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Dresden Codak is one of those comics that can't easily be summed up. It's not a gag-a-day strip, nor is it an ongoing storyline comic. Instead, it is an odd mixture of whimsy and philosophy. Indeed, the second comic uses Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as the punch line (and deus-ex-machina) for that strip's protagonist to escape. Sadly, it wouldn't be until the strip De Los Muertos that recurring-protagonist Kim Ross would first appear, stuck in a boring high school class with an unreasonable teacher who insists she either write a 10-page paper after he believes she misbehaves in class, or travel into the Aztec Underworld. She chooses the latter, and in doing so learns that death is not to be feared.
Kim ends up evolving into a rather fascinating character. In many ways she's a mad scientist, apt to do some rather strange and insane things (such as strapping a rocket-pack on herself to try and get to school). She's also shy and introverted when it comes to guys she's interested in (which led to a rather interesting comic with her spying on a guy she likes while talking to a miniature Carl Jung... her extrovert ends up splitting physically from her and went off to go out with the cute guy). Basically she's every smart geek's dream girl, being brilliant, beautiful, and as much a geek as they are.
The comic's artwork is also beautifully done. The early comics (pre-Kim) are fairly bare-bones, but when Aaron Diaz puts his mind to it, the comic truly begins to stand out. The current storyline is a perfect example of this, with camera angles above and to the side of Kim as she is seated. Nor do characters stand artificially with their faces to the camera. Characters will walk away from the reader's perspective, and away from other characters. Little actions like chewing on the end of a pen are included, making these characters human. Backgrounds can be plain or elaborate, depending on what is called for. Thought goes into this comic, both with the artwork and definitely with the comics themselves. This isn't for everyone, mind you. Some people just want mindless entertainment. But if you enjoy comics that make you think, Dresden Codak indulges in a whimsical side of science and philosophy that is rarely seen, and to me is well worth reading.
(Preword: The following is the second submission we've had for Tangents: American Reviewer. While images were included, I shifted the second image further down (and reduced each to 25% original) due to the relatively small size of the review submission. I apologize for the delay in getting this out; I honestly lost track of time for a bit. Anyway, enjoy.)
Review:
Intriguing
 This isn't exactly one of those reviews that you recently called for, Tangent. Instead, I thought I'd chime in with some more insight into your recent exploration of (what is probably) an emerging relationship with Jason and Katie in The Wotch, which you determined with simple gestures and seemingly vague interpretations of dialogue in a couple of recent one-shots.
This isn't exactly the first time when Katie and Jason's relationship was touched upon. A much earlier one-shot from over a year ago has a recollection of a previous time when Katie was alone with Jason, which "still haunts [her]." Although their dialogue was obscured by the ensuing chaos of a lab accident, readers can basically read the undertones of what the strip may have been implying (especially when Katie grabs her hair, which Jason has a known fetish for). And at the end of the strip, they both agreed to forgive and forget. This may indicate that she still has feelings for him.
On a side note, I sometimes wonder if this "last time" was the reason why Jason (assuming the incident occurred before the much earlier Slumber Party of Doom arc) was refused invitation to the all-girl slumber party. It was Katie specifically who stated that Anne shouldn't bring him over. Jason's history with Samantha Wolf (another redhead and a good friend of Katie) was never stated in the comic if he even had one, so we're uncertain if she was aware of his own actions, yet she nodded in agreement when Katie told Anne not to inform him of the party. Was Jason's fetish too well-known across Tandy Gardens High School, or did Katie warn all the other redheads on campus and she just wants him to stay away? If it's the latter, would Katie might've wanted Jason gone as a ruse to keep him from meeting and developing a relationship with other attractive redheads? It's a long shot, I know, but Anne has thrown curveballs before (warning to new Wotch readers who are still catching up on the archives: that linked strip is spoilerific), so it makes you wonder...
 Anyway, back to the present. What I found interesting in the latest one-shot was that the random girl who passed by the crew at the mall happened to be blonde, and "Kevin" couldn't help but ogle at her. Could it be possible that Katie maybe has a personality that mirrors Jason's, where she's a redhead and has a fetish for blond hair, while Jason's a blond and has a fetish for red hair? Again, I'm aware that this is just more wild speculation, but this can maybe grasp a piece of the puzzle as to why the incident from long ago happened in the first place. When she discovered Sonja, the fact that Jason was a girl probably wasn't the only factor bothering her; she also probably disliked seeing someone she secretly (perhaps even unconsciously) admired constantly abandoning her own fetishes. She probably finds another redhead as anti-"eye-candy" just like the way Jason finds another blonde (even himself) as anti-"eye-candy."
As you said in your editorial, this relationship is definitely intriguing.
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Brett Hainley: This isn't a review. It's a critical analysis. Not only that, it's a rebuttal of somebody else's critical analysis.
No.
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Steve Anderson: Are we speaking FARSI here? Is the concept just too damn vague for everyone to wrap his or her head around? It's American REVIEWER! Not American Essayist or American Rebuttal or American Paint-a-Picture-With-Words or even American Primal Scream Therapy Hour (though that would kinda kick ass). It's American. REVIEWER.
Write. A. Review! Send. It. To. Us! We. Will. Read. And. Discuss. It!
Hopefully now we're all clear on the rules....
At least this one's closer than the last one I read. Look...you're within striking distance, okay? Next time, just leave previous works out of this, read a comic, and tell us about it. Granted, you've broken some interesting ground here and made some pretty damn nifty points, but you have not actually REVIEWED THE COMIC!! This is not the time to get all avant-garde on us. Review is a simple process designed to help people make a critical decision about their commercial choices. Read or not read? Buy or not buy? Watch or not watch? Yes, no, or maybe and a little space devoted to why.
That is review. And that is also exactly what this submittor has not done.
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Robert Howard: My vote is against it:
You have some very interesting points here. However, this reads more
like a forum board post or a Letter to the Editor than a review. Of
course, that's a common complaint of a number of my reviews, but it's
a valid point. You touch upon some issues concerning the characters
and raise some good points... but what about the comic itself? We
don't really gain any insight into The Wotch as a whole from your
comments. Indeed, without having read my own review, the reader is
left wondering just what is going on here.
This can work. However, what you'd need to do is craft this review
around the comic, not around my own comments. Talk about the comic and
about characterization... and then draw in this interaction between
Jason and Katie to prove a point about characterization and the
"ripple effect" that happens over time.
In a recent Secant I mentioned how good artwork can help salvage even poorly plotted comics. Its converse is that a poorly drawn comic can keep people from reading, unless the story manages to catch you from the very start. When you add in that a comic is a highly-pixilated sprite comic, then things start going downhill rapidly. Looking back at 8-Bit Theatre, there's one thing that drew me in: the characters. Unfortunately, there is a current character-glut that threatens to sink this ship into a sea of inanity.
Part of the problem lies with the plot convulsions that make me want to shove a leather wallet between its teeth before it bites its own tongue off. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy complex plots and involved comics. But the comic has just come off of yet another pointless subplot, this one with White Mage turning wannabe-evil for five minutes, to an equally pointless story with tertiary-character Princess Sara suddenly having four villains as advisors... and I'm left scratching my head as to when that happened and realizing I don't care. I didn't feel like reading through the archives to see if it was something new (no doubt due to her father's dementia) or if she'd hired them herself.
8-Bit Theatre is becoming too convoluted. While character development of the "Heroes of Light" (who are anything but heroes) may be its main draw, this development can actually continue in pursuit of the main plot itself. Instead, third-rate plots and close-ups of overly-pixilated sprites has done a good job of killing my enjoyment of the comic, especially as the characters have shown no sign of true development (and I don't count the recent events where Fighter has become a genius as development but instead another plot development). The comic needs to get back to its roots: the primary story, and the growth of each of its members. Without this, the comic will lose the only qualities that made it worth reading in the first place.
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Congratulations to Dirk I. Tiede and his bride Emily, who got married on Saturday, September 1st, 2007. Dirk is the cartoonist behind the supernatural thriller webcomic Paradigm Shift, which I first started following several years ago and which quickly became one of my favorites.
I've heard it said that good art can save a bad story. I'll admit that's not always the case with me, as if a story hits too many nerves I'll stop reading no matter how pretty the art. Fortunately, Synthetic Life suffers more from problems with a suspension of disbelief in its story. This can be a problem with any science fiction or fantasy story, but with SL I found the stumble was over societal issues rather than unreal technology. Unfortunately, these issues are central to the story and focus on a core motivation of the primary male protagonist, Sean.
While a main focus in SL is with interactions of artificial persons (and by that I mean androids rather than juristic entities), Sean's primary motivation in creating the android Michelle is linked with his core motivation of freeing his father from jail. This brilliant young man who has the intelligence and resources to build an android and supply her with all sorts of high-tech gadgets to recover his father doesn't think of going the simple route of hiring a lawyer. And I say this because of later events when he gets together with a lady friend who is a lawyer and recruits her help in trying to free his father once his father is recaptured. Strike one.
Strike two exists in Sean's irrational treatment of Michelle (and the equally bizarre actions of his arch-rival, who likewise has created androids and somehow sees Michelle as a threat); Sean actually lies to Michelle, claiming she's human, despite evidence to the contrary. His treatment of Michelle borders of the schizophrenic, with him acting almost like she's his girlfriend and then ignoring her to be with another female acquaintance, while letting the naive and innocent Michelle wander the city on her own, unattended. Indeed, it's only the utter charm of Michelle and her innocent inquiries into mundane elements of human life that keeps the comic from striking out. SL suffers from a number of flaws... but a combination of a couple of intriguing characters and good artwork keep it from being a total loss.
Cameo Comics is one of the core comics behind the Crossover Wars and is a combination of meta-comic and epic storyline. The comic follows the journeys of Scale, a character with the ability to dimension-jump, much in the same vein as public-source character "Jenny Everywhere," and in theory would be used in an ongoing series of cameos through a multitude of comics. The comic's startup coincides with the comic Evil Overlords United, and indeed the start of the comic hints at what was to come in the CW with the webcomics creators inserting themselves into the comic to tell a friend (and the audience) of what they have planned. Even I can deduce that the comics were planned together as part of CW rather than exist as seperate entities.
EOU's "invasion" of CC brought about Scale's insertion into the meta-comic itself and seemed to hint at CC's evolution into an action-adventure comic with Scale being involved in a war between various webcomics while trying to find and rescue her kidnapped cartoonists/creators. That promise was not actualized, and while for a while Scale was staying true-to-concept and visiting various comics, lately she's turned into a stay-at-home protagonist, occasionally popping into other dimensions to recruit help to find and rescue her cartoonists. Part of this has evolved out of the plot itself. However, this doesn't lessen the recent inertia within the comic where nothing seems to happen.
Part of this also lies with update issues. Cartoonist Caitlin Woods has been unable to draw the comic of late, and guest-artist Gothia has likewise been unable to help, resulting in a multitude of cartoonists drawing scenes for the comic. As CW has suffered from integral comics failing to update (Pimpette being a prime example), this has only exacerbated the problems faced within CW. Likewise, I am unsure as to the viability of CC to continue once CW comes to a conclusion, due in part to the epic nature of the storyline and of Woods' inability to continue updating on top of her duties in other comics. Its crossovers with various comics also makes it difficult to read the comic on its own, and can result in some confusion as to what is going on at times. As a part of Crossover Wars, CC is essential reading to understand much of what is going on. On its own, justification for reading becomes more problematic and depends on your tastes.
 (From Evil Overlords United. Click on image to see it full-sized.)
The concept of massive crossover events is nothing new. Print comics have been indulging in this money-making endeavor for decades now, with a primary storyline spawning numerous tangential side-stories as various comic books join in with varying levels of participation. Webcomics borrowed a number of traditions from their print brethren, including that of crossovers, but with the intention of exchanging readership rather than increasing sales of books. Still, early on the largest crossover events involved three or even four webcomics, partly due to the logistics involved. They served to combine disparate elements of various storylines that had no editorial connection.
That changed in 2001 when Damonk of Framed!!! talked some thirty other comics into joining in on a grand crossover event where characters of his comic escaped into the webcomic multiverse and caused a bit of mischief before nearly all of the escapees were captured and dragged back to where they belonged. No doubt this massive crossover event was partly the inspiration for the current massive webcomic crossover event, Crossover Wars.
The central comic for Crossover Wars is Evil Overlords United. EOU is much like its sister comic Cameo Comic in that there are frequent segments where you need to visit alternative comics to fully comprehend what's going on. However, EOU is more self-contained and with but a few hiccups you can usually follow its story without visiting other strips.
If I were to try and sum up EOU in one sentence, I'd say that EOU is a comic of multiversal domination by a group that had memorized the "Evil Overlords List." This is a group that while nominally evil (I say nominally because while they've threatened people with torture and worse, I've not yet seen them do anything that I'd consider "evil") are able to work together without the conflicts of leadership often found in traditional "evil organizations."
Yet while the storyline and the massive crossovers of EOU are what drives this comic (and indeed is the impetus behind its inception), what truly makes this comic worth reading is the characters. The comic could easily have become overwhelmed in the minutia of various crossover events and left its characters pale one-dimensional caricatures. Instead, we have frequent moments of actual character development that have breathed life into the cast.
The heart of EOU lies with the characters. In this, EOU is an ensemble cast with several key stars. At the forefront is the Editor, a Naga who is the drive behind the multiversal invasion. He is possibly the closest to being "evil" among the Overlords, though how much of that is due to his inhuman nature remains to be seen. He is also the most powerful of the cast, with the power to easily overcome any of his erstwhile allies. Interestingly, he downplays his own magical strengths and instead uses his intellect to think things through. He has worked hard to form alliances with antagonists from other comics and create an army capable of achieving his goals.
While the Editor's origin story has not yet been revealed, his drive, sense of humor, and intelligence (coupled with sheer power) could easily allow him to overshadow the rest of the cast. He easily could have become the Mary Sue that crippled EOU. Instead, the Editor tends to vanish for periods of time, allowing his minions to work through problems on their own while his own strengths are rarely shown. Part of this also lies with his ability to anticipate friend or foe, and he often is five steps ahead of those around him, with only the occasional stumble.
Celine is another fascinating part of the cast, with a role traditionally held by women in many spy thrillers. She's attractive, a powerful psychic, and quite cunning, but also has several flaws to help balance her concept. One of these lies in her pathological hatred of aliens as she and her mother were kidnapped by the G.R.A.I.S.E. of Melonpool when she was a young child. Her mother would die of malnutrition while their prisoner, leaving her daughter alone at the tender mercies of the aliens. Her back story gives a barebones treatment of that past, and also hints at fellow Overlord Jason Fellback, who was sent to retrieve her.
One of the more intriguing moments, and a point where I realized EOU was more than just an instrument for Crossover Wars and was working in character growth for the cast, was when Celine revealed elements of that past... and the fact that Dr. Catastrophe was her father. The story of how Catastrophe and the Editor tracked her down remains a cipher, unfortunately, and it seems unlikely we will learn those details even when the comic ends.
The story behind Jason Fellback is likewise rather bare. We know he has amnesia and that he was sent to rescue Celine from the G.R.A.I.S.E.; added hints in the comic suggest he is a Goddess-worshipper, and some form of priest of the facility where the Overlords have set up their base of operations. But the wheres and hows of his joining with the Overlords and his past remain unknown. He's shown remarkably little initiative in learning about his past, though whether his prior efforts were never shown or he trusts the Editor that greatly remains to be seen. His other flaw, an intense allergy of cats, is often played for comedic relief and has been used in some of the crossover events to defeat him.
Deception is the second in command of the Overlords, and has shown a tendency to try and act without waiting for input from the Editor. Despite this tendency to try and seize the initiative, Deception has not tried to overpower the Editor, and in his own back story his defeat at the hands of the Editor revealed that this deceptively-mild looking elf is in fact a Dragon... and one who was defeated with but a little difficulty by the Editor. His character is one of the least serious of the cast, with him portrayed as a womanizer and general pervert, though one who has shown considerable loyalty to his fellow Overlords.
The remainder of the cast exists in a secondary role. Dr. Catastrophe heads up the research division of the Overlords, and is given a more human touch with his obvious concern over his daughter Celine. He also holds the position of confidant of Zworgue, an alien entity whose technology and abilities has enabled the Overlords to launch their raids into other worlds. Zworgue himself has been played mostly for comic relief and it seems unlikely this will change anytime soon.
Tertiary characters include Catnap and Death Bunny, who are base cannon fodder who've had minimal character development within the EOU comic. Outside of EOU, they've been developed to a greater extent, depending on the whims of the cartoonist borrowing them. And of course, there's the Droids. These are the backbone of the invasion force, and are mostly faceless cyphers... but hold enough eccentricities that as a whole help make the background happenings in the comic worth watching.
Recent events have the Overlords preparing for the next phase in their assault on the webcomic worlds. Initial attempts to overthrow Rogues of Clwyd Rhan succeeded, and the armies from that world will be utilized in the next stage of the invasion. Considering the general inept nature of the majority of the troops in RoCR (with its success due more to trickery and brute force than actual strategy), this invasion will fall flat on its face and no doubt lead to reversals in the Crossover Wars.
And that is perhaps the greatest flaw in EOU. It's destined to end with its protagonists having failed in their quest. Sure, they're "evil" and the bad guys. But the primary cast works well together and they have shown surprising character development. Whether we'll see additional character development as things start going south for the Overlords remains to be seen, but I couldn't be surprised for additional quiet moments to appear, building additional bonds between these characters before their final end.
For all crossovers eventually end. Whether it will be with the Editor tied down and Velma yanking his fake head off to reveal Damonk was the mad genius behind it all, or for one or more of the Overlords to sneak off in preparation for the next mad bid to take control, that end is inevitable, and will call in the curtain call of EOU itself. But while EOU is the central picture of this puzzle, it is the variety of cameos and crossovers that have emerged because of this that truly make the whole. And the webcomicking world will be changed by the Wars as cartoonists realize that they too can be a part of something this big.
This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. It is the start of something new.
Robert A. Howard
Note: The original more whimsical incarnation of this review can be found here. Rob H.
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