The Webcomics Weekly #138: Within and Along the Equator (5/25/2021 Edition)

The Webcomics Weekly continues as the summertime beckons. Elias takes us all “Along the Equator,” we go “Within” and “Strike a Chord.” Also the second season of “Lavender Jack” begins.

One of the things I love most about checking out Canvas webtoons that update infrequently but regularly is that you can see, in just a few episodes, great strides in art and storytelling. By the time “Along the Equator” reached the episodes I looked at today, fmiiart had already leaned back from the heavier handed exposition of the first couple episodes and dialed back the edge in order to let the characters shine through. One interesting change this wrought is the censoring of certain curses, usually in situations that don’t require the full impact. It injects a small bit of levity without plastering over the character’s willingness to swear.

Narratively, ‘A Possibility’ contains the beginning of the inciting incident, with Micah falling into the sewers by the wall and getting his chance to explore outside. It’s a moment that feels monumental, even though we’re only a few chapters in, and fmiiart delivers on the reveal, producing some gorgeous landscapes to have Micah get lost in. Before we actually get that reveal, we get a little more depth to Claire, the seemingly conflicted bully from early on, as well as the introduction to a bit more of the supporting cast and some nice worldbuilding around Micah’s condition, something that wasn’t so clear before this point. Clive, Micah’s brother, is discriminated against because of his scar but it hadn’t been well established why everyone picked on and shunned Micah prior to this beyond his surly personality.

This transitions into the aforementioned reveal & exploration before bringing us back to Clive discovering that Micah is missing and doing the smart thing and searching in town before assuming he’s in the very dangerous, very illegal outside, which also gives fmiiart the chance to bring in their ill mother. It’s a shame that the panels are so small and infrequent in each chapter, as there is a lot of story here that’s waiting to come out, and could use some additional room to breathe. This has gotten better by chapters [010] and [011] but the stuff with the mother is one place where those early chapters’ edge & brevity have cast a bit of a pall over her presence. Still, the confidence of fmiiart’s linework in those chapters and a more pronounced sense of environment have helped make the comic feel expansive rather than constrictive. I do think having a greater contrast in the framing of the outside and the inside would’ve worked to deepen the themes of constriction vs freedom but one shouldn’t complain about choices not made.

All in all, “Along the Equator” is an intriguing series with a central pair whose brotherly bond is key to its charms. The constant improvement of the art and storytelling are a bonus that makes me excited to see what fmiiart has in store in a year or two for this comic. Maybe you’ll be there along with me.

Like many people I’m a fan of rock. Rock is such a massive category with roots and branches stretching out in nearly ever direction and a true connoisseur can sample delicious fruit of many varieties. But as a child of a particular era pop punk is very near and dear to me. You can still find me rocking out to Blink 182, Green Day, Good Charlotte and Yellow Card. It was a different time. A time of unfortunate hair styles (I’m looking at you with the frosted tips) and corporate focus group engineered boy bands. But pop punk and emo were trying something different. Something different that can be traced to the legacies of current artists like Machine Gun Kelly.

So lets fire up the portable time machines found in our devices and screens and go back in time to the era before social media, where even flip phones were somewhat of a luxury and people wore frosted tips unironically. The webcomic on WEBTOON It Strikes a Chord has just released its 9th episode on Wednesday and will release future episodes on Wednesdays. It is created by artist Springrooove and is a rockn’roll comic. There is a fresh, non-gimmicky or too saccharinely sweet nostalgia in this comic. Each new episode is named after a pop punk hit from that era such as “”When I Come Around” a nod to the Green Day classic and “In the Garage” a connection to a song off Weezer’s Blue Album.

The comic opens with a prologue where the main character Stevie Ford is confronted by a mysterious figure from his past that has yet to be revealed. The moment he confronts this person will likely be pivotal. Stevie is in one of the biggest rock stars on the planet and travels home to his small town for his sister’s wedding. Stevie and his sister have a conflicted relationship to say the least. While on the plane back home he hears his own song on the in flight radio show. They also mention that Stevie’s sister is getting hitched. He is reminded on the plane that he needs to come up with a new single. The comic has plenty of comedic moments like when Stevie mentions his sister’s fiancé’s “Justin Timberlake lookin’ ass.” His mother has moved into a massive mansion with the money from his son’s music. Stevie finds the room prepared for him by his mother is a massive shrine to his music.

The romance aspect of the story hasn’t been officially set up though there have been some clues in more recent issues. I am convinced that the emotional stakes of the characters are significant enough to support sustain a long fruitful comic. In just a very short amount of space Springrooove has made three dimensional characters who, though flawed, we actually care about and relate too. The art style is certainly magna influenced, though it is unique in its own right and the colors pop and the artist is not afraid to use more traditionally drab colors like beiges and browns giving it kind of an earthy feel. Overall this comic shows a lot of promise and takes the overused trope found in Hallmark movies the classic “you can’t go home again” storyline and tweaks it just enough to make it interesting. If you’re looking for a good romance to follow from the beginning, that has the potential runaway hit, look no further.

We begin season 2 and “Lavender Jack” has to do something different, it has to (re)introduce itself. With the start of a new season and decent marketing push, mixed with word of mouth, the start of a new season is bound to generate new readers. Even if the possibility of the new reader wasn’t as great it is still the start of a new chapter which requires groundwork to be laid in a way that hasn’t been done since the start of the series. That introductory energy allows Dan Schkade and Jenn Manley Lee to remind readers what makes “Lavender Jack” so fun. On one hand it’s a strip about the institutional corruption of a city and how existing hegemonic forces use power to reinforce that power and exacerbate class and racial divides which is rightfully heavy. But at the same time, it is a pulp inspired strip about a man who dresses up in a lavender Daredevil-esque suit to avenge himself and stops human trafficking rings, which happen to be tied to that institutional corruption, and has the debonair energy of a good guy James Bond. A good introduction would manage to weave both of those elements together, giving new readers an idea of what to expect and reminding existing ones what it is they liked about it in the first place. The first three episodes, 49-50 in particular, pull that off. This strip opens on a human trafficking ring that puts their drugged victims in coffins! But Schkade’s pacing of the action is well done, the quips are witty without being hollow snark, it all comes together to balance out and you see what “Lavender Jack” is capable of.

I’ve often neglected to mention the coloring of Jenn Manley Lee, but their work really stands out in this batch of episodes. Their rendering has never been overly realistic, in a lot of ways it reminds me of Silver Age pallets with the vibrancy shifted down. That shift down allows for moments to really pop, or more accurately EXPLODE. Part of introducing a character is showing off what they can do, and Lavender Jack can use microwaves to explode bullets in the chamber. But after a long series of episodes where that has become common knowledge, it wouldn’t make sense for everyone to suddenly forget. So Schkade brings in people from out of town with all their guns. To capture the explosions Lee uses a common color in a different way. Everything becomes awash in bright pale orange before shifting to a blood red with balls of pure white at the center of each explosion. It’s a simple application that creates the sense of an explosion, with Schkade’s silhouette line art supporting. Orange in this strip has mostly been related to buildings and rare interior decor so to see it in this set of episodes with their white-greys makes everything pop appropriately.

These first three strips are mostly centered on introducing our protagonists, with longer term groundwork relegated to teases mostly at the ends of a strip. Which is fine, readers need to understand characters before they can care about plot. I am curious to see how this new threat of an even more entrenched secretive cabal plays out, who have their own masked icon to do their bidding. The start to season 2 is necessary table setting, it’s well done and the action continues to be among the best I’ve found on Webtoon.

The line between waking and dreaming is blurred for the protagonist of “Within,” a hitman who seems to drift with little control over his life in or out of dreams. He meets a friend in his waking hours but struggles to connect in a meaningful way, and while dreaming, he appears as a robot head disconnected from a flowy, ribbon-like body. The protagonist records the time he wakes from the dreams and what he sees, as well as what he sees during the day as he waits for instructions on who to assassinate next.

“Within” takes place partly in dreams, but even during the waking portion of the comic, the art style is similarly fluid and flowy. Speech bubbles of background characters bleed into the background to effectively show how the protagonist floats through life just as his dream self floats through a mysterious house. The imagery in the dream house is eerie and the protagonist’s dream self almost looks like he’s floating through an underwater world. Though billed as a horror comic on Hiveworks, so far the dreams aren’t scary, necessarily. They’re intriguing and strange, like entering a dream where the world doesn’t work exactly the same way our world does but the rules haven’t been explained yet. Even the violence of the assassinations carried out by the protagonist seem disconnected from the real world and aren’t drawn in great detail, detaching the reader and the protagonist himself from the grisly action.

Verena Loisel uses a blue-green color palette throughout, so splashes of red and orange as well as unexpected images, like a bug in a tuxedo, stand out and seem to take on additional meaning. So far, the pace of “Within” is slow, since there are two parallel stories to set up, but there are enough crumbs of information to make you guess what’s going on and want to know what will happen next. Even if it takes a while to find out who the protagonist is and who he works for and why, the dreamy art and pleasant character designs would make for an enjoyable hitman slice of life comic.

“Within” is a dreamy story with a fluid art style that promises mysteries in both of it’s parallel storylines and I’m looking forward to seeing what awaits the protagonist in dreams and the waking world.