The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life and we’ve become a Self Help Influencer. We’re telling you how best to live with yourself. Your four selves. Your four time-displaced selves. Step one: Read this comic. Step two: Uh. Um.
I didn’t think step two through.
Live With Yourself
Episode 1: ‘Dynamite with a Lazer Beam’ – Episode 542: ‘The Boys End Their WEBTOON’
Updates: Completed
Written by Shen (1-139) and David J Catman (140-542)
Illustrated by Shen (1-18, 20-37), Pidgeoneer Jane (19) and David J Catman (38-542)
Inks by Megan McKay (24, 26, 29) Andy Kluthe (206-542)
Flats by Jake (414-542)
Reviewed by Elias Rosner
“Live with Yourself!” is a fascinating comic, not only because it’s a very fun, wacky read, but because it’s an example of something you see very little of in the webcomic sphere: a multi-creator series. Now there are plenty of series that have multiple creators working on them, and I’m not counting the corporate comics that assemble studios or teams which, sadly, end up being fairly interchangeable in terms of talent. No, I’m talking about one creator passing the baton of their work onto a successor. This is very standard in newspaper comics and the norm nowadays for corporate superhero comics, but webcomics? Those have always been singular projects, living and dying on the whims of their creators (and the crushing weight of America’s capitalistic hustle culture.)
Started by Shen, of “Bluechair” fame, back in 2017, “Live with Yourself!” tells the simple story of Todd, who, after getting into a mysterious accident at work involving a broken clock (kinda, sorta,) suddenly has to live with three other versions of himself: Tomo, the Todd from tomorrow; Babs, baby Todd; and Oldie, the Todd from the far future. Hijinks ensue. Nonsense occurs. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey shenanigans abound.
The art is functional and simple, starting off very rough and quite zoomed in, as tends to be the case with a lot of earlier webtoons I’ve found but is more indicative of Shen’s propensity to fill the panel with his characters. It adds to the off-kilter nature of the series. It’s also a bit hard to read, more in your face than it needs to be, and one can see Shen struggling to keep up. Eventually, David Mercer aka David J. Catman (of “Mercworks,” another gag-a-week strip from the mid-2010s) takes on art duties, at first trying to stick to Shen’s style before honing it into the shape it would remain in for the rest of its run.
“Live With Yourself” is not a particularly profound series nor is its cartooning particularly standout. It is the definition of solid and consistent, growing where it can but rarely pushing boundaries. The comedy is hit-or-miss, the story has its ups-and-downs, veering sometimes too hard into “lol random” territory and sacrificing its story on the altar of funny, at least in the early-middle, and the pacing could sometimes be slow, often owing to a twice-to-three-times-a-week schedule.
However, like any good long-running series – 545 episodes, remember? – it finds its footing again and comes back stronger than before. I was never bored and it was never lacking in new, ridiculous, wonderful ideas. I mean, it’s a comic with four versions of oneself! The jokes practically write themselves. Probably because they saw them yesterday.
You’ll forgive me if I sound a little loose on details. I’ve been reading this series since it debuted and remember far less of the run than I thought I did. But the gags I do stick with me even after I stop reading. Oldie’s tooth collection, the time bureau, Lex Winsmore, the Davian Chaosbuster saga, and the Professor’s long arc from computer fixer to sad-sack ghost-hunter to…well, you’ll have to read to see where he ends up.
It’s bittersweet, seeing something like this finally come to an end. “Live with Yourself!” has reinvented itself so many times throughout its run, starting as a simple gag series with a light plot and a clever gimmick to mess with – a sitcom, to be sure – and concluding as an earnest, weird, ensemble sci-fi tale. I loved reading this series. It feels like a relic, somehow, and with its finale, like an era is closing, even if it’s only a personal era. For a series that wasn’t that big, even before Webtoon ballooned into the behemoth it became here in the US, that’s what I’d call a win.
So long, “Live With Yourself.” If you’re one of the many lucky people who get to read this in its entirety now that it’s over, enjoy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to ride my bicycle out onto the seven seas of rhye with my best friend: myself.
