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9/13/2007
Secants 
I've been waiting somewhat impatiently for No Pink Ponies to start updating again after the rather unexpected beating of Jess's unrequited crush (whom, for a lack of better name, I refer to as "T") at the hands of his dead fiance's little sister, Melissa. We'd not seen any sign of Melissa being abusive in the past. Indeed, while she initially blamed T for the death of her big sister, it seemed that his saving her life helped redeem him in her eyes, and also led to Melissa becoming a possible complication (or should I say competition?) in Jess's furtive daydreams of winning T's affections.
As far as hiatuses go, it wasn't too bad. One month is child's play compared to some comics. It was the pseudo-cliffhanger element, combined with an action that felt very much out-of-character that was annoying. And even with the resumption of the comic, it still is feeling a tad flat... almost as if Remy "Eisu" Mokhtar had tried for a quick laugh, found it had fallen short of the mark, and was working hard to fix that error. (Then again, random violence is rarely as funny as most people think, especially when put in a semi-realistic environment.) Perhaps the one element I find most annoying with the recent updates is the return of the "whoops, almost" relationship shtick. Having T and Jess get close only to be interrupted by Melissa feels contrived (as does Melissa's denial-filled explanation for beating on T). There is no Moonlighting curse. Sexual tension can occur even with couples who are dating and having sex. Jess (or T) can feel inadequate, worry about competition even after starting to date. Who knows... having them date may even inspire new storylines, and keep the comic steered away from the dread shoals of hiatus that have beached this comic on more than one occasion. 9/12/2007 Secants 
I initially learned of No Rest for the Wicked through my Suggestions thread in the Tangents forums. As is normal with suggestions in that thread, I promptly ignored and forgot about it, which is a shame seeing that NRW is a superlative comic that takes the world (and stories) of classic fairy tales and tells an ongoing epic story utilizing characters and events from these tales. This isn't a bastardization of the classic stories such as Disney forces down the throats of fans whenever it steals a story and "spiffs it up" into a bland contrived mess of political correctness and unimaginative idiocy. Instead, Andrea Peterson has created something as dark and edgy as the original stories, but continuing their tales.
The comic follows November, a princess suffering from a crippling level of insomnia. Rather than marry a dull-witted commoner, she runs away from home and soon learned that she would be able to sleep again when the Moon had risen from the dead. Her first recruits include Puss in Boots and a young lady in a red-hooded cape and a vast hatred of beasts, especially intelligent beasts who can speak (and thus the presence of a talking cat doesn't exactly go over well with her). Later in the comic a fourth member joins them... a young lady with silver hands and a past far more tragic than problems with sleep... or even wolves eating one's grandmother. While Peterson's storytelling works well with the subject matter, it's the art that drives it home. While the comic's art may have roots in the manga-style, the huge eyes of the characters is particularly haunting, especially with the deep shadows under November's eyes, or the haunted, angry eyes of Red. The comic is mostly in greyscale (with a strong tendency toward blacks and greys), except for Red's ragged cloak, which is the dark red of blood and perhaps characteristic of the anger and pain Red feels. Indeed, more than the art and story, it is Peterson's development of these characters' personalities that truly makes this comic worth reading. Fortunately, the archives are not so huge so to deprive new readers of more than one night's sleep, no matter where the moon may lie. 9/11/2007 Secants 
I've been holding off on reviewing El Goonish Shive until the new artistic format had a few updates under its belt. When Dan Shive initially commented on shifting his artistic style to a full-page format, it looked like something that would work. The larger frames would give him more artistic freedom and allow him to develop the story more fully. He claimed it would release him of constraints he'd encountered in the half-page format which apparently were contributing to writer's block. Upon seeing the implementation of this format in-comic, something in the back of my head said "this isn't working." Indeed, I've only noted a couple instances where it even came close to hitting the ball.
After thinking about it for a while (and noting that I've had a similar reaction to the shift in style for Penny & Aggie's layout), I've realized a fundamental reason for my dislike. The full-page format actually slows the pacing of the comic. In doing so, it has caused a comic that has a tendency toward slowness (both story-wise and due to the frequent hiatuses it's recently gone through) to crystallize like honey that's been in the cabinet too long. The result is an ugly morass that looks unappetizing and doesn't ignite my interest in the story anymore. For all of the flaws he found in the old artistic setup, there was one truly decent aspect to it: the entire comic fit on one page, allowing it to be read quickly and concisely. The combination of glacial pacing and scrolling have resulted in my losing interest in the story even before I finish reading it. Indeed, the comic has also started using fewer panels with the new format, resulting in what little pacing there was to falter worse. Nor has the new format led to an increase of comic updates. Frequent delays have continued to plague EGS as Shive struggles to find the perfect positioning for characters and backgrounds. It feels like Shive is trying to show more with less effort, resulting in a story that has stalled out and refuses to restart. It was a decent experiment... but the new artistic style doesn't work and should be abandoned. 9/10/2007 Secants 
We come here today because of kittens. It seems the Kitten Collective has struck again, and is busy assimilating Penny Arcade. No doubt they'll be scratching their heads and wondering what the heck happened to their sofa and fridge once the little blighters clear out, but when we have kittens in not one, but two straight updates for PA... well, it calls out for a Secant. Which when you think of it, is a bit amusing. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times: gag-strips aren't my forte. Even so, there is something about PA that drags me in, screaming and kicking, forcing me to read even as I lament the lack of storyline within the comic.
It's not the art - or at least, not completely the art. Don't get me wrong; Gabe's an excellent artist. Unfortunately, he's addicted to templates and cut-and-paste, which leaves me scratching my head. I mean, PA comes out thrice a week in a newsstrip format. Does it honestly need to use CaP? Fortunately, the use of CaP isn't an everyday (or every week, at least) occurrence. And when he stretches himself, Gabe shows a level of creativity and imagination that is truly staggering. I'm not big into computer games so I'm unsure as to what is adapted from the gaming industry and what springs Athena-like from Gabe's brow, but when those shining jewels do appear... then they're well worth treasuring. No, what keeps me coming back each update is the creativity that goes into the strips. That and the rants (which are easily as enjoyable as the comic is), but in that they're linked. Perhaps that's why we've had kittens in two strips now, popping out of the PS3 every twenty minutes and raiding their pantries. No doubt in the background sometime we'll see the Fruit F##ker trap a couple of kittens in the corner of the kitchen and next thing you know we'll have kitten juice being served. But with Tycho and Gabe behind it, people will laugh, and come back for more. 9/14/2007 Play Date  (From Namir Deiter. Click on image to see it full-sized.)
Namir Deiter is a comic about family. In particular, it's about two families, the Namirs and the Deiters (and of the Deiters, mostly just Blue), as well as their friends. Over the years the comic has grown to focus more on Tipper Namir and her friends than that of her sister Snickers or of Blue Deiter. Even with this shift in focus, it would be safer to say though that ND is an ensemble cast than having any one character as the star of the show. As such, each character (even those who appeared years later) can be the focus of a story segment without seeing any trace of the Namirs or Deiters. I first came across ND years ago in Fur Will Fly (when Brian Daniel borrowed Blue and several other characters for his comic; Isabel Marks has stated that the "crossover" is not canon and never happened in the ND continuity). I took a quick look over at Marks' comic, didn't see anything that demanded I read, and promptly forgot the comic. That's not to say the early strips weren't worth reading; back then I was only reading a half dozen comics or so and wasn't all that interested in finding a new comic to read. Early ND strips share a lot in common with the second wave of comics that was emerging on the scene at the turn of the century. Most had fairly rough artwork and stories oriented more toward humor than drama. And as with the rest of the Webcomic Class of 1999-2000, ND's artwork took a couple of years before the rough edges were smoothed away and the art style found in today's strips was more evident. A clear example of this evolution can be found here with comics Marks drew a year-and-a-half later to replace unrelated filler art (so that the archives would flow better). The art in the first two years undergoes several leaps as Marks experimented to find the style that worked best. Some of these are filler comics when Marks was feeling lazy. Other strips jump between greyscale or penciled work and a variety of coloring techniques. It's around July of 2002 that coloring and art truly starts to stabilize. It was also in this period that Marks started creating little story-arcs, with each one ending literally with a little "The End" at the bottom of the arc. These story-arcs would focus primarily on one character-group. These stories would often be character-pieces rather than stepping stones toward any epic storyline. However, little tidbits were added giving us pieces of background as well, such as the fact Blue Deiter ran away from home as a child and moved in with her older sister... and has come to see her as her true mother. That gave us our one glimpse at the Deiter family's biological mother. Of the Namir family's matriarch, we've not even seen a flashback with her visibly in it (though we have seen their father, who is a bit of a number himself and has been shown to be manipulative and hurtful in the two story-arcs concerning him). 
The pieces of this puzzle show two families where the eldest sister ends up raising her younger sibling (with it being more visible with Snickers and Tipper; when we met Roxanne Deiter, Blue was already in her late teens, and their relationship was more friendly than parental). Their pasts influence their actions. Blue shows signs of being very much her biological mother's daughter with both her boozing and her sleeping around (to the point that I half-wonder if Blue might be alcoholic as her mother was... just not as severe at this point).
Snickers and Tipper's mother likewise shows little true love for her offspring even when she's in the comic. She seized custody of her children to deny them to her husband, and then alternatively ignores or tries to control them. She also ends up abandoning them (when Tipper was around 14 I believe) due to a warrant out for her arrest... because of five unpaid parking tickets she ignored for years. I'm not entirely sure how realistic it is that someone could build up tens of thousands of dollars in fines and the like from five unpaid tickets, but the sheer idiocy of the situation would make for a fine epitath for her tombstone. This whole situation forces Snickers to grow up. And fast. And while she still did some immature things from time to time (perhaps the greatest of these was eloping with her fiance, though she never told her mother, and Mrs. Namir fled the country within a few months of the elopement making this a non-issue), she's been far more of a mother to Tipper than their mother ever was. While this sometimes comes out as being bossy... it truly shows how much she loves her sister. Her relationship with her husband Twix has been fairly stress-free; indeed, the only thing they really argued about was having a baby, as Twix felt that Snickers wasn't mature enough and knew he himself wasn't. Naturally enough, Snickers gets pregnant anyway. This was one of a few story-arcs that I feel fell a little short with how it played out. I mean... Snickers breaking down into tears because she heard her husband tell his cousin that he felt Snickers was too young to have a child (which got translated in her mind to "Snickers is too immature to have a child") is realistic enough. But she found out that morning. She very likely found out before BoB showed up to have Twix help him with his taxes. Yet she didn't tell him? She didn't blurt it out ahead of time? That entire story-arc could have been better done... or the big reveal could have happened the next day without reducing the dramatic effect of the whole thing. 
The tendency of the characters to devolve into relationships is another possible fault. I'm not entirely sure yet on this. All I know is that relationships in ND have all the gravitational pull of a black hole, and only Joy has been able to resist this (and not of her free will). Okay, cousin BoB also has resisted, by fleeing the country one time, and leaving a bride at the altar the second time. Hell, even Tipper's irritable lesbian friend (who had a serious crush on Tipper for a while) has managed to hook up with someone else. You know, sometimes people remain single. This is not a bad thing. But naturally enough the only character I want to see hook up with someone (Joy) is single. Well, okay. I don't want to see BoB with anyone either, but that's because his character is... one we don't want breeding.
And that brings up another point: Gabby. When I was around the 2003 mark for ND, I joked to my friend Steve Anderson that at least ND didn't have any token lesbian characters running around and falling in love with any of the straight girls. Needless to say, I needed a strong drink once Gabby came out of the closet to numb the pain of biting my tongue. However, my fears of another cliched unrequited lesbian love affair proved to be ill-founded. Yes, Gabby was in love with Tipper. She never tried to act on it. She tried to get over it. And she did. To this I have to applaud Isabel Marks. She took what could have been yet another poorly-written unrequited lesbian love story (or worse, a requited lesbian erotic story) and treated it with respect and decency. She treated it realistically. And considering we're talking about anthropomorphic animals running around, that says something. The anthropomorphism is another aspect that helps amuse me to no end. These aren't just furry people. When Blue (who is feline) ends up in a tree, she can't get down without help. When Tipper is hiding from Blue, she goes right up a tree (though we don't get to see how she gets down). When Twix is talking to Snickers about his being brought up by slugs (he's feline, as is the Namir family) he comments on the possibility of their children being part-slug (though BoB at least thinks Twix was switched at birth... and considering the fact BoB is described as a village idiot in the cast page, that's saying something). Their anthropomorphic nature is not just artistic. It's part of who and what they are. 
The sheer size of the comic (over 1,800 strips) makes it difficult to focus on any one element. Each character could easily take up a page on his or her own (Blue for one is a very complex and layered person, and easily could have dominated the entire review tonight). The story-arcs interlock into a wider picture that works both alone and as a part of the greater picture. And the Namir and Deiter families could easily be a reflection of our own reality, seen through a distorted glass. What few flaws exist do not seriously detract from the comic as a whole (or even when viewing that one piece alone). About the only true stumbling block for new readers is the sheer size of the archives... but which is also well worth the read.
Robert A. Howard Comment on the Forums. |
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Some material on this site is not suitable for younger viewers.
All images and articles available on this site are copyrighted to their respective owners;
Amber "glych" Greenlee, Barb-Lien Cooper, Park Cooper, Ryan Howe, Steve Anderson, Erik Lervold, Adam Barnett, Hamil Griffin-Cassidy, Ron and Justine Fontes,
and Robert A. Howard, unless otherwise duely noted, 1998-2007