The Webcomics Weekly #200: 200 Hundred Of These (8/23/2022 Edition)

The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life. For the 200th time! That is a lot of webcomics to wrangle and cover and more appearing every day. We’re going to be changing the format a little bit going forward since doing it the same way can get a little tedious after a while. What is a big numerical anniversary number without a sudden change.

I should get this out of the way first: Webtoon Factory’s app is pretty clunky. I’ve now read a few series on it and while the scrolling is smooth and the interface is simple, it always feels like it’s one bad day away from crashing and for some reason, likes don’t work on mobile. Hopefully they get this fixed soon. But I’m not here to talk about the app or the company behind it, I’m here to talk about “Illyne,” a fantasy comic that seems to be a part of a much larger series but is able to stand on its own. Mostly.

“Illyne” follows its titular character as she is sent to investigate why all the lands’ Artifacts, supposedly eternal magical rocks that have single traits like Earth, Wind, Fire, Heart, have gone dark, losing all their power. She’s accompanied by Lux, a new recruit to the order. Together they must unravel the mystery, find out what happened to the last person to investigate, and survive the experience. It’s been a while since I’ve read a straight high-fantasy comic and “Illyne” does not disappoint in that department.

Hallmarks like large rolling fields, jagged mountains, magic in daily life, and pseudo-medieval European fashion and politics abound. But rather than feeling generic, Papiyou’s art creates a particular sense of place. You feel like he’s been there, seen these vistas, and then painted these characters into them. Seeing as how this is a European webcomic, that may very well be the case.

That painterly look is certainly one of the comics’ great strengths, seeing as how the story itself is so simple. It’s weird to say but my biggest problem with “Illyne” is actually its simplicity. Part of this is due to the sense that we’re not seeing the full picture. That this is not the first introduction to these characters or this world an audience has had, a sense I get from the repetition of the opening crawl before each chapter. I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong. However, it’s hard not to feel like the story is suffering because it isn’t fully committing to one or the other.

Characters drop in like we’re supposed to know who they are and what they want and it’s hard to tell who’s new and thus we’re meant to know little or who’s old and we’re meant to have the context to judge their actions and extrapolate. And yet, the simple story’s slow growing conflict- find out what happened to the artifacts and why others are trying to hide the truth – remains compelling via our two leads and though we don’t spend nearly enough time developing them beyond their archetypes, the archetypes work for a reason. While I’m not clamoring for more of everything, or to know what will happen to everyone, like when I finished Arcane, I’m interested enough in the world to want to know what’s next.

And since I only read the first half of the “season,” I may just very well get my wish.

Our pink protagonist is back! Turns out all Hades had to do to find Persephone was wait a while and go back to his office. But Zeus isn’t backing down from his threat to arrest both Persephone and her mother Demeter. Anyone who supports them is going to need to tread carefully. Even though power is technically shared between Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon in a triarchy, Zeus is the one who rules over Olympus and he is not a happy camper.

Hades finds Persephone in the roots of a tree. The tree is also Persephone? She’s grown into it like a pink Ent. The sequences where Persephone loses control of her hair and the leafy growths that grow out of her body are surreal and strange. (And great! I really liked this foray into an almost body-horror vibe.) As Hades races across the Underworld to get to her there’s a great panel of him flying over the city and a few extended vertical panels that make excellent use of the scrolling format. It makes me remember how cool this strip was in the beginning and how groundbreaking its use of the format was. While I hate the fact that Persephone is, yet again, a passive participant in her own life being rescued from herself, I appreciated the panels that got us there. From a technical standpoint, they’re spot on.

In fact, I gave a shout-out to the artwork last time around, saying that it felt like the older episodes of Lore Olympus. Another shout-out to the artwork is due this time but for an entirely different reason. Persephone looks nothing like her old self but I like her design in his batch. It’s less childish than it has been recently and I much prefer this to the Persephone that looked like an anime child. I like that Persephone ran away because it felt like she was gaining control over her fate but now that she’s back in damsel mode, at least she doesn’t look like a child. We also got to see Hecate unleash her powers to help Persephone. Hecate is one of my favorites and it was awesome to see her let loose in Hades’ medical glowing pool.

Next up, we’re going to find out Persephone’s view on what really happened to the mortal village she supposedly destroyed. Then it looks like there’ll be the trial of the millennia as Persephone and Demeter answer for their crimes. (Or not! We’ll have to wait and see.)

Part 5 comes to an end and the sixth begins in a series of solid strips. That seems like faint praise, it is, but if you think about the narrative logistics that this trio go through it shows the improvement of turning these strips into webtoons and breaking larger episodic units into micro-ones. We have the conclusion of the fifth which meant pulling that all together and adding a cliffhanger, and then both dealing with that fall out and pushing the plot forward for the sixth arc to function. This trio of strips largely break down in that fashion with each servicing that function allowing for seriality and satisfying narrative units.

One of the hang ups in this strip has been how the action in the webtoon format can have a bit of friction to it, the choreography falls short of the format. The opening fight with Motherboard is an example of how good blocking in this format enhances the choreography. Motherboard gets to show off a little bit and his a reflexive shoryuken. However, in all that attention the reader and character get tunneled vision and don’t see what’s coming until it is too late and they are captured. A pattern that occurs throughout the strip as the gang is captured by the Mall Goths and their evil Soccer Mom patron.

The opening to part six doesn’t deal with the plot fallout of this cliffhanger but offers another glimpse of the cause of all the emotional fallout and trauma from when NYC was nuked with the death of Kate “Kid Quick” Flynn’s mom. It’s a really effective articulation of speedster powers and the juxtaposition of those powers, all the time they seem to have being quick and the limit of time. This lays the emotional foundation for the odd couple dynamic between Quick and Singe. Quick is a normal-ish hero type. Singe is the negative image people associate with Juggalos and other boorish behaviors. The writing-art working together to juxtapose and build these dynamics quickly and effectively.

The plot fallout of the twenty second episode also comes with a content warning, which is a surprise given when it’s published. They’re becoming more common but it’s the right call and as they state nothing is actually shown but it’s a sequence where it’s all there subtextually. The scene also sets up emotional stakes for the boys that treat them not as pawns but as characters seeking to articulate their own agency and get out of these darn cuffs without them blowing up.

It’s taken a bit but this is really starting to function as a webtoon really well.