The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life and asks you to put on the Talking Heads and ask yourself “Well, how did I get here?” Because that’s what is bugging our main character, Myeong, as she ponders a flailing acting career. Pretty soon she’s going to be doing the Al Pacino coffee scene from Heat with the way her current relationship is on the downside.
Muse on Fame
Episodes 1-7
Schedule: Tuesdays
By Soojin(art and storyt)
Reviewed by Michael Mazzacane
“Muse on Fame” is a good example of how execution matters. Soojin’s formal arrangement of these strips isn’t exactly groundbreaking. You’ve got your establishing environmental shots of city skyscrapers that don’t really fit the rest of their art style. Overly long gutter space. Panels are all pretty much rectangular. I wouldn’t even call the content of panels in and of themselves as overtly stylish, “Muse on Fame” is a contemporary interpersonal drama not some isekai fight strip. And yet Soojin’s execution of “Muse on Fame” is one of the more engaging webtoons I’ve read in a good while. That reaction is born from how Soojin uses these basic, as in ground level, formal elements to complement the story they are telling. It plays to Soojin’s strength as an artist by emphasizing their character work.
At the center of “Muse on Fame” is Myeong a struggling actress who is nearing that period in her life when she is no longer “young” aka 30! Calling her a struggling actress is maybe giving her career too much credit, as her boyfriend and one of their schoolmates establish themselves as directors and actors on the rise, Myeong is busy scrubbing toilets surrounded by the luxurious objects of excess she dreams about. Soojin’s smart arrangement of elements shines in the opening strip as the initial fantasy is established before smashing it to pieces as we cut to Meyong scrubbing a toilet. The class anxiety that runs through these early strips is palpable and not just limited to our main character, everyone seems to be anxious about their lot in life in some way. Even Myeong’s rival friend is soon revealed to be their own brand of neurotic mess.
These anxieties help to reveal the fissures in Myeong’s relationship with Hyeonjae, two former high school-like sweethearts, who now in their late twenties seem are more preoccupied with wondering how did I get here? Or, do I still feel the same as I did back than? These are complicated emotions to work through and in their best decision, Soojin does not limit the reader pov to just Myeong. A fair amount of time is also spent with Hyeonjae and the reader begins to get a feel for his lived experience, desires, and faults. After the two break up in a pretty solid comedic misunderstanding, though later revealed to be not soo much of one, it would’ve been easy for Soojin to just write Hyeonjae off as a bad partner. But they don’t, instead they focus on relationships as being a two person job. The strains of distance in Myeong and Hyeonjae’s relationship are both of their faults, and fault might not be the perfect word. Soojin’ art in these sequence captures this feeling of weight each person carries and the feeling of history between them, so far only shown in a few flashbacks. In these ways Soojin’s art shines even as their macro arrangement of them isn’t anything you haven’t seen 100 times before.
Myeong’s life takes another sudden turn after an old photoshoot of hers suddenly catapults her to viral fame. Suddenly those luxurious items she scrubs begin to come into reach, but the process she has to do to get there is not as idealized as she’d hoped.
“Muse on Fame” was going to live or die by the artists ability to convey character, and this strip thrives because of it. If you’re looking for a well written character drama this is worth a look
