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The Webcomics Weekly #152: The New One Hundred and Fifty Two (8/31/2021 Edition)

By | August 31st, 2021
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

After 151 weeks (or there abouts) I can finally make a decades old joke about a publishing initiative by DC! My obsessive sense of humor aside, this week we have a look at wish fulfillment with “Wishlist.” The oddly named “After the End,” because if it were the end, it would be finished. We start getting answers in “Lavender Jack.” We also ask you to keep looking “Within.”

After the End

Pages: Episodes 1-8
Schedule: Fridays
Writer: Kathryn Jones
Illustrator: Gabrelle Burke
Reviewed by Devin Tracy Fairchild

Today we travel 101 years into the future to a space station where everything is going terribly wrong. We are aboard the space station H.A.N.K. with an international crew of intrepid explorers. The captain is Victor Leonov. He is joined by geologist Claire Williams, engineer Drew Anders, and physicist Misha Tereshkova. The crew is trying to reach Earth, but all transmissions seem to be falling on deaf ears. The Russian astronauts discuss the possibility that they’ve been abandoned and muse that it wouldn’t be the first time their government abandoned their own astronauts. Misha says that its good they have Americans onboard because they’ve never abandoned anyone. Victor quips “that we know of.” From panel one writer Kathryn Jones and illustrator Gabrielle Burke’s webcomic “After the End” is off to a great start.

The art is stunning. Burke knows how to create elegant figures and the art style is pretty refreshing and unique for a webcomic. Clean lines, neat features and appropriate facial expressions for whatever that point in the story calls for. Everything is tinted blue, reminiscent of Alison Bechdel’s autobiographical comic “Fun Home” which was also tinted in blue. Her second comic “Are You My Mother?” was tinted in red. The space station and space shuttle are drawn with precision and great detail and are realistically designed making this whole story even more realistic. Each character is distinct and original, and their rendering brings alive their particular characters. As the crew goes into their cryo-hibernation pods to conserve food and water the panels slowly fade into white space in a smooth transition. Then a single pair of eyes come into view, eyes that are opening, signifying the end of the hibernation. This transition is smooth and the single panel with just the eyes zeroes the focus in on the act of waking after an indeterminate period of sleep.

The crew emerges from their chambers only to realize that Misha the physicist is nowhere to be found. It appears that his pod was never closed for some reason. So, the crew goes in search of their lost crew member. They had programmed the chambers to only open when they’ve finally received a transmission from Earth. They playback the transmission, but it is too garbled to make out what is being said. They try to reach earth from their coms but again there is no answer. It is then that they realize that two years have passed on their Earth while they slumbered in their chambers. That means that Misha was without sufficient supplies somewhere on the ship and is presumed dead. The crew put on their space suits to be safe and search the ship for Misha. The last place left to search is the kitchen. Then in the reflection of one of the crew’s space helmets we see a lifeless, mangled Misha. The next panel reveals Misha stuck in an air vent with the bottom half of his body chewed up and his intestines hanging out. It appears that their worst fears are realized, Misha is dead. But in fact, something worse even than that has happened. Suddenly a voice comes from Misha’s corpse, with a red word balloon. It is the ship itself communicating through Misha that it is in trouble and needs the crew’s help.

They plead with the ship to let Misha go. But the ship refuses saying that it still needs him, and the ship cannot function without all of its crew. It also says that Misha has done something to it and now it is broken. The engineer Anders pleads with the ship that he can fix anything Misha has done to it. The ship cautions the crew that there isn’t much time and then sucks Misha back in through the vent. The crew makes a plan to flee the ship and take the shuttle back to Earth. The ship pleads with them not to abandon it. The crew sprints to the shuttle and the ship says that it is still hungry. Then as they run by, they notice a big crop of mushrooms growing in the vents. The crew makes it to the shuttle and books it out of there. The engineer wonders aloud if the mushrooms had something to do with why Earth never responded to their transmissions.

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If you’re looking for a good comic, beautifully drawn, in the sci-fi, horror, or post-apocalyptic genres, look no further than “After the End.” It seems something terrible has befallen Earth and we don’t quite know what it is or what magnitude of catastrophe has struck our planet, but I can’t wait to find out. This is sci-fi that is nestled snugly between plausibility and childlike wonder with a gritty terror to the first few episodes that makes me certain it won’t disappoint.

Lavender Jack

Episodes 71-73
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Dan Schkade(writing and art), Jenn Manley Lee(color)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane

“Lavender Jack” is probably the longest running currently active strip I’m reading at the moment; this batch of reviews will cover episodes 71-73. That length makes it probably on average about two to three times longer compared against the rest. One of the theoretical bonuses of this kind of digital distribution is the easy access to the archive. A new reader could see a new episode, start glancing at it and just start at the beginning. But what about the more well-read who are busy and maybe don’t remember everything that happened in a strip some 40ish episodes ago? That is an interesting problem to have that isn’t considered that much out loud. Episode 71 is an exposition dump that both explains to newer readers and reminds older ones the nature of Sir Mimley, Agatha Sampat, and Gio Sakakibara about as artfully as one can. This refresher ensures everyone up to speed and acts as foreshadowing for how the present Black Note case intersects with Inspector Crabb’s past. Maybe more will come out about the supposedly mad Reger, but at first blush it feels a little too neat and #itsallconnected – even if that sorta connection is a function of this kind of narrative and storytelling in general. Episode 71 is both an exposition dump, or reminder, and an example of how you can use that to further an emotional arc within a character.

The Black Note’s interview with Miss Quarrel is formally a really great way to use the vertical strip for a dialogue heavy sequence that also reminded me of Silence of the Lambs. Despite the heavy amount of black, episode 72 features clearly defined panels more often th an not. However, the lettering effectively erases the sense of going from panel to panel as it guides the reader’s eye in a squirly path down the middle jumping back and forth between the two. Sc Schkade’s framing in this sequence emphasizes the power dynamic at play, Black Note is in control with the threat of murder. He looms large in every panel from every angle, more often a black shape coming out of the darkness than anything. That emphasis on scale just reminded me a lot of how Jonathan Demme and Tak Fujimoto used eyeline matches and near matches to show who is “winning” a conversation in Lambs. It’s subtle work but Jenn Manley Lee sparring and yet abundant use of red in this strip is a good example worth looking at how to do a lot with a little and never make it boring

How Black Note characterized Lavender Jack as an ultimately ineffectual revolutionary and keeper of the status quo was a nice recognition of the inherent limit of superheroes. They can’t be that revolutionary or too active, otherwise they’ll just be villains like Black Note … or early Golden Age Superman. It’ll be interesting to see if that question is posed to Jack more directly and what that spurs within him.

We return to Theresa Ferrier in episode 73, with the promise of answers about those mysterious green rings. Like episode 71 this episode was just a good reminder on don’t mess with Ferrier, there’s a brutality to the cropped strikes as she takes out the masked thugs that is reminiscent of not-Lord Hawthorne. Episode 73 overall is just a good exercise in tension.

Wishlist

‘Wishlist’ – ‘The Barbarian’
Updates: Sundays
Written by Ced
Illustrated by Stivo
Reviewed by Elias Rosner

Loser protagonists come in a few varieties and while I often find I like watching/listening to/reading about the very off-beat ones, like Napoleon Dynamite, Marcus is the kind of loser I love to watch: Daffy Duck. Bear with me here because Daffy is far more charismatic and likeable than Marcus is in the first couple chapters. Marcus talks aloud a lot. Like, A LOT. That kind of nervous energy would be very relatable were it not for the fact that he’s not funny or witty AND the artwork overly exaggerates this buffoonery, turning what would be an indicator that’s he’s a kid with a nervous disposition and a bit of a chip on his shoulder into that most insufferable of characters: the loud comic relief.

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Thankfully, he mellows out rather fast once the plot kicks off, turns out to not be the total creep I was afraid they were going to turn him into, and the loudness is used to the comic’s advantage, like in ‘The Barbarian’ where he’s transformed into a Visigoth after being asked to be turned into a goth and gets to yell about fighting the urge to kill in a big, old German font. Let me step back a second. The basic premise of “Wishlist” is Marcus accidentally summons a demon after being part of a botched seance and he promptly sells his soul to the demon for unlimited wishes, not even blinking at the terms because, well, he doesn’t believe in contracts. The demon, much like Marcus, is also pretty inept and brand new to the job, so hijinks ensue.

It’s a set-up that’s a common enough twist on the genre to need an extra hook and I’d say “Wishlist” delivers. Much of it comes down to Stivo’s paneling and his artstyle, which is this cartoony, borderless vector art style. As I mentioned before, the characters are pretty exaggerated – Marcus has a very large head and Cray, the demon, is this big green creature with a tiny head, tiny feet, huge torso, and huge goofy glasses – so Stivo is able to make them all expressive and identifiable.

I love the sequence in the second chapter where, after being asked to prove he’s not an alien, Cray has 8 solo panels, each unique, split by large gaps to really emphasize the amount of thinking he’s doing, before concluding that it’s hard and he doesn’t know how to do it. It’s the kind of scene that could easily have fallen flat without the right artist but Stivo proves he’s up to the challenge. Not every joke is a winner but the ability to simulate the pause and the slow dawning is a real plus for “Wishlist” and I’m ready to see how else these wishes will blow up in Marcus’ face.

Within

Chapter 9, Pages 216-222
Updates: Tuesday
By Verena Loisel
Reviewed by Mel Lake

In the final pages of Volume One of “Within,” the protagonist we’ve followed for over two hundred pages leaves everything behind. At the end of my last review, he was standing on a hill overlooking the city where he’d spent his life drifting between a violent and disaffected life and the bewilderment of dreams. Now, he’s made his way to a train station, shivering in the cold, and ultimately decided to get on a train bound for a destination unknown.

Redhead enters the train car and as he looks out the window, it cracks the way his reality had in the city when his dreams threatened to overtake him. The panel has a unique layout, pairing an outside view of the train in motion with a still shot of Redhead inside, then the same shot from outside the train as the cracks spread. It’s an intriguing use of layout and white space, and somewhat unique for “Within,” which usually fills the page with panels.

After that, we cut to Redhead’s dream self, who also takes the time to look back. In this case, it’s the dream house where he spent page after page seeking to escape. Redhead’s dream self, as his actual self had done, moves on.

And that’s the end of Volume One of “Within.” I’m glad the story didn’t break with Redhead looking over the city because although it’s not at all clear where he’s going or if he has a plan, these last few pages make it clear that he’s moving forward both in dreams and in life. Will he escape and live happily somewhere else? Is that possible after killing several people and fleeing the law? Is that even the thing that matters the most to Redhead? We never did find out what secrets lie in Redhead’s past or what the real meaning of the dream house was, though I have some vague guesses. (Generally, I think dreams are made of a mix of crossed signals in your brain and things that your mind is working through. Whether a house is just a house depends on your perspective and whether a bug in a tuxedo is a bug in a tuxedo or a representative of your father or an authority figure you want to escape? Well that’s anyone’s guess.)

I’m glad to have made it to the end of Volume One of “Within,” and although I was perhaps hoping for more clarity in the plot, the dreamlike moody flowy quality of the art style and storytelling has always been in the forefront, so I’m not surprised to have part one end on a mysterious and ambiguous note.


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