative team do a good job of building out the courtly intrigue and win-or-die politics that happen in the periphery of the series. It creates the feeling of a world with its own set of rules even if the reader isn’t privy to them at the start.
Continued below“The Remarried Empress” comes in guns blazing DRAMA! It is deceptively subtle with all of its artistic bluster. At the same time it serves as a good example of how this series is going to operate. By the end of the first episode you’ll either want to furiously mash next or move on to one of the hundreds of other webcomics that were updated in the minutes it took you to read this one.
Pages: Book 10 “Trial By Fire” Pages 9-16
Schedule: Mondays
Written and Illustrated by Ron Randall
Colored by Moose Bauman
Lettered by David Jackson
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
As I’ve read ‘Trial By Fire’ I’ve been consistently looking at it as a good entry point a soft reset of sorts for “Trekker” as a published work. By the end of ‘Trial By Fire’ that feels like it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Both points of view, however, stand up to muster and are “right” at the same time. ‘Trial By Fire’ does some big things, like killing Paul, which is shocking and a gut punch for a long term reader. At the same time if you were just coming into the series Randall provides enough contextual information that explains the basics of Paul and Mercy’s relationship that his death, while perhaps not as impactful, is dramatically justified. ‘Trial By Fire’ is a quintessential “Trekker” comic, it works well enough as a standalone issue but has threads that longer term readers will recognize and feel the tug when they are tied off.
With this being the climatic third act there is a fair amount of action and Randall once again threads the late 90s Image aesthetic needle with the retrofuturism aesthetic the series is inspired by. The action is in better balance in this section compared to the first batch of pages. Rob Liefeld he is not, but he does make several pages built around large anchor images of Mercy in action. He draws her kicking like she’s Raiden in Mortal Kombat most often, an understandable image that would both be well known at the time as well as imbue it with a mid action energy. Despite a heavier action lean, he doesn’t draw Mercy in any ridiculous, spine busting, poses.
If there is one 90s Image trick he most effectively used it is the implementation of lots of tiny panels in sequence. This comes through on the twenty first and fourth pages with the page shot through the middle in a series of rapid fire panels that extend the temporality of a brief moment in time. Using four small panels to show Paul’s body riddled with bullets is more effective than if he’d stuck to his usual one or two panels structure.
‘Trial By Fire’ was another effective “Trekker” story that also has a nice hook for new readers.
