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The Webcomics Weekly #130: A Kid Named Lavender Jack (3/30/2021 Edition)

By | March 30th, 2021
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Like little Hannah we here at the Webcomics Weekly Hunger Too for souls webcomics. This week, Elias takes a look at a darkly adorable “Kid Named Hannah.” Meanwhile the City of Gallery is going through some changes and the story enters its final phase for season 1 in “Lavender Jack”

A Kid Named Hannah
‘Poke’ – ‘Holly the Ghost’
Updates: Irregularly between once & three times a week
By Hey Bob Guy
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

The juxtaposition between death and cute, wholesome comedy is a time honored tradition, one which Hey Bob Guy joins with aplomb and grace. Technically a soft reboot/sequel of his previous series Hannah & Morty, “A Kid Named Hannah” follows the titular Hannah as she and her Papa (Death) go about their days in the only way Death & his kid can: with hijinks and a slight air of exasperation. As with many comic strips, the age you are when you read it determines who you identify with most. Tag yourself, I’m Death.

Hey Bob Guy’s style is simple and clean, something which the paneling reflects as well, which is exactly what you want from this story. I love the designs of Hannah & Death. They’re expressive but bouncy, almost like living shadows, while the rest of the people have more definition, even in their cartoony state. These six episodes are a wonderful introduction to these characters and the kinds of stories one can expect from “A Kid Named Hannah.”

‘Poke’ cleverly sets the tone while establishing the dynamic between Death, Hannah, & any unfortunate soul who happens to be reaped when Hannah is bothering her Papa. ‘A Bunch of Hannah Thoughts’ is a litany of funny Hannahisms and little kid moments, culminating in a soft, warm ending. ‘Scared’ is perhaps the most traditional of all the set-ups, with a punchline that is pure tiny child, something I’ve certainly done to my parents when I was young.

I wanna highlight that chapter actually because I loved the way Hey Bob Guy depicted the scene being at night. Using purple as the lines rather than white made it feel ethereal and dim but still warm and welcoming. It reminded me of Batman the Animated Series in how they drew on black paper rather than white to ensure the scenes were always dark like Gotham. I love that kind of stuff. If you’re looking for a new comic with a sweet center to read, “A Kid Named Hannah” is perfect and, dare I say, to die for? I’ll see myself out.

Lavender Jack
Pages: Episodes 35-38
Schedule: Tuesdays – currently on seasonal hiatus
By Dan Schkade(writing and art), Jenn Manley Lee(color)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane

Dan Schkade does things differently in this batch of episode by shifting the spotlight away from our dual protagonists of Sir Mimley and Ferrier. They bookend this batch of strips, but the core of the readers time is spent in the company of the antagonists: the Hawthorne’s, Van Lund, and newly appointed Chief Justice. Schkade manages to do three things simultaneously that most serialized comics barely do two of: he pushes the plot forward, begins laying the groundwork for the second season, and manages to add texture to the characters in the process.

Pushing the plot forward is perhaps the most basic and rudimentary task, but they manage to cover a fair amount of ground in these four strips. By the end of the first strip Ferrier’s partner is taken in by the police. By the end of the fourth, the team has a plan to get her back. In between all that Chief Justice Gall has a meeting with Lady Hawthorne, which brings together to two antagonists for their respective seasons. It doesn’t take super careful reading to see Gall is being setup as new chief antagonist. That doesn’t mean Schkade is done with Lady Hawthorne though, this is more page time than she’s previously received as she tries to pull a Wilson Fisk from Daredevil season 1 and be the true power in Gallery. It isn’t that her actions have an obvious parallel with which to understand them, it’s Schkade’s cartooning that gives the character a real gravitas. There is a raptor like focus to her as she speaks of how her, Lord Hawthorne, and Van Lund have all been through hell. It isn’t the kind of site one sees in this kind of fiction.

Meanwhile their extended unofficial blackmail routine becomes a point of commentary between Van Lund and Lord Hawthorne. More Van Lund than Hawthorne considering the latter rarely speaks. He is a man of actions and survival, making his intentions very clear to Van Lund after being verbally diagnosed by him. Van Lund’s surmation of Lord Hawthorne, that he’s driven by an aching self-awareness of his own shallowness, might not be perfectly correct but it fits with everything we’ve seen before. That moment is an excellent bit of both writing and controlling reader perceptions over a character. It is textually telling us something that would normally feel weirdly expository but with what we have seen as readers it clicks into and creates a new understanding for Hawthorne’s way of being – even if it plays on some less-than-ideal colonialist stereotypes. Schakde is in a subtler, showy, mood in the final episodes as Mimley continues to recover from his injuries.

Reading this batch of episodes, it makes me wonder and yearn for “Lavender Jack” to return for its third season. The way they read individually and as a group is excellent and makes me curious what the experience would be like on a week to week basis.


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