I love it when we get to return to webcomics. I know it doesn’t happen as often but when we get to see how a thing has changed after a while rather than the incremental changes we usually do, it’s always a wonderful feeling. I say this because Hannah Templer’s “Cosmoknights” is back and I am HYPED. We’ve also got the continuing looks at “Dr. Frost” and “Adventures of God” and a newcomer, “Tales of Greed.”
Also, I gotta plug this kickstarter, “Big Mood,” as it’s a collection of strips that directly support a wide variety of awesome artists! This is the fifth one in the collection but they’re all more like thematic anthologies. Go back it! I’m a big fan of them.
Adventures of God
Pages: Episodes 23-32
Schedule: Fridays
By Teo Ferrazi and Corey Jay
Reviewed by Devin Tracy Fairchild
For this week we will dive even deeper into the gleeful nihilism that is “Adventures in God.” A lot of gag oriented longer form strips can get old really fast. Maybe the artist isn’t being innovative enough, maybe the writer plays the same chord over and over again like some noise rock punk band from the early eighties, which can be fun for six or seven more issues but lacks syncopative improvisation and rawness that makes comedy the best spoonful of sugar to wash down the medicine. “Adventures of God” has the distinction of not tumbling headlong into these pitfalls. Instead of a spoonful of sugar, this comic’s medicine is the subtle anise and fennel flavor of a good batch of properly nuanced absinthe. And like absinthe, it can hit you hard.
The minimalist backgrounds and rawer character designs of Corey are the subtle flavoring to carry you floating into the ether on a bitchin’ buzz. Each character has their own distinct design despite many of them being generic throw away characters, almost like red shirts on “Star Trek.” But to call them throw away characters doesn’t do it justice. They’re not generic. And the stoner art designs seem to improve with time. Right about the time you think you’ve built up a tolerance, an additional visual intoxicant (insert your choice intoxicant here) is added to add to the ambiance. And this visual and narrative high shows no sign of peaking anytime soon.
A little word about timing here. As someone who has written jokes and funny stories of fiction and nonfiction, timing is everything. The best jokes are real and raw. The best jokes are both topical and timeless. This accurately describes every gag in “Adventures in God.” Because much of it takes place in a factionalized eternity and deals with immortal beings human and otherwise this strip is timeless. But it is also connected to our present moment, without being too preachy. The episode 33 starts with a guy who gets into heaven by a technicality, familiar territory, but here it is not a tired trope. It is nuanced, and he literally gets into heaven by a sneeze.
The backgrounds in other places are more involved. One of the opening panels of episode 34 shows humans going about their daily lives, watching football, sunbathing, sitting in a coffee shop (like I am now) and walking their dogs, all while a death penalty for planet earth from climate change looms over us. Some of the people are rendered as purple amorphous blobs a la Mr. Meeseeks from Rick and Morty (an obvious influence on this comic) while other people in the background are fully rendered characters. This has a surreal effect, like much of the art. The comic ends with God being more invested in his favorite football team blowing a halftime lead, than the prospect of our planet being destroyed by our self-destructive tendencies.
The next issue features nondescript missionaries appearing at God’s front door jazzed up to tell God about Jesus. God’s first reaction to their proposition to tell him about Jesus is “what did he do this time?” One of the clean cut missionaries flashes a toothy grin that takes up half his face as the other one precedes to explain the real “truth” about God’s own son that he is a mind controlling shapeshifting alien who feasts on his followers. The neon green messiah with the dreads of Medusa can only be described in terms of the overused generality “psychedelic.” God immediately calls them out for their shit but they dutifully give him a pamphlet. The next panel shows God freaking out, sporting a tinfoil hat demanding of Jesus to explain himself. Jesus responds by pointing to his own prodigious propitiation which seems to put God at ease.
Continued belowThe next episode features a detailed colorful panel of a couple driving a sedan through a windy wooded mountain pass, calling out to Jesus. When he appears they demand that he basically “take the wheel.” Jesus makes the point that he was born well before the invention of cars and is in fact incapable of driving. The next jarring panel takes a turn as a handgun clicks against Jesus’ temple. Turns out this couple was escaping the police as the next panel comically depicts equipped with full background details of police cars in hot pursuit as the criminals continue to hold their gun trained on Jesus. Jesus then calls for his Dad to take the wheel and (drunk as usual) he drives it off a cliff. The next panel is meta commentary where too hipster looking kids ponder why Jesus would be afraid of dying anyway because he was resurrected. In that last panel Corey and Teo were really aiming for the cheap seats.
As a counterbalance to what I said before about these creators being more like jazz than 80s noise rock punk, they return to the familiar chord of Noah’s Arc, what I assume is a fan and creator favorite maneuver. Noah and Panda porn takes the cake! But each time this satire fueled Dynamic Duo returns to familiar territory, it is fresh. Like how every Grateful Dead song somehow sounds the same but is entirely different and each command live performance is distinct from the ones before it. A true Deadhead can tell you 30 seconds into a particular tape recorded version of “Althea” which era or even sometimes which city it was recorded in. In the same way a discerning connoisseur of the comic or “Adventurehead” (or “Godhead” but I think that’s already trademarked) can visually locate the comic or gag into a larger ever expanding mythos. Visually there is a lot more variations in character design or background than I first anticipated. I never thought a comic like this could expand my visual, narrative, and satirical palate this much. Definitely worth reading on to discern more hints of oak and Sour Patch Kids.
CosmoKnights Book 2
Pages: 1-13
Schedule: Tuesdays/Firdays
By Hannah Templer
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
“CosmoKnights” returns in a curious place. The opening pages to Hannah Templer’s return to Pan, Cass, Bee, Princess, and the mysterious woman with similar goals is largely silent and picks up from a scene from the prologue to ‘Book 1.’ These are effective pages, but it is interesting as it reveals some of the pros of the webcomic-book serialization method. Currently “CosmoKnights” is still hosted on cosmoknights.space, barring a chapter select there isn’t much digital space as a webcomic. That lack of friction makes the choice to start this new chapter back in the past, with an imagined version of what Tara went through after Pan got her on the ship effective. What little dialogue that exists in these opening pages is taken from Tara’s ethereal message in the locket that closes the first book. With that lack of space choosing to begin on a call back from the end of the previous book helps to further suture the narrative together. It also takes advantage of that lack of space through the access webcomic distribution affords the narrative.
Instead of starting somewhere more traditional like pages 12-13 that gives the reader money shots of the cast at the start of a day. Without that gap the need to reintroduce characters is minimal, the narrative becomes a seamless flow –chapter select aside. ‘Book 2’ starts on a character who is more of a phantom than character at this point. That phantasmic quality is reinforced as the opening pages are revealed to be a nightmare for Pan as she can’t shake the frantic and dire sounding plea from Tara. Even for new readers this beginning should prove to be effective since it centers the narrative within Pan, while “CosmoKnights” did shift perspectives, Pan is the main character.
Templer flexes similar but different muscles in the opening pages of Tara aboard the ghostly ship. The fight sequences in ‘Book 1’ were highly effective with clean visuals and reading lines that evoked fight manga without the excessive speed lines. That ability to frame action comes through as Tara explores the ship, each image slowly creating more and more dread as the wayward princess goes deeper in. That tension dissipates by 6 with the discovery of supplies, but that’s when the narrative begins to compress, and her message comes into play. It is imagined to be false hope which helps to secure the garbled warning that they made a mistake. Templer introduces this rolling ink effect to page 8 that overtakes some of Tara’s dialog in an effective bit of lettering.
Continued belowThe start to the second book of “CosmoKnights” isn’t the table setting you would expect. It shifts tones wildly into something closer to Alien. All of which helps to support the goal of placing the reader in Pan’s anxious mind space.
Dr. Frost
‘Persona’ (1) – (7)
Updates: Saturdays
By Jongbeom Lee
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
We roll from one arc about BPD and suicide to another this week, though those two aspects are less central to ‘Persona.’ As Seonga starts to move away from her position as an undergraduate student and into the wider world, so too does the story move on from patients coming to the room to seek treatment. The framework of the story is evolving alongside the characters, allowing for a longevity that may not have been possible had “Dr. Frost” kept its initial formula. It’s great and, despite myself, I find that each arc gets me more and more invested in not only the particulars of each case, but also of how Seonga, Frost, Professor Song & Professor Chun will approach it AND how they will or won’t grow from the experience.
The central conceit of ‘Persona’ is that Frost is brought on as an excerpt consultant on visionary director Joonho Park’s latest feature, the titular Persona, but something is amiss on set. This is framed for us via the opening scene of the first chapter, wherein the lead actress of his previous film died by suicide at the Cannes festival wherein they had just won the Palme D’Or, as well as via strange goings on that Frost and Seonga notice. By the end of these updates, we’re talking about the possibility of hypnosis, at least as a tool for method acting, and things are starting to heat up with the documentarian under suspicion and things starting to look far more dire than we once thought.
Lee’s artwork continues to impress me with framing and panel composition, though I do find the way he draws faces to still be hit or miss, though the ratio is far more tilted towards hit. It’s really Joonho Park’s face that gets me. There’s something about it that strikes me as inconsistent, even between adjacent panels. However, that is a minor nitpick for a series that relies less on flashy artwork and more on setting the right mood to tell its story. On that, it succeeds with flying colors and I am dying to find out how all these little details tie together…and how they will help Seonga make a decision about studying abroad for grad school.
Tales of Greed
Episodes 1-7
Updates: Saturday
Written by Juin Kim
Art by Taejun Pak Webtoon Company
Reviewed by Mel Lake
We all know the dangers of cell phones, right? Depending on who you ask, they might be rotting our brains, damaging our vision, or corrupting our morals. Or all of the above. Even though it seems like much of mainstream news and entertainment content comes from Tik Tok these days, cell phones and the young people who use them all the time are consistent targets for moralistic scolding. “Tales of Greed” takes these warnings in a direction that seems like it would fit right at home on an episode of “Black Mirror.” What if an app could give you the thing you desire most? Would you use it? At what cost?
There are two standalone stories available in this new series, and both come with warnings for violent/disturbing content on the first page. Heed them! “Tales of Greed” does not hold back when telling the tale of a woman bullied for her looks who gets grisly revenge on her tormentors, only to find that her ability to change her own appearance via an app can have unexpected (and deadly) consequences. Similarly, the second story, of a man who can switch bodies with people via a phone call, takes a violent turn when he accidentally switches places with a murderer and finds himself on the run from both the police and a homicidal maniac.
The characters are drawn realistically, with expressive faces that easily inspire sympathy, disgust, or fear. The plots take disturbing turns and although the violent imagery isn’t over-the-top gory, it’s definitely more like a horror movie than an action thriller. Both episode arcs are fast-paced and though the dialogue suffers a bit in translation, the action and plot twists make for the type of story you want to keep reading, even if you have to cover your eyes every now and then.
Like the incredibly popular and long-running webtoon story, “Lookism,” “Tales of Greed” is not subtle about its message about the suffering faced by both men and women due to their looks (or perceived lack thereof). But since “Tales of Greed” is an anthology series instead of one focused story, it can branch out and explore the world of greed, desire, beauty, and power in different ways. It’s like if the “Death Note” were an app instead of a notebook, or the painting of Dorian Gray in Wilde’s novel was brought into the era of Instagram.
Since “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is over one hundred years old and the myth of Narcissus goes back much further than that, people have clearly been vain, selfish, and awful since forever. “Tales of Greed” is a Gen-Z take on these classic tales of awful people facing the consequences for their awful actions, and I’m curious to see how many stories the series can sustain. I’d like to believe the creators of “Tales of Greed” might run out of awful people to tell stories about but I have a feeling that day won’t be coming anytime soon.
