For this week’s addition of Webcomics Weekly I’ll be looking at a pair of relatively new strips, “The Academy’s Undercover Professor” and “Re-Possessed”. The first because the title intrigued me and then I read the opening quarter of the strip. The second because Yishan Li is doing the art and I am a fan of their work. So let’s begin.
The Academy’s Undercover Professor
Episodes 1-3
Schedule: Satrudays
By WAG (art) sayren (original story) Tana (adaptation) INSA (Background and Effects) Chacha Kim(Coloring) PASA(Art Director)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
One of my consistent complaints about webcomics is they can take a good while to get started. It’s one of the traps of having the theoretically infinite space and time of fully digital publishing. The first episode of “The Academy’s Undercover” wastes no time getting going, one could even say it moves too fast. In the first maybe 10th of the episode we go from a homage to the start of My Chemical Romances “Welcome To The Black Parade” before taking a sudden left turn into “Shaman King”, before taking a hard right down the boulevard of broken dreams and the whole thing becomes an Isekai. Because I was doing so well not picking those! And oh, yeah, really the synopsis for the series talks about how the strip is about assumed identity with maybe a dash of Hitchcockian flair. All of this is mostly covered in the first strip, the assumed identity stuff comes into the foreground by the third.
The creative team throw narrative spaghetti at the wall and darn it, I want to see what sticks. For all the excesses in that first episode, the identity fake out is wonderfully well done. All of this omniscient narration is matched with framing that masks and denies readers a good look at the character. It makes you think you’re reading and seeing one thing when in fact it is another thing entierly. Through all this Isekai nonsense of the first bit we are introduced to a character named Ludger Cherish, he’s off to go be a professor at a magical school. Naturally traveling by train. On that train he just happens to sit with a man named Gerrard headed in the same direction. And then the train is attacked by bandits (terrorists?) and he gets blown to bits in a suicide bombing!
In the dust Gerrard’s face begins to peel off, Gerard is not Gerrard and not even Machiavelli. This man of many faces is a regular “Grimjack” on the battlefield. Which to the art teams credit they seem to pay homage to in terms of pose if not costuming.
To the art teams credit the action in these episodes is sound with a bit of flair. There is this habit of using speed lines that take over panels, which would be a problem if their content seemed visually engaging. Instead you have these breaks where the strip devolves into geometric shapes as generic magic mixed with steampunkish aesthetics go off. It creates a sense of energy and dynamism to what are on their own mostly just fine if not engaging unto themselves panels.
As the dust settles Gerrard realizes he doesn’t exactly look like a man in his mid-forties anymore and the cops have arrived. And so the man with many faces puts on a new one, a freshly minted professor of magic!
The art team draws a mostly engaging fantasy-steam punk environment, the techniques used are all in that Clip Studio Paint Manhwa. It can look generic because you’ve seen the default presets a thousand times before, but there is an energy and enough subtle differentiation that it at least has me intrigued. You don’t burn through that many references without either having a plan or burning out in spectacularly fast fashion.
Episodes 1-6
Schedule: Satrudays
By Trevor Mueller (writer) Yishan Li (artist)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
A few weeks ago artist Yishan Li announced the start of a new comic and I was intrigued. Li is one of my favorite artists after doing the “Swing” series at Top Cow and a wuxia inspired “The Adept”, her time traveling superhero as life management series “Paradox Girl” is also worth a look. “Re-Possessed” isn’t like those previous series it’s closer The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and Ghost Busters as its now working-class protagonist is hired to reposes certain spooky objects and maybe fulfil a destiny that will save the world along the way.
Continued belowIn my years of reading and consuming media, I am predisposed to dislike characters like Troy. A slacker dude who despite going to college for free can’t seem to apply himself or bother to try while his best friend – a working class woman of color is working and thriving. Takemichi Hanagaki has a class consciousness to him, and that’s why he hates his life. Troy has no consciousness. Trevor Mueller’s writing lays it on a little thick as everyone around him reminds him to even just attempt more. Who knows maybe in 20 episodes we’re going to begin to unpack the trauma surrounding his absent mother and maybe diagnosis him with some stuff. Until than I’m far more interested in everyone but him.
Everyone else is if not a fully realized dynamic character, does something interesting. Mari is holding it down and working at a spooky pawn shop run by Adelin, who is a very fashionable witch. Cheryl Anderson makes sarcastic comments. They all do something. Troy does nothing.
While the references points and basic structure are obvious and tired, Yishan Li’s art pushes it above a run of the mill fantasy webtoon one would find on here. It just doesn’t quite look like anything else on here, there’s a real softness to the way she does rendering those contrasts with the sparse use of black lines. It’s not painterly but it doesn’t feel pushed into that over lined style of drawing. Her facial expressions continue to be engaging, though there is a certain degree of same face for characters if you look at their prior work – and they all seem to have the same nose. The ability to emote and willingness to effectively chibifi/cartoon reactions is what helps to sell the working-class comedy bits such as in episode 5 when they realize the chair is alive. It helps to sell Tory’s humanity in ways the writing just makes me want to dismiss him.
The main character may be a piece of white bread, but everything else around this is engaging and well executed.
