The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life. This week we have a look at the delightful “Gato & Brush” a mile a minute gag strip that is just kinda nice. As well as continuing coverage of “Lavender Jack” and “Lore Olympus.”
‘E-Meow-Tions’ – ‘Not Just Yet’
Updates:
By Studio Nostos
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
I love how, thanks to the internet, there’s a lively subgenre of fantasy that’s basically newspaper strip funny animal comics. Every new take fills a different gap, iterating on jokes at a breathtaking pace. We’ve covered quite a few before but right now, we’re going to take a look at “Gato & Brush” from Studio Nostros. There isn’t much more to the premise than “here’s a cat with a talking brush/wand.” No deep lore. No belabored set-up. Well, there’s a small set-up in the first chapter but it’s simply the question: “What do you think your cat is doing when you’re not there?” “Gato & Brush” is clearly more a vehicle to have fun with their cat protag in imaginative fantasy situations, although my favorite chapter is the least connected to any traditional fantasy set-ups.
‘E-meow-tions’ is an ADORABLE chapter, featuring different cat emotions as personified as, well, cats. There’s Hungry and Angry. There’s Zoomies and Dread. And then there’s the punchline to the comic, which I won’t spoil here, but was genius and caught me completely off guard. Hats off to Studio Nostos for utilizing the expectations of these kinds of short, single panel webcomics to do so. Not every chapter’s jokes work perfectly, like there were a bit too many puns in ‘Ent-itled,’ but that’s a personal taste thing and I still enjoyed them all.
I think a lot of that has to do with Studio Nostros’s cartooning. It’s clean and expressive, with a versatility that prevents everything from having a plasticy sameness. It also allows for the occasional serious strip, like ‘Not Just Yet,’ which uses the visual language of “Dark Souls” to craft a pretty moving piece about defeat and failure in a difficult and brutal world.
It’s not long, and it’s not profound in a novel way, but it does illustrate the strengths of the creative team and conveys its message well. It’s also a fantastic merging of the two aesthetics such that the comic feels darker and more somber without making a clear break in style. The smoky backgrounds and the sickly greens and fiery oranges chosen draw out the oppressive atmosphere while the lighting emphasizes its beauty in spite of the desolation and struggle. For those looking for a low-commitment read with heart and humor, give “Gato & Brush” a chance. You just might find it’s purr-fect for you. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist.)
Episodes 101-102
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Dan Schkade(writing and art), Jenn Manley Lee(color)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
The second act of “Lavender Jack” season three comes to shocking and violent conclusion. I must admit I guessed who was under the nu-Jack mask a few panels before the actual reveal. That realization, however, did not change any enjoyment of skill in the reveal that not-Lord Hawthorne is only mostly dead. Schkade’s continually sound layout and draftsman skills shine in these strips as they play the chattiness of Mimley and everyone around him against the mannequin blankness of nu-Jack. While Mimley’s costume advice is on point, though I do like those flap buttons, the metal mask is the key to separating these characters. It restricts Hawthorne-Jack from emoting in any normal way, Schkade instead just renders that unflinching iron mask and the hint of a smile at the reader. It’s Michael Meyers-esque, but closer to the Rob Zombie iteration of the character with the blunt force violence than the John Carpenter iteration of the Shape.
While much of the finale is situatied around a battle of the Jacks, Schkade opens the strip on a character we haven’t gotten to see much of: Marguerite. She has been healed and striken with a surplus of energy as she tends to the not so comatose Ma. It isn’t much, but it opens up Schkade to show a different point of view on to as Mimley put it at the end of the act, “the League,” and Ducky’s important role within it.
Continued belowThere’s a funny moment at the end of the act, Johnny Summer’s just shot Hawthorne-Jack only to discover them disappeared. With the danger over Summer’s has one thing on his mind, will he get to see Mimley anymore now that he’s back on the job as it were. It’s a sweet moment with an equally sweet response, they’re a part of the league now so there’s no getting rid of him.
Structuring this season in this way continues to be a net positive in terms of arcing individual strips. While previous season certainly had their arcs this one just paints a much clearer picture for where the reader is on a strip by strip and seasonal basis.
Episodes 51-60
Updates Sundays
By Rachel Smythe
Reviewed by Mel Lake
My opening sentence from two weeks ago pretty much still applies in this batch of episodes of “Lore Olympus.” There’s more Underworld Corp workplace drama, more romantic drama, tabloid drama, and an identity crisis for our pink protagonist, Persephone. We last left Persephone on her first day of work as Hades’ intern and in the middle of an awkward encounter with Hades and Minthe, who have just decided to make their relationship official.
After giving Persephone the cold shoulder, Hades is manipulated into taking her on a tour of the Underworld by Hecate. The two reconcile and enter the bridge between the mortal realm and the Underworld as Persephone prepares for her new job as “Shade Coordinator.” The world of Olympus and the Underworld in “Lore Olympus” hasn’t ever made a lot of sense to me but the artwork is so unique and lovely that it rarely seems to matter. Even here, when it’s hard to tell whether Hades is showing Persephone a city, a corporate office building, or a fantasy realm, it’s hard to complain about not knowing how it all works. We finally see Styx, whose hair forms the famous river mortals must cross when they die, and Charon, the ferryman of the Underworld. While visiting with the recently dead mortals, Persephone gets another hint that she may be a fertility goddess, something she vehemently denies. This seems like a detail that’ll be important later but for now, it’s just something to file away.
Meanwhile, Minthe and Thanatos are scheming behind Persephone’s back and Hera has had a vision about Persephone’s assault by Apollo. Her conversation with Zeus about Apollo’s reputation being more important than Persephone’s assault is depressingly relevant to the real world. And on a less depressing but no less real note, Thanatos and Minthe’s catty work group text is spot-on. Workplace bitches gonna be workplace bitches.
Since we have a larger cast of characters to keep track of and as Persephone’s relationship with Hades becomes more than a series of random meet-cutes, the tangled plot web gets even more tangled. This made it hard to figure out where to stop reading since the story beats just kept going without really building to any sort of climax. Since this is a long story, that’s to be expected but until now it’s been easier to see the ebbs and flows of plot and character arcs. Another minor complaint I had this time around was with the character faces themselves, which seem to be drawn differently, even from panel to panel. The faces of even the main characters looked off in some of the panels here, which is understandable given how much art Smythe produces on a regular basis but it did throw me off a bit this week.
