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The Webcomics Weekly #124: Kona Crush3d (2/16/2021 Edition)

By | February 16th, 2021
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Welcome back to Webcomics Weekly, where we make leet speak and wrestling jokes. This week things get physical as Elias reviews “CRUSH3D!!,” a strip that is in the vein of sports manga. He also continues the journey up the “Tower of God.” Michael meanwhile continues to chase conspiracies in “Lavender Jack” where things take a turn for the Dreddful.

CRUSH3D!!

‘Cold Showers!!’ 9-14
Updates: Mondays
By Yaa
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

I’m always on the lookout for fun takes on various genres, ones which sit outside the norm and provide ins for those who aren’t usually fans of the genre. “Crush3d!!” isn’t quite one of these for what I can really only call “sports manga” but it does have a solid hook, energetic and lively characters, and a clear eye for telling a story about Hockey that’s really about the people playing hockey. Think of it as a less wholesome and more complex “Check Please,” though that isn’t to dismiss the complexities and nuance of Ukazu’s amazing webcomic but instead to highlight how much more coarse and gritty the characters and story of “Check3d!!” is.

Beneath the story of beautiful boys with horrible personalities – they’re all goblins and gremlins and insecure trash fires and I love most of them – trying to learn to be a functional hockey team is a sea of roiling emotions and traumas that will almost certainly bubble to the surface over the coming chapters. Complimenting the tale is Yaa’s art, which is beautifully rendered to depict the heightened emotionality of the characters, the intensity of the action, both in fight scenes and during the hockey games, and to convey the personalities of everyone. Plus, it’s funny, and as anyone who has read the quintessential beautiful boys hitting sports things story “Haikyuu” knows, a balance of character comedy and intense sports & interpersonal action is a must.

The only issue I have with the comic, and this is something that’s far, far less common now, is the translation. Yaa is German so there are times when a sentence fails to resolve or uses the wrong conjunction in a sentence, leaving it readable for sure but just a little off. This was a problem early on, when the stilted dialog created a friction in the snark that should not have been there, but in these latest chapters, there was only one moment I noticed that had this problem. Otherwise, the story is moving at a nice clip week to week, and I cannot wait to see more.

Well, I could do with Crush being less of a chaos murder hobgoblin but the chip on his shoulder, as well as his mysterious past, provides ample reason for me to want to follow along and see how much is a front and how much is him acting out.

Lavender Jack

Pages: Episodes 22-25
Schedule: Tuesdays – currently on seasonal hiatus
By Dan Schkade
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane

One of the nice things about “Lavender Jack” has been Schkade’s use of narrative structure. At certain points the strip will be in a more serialized form, such as the multipart prequel arc we recently read through, and at other points he will lay out a series of episodic but connected strips. Generally speaking, plot is generally pushed forward as more members of the Gallery cabal mysteriously wind up beaten to death. That movement, however, is not a straight serialized line. Episode 23 takes a winding route dealing with Sir Mimley at a ghastly dinner party where guests talk about Jack as if it were “Almost Got ‘Im” or “Legends of the Dark Knight,” with it becoming somewhat of a jam strip as Schkade brings in several cartoonists to draw each differing rendition of Jack. The offer Jack makes to the banker Batton in episode 22 isn’t picked up again directly until episode 25. Episode 24 is built around the subtle character work and growing working relationship between Ferrier and Crabb. It just gets to flow in a way that maybe isn’t optimal or the tightest but plays to Schkade’s storytelling strengths as the temporality of episodes overlap on one another. This batch of strips isn’t decompressed; it situates them within very specific points of view and limits it, generally, to those points of view.

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Episode 22 is just a delightful bit of storytelling as Schkade has fun with the medium of comics to create some tension and comedy as the Sisters and Batton plead and boast about their preparedness for Jack. The Sisters have hired the Bows and Arrow gang, a gimmick that sadly doesn’t lead to as many Green Arrow references as one would hope. Batton meanwhile has hired the next best thing: ninjas! Neither appear to get their money’s worth. What makes this all work is how distracting it is. Schkade makes the reader look over there and be lulled into a sense of not safety, but understanding, only to pull back a monstrous reveal. Lord Hawthorne crossing the threshold spotlight in green, in a tasteful homage to Frank Miller. Lord Hawthorne just looks mean and scary. As a reader you just have to hang on the image of his cane as you scroll down. The understanding of what is happening off screen reinforces the charge of Jack’s offer to Batton. He won’t save him, but Ferrier and Crabb just might.

Episode 23 is mostly a party sequence, a bottle episode on an anonymous patio. The art jam nature of the strip is worth reading. How Schkade continually isolates Mimley in new ways is what makes the episode stand out. He cuts Mimley out via overlaid panels or places him in implied ones. Artistically and narratively, this tactic works very well in the vertical fluid nature of the strip.

The strip also takes a turn to the Dreddful, with the sudden arrival of military constables on the streets. Their presence is haunting, but the sense of paranoia Schkade slowly develops on Crabb’s face as she realizes the cabal has effectively taken over the City is fantastic.

“Lavender Jack” is hitting on all cylinders as it crosses the halfway point of season 1.

Tower of God

Tower of God: Season 1 Eps. 67-74; Episode 12 – “Underwater Hunt, Part 2”
Updates: Mondays (Currently on Hiatus in English)
By SIU
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

What do you desire? Money and wealth? Honor and pride? Authority and power? Revenge? Or something that transcends them all? Whatever you desire—it can be yours if you climb the tower.

Bam & Rachel, ostensibly the two most important characters in “Tower of God,” get surprisingly little to do throughout both parts of “Underwater Hunt” and its equivalent chapters. While we do get more screen time for the two of them in “Part 2,” they have almost zero agency until the end (I’ll get to that moment a bit later.) That said, “Tower of God” does give their conversations a bit more substance than Tower of God. As I’ve said before, the comic is able to pack in more conversation since it doesn’t have to consider delivery time in the same way but even so, the show made deliberate choices that flattened their scenes.

In “Tower of God,” while it’s quite noticeable that the two of them are doing bupkis for a trial technically all for them, the conversation has more motion to it. It’s less reserved than Tower of God, which is usually a point in favor of the show but in this case, it adds that boring factor to the scene. There is a tension being built up in the comic beneath Rachel’s questions and Bam’s answers. We learn more about the two here and I cannot fathom why that wasn’t preserved when transferring over, when previous episodes have emphasized Rachel’s loneliness and jealousy and insecurities far better than the comic did.

Bam too, is better expressed in “Tower of God,” as we get a gage for how he’s grown, what he’s lost, and crucially, how he feels about it all. He’s still deeply indebted to Rachel and clearly still acting for the imagined version of her in his head, but he’s also moved beyond needing just her. He has others he can lean on. Rachel sees this and struggles, putting Bam down to hide her fear over the fraying connection. It is also possible to read her apologizes as her being sorry she held, and is holding, him back. This tracks with her previous comments and sort of tracks with her actions, though her actions make her torment seem like it’s about something else.

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We’ll come back to that in a minute. First, let me highlight a few other changes.

On the whole, I think “Underwater Hunt, Part 2” does its fight scenes much better than “Tower of God,” especially the one with The Bull & Bam, except for one regard: it falls short in creating the emotional stakes beneath the fight. Because SIU tends to over explain rather than under, we have a better sense of who these characters are in a larger sense and what motivates them. Much of this has to be gleaned from glances and guarded sentences in Tower of God, an approach I prefer most of the time, but in the case of the fight of Ren vs Endorsi, Anaak and Yuri, the lack of context and concrete, worldly details harms the fight, making it feel disjointed despite being impactful visually. Kevin Penkin needs a lot of credit here again because his score is the only reason I was able to stay invested in the twists of that fight.

Get Dunked Ren

It’s clear that Tower of God adaptation philosophy and choices actively undermined this episode’s events. While I think all the fussing over Baangs and whatnot or the complex minutia of certain tests is a waste of page space, the reasons why Ren’s presence is so fraught, what he is and is not allowed to do under the Tower’s rules, and what his ultimate goals are, are important to make clear. “Tower of God” does this while Tower of God leaves it open, and in doing so leaves the audience confused and, when they’re not, the actions feel hollow because there isn’t that emotional connection.

For example: when Ren drops the detail that taking out Endorsi means there’ll be one less competitor for the Bia family’s princesses in the comic, it puts the “he planned it this way” line from the show into context. It makes it more personal via specifics rather than asking the audience to make general inferences that might do the job but not as effectively. The assumption I had while watching the episode that Ren wanted to capture and take our Endorsi and manipulated the situation to make it that way, knowing her newfound allegiance to Anaak, but the why of it all was lost on me. I couldn’t be shocked or scared or full of despair because it held no purchase; I could be worried for Endorsi since the animators did a great job of conveying the depths of despair she was now feeling, but the stakes didn’t feel much different (this is in both cases) and the twist doesn’t work if I don’t have the context for why now is different than before.

There is also a scene with Endorsi & Bam that’s dropped. I liked the scene, and I’d have liked to see it preserved, removing it places the emphasis on Anaak & Endorsi’s bond rather than on anything Bam does, which is a great strength of the show but unfortunately undermines Bam’s centrality as a character. Without moments like these, Bam comes across as far more empty than he should be, which is a criticism leveled at the show that I think is sustained because he really isn’t an interesting protagonist in the first season of the show OR the comic; it’s just that the comic has enough additional scenes to properly show his importance to the whole cast and give him a slightly deeper well of emotions and thought.

All this applies to Yuri Jahad as well. I’ve questioned before why her scenes keep popping up as reminders that she’s there but not doing much and that’s basically all set-up for her big reveal here. I like the overdramatic reveal in “Tower of God” more but it’s more fitting that the show gets a more subdued, cooly sinister entrance. That said, because Tower of God cut out almost all explanation of or mentions of Urek Mazino, we have to cut that from the ending of the fight, which is MADDENING knowing that one line could have provided a much better season 2 hook than a mysterious symbol and a “tell him to meet me on the 77th floor.”

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Spoooooky

We’ve seen the symbol before on Urek’s back so I guess they thought it wasn’t important to make obvious but I think this is one place where adding a few more words would have been acceptable. It would also make the scene between Khun and the other Khun family member connected in Tower of God rather than a bit of a confusing mess. The change from it all taking place in his lighthouse and Khun being shocked and confused was a good change though, more in line with Khun the schemer. That entire segment is different in both, owing to the dropping of characters for the show, as well as the more consistent characters.

The last thing I wanted to mention before we get to THAT SCENE is the structure of the test’s presentation and the culmination of the crew’s plan. In both, they fail to explain the plan before it happens, which again, leaves the audience confused as to why they should care. It’s less important than I make it seem, since much of the immediate action is clear and, at least in the show, the map Khun is following’s dual meanings both keep the scene tense and make sense when rewatching. However, the plan feels more sudden and out of nowhere in Tower of God than “Tower of God” because in the comic the scenes aren’t broken up as much.

For once, the show is more frenetic than the comic and while the attempts to weave the three plots together is admirable, it ends up taking the tension out of the test portions, making them feel insignificant when compared to Anaak’s fight or Bam & Rachel in the sphere of Shinsu. Crucial pieces of information are never made apparent because there just isn’t the space and the more important piece of the test – it being a ruse for Ren to sneak in and take out the “fake” Anaak Jahad – is the focal point. Or, it should be, but it never quite feels like it. Do I like seeing Pericule so distraught? Yes, and the show gives me plenty of that, but I’m not really invested in how they’ll solve the puzzle because we keep cutting away without building the plan. The longer stretches of unbroken scenes in “Tower of God” lets us get invested in each section so that when we do cut away, it’s at a lull rather than a peak.

OK. We’re here. It’s time to discuss THAT SCENE. I’ve been holding my tongue for months, and I’ll really break it down in two weeks, but for now I can finally address this fact: the “Tower of God” fandom hates Rachel. They absolutely hate this character. I cannot for the life of me understand how her actions here warrant that level of vitriol. I can also address what THAT SCENE is: Rachel has been faking needing her wheelchair and pushes Bam out of the sphere, apparently killing him.

Top 10 anime betrayals

This scene plays out essentially the same in both “Tower of God” and Tower of God so it’s hard to compare the two but Tower of God sells Bam’s weakness after his fight with The Bull much better, making the betrayal more impactful and acute. The lack of “I’m sorry” also makes it seem more sinister in the show. Where I think “Tower of God” succeeds, however, is in the inclusion of a framing scene at the start of the chapter. It reframes Rachel & Bam’s relationship by showing the stratification between the two of them that isn’t present in any of the others, giving a greater understanding of why Rachel might push Bam off the sphere. She sees him not as an equal but as a pet and now she feels he’s moving above her, moving beyond her, and this scares and angers her.

She saved him, he should not be saving her. She is not the helpless one. She is the center.

She is the star.

In two weeks, “Tower of God” and the end of season one. See you then.


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