The Webcomics Weekly #160: This is Not a (Web)Comic Column (10/26/2021 Edition)

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life. This week we bring you “Not a Comic”, but is a comic but anyone name just as sweet? As well as continuing coverage of “Lavender Jack” and “Lore Olympus.”

The second season of “Lavender Jack” enters its final stage with this batch of episodes. Next time we consider this strip it’ll be the season two finale. With the finale insight and time running out everything goes into high gear, and yet it isn’t some eXtreme studios “Prophet” double page spectacular. There is still a plan and formal grace involved that isn’t quite as whimsical as Wes Anderson but evokes it in the way Schakde contrasts the spectacular and mundane in episode 84.

Episode 83 begins with almost a dare as the shoe begins to drop on Sir Mimley and the Lavender League. Endo is given a gift from beyond the grave by his late assistant who has cooked up one last ditch effort to win this election! The plan is simple capture Lavender Jack … or, well, make an arrest that is big and splash. The perfect target for which is Sir Mimley, who just so happens to be Jack. What comes after is more important but the basic deductive method that unmasked Mimley is just plainly well done. The kind of basic research that is never brought up in these kinds of stories because it will undo them and finally reveal that Bruce Wayne is Batman. With Mimley unmasked to certain members of the City Government it raises the stakes for the finale. Will Mimley go full “You Have Failed this City” and kill Endo? Unlikely. Will they come to some sort of “understanding” and threat of blackmail? Who knows, maybe Endo will just die. But it raises the specter of questions going into the finale and that is effective. The logical rigor of the report is contrasted with the nonchalance of Mimley, unware that Batstrop manner is about to go “Over the Edge” from The New Batman Adventures

Schakde contrasts the spectacle of this “Over the Edge” moment with a surprisingly mundane exit, as Mimley and Ducky escape via secret elevator. The means of escape are not mundane, but the amount of space Schakde dedicates to tracking the elevator slowly descending as the two talk about nostalgia and regrets is. There’s a fire raging above them and they’re making slightly above idle talk. The image of the elevator descending downward is also the only kinda thing that would work in a vertical strip like this. You might be able to hack it up and shrink it to fit a single page but that would be robbing the image of its integrity.

With all that out of the way episode 85 sets up the big suicidal finale, notably without Lavender Jack. I’m sure he’ll show up eventually but 85 is an Honoria Crabb episode, cementing her as much lead and detective as Ferrier and Mimley.

This week on “Lore Olympus,” we’re taking a detour from the main story to find out why Eros, son of Aphrodite and winged himbo extraordinaire, helped his mother dump Persephone in Hades’s car in the first place. As established in the previous panels, Persephone lives with her roommate, Artemis. Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, is fiercely protective of her naive friend, but also wants her to enjoy her life in the mortal realm. Both Artemis and Persephone’s mother, Demeter, seem to realize that Persephone is so cute and, well, luscious, that she’ll end up the target of unscrupulous characters. The solution to this problem is, of course, to give Persephone a phone. More on that later.

Episodes14 through 16 focus on Eros, who arrives with dramatics and apology donuts. Artemis and Persphone are NOT about to forgive him for getting Persephone drunk and dumping her, at least not until he tells them why he did it. Turns out, Eros’s mother has some dirt on her son and jerks him about on a chain that is rendered literally around his neck. Eros’s story is actually that of Psyche, who was the first goddess to become ensnared in Aphrodite’s wicked schemes. Eros is to trick Psyche into falling in love with the ugliest creature in the world but he falls in love with her instead, rescuing her from a terrible marriage and then trapping her in his apartment. When she receives a knife from her sisters and tries to kill him but finds out his identity instead, Eros is heartbroken and leaves. What Eros doesn’t realize is that his woe-is-me tale is heard very differently by the two goddesses he’s telling it to. They are appalled at his actions instead of sympathetic, but because we’ve spent the past few chapters seeing both sides of the story, readers are torn between acknowledging how Eros’s actions are wrong but understanding them at the same time.

Morally questionable sob story aside, I find myself absolutely loving Eros. (I don’t think that’s a pun? Maybe it is? Wordplay aside, I just love Eros.) He is exactly the kind of dumb sympathetic jock character you can’t help but love. He’s sensitive and gullible and wants to do the right thing but ends up f-ing up instead. I love him, your honor. His expressions are goofy and his wings are gorgeously rendered, even as he’s doing simple things.

So, as Artemis is berating Eros for leaving Psyche with his scheming mother, remember the phone I mentioned earlier? Of course, the first thing Persephone does is use it to text Hades. And I can’t wait to see how Hades responds but I’ll have to, because that’s the end of this review and I think this comic’s story will be better served with some pauses in the romance to let it build.

It’s spooky month and that means it’s time for The Webcomics Weekly to transform into a prose review column once again. What do you mean that’s never happened before? Well, how do you explain my reviewing “NOT A COMIC?” It says it right in the title that it’s “NOT A COMIC.” Am I not to believe W A F F L E T_T? Perhaps not.

“NOT A COMIC” is an experimental work that utilizes the Webtoons scrolling format to explore abstract concepts like sanity, depression, happiness, etc. and present them in a similarly abstracted way. There is not much in the way of illustrations and while I would not consider the end result anything scary or even spooky, the subject matter the comic is attempting to approach is heavy. “NOT A COMIC” did not successfully evoke the feelings of dread it wanted to, but that’s not a criticism; I just found the work more intriguing than frightening.

The reason for this is, rather than relying on the abstract and the clever interplay of text and effects to build up the horror of the unknown and the uncertainty of what is going on, as was the case in the first couple updates, W A F F L E T_T chooses to literalize the concepts they’re working with, and in doing so reduces the spook factor. As the comic that is not a comic is primarily told through two different texts in conversation with each other and with the audience, this may have been inevitable.

I still found the ways W A F F L E T_T choose to express a change in power, an attempt at obfuscation, or the sheer power of a statement to be very effective. I appreciate how different this comic is from the others I’ve read, even as it really straddles the line between comic and prose experiment, and the first episode really drew me in with its mix of oddities and strong voice.

I can’t say I would recommend this to others but only because I’m not sure how to. The story is simple and has been approached many times in many ways, often with more nuance and depth. The episodes are short and it’s hard to tell if this is all we’ll get, if there’s a little more, or a lot more. However, the comic clearly knows how to use gutter space and the pacing is excellent, though I think a slower pace would have benefitted the work. And while we have only seen a couple illustrations, the use of the effects on the rest of the comic are well done and quite fitting. In the end, “NOT A COMIC” is an engaging experiment and clearly a way for the artist to work through these ideas. That they’re sharing this process with us is meaningful in and of itself and an approach I cannot and will not dismiss.