This week on Webcomics Weekly Elias takes a post-Valentine’s Day look at “The Boy Who Murdered Love.” “Lavender Jack” is about a man who isn’t murdering for love, yet.
Lavender Jack
Pages: Episodes 44-45
Schedule: Tuesdays – currently on seasonal hiatus
By Dan Schkade(writing and art), Jenn Manley Lee(color)
This is a smaller batch of strips than normal for a couple of reasons. For starters there is a fair bit to unpack in this pair of strips as ‘The Three Rivers Affair’ finishes. The other main one being the content of strips 44-46 are a very specific story being told that warrant consideration on their own.
Hannibal was fond to say “I love it when a plan comes together” on The A-Team, this was something of a gag as their “plans” rarely came together quite as they planned. The reason juice that powers the statement though is irony, audiences understand that a plan didn’t really come together. There is a real power and joy to seeing a plan come together, it’s one of the reasons heist films are so thrilling. Dan Schkade hasn’t spent the past 8 strips or so planning a heist, but he has been laying plans and they finally come together in these two strips. Lord Hawthorne has arrived and all that stands between them and getting away with it is Ferrier and the Butler Masters, which don’t appear to be great odds. Except, they have a plan!
More fighting sequences are coming, but the handicap match between Lord Hawthorne and Ferrier-Masters stands out from their contemporaries. Schkade doesn’t go overly dynamic or stylized in the choreography, instead creating a call and response rhythm where Ferrier lays out the tactics and Masters implements it. The transition between Ferrier calling for “high center block” and the instructions being put into practice is excellent craft. Ferrier cuts Lord Hawthorne above the eye and we see it. This rhythm allows Ferrieir, who is an accomplished individual but older, stand toe to toe with Lord Hawthorne for a while and be dramatically effective. Schkade sells her ability to defend herself. It’s all going well, but like grappling in MMA everyone’s a black belt until they get punched in the face; or more accurately stop listening to coach Ferrier and get their neck ripped open.
Masters getting chewed on is a level of brutality that Schkade hasn’t really gone for previously and is effective for that reason. Jenn Manley Lee spotlights the neck bite with a splash of orange (a color we rarely see in this strip.) The plan begins to fall apart. The rhythm changes from panel to panel to long scrolls as you see the distance Lord Hawthorne must cover to get to Ferrier. The strip ends with a portrait of Hawthorne with a made look in his bloody eyes.
Their fight continues in the next strip and Lee continues to add that splash of impactful orange as Hawthorne smashes into Ferrier. These are simple images, quick hits, that land because the comic has trained the reader to assume orange means hard blows. It also distracts the reader from changing spatial arrangements that allow for this handicap match to end in a hard-fought draw. It might have changed but the plan worked and continues to progress.
Meanwhile Schkade lightens things up with a bit of humor as readers see Abbey Quarrel at work. Schkade has a knack for quippy dialog that turns the quips down by about half, there are some clever zingers in his work, but they are not the main point. They help to reveal the point: don’t underestimate Abbey Quarrel. Van Lund returns looking for his money and to retract his statement, thankfully Lavender Jack is there to stop the whole thing. Quarrel’s sequence is an extension of the second half of the fight, using actions to hold the reader’s attention so that they can be surprised when someone suddenly appears.
This pair of strips is a good example of how comics can use action to create a satisfying sense of action in a variety of ways.
The Boy Who Murdered Love
‘Waiting for Love’ – ‘Want Me to Spell it Out for You? F-R-I-E-N-D-S’
Continued below
Updates: Sundays
By Azoria Wolf
Art Assistance by Kenny Tran
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
I genuinely do not understand the appeal of cafes, nor why it is the go-to setting for the romance genre, but there must be something to them because everyone puts them there, from “Cupids’ Arrows” to this, “The Boy Who Murdered Love,” which is much less grim and gritty than the title may lead you to believe. Thankfully, these last few chapters steer us away from lattes and coffee conversations and delve a little deeper into Noah’s new “‘job” as a Cupid’s human assistant and the greater cosmology of the comic’s world.
These episodes show the opposing forces at play in the various principal characters’ love lives, recasting them as angels in the Christian sense rather than angels in the Greco-Roman sense, which interests me as someone who enjoys these kinds of reimagings of well-trod concepts. I’m not totally sold on the way “TBWML” is handling those aspects of the comic but I suspect that will change as the veil is pulled back on the mystery surrounding our “evil schemer” character Gadriel. That said, I hope Wolf takes the time to properly explore the conflict. Thus far, we’ve had two adventures where Noah got to save soulmates who were separated by time and circumstances and while they’re both compelling, they are resolved rather fast after being built up.
The shortness of the episodes coupled with the brevity of the relationship hunts hurts the narrative as it feels too pat. With a comic that’s primarily dialog and joke driven, that’s not a good place to be 16 chapters in. That said, I suspect there was an eagerness to get the ball rolling and establish a few successes before the real complications set in. Like, why is the current relationship he’s trying to save golden not red? What about the grey haired boy who just got out of a highly toxic situation through some very dubious means? And, obviously, what the heck is Gadriel up to? I’m excited to see these answers unfold and anyone who is interested in supernatural romance stories should definitely give this comic a shot.
If you’re looking for cute boys, glowy eyes, That Gay Shit™ and lots and lots of crop tops, you’ve found the next comic for you.
