Postcards #9: Hero

Today's postcard is notable in that this is the first Postcard I've been asked to do not by the creator of a comic, but an ardent reader of it instead.

Hello,

As you probably have guessed, I'm emailing about a webcomic: Hero, by Hwei Lin Lim. I know that you are extremely busy and probably have a request list the length of an astronomical unit, but on the off chance that you have a bit of time...

If you haven't read it yet, well, I can recommend it at least as a personal favorite -- the art is beautiful, the story dreamishly meandering but well-told and meaningful. There's about 200 pages in the archive, and the narration/dialogue is done through hovertext, which I think is very liberating for both the visual and textual aspects. And if you have read it before, then I would be very interested in what you have to say about it, again given that you have the time.

And uh, I got some metaphorical weird looks last time I made this clear, but just so you know, I'm not Hwei -- I'm just a really, really invested fan. If that's a problem, then just say so and I'll disappear like a well-bleached stain. Thanks for taking the time to read this email!


Aoede

How am I to refuse such a charming request?

The first thing that will strike anyone who reads this comic is the total absence of the usual text and narration bubbles. Instead Hero truly transcends from "comic" to "webcomic" by making use of hover text for the narration.

This is not the first time I've seen anyone experiment with the web format by making the reader interact with the comic (in fact every page of Dr. McNinja has bonus jokes hidden in the image text) .But this is the first one I've seen that actually seen that makes the hover text the focus of the delivery and succeeds because of its simplicity. 

Others had the readers click to make a text bubbles or additional panels appear. Some played sound effects to go with the action scene when you clicked it... but here...

...you just hover over the relevant panels to make the appropriate text appear.

So the reading of Hero makes one feel more like they are reading an interactive picture-book, and oddly enough it makes one slow down to appreciate the beautifully watercolour-isque art and the enthralling, stylish story more.

Hero has a narrative style that is immensely distinct and endearing. Everything is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist, and by extension, every thing is described as a comparison based on the protagonist experiences.

For example the protagonist is so impressed with the memory of a wolf which is devoted to its human companion that he describes always having someone who will keep you company and wait for you as "having a wolf"

The odd speech bubble does make an appearance, but they are always pictorial "speech" bubbles.

I especially like how Hwei manages to sneak in bits of her local influences into his work. Subtle inside jokes like this one resonate with me :) (Yes yes, I did chuckle when I identified the cendol, sate and ang ku kuei!)

The story flow is interesting, although sometimes it feels like it jumps from one point to another, leaving the reader slightly bewildered at points.

In one chapter the format suddenly changed without warning, leaving me anxious that Hwei was abandoning her trademark speech hover thing only to have be relieved when she went back to it a chapter later. I'm still not clear on why she changed the format, my guess is that she was experimenting... but it did disrupt my reading for a bit.

All in all, Hero is something very special and unique out of the comics I have read, and in terms of webcomic finds, this is a motherlode of a Find! Finding comics like this totally makes writing blog worthwhile. I think I need to send Aoede a thank you email for this.

Edit: I'd confused Hwei's gender (Heh due to me thinking Hwei was the surname and Lin Lim was the name, which is masculine. ) My bad, and fixed ;)

Postcards are reviews requested by (mostly) webcomic authors. They focus less on reviews and more on critical insight and unreserved, honest, feedback. You can request for a review by emailing Ping at webcomicfinds @ gmail . com and if it interests her, she'll take it up. But be warned, when Ping says honest feedback, she really means it.

Postcards #6: The Battle of Dovecote Crest

In my previous postcard we had an example of how bad presentation and marketing correspondence can negatively colour one's impression of a comic. Today I'm going to do the polar opposite and show how good presentation and communication can elevate one.

Some time ago, I received this email from Bridget, the artist who does The Battle of Dovecote Crest

Hello Ping,

Just wanted to make a request for a critique, if you have the time. The Battle of Dovecote Crest is my second webcomic, this time as the artist half of an artist/writer team. We're pretty new, having only started updating in late September 2008, but we've got a bit of an archive going and are about halfway through our first story arc. If you have any advice, it would be greatly appreciated!

Here's the link if you decide to check it out: http://dovecotecrest.comicdish.com.

Thanks,
Bridget Underwood

If you compare this to the previous postcard, I'm sure you can see the difference in approach. There's no self-promotion, only statement of the facts. It's kinda like the difference between a good resume and a bad one really. A bad one has stuff like "I'm intelligent, self-reliant, able to multitask and am a team player." A good one says it like "I did project [X] with a team of 7 people where we coordinated to produce [Y]. My role was doing [A], [B], [C], where for [B] and [C] no prior documentation or precedence had been set yet.

In short, it lets the reader decide. And this does mean a lot.

Anyway, short prattle over, let's get to the comic itself.

I have to admit my initial expectation was apprehensive. It's a comic about history? (History was one of my most hated subjects back in school). However, the site design was just so charming (made to look like a civil ware recruitment poster) and in tune with the rest of the comic that it did allay any reservations I might have. The art and writing pretty much did the rest.

Anyway, Dovecote Crest is a joint project between writer Hailey and artist Bridget. Joint projects tend to be either amazing (think T Campbell and Gisele Lagace) or short-lived (I'd link some comic that this happened to, but I can't for the life of me remember the name) or both. The really bad ones... well they never really get started ;)

Back to the topic, this comic follows the life of "Charlie", a young graduate who majored in history but is finding life out of college with a history degree not quite up to expectations. Stuck working for a historical enactment museum in the diminutive town of Dovecote Crest while her fellow classmates somehow have found careers, her seed of discontentment is offset by the support of her friends: Her sweet but socially-inept boss Jeremy, nice but no-nonsense Tess, and the always cheery and comical Ben. (Well that was a lot of alliterative description).

I really like the art style... it strongly reminds me of Faith Erin Hicks' (of the Demonology 101 fame) early work. While it lacks a lot of flash and fancy special effects (which is not necessarily a bad thing, as it matches with the context very well) it is well done, and the strongest point of Bridget's work is her sublime facial expressions.

Of course all the best art in the world is nothing if the story is not compelling. But as it turns out there's no worries there, because the story crafted by Hailey transcends its setting. OK, so I'm a self-confessed history hater (though that might have been due to the inaccuracy of the history I was made to study suffer, but that's a whole different can of worms), but somehow the characters and writing made it come alive for me. I think even though the setting and subject matter may be unorthodox, there's a lot people who can identify with in the characters themselves. And by association they start to become interested in the setting and subject matter when they couldn't originally.

I think it's really obvious by now I really really like this comic. I guess it's because it surprised me by taking a subject that was anathema to me and transformed it into something interesting and compelling. It takes a lot of skill to be able to do that and when you do manage to do it, you're pretty much doing everything right. In fact I wrote this with the usual feedback and criticism thing in mind but I really can't find anything I would nitpick (well maybe other than don't put the news page posting in every page of the archives too).

So this comic is a rather special and unexpected Find. But when I read a comic like Dovecote Crest I thank the Web for webcomics. Dovecote Crest is a comic that would probably have never been accepted by a conventional publisher because of the unconventional and niche subject matter. It's a shame, but traditional publishers have budgets and costs and businesses to run, so their sense = cents (and dollars). It's business.

The webcomics don't have to be business. It can be about doing something for the heck of it.

And that's the beauty of it.

Comic Category Descriptions

I don't rank comics by star ratings, but I do sort them into categories based on how I perceive them.

But for your convenience when browsing reviews by category:

What a Find! - Comics with special and unique characteristics that enthralled me, and which I can whole-heartedly recommend to others.

Place of Interest - An enjoyable comic that while wasn't earth-shattering and might have some flaws, is a worthwhile read if you have some time to spend.

Lost in Transit - A comic that has both positive qualities that might endear it to readers, and negative qualities that might drive them away. It's like Marmite, either you like it or hate it, there is no in-between.

Weekend Day Trip - A comic that was not really bad, might have been quite enjoyable to read but was lacking on the "memorable" front. A read-through is an entertaining way to spend a few hours, but ask me about it after a long time and I might need a few minutes to remember I read it.

Under Development - A comic that is too new to be evaluated properly, so contents of review may be inaccurate later on.

Tourist Trap - Comics that I did not enjoy and cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone.

38th Leg: Shi Long Pang

Comic: Shi Long Pang
By: Ben Costa

Setting and Elements: "17th Century China"
Content Type: Action/Adventure, Historical

Art Medium: Full-Colour, Heavy Inklines, Simplified
Art Style: Manhwa-Simplified Cartoon hybrid

Is About: The adventures of a shaolin monk who is forced to wander away from his monastery.

Website: http://www.shilongpang.com
Frequency: Weekly (about)
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
I like the simplistic layout of the site, and how the title image blends with the background. The art is eye catching, if rather heavily styilized, and while I don't mind it for a humour comic it looks to me like this is an action-adventure one. I know some readers might get turned off by that. For some reason the mindset is that simplified = humour and action = realistic, but hey this is webcomics, the rules are made to be bent and broken.

It takes me a moment to realize the main site is no longer at Modern Tales and has moved to http://www.shilongpang.com/

The main site is even more elegantly simplistic. In fact I like the current site design even better. Whatever else you might say for the creator, he knows how to make a site look clean, interesting, and new-reader friendly.


The Concept:
Shi Long Pang is the tale of a wandering monk in ancient China. Yes I know that sounds ridiculously cliched, but this story is more than what it seems at first.

The titular character is a lost monk, wandering around looking for survivors of his monastery after it was razed by an army convinced the monks were harbouring rebels. Aptly described by a city guard as "like a little pork bun", he seems rather nondescript, but as more and more of the story unfolds, we get to see more and more of how he fits into the overall picture of war, intrigue and politics.

And wouldn't you know it, I go and pick a sample image that has the titular character cropped out. Uh... Oops. 

No that monk there is NOT Shi Long Pang.

The Art:

Like I mentioned before, the art at first glance seems over-simplified, but it is by no means simple. The colouring is beautiful, and although sometimes the facial expressions don't quite gel.

But overall the art is subtle and effective. And the detail in some of the pages truly is epic. The fight scenes, (and there are many of them), are intricately done. It's pretty amazing, as is sheer amount of energy and fluidity in them.

The more I read this the more amazed I am than the perspective and point of view the artist uses. It doesn't feel like a comic more, but a full blown movie and I'm in the middle of it. Quite an accomplishment.

And that simplified style really does grow on you.

I have to say though, I'm not a big fan of the use of screentones experimented with in the later pages though. They sort of go against the whole subtle nature of the artist's style. But it could be just teething problems.


The Writing:

One beef I often have with comics set in non-American contexts is pretty much well... the mannerisms and characters in the comics are often pretty much American, transplanted into ancient Japan or Rome or whatever exotic place they are supposed to be in.

There's usually very little research done on what those places WERE like, so it's refreshing for once to see a comic that goes into this with such painstaking detail.

I particularly like the use of authentic terminology, and the very reader-friendly footnotes that explain what they mean. Sometimes they are a little lengthy, but overall they give the comic a feel that I have very rarely encountered elsewhere. This, ladies and gentlemen, is writing with substance.

Although some scenes weave crazily from tragedy to humour the storytelling, pacing and introductions are superbly done. I never felt overwhelmed with characters (who were all humbly lovable), and I loved how the story gradually built up and deepened.
Politics and philosophy in particular, are very difficult subjects to tackle when it comes to comics, but the author carries it off very successfully here, and you can understand why things happen the way they do.

On a personal note, I love the bilingual jokes. Yes I know most people will miss them, which makes it funnier for those who DO get them, I suppose.


Problems:

The layout of the panels, while most of the time artistic, is sometimes confusing. Attempts have been made to improve the readability by adding arrows and such, but in my opinion they didn't work that well. The eye travels faster than the amount of time it takes the brain to register the pointy arrows, so having read a panel or two and then having my eye jerked back to the correct path can get somewhat tiresome.

Sometimes the walls of text in some pages are a little hard to read due to the hand-lettering (rest of the time, the hand-lettering's great though).

Like I mentioned before, the simplistic style of the art might turn new readers off, but I really wouldn't change it for the world. Sometimes you can't pander to the lowest common denominator, and if they miss out on this gem, it's their loss, really.

Overall:

I didn't really expect to like Shi Long Pang as much as I did. You know a comic is good when you continue thinking about it after you're away from your computer and doing something else and you're still pondering about the storyline and your favourite pages.

Yes, I didn't have great expectations of SLP, but the vaunted subtlety I keep talking about managed to get under my skin, and lo and behold, this one's going on my reading list.

The Next Leg:

I'm going to leave the choice of the next leg open for the time being and make my decision on which comic I'm going to pick from the Shi Long Pang links page later. Unless you want to recommend one from there, of course.

34th Leg: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Now if you recall, back in my last actual log I checked out Dementia of Magic. So in grand Webcomic Finds' style, I'm continuing from DoM's link page. There are many well known webcomics there, but the absurdity of the concept made this one stand out:

Comic:
By: Chris Hastings (Pencils and Writing), Kent Archer (Inks)

Setting and Elements: Modern Day, Surreal Reality
Content Type: Action, Humour

Art Medium: Black and white, Pencil and Inks
Art Style: American Comic Book

Is About: The story follows the exploits of Dr. McNinja, of the Irish McNinja ninja clan (I cannot believe I typed that out with a straight face). The Doc, as he is known, has rebelled against his family tradition of being ninjas and becomes a doctor. The stories follow his adventures as he tries to run a general practice and cope with his life as a ninja at the same time.

Website: http://www.drmcninja.com/
Frequency: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation: The white website design is very clinical and well designed. I find it odd that both creators names were not on the frontpage with any sort of copyright notice, but all the information is available on the "About" page.

The illustation on the frontpage, of a ninja in a doctor's labcoat is beautifully rendered, if a little posy and stiff-looking. Overall, it looks to be promising, the premise is definitely unusual. Now to see how it plays out.

There is no "Start reading from first page" link on front page, so off to Archives.

The art style is very old-school comic-bookish, black and white ink lines. It looks pretty good so far. Judging by the preview it's a hugh archive, so looks like I'm in for a long read.

The Concept:
Well to be sure, the concept is unusual. You can have medical sitcoms like Grey's Anatomy and then you can have shows about ninjas. Combining the two is like combining strawberry cheesecake and rice congee. Not something you'd really think of naturally.

The Art:
Like most webcomics, the art starts off a little shaky in the first storyline but steadily improves as time goes on. The comic is in black and white, with clean lines although the artist does make use of what looks like tablet-work for some special effects.

The action looks very well-drawn, although at time I have had a strong feeling that some of the elements in the page have felt traced. Mind you this observation disappears in the later issues, the art is overall very well down and the composition of the pages and panel layout are impeccable.

Character design is very very distinctive. I certainly never had any difficult at any point differentiating between characters even though maybe 50% of the characters are ninjas who never, ever remove their ninja masks. Granted, a ninja who runs about in a white lab coat and stethoscope isn't particularly hard to confuse. Mind you, it's hard to make a ninja in a white lab coat look good, but heck, the Chris Hasting-Kent Archer partnership does it with considerable finesse.

One thing worth of mention is that since the main character is one who never ever (I repeat) removes his mask, all the expression for the Doc is done though what you can see of him, body language and eyes. Speaking from experience, I can tell you this is not easy. And here, it is remarkably well done.

The Writing:
The writing for Dr. McNinja is consistent in a few aspects, mainly that it's funny, and in keeping with the titular character, it's irreverently absurd. All that said, once you can suspend disbelief on the concept, a lot of things make perfect sense.  And it never tries to take itself seriously, and so continually lampoons: internet culture, Batman, the comic book industry, caption boxes, and occasionally, itself.

In short Chris has a very unique, pawky and enjoyable sense of humour, and this really is the hallmark of the series. This doesn't mean that Dr. McNinja is all silliness and no plot however. The plots of the stories, while always absurd, are surprisingly intricate and take care to make sense in the same absurd manner.

Add to this there is some very strong characterization going on in this series. It takes your perceived stereotypes and turns them on their heads. And while the Doc is portrayed something of a wonder (Medical doctors/super ninja) he has is own issues and is flawed and fallible enough to identify with and like. Even the villians are very well fleshed out, and don't get me started on Gordito, Judy (the rather unorthodox receptionist), and the Doc's Fruit and Nut cracker of a family... 

Problems:

Not really much that I can point out, the creators of this comic seem to know what they are doing.

There was one point where I was greatly worried that the comic might have fallen to (Drat I can't remember what's it's called... I just call it GPF syndrome. You can call it the Rowling syndrome too if you like.) the tendency of some humour webcomics to morph into overly serious epic drama comics. But much to my relief, although the overall story took a slightly darker and more serious tone, it never really got angsty or overly serious, and managed to retain the essence of McNinja-ness (there I've coined a new word) that never alienated the reader as much as some other comics did.

The other thing is the most recent storyline touches on a subject I have a problem with. Well, so much that over 3 years ago I wrote an article about it for Comixtalk (previously known as Comixpedia). Granted, it looks more promising this time round given the unconventionality of the writing... Chris might be able to pull this off in a way that doesn't make me roll my eyes. There are always (I am happy to admit) exceptions.

Overall:
I try not to be too gushing or too critical in my review logs, but this is a comic I seriously enjoyed and laughed out loud at. It's a Find, I am very glad I chose it for this leg of my journey.

There's quite a bit of violence, as should be expected from anything with the word "ninja" in it (Unless it's some hunter rolling "Need" on your epic mace in World of Warcraft... oh wait, we murdered a boss for that... nmind) but oddly enough it self-censors profanity, which I suspect is more for comedic effect than anything else.

The Next Leg:
...will be a surprise. There's lot of links in the links page, so you'll see what comes up in the next episode of Webcomic Finds!

Note: I had earlier mixed up names and referred to Kent as the writer when it should be Chris... uh... whoops?

Year #1: Ping's Favourite Finds of 2004/2005!

It took Eric Burn's Websnark to remind me, but Webcomic Finds turned 1 year old on August 12th... And I completely missed it.

Which annoyed me really, because I had a feature planned for it and stuff. I wanted to summarize the picks of the year.

Better late then never I guess.

A little over one year ago, I thought what a great idea it would be if I started reviewing comics. I liked doing it. I'd often done them in forums. But I wanted something more official. I considered doing a review site by proxy, with a drawn comic instead of a review (You'll recognise my prototype for the comic that eventually became "The Essence of..."), but then I decided there were review sites enough already. I really didn't have anything I wanted to add to them and reviewing in comic form has its limitations.

Then I got one of my ideas. You know, one of those weird notions. I was rereading a Dalton Wemble article over at Comixpedia, when Dalton mentioned several topics, including the importance of having people recommend comics through links. Then suddenly it stuck me what an interesting experiment it would be if someone explored the world of webcomics through the links page. Where would you go? How many new and interesting comics could you find from the links page of a comic that you like?

And Webcomic Finds was born.

There's been some misconceptions about Webcomic Finds, the main one being that it's a webcomics commentary site like Websnark and many others. It's not. This is my travel journal, and my journey is webcomics. Occasionally I might talk about other stuff, but the main focus is exploring webcomics and finding new ones.

Now that I've had a year of exploring, I've covered a staggering number of comics, some which were ok, some which weren't and some which were unmissable. It's time to go over the list and pick out my favourite Finds of the year. This is something I'll be planning to do every year, by the way.

Firsly, this is not a top ten list. This is the ten favourite new FINDS list, which means these are the top ten new comics I discovered last year than I am very glad I did. This also explains why old favourites of mine like Fallen Angels Used Books and Count Your Sheep aren't in this list. Love em to bits, but I did know about them waaaaaaay before I started the blog, so they weren't new. There are a lot of comics I like that aren't in here, many for different reasons, ranging from me knowing about them earlier or hiatus or rough spots. Doesn't mean I don't like them, but the ones in the list are the ones that I check religiously for updates.

Now to make this a little more special, I decided that instead of just I list, I'd add a little fanart for each entry. It's not much, and I do apologise for the quality (I'm just learning markers) but it was great fun all the same.

Without further ado, we have, in alphabetical order, the ten comics that made the past year of writing this blog worth while for me:

Catharsis was the comic featured on the 32nd Leg of Webcomic Finds. One of the few webcomics online that prove suitable for all ages, it tells the story of a girl and her dragon... and naken squirrel... and dirt bunnies... and gargoyles... Well it's complicated. Catharsis is charming, well written, and overflows on the cute. It's got a huge archive, and if you like whimsical, heart-wrenching, imaginative humour, you owe it to yourselves to plow through this baby.

Copper didn't win WCCAs for nothing, but back then at the 16th Leg, I didn't know that. Although some reader of the New York Times accused Copper of being a shameless clone of Calvin and Hobbes due to the story being about a boy and his non-human companion, other than the initial premise, there's not THAT muc similiarity, really. It's pretty much as much similarity as between say... Batman and Spiderman). Watterson deals with nostalgia, imagination and real-life. Kazu deals more with fantasy, philosophy and intellectual symbolism. Despite the infrequent updates, each page is good enough to stand alone, so it's worth your time to look over the small collection, and enjoy the thoughtful writing and fantastic art.

Darken was one of my numerous stopover comics, and at that time wasn't updating very frequently. Now that the creator Kate "Komiyan" is in the 3-times-a-week "Lazy Grind", updates have been coming in thick and fast, and this comic has been nothing short of engrossing. A medley group of stock fantasy characters (Warrior, Dragon-priestess, Thief, Dark Elf and Black Widow) are out on a quest. The twist is: their quest is to take over the world of Darken! Finely balancing humour and adventure, if you can bear the roughness of the first few pages, this comic will have you in love with the fantasy genre all over again!

Digger. Everyone's been rhaspodising about it, and with good reason. Digger is the wombat who by an arcane twist of fate, gets tunneled into a world entirely different from her own. Now she's lost in a world of oracular slugs, dead gods and metaphorical pigeons, and with no way to get back to her warren. Other than the spell-binding black-and-white art, the writing... well... this comic can somehow be charming and macabre at the same time, sweet yet scary, funny yet tragic, and Ursula Verson shows you how! Unfortunately at this time this comic requires a subscription over at Graphic Smash, but for those who would prefer it, Digger is now also available in print format. Stopovered due to metaphorical pigeons...

LinT, the full name of which is "Life in Tehran" harks back to a time when comics were simpler and most importantly, FUN. The story is a praody of the typical DnD adventurers-on-a-quest set-up, but the heroic 'heroes' have been subtituted with the silliest, craziest and most lovable bunch of characters ever. From midget dwarves to wise orcs and sock-stealing theives, the characters go through adventure after adventure in the most unheroic ways. And although there's the occasional spare moment of drama, it never gets too far before the slapstick humor pops in to remind you this is all about fun, and that's the way comics should be.

Magellan Justice Academy. Fans of superheros who have gotten bored of the incessant rehashes and ret-cons will find a breath of fresh air in Magellan. Kaycee is the underdog 'norm' hero who is accepted into Magellan Justice Academy, a training academy for superheroes. How can she hold her own, especially when things in Magellan seem to be going into odd directions? It's hard to but a finger on why Magellan works so well as a superhero comic. I think the reason is that the superhero facet is a secondary aspect of the characters, and who they actually are the first. It's less about who has what power and super-ability, but who has the guts, the responsibility, and the good sense. Rule One of good writing: Make the audience care about your characters. Stephen Crowley succeeds massively at this, and Magellan as a result is addictive and compelling. Graphic-Smash only, but with lots of free samples. Stopovered!

Nahast: Lands of Strife has been struggling with updates lately, but you can tell creator Alexander Melchor is really trying. Another one of the fantasy comics, Nahast is different in that it has its own world and high level of world-building. The story behind Nahast is serious, and intricate, with the occasional light moment. Humour really isn't the central theme of the comic though. This is a epic fantasy, though it reads more like mystery and mythology wrapped into one. It's hard to put my finger on why this comic is addictive as it is, but if you don't mind the filler and sporadic update, give it a try and maybe you can find a better way of describing it. Discovered through a stopover.

No Rest for the Wicked is one of the most brilliant fantasy concepts online. Basically, it takes traditional european fairytales, interwines the plots and retells them in the most ingenious way imaginable. The moon has been missing, and Princess November, the Princess from "The Princess and the Pea" can find no rest until it is found. Accompanied by Little Red Riding Hood and Puss-in-Boots, they set out in search of the moon and her grave. The art for NRFTW is manga-styled, but creator Andrael has taken pains to make it her own personal variant of it. NRFTW is one of my favourite comics of all time, and if this comes out in print, I'm getting it. I like it that much. Found on the 6th Leg.

Shivae! by Tiffany Ross is an anthro comic. When I first found it back in one of my stopovers, I was surprised that something this good had managed to exist this long and elude me. Shivae! is an interesting look at a non-human centric world of creatures known as Shivae, which are sort of part-dinosaur part-winged-horse-like creatures (that's a lot of dashes, isn't it?). When aliens start showing up and invading their world, the Shivae come into conflict with the settlers and more often than not, are hunted for the treat they present to the settler's livestock. Their only solution is to run, but how far can they run if the settlers keep spreading? Other the cute character design and the gorgeous colouring by Tiffany's colourist, Flowerlark, the writing is compelling, yet touches on a lot of serious issues in a non-preachy way. Definitely worth a read.

Reviewed back in the 2nd Leg, The N00b is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the world of Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming. Our protagonist is a newbie who has just embarked on an adventure in the world of Clichquest, a cumulative parody of games like Worlds of Warcraft and Ultima Online. While the rougher language may turn a few people off, and The Noob's writing is ingeniously funny and more than make up for any shortcomings in any other department. When you hear an RPGer explain with a straight face that "deus ex machina means "God without a car", you know that Gianna Masetti is an evil evil genius.

That concludes my list. There were many many more comics that I would have loved to include in there, but sometimes a line has to be drawn. But if there were only ten new comics I could recommend to you, these ten would be it.

Looking at the list, I can't help but notice a really high percentage of fantasty comics in it. I must make a mental note to expand my reading tastes the next year. We'll see if things change. My agenda for Year Two is to have more random picks. I'm also thinking of doing more reader-interactive picks. We'll see.

It's been a long year, with many ups and downs. I've made a lot of new friends writing this blog, which I'm grateful for. No doubt I've made a few enemies too, but that's life, I can't please everyone. It also got me a number of of requests from numerous webcomic artists requesting for reviews (I'm working through the list guys. It's long. I'll get through it eventually) and invitation for other groups to write for them (which I would consider if I had more time).

But most of all, I'd like to think most of you out there liked reading Webcomic Finds, and I sincerely hope I've managed to introduce you to one of two new comics that you liked.

And that's the most important thing, really.

Stopover at The Tenth Life of Pishio the Cat: This is me waiting far too long to write about this.

Several months ago, there was a completely new comic that debuted on Graphic Smash.

It was called The Tenth Life of Pishio the Cat. Other than having an incredibly long title, it also had something many other comics didn't... a refreshingly original plot for a webcomics and non-human centric characters.

From the very first few pages, I fell in love with Zack Giallongo's amazing art and set-up. This comic, I knew, was something special, and did something very few comics manage to do within their first few pages: Get bookmarked immediately.

I would have written about Pishio long ago, but seeing that the comic had barely started, I resolved to wait a while for a substantial archive to build-up. (My magic number is 20 pages).

However, in that time the comic had managed to get a WCCA nomination and recently went independent, moving from Graphic Smash to WebcomicsNation.

A perfect time to start writing about it, since the archives are free now. ;)

The premise behind The Tenth Life of Pishio the Cat is simple. Pishio the Cat has been carelessly squandering his nine lives. When his luck finally runs out one day and he finds out that he's dead, he strikes a bargain with the powers-that-be for a last chance. Unfortunately, that involves risking his life-on-loan doing a dangerous task that even the powers-that-be cannot do. Can a cat find redemption?

With the recent NYT article and it's subsequent Slashdotting, a number of complaints about webcomics surfaced. While I am rather skeptical about the NYT article's viewpoint due to the writer's position, the discussion on the Slashdot thread I found more interesting, as a lot of them were from the viewpoints of the actual audience webcomics target. But anyway, one particular complaint was the lack of good-quality artwork in the webcomics.

Personally I think there's plenty of stunning artwork in webcomics. But because webcomics are learner's medium, the masterpieces get drowned in a lot of practice works, so the means the skill level of art is dragged down. It's a price we pay for not having editors.

All that said, the art Pisho is what you get when the comic artist in question is a professional illustrator from the start.

(Cat and Cock fight! (Yes, I'm aware how dirty that sounds) Click the thumbnail to see the original page).

The art speaks for itself, and in many cases, the writing as well. Zack is obviously from the the school of "show, not tell", so dialogue and narration are kept to a "need to know" basis, and never so much that the reader feels info-dumped. Instead, he prefers to let his composition and illustration skills do the talking and you get page after page of silent panels, where the reader is let to decide for themselves what they are seeing. Most of the time it works pretty well.

Those who need dumbing-down of their reading material and the main character narrating exactly what's going on so the reader gets it probably won't like Pishio. But those who like doing their own interpretation, a little bit of thinking, and lightning-bolt casting squirrel shamans will love Pishio.

All in all, Pishio is good from the get-go, and continues to be good so far. I'd even go so far as to call it a completely original, less-whimsical and more-violent cousin to Ursula Vernon's Digger. Given that Digger is one of my favourite webcomics ever, consider that high praise indeed.

32nd Leg: Cartharsis

After a nice long rest, we're back to travel the world of webcomics again! Today we're continuing from where we left off. If you recall (I highly doubt you do, it's been a heck of a time) the last time I was over at Super Hero Vindibudd and the banner of the ninja-cat caught my eye, leading me to...



Comic: Catharsis
By: J. Boeke

Setting and Elements: Modern Day, Slice of Life, Surreal
Content Type: Adventure, Drama, Humour, Severe Cuteness Overload ;)

Art Medium: Inked and coloured, Later Strips appear to be drawn digitally.
Art Style: Hand-Drawn, Stylised, Mix of B/W and Full-colour

Is About: Gwen, who happens to have a dragon as a pet in her apartment... along with a bad-tempered squirrel... and a ninja-cat... and a colony of dust-bunnies and fluffs...

Website: http://www.catharsiscomic.com
Frequency: Daily
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
The dragon and stuff looks familair, then I realise that I've seen Catharsis being endorsed by Adis over at Count Your Sheep before. Other than the given that if Adis endorses a comic it's probably good, the art looks really good, especially the dragon.

The website is simple, but enhanced with lots of em... tribal-looking... erm cherries(?) that make up the navigation. I have to idea what they are but OMG they are cute!


The Concept:
Comparisons to Calvin and Hobbes in envitable in this genre, because it's well, the story of a kid and his/her imaginary friend. Now imagine what happens if the kid has grown up and has to take on the challenges of being grown up, but the imaginary friend isn't imaginary but mythical instead. And despite the kid having grown up, she's still very in-tune iwth her inner child. Heck, she even turns into her inner child from time to time.

That's pretty much describes the concept behind Catharsis.

The Art:
While early art is done in grayscale, and differs from what you see on the front page, art is always competent, done in a very individual semi-realistic but stylised cartoony art-style. As the series progress, the art keep improving dramatically until it reaches the very attractive a recognisable stuff you see on the front page.

The artist seems to particularly excel at (how can I say this without sounding idiotic?) drawing cute stuff. Ranging from the balls of fluff with darling beady eyes to the crazy tribal cherries and naked squirrels, the plethora of of excellent cute character designs never fail to astound me.

There's not much background in most of the strips, but where there's a need for them, they're there and competently executed. All in all the art while although not jaw-droppingly awesome, is excellent in a comfortable sort of way, and very distinctive, which most of you know by now scores major points with me.


The Writing:
As good as the art is, the writing for Catharsis is the major pull. It alternates between 'funny' and 'light-drama', but it never lets itself get too serious, and the jokes are consistently funny. JB also has the knack of capturing those 'slice-of-life' moments that most of us have been through, like constantly making a fool of yourself in front of the cute guy from your building, or those awww when something bad happens and all you have is your dragon friend to hug.

The thing that makes my cup run over, however, has to be the characters themselves. Gwen is a very easy character to identify with, while Rremly is endearing, all the more so because of his apparent naivete despite being a dragon with a long lifespan. The other supporting characters have individual personalities that are well fleshed-out. Seriously, when the writer can give three balls of fluff distinct and lovable characters, it's hats off to the creator's writing skills.

Oh, and Bitey rocks.


Problems:
Frequent fillers in the archives are annoying, but given that a comic of this quality updates daily it's understandable, although it doesn't make going through the archives any easier.

Other than that, no major quibbles I can lay my hands on.


Overall:
It's not often that I come across a comic that I start reading and forget that I'm reading, because I'm so caught up in the escapades of the characters. Catharisis is a Find of Finds, and I'm very glad I discovered this little gem.

As an added plus, Cartharsis is suitable for kids to read, which as you remember I was stating not too long ago, is a rare amongst webcomics.

And I want a shirt with one of those cherries on it. :D


The Next Leg:

The Catharsis link page has to be one of the cutest I've ever seen. Being responsible, it even has a ratings system for the links.

The Dementia of Magic looks intriguing. Besides, something with "Magically magnificent!" as a description sounds good ;)

Stopover at The Green Avenger: There's Something About Abby

(Holy Crap! An actual Webcomics Find Post! Who'd have thought?!)

There are many reasons I like hanging around the Keenspace/ComicGenesis forums. The main one is I get to see all the budding talent first-hand, as most people start off at Keenspace and go indie when/if they get successful. Personally I think that's a great system.

Eric Burns wrote this long snark about the School of Keen a few months ago. Personally I always thought there was more learning to be done in Keenspace than Keenspot, because Keenspot is more of a business propostion, and Keenspace is there for well... starting out, experimenting, and making a comic for the hell of it.

Back to the topic, here's on of my finds discovered from hanging around Keenspace:



I think I've often mentioned I've not a devotee of superhero comics, so I wasn't sure what exactly attracted me to this comic. It might have been the art, there's something uniquely characteristic in the art style. Or that it gave off a different aura from what I expected from a typical superhero comic. I'm getting to be quite good at detecting those kind of auras.

So I checked out Green Avenger, and was amply rewarded for it. Green Avenger is an interesting hybrid superhero comic. There seem to be two kinds of comics, the story comics and the unrelated semi-autobiographical slice-of-life comics (which are usually sandwiched between the story comics, and are light bits of humour or commentary strips).

As far as I can tell, the story is about Abby, a girl who moonlights as the Green Avenger. How she got her powers and what exactly she's avenging isn't exactly clear. In fact I have a theory that she's not avenging anything, and calls herself the Green Avenger just for kicks, and doesn't really have a clue about superheroing. She also has a telepathic ex-superhero friend called the "The Purple Lavender Fey" who seems like sardonic and serious foil for the happy-go-lucky Green Avenger.

Back to the story, this seems to be a "how superheroes deal with real-life" kind of comics. The amount of humanization the characters are given makes The Green Avenger stand out from the rest. I'm pretty sure the following scenario rarely happens in the run-of-the-mill Marvel comic, for example:



The story seems to be taking a dark and more serious twist recently, but remains intriguing. A definite plus is that the creator is colouring the more recent strips, which makes all the difference in the world. Especially since the comic is called the Green Avenger, after all. There is something endearing and quirky about this comic that I can't quite name, but whatever it is, it's really growing on me, and I can safely say The Green Avenger is one comic that I'll be definitely watching in the future.

By the way, is it ok for me to spaz out happily over this? I remember reading Argon Zark when I was a little kid of twelve or thirteen, and getting a mention is just undeniably cool, even if it's so many more years later down the line!

In other news, I'm almost finished with moving house again. Maybe staying put for a couple of months will result in more blogging from me as I get back into the mood for more Webcomic Finding again.

Stopover at Scarecrow: Kids Nowadays Get the Darndest Things

I came across an interesting comment the other day, where a creator was vehemently insisting her work was not created "for kids". Somehow, the phrase struck me as odd, because when I think of my favourite books and films, I realised that a startling percentage of them seem to consist of material people tend to foolishly classify as "For Children".

One gets the gist of what they mean, of course. After all "Does not contain graphic violence, sexual situations and profanity" doesn't quite have the same ring. Still, "For Children" is a rather demeaning label. No wonder the film industry dropped that and started classifying stuff as "U - Suitable for All Audiences".

One thing I particularly dislike about classifying any kind of material for any kind of target group is that often psychologically excludes anyone not of the said target audience, to the point that they sometimes feel guilty reading it. In fact, it's a private theory of mine that many parents actually do enjoy watching childrens shows and reading childrens books on their own merit. They just wouldn't be caught dead doing so without the kid at hand to explain that they were 'supervising' and 'reading it to them'.

Me, I'm a sucker for children's books, because the majority of them seem to exhibit a lot more originality than stuff "For Adults". I've always believed that creativity can flourish surprisingly well under restrictive circumstances, and when you take away the easiest ways of amusing and audience (Violence, sexual innuendo, etc) creators are forced to explore different routes and find more creative ways of making a story interesting. And when people explore, people tend to end up experimenting more and rehashing old and well-worn concepts less.

Which brings us to my latest Find, Scarecrow:



Scarecrow is a young webcomic, and feels like something in-between a comic and a children's book, and while it has not proceeded very far yet, I already find it a very appealing. The mix of narrative styles and the "children's book" type illustration stands out in a field (No pun intended. I swear!) that seems to be dominated by ASHCB (American Super-Hero Comic Book) style and manga.

While nowhere on the site indicates it's 'for children', the style is very suggestive of that particular target audience. And other than the slight Messianic element to it, I have very little difficulty imagining any parent reading not thinking it would make great reading material to get their kids to start reading more.

I've often wondered why so few of the webcomics online seem to be written with an all-ages, but in particular, younger-ages audience in mind. Count Your Sheep is one, but I can't seem to think of any others. Ok, so webcomics are partially the rebellious progeny of the all-ages friendly newspaper comic, which according to some, nowadays apparently consists of the driest, most humourless stuff that can be found printed on dead trees. And like most rebels, the tendency has always been to push the limits in the opposite direction just because we can.

The question is: just because we can, must we do it all the time? Some things are like Infinite Canvas, where overuse of one often results in it getting old pretty quickly. For me at least, the novelty of webcomic freedom wore off long ago. Ironically, writing a webcomic for kids is probably tantamount to rebelling in the rebellion.

And all I can say to that is: Long live the Rebellion!




Incidentally, if you know of any other comics like the above, the comments section is now there, I'd love to hear of them.

Stopover at Count Your Sheep: Oddly approriate timing...

I'm a humongous Count Your Sheep fan. (Or Sheepheads, as some people call them). I was nuts about CYS back when it started, I'm still nuts about CYS now.

Now though CYS it deals a lot in nostalgic innocence and heart-warming moments, it's also a humour strip. And like most people who make humour strips know very well, it's hard coming up with a funny joke every day. I'm not sure I could do it, I have tremendous respect for those who try.

Humour strips are generally hit-or-miss affairs. Some days you get stuff that's so-and-so, and on other you get stuff that makes you laugh so hard you fall of your chair. CYS is no exception, but Adis has been on a roll lately, I really wanted to point out a couple of noteworthy strips:

Firstly, I really like the artistic experiment Adis tried with the background on this strip. It just works really well.

Secondly, there's last weeks Bruised Purgatory strip, which was responsible for a peal of very hysterical laughter from my room startling everyone in the vicinity. I use that particular phrase a lot myself, so it really strikes a chord. I wonder what people would think if I started using the other alternative? ;)

And then there's today's one-paneller:



With all the feminism talk lately, that was uncanny.

That just about sums it, really. The reason why I like CYS so much is that on a day of madness, it can still make me laugh.

Stopover at Golden: Long Live Shameless Self-Promotion!

I briefly considered announcing the existence of this (no longer) top-secret project on April Fool's Day, but the timing wasn't right and it wouldn't have been much of a joke anyway.

But now that we've finished an iteration, I can finally get to the shameless plug... I've recently had to make an iron-cast pledge not to take up any more comics projects, leading to me having to reject a lot of other stuff I would have loved to try my hand on.

Unfortunately, this vow lasted until Colby Purcell came up with this fun idea of a comic jam of fairy-tale proportions.

Literally.



It's said that seven heads are better than one. When six of those seven heads consist of my favourite webcomic artists:

Colby Purcell of LinT
J. Harper of Feyenne
Zachary Parker of Flatwood
Aja of True Magic
Komiyan of Darken
Andrael of No Rest For The Wicked

How can I say no?!


Now who wants to bet how long my renewed vow to not get involved in any more projects lasts this time around?

28th Leg: Bilaran Wars / Mute

I'm going to do something slightly different today. You see, the current site I am at appears to be a collection of comics by the same creators. Although the site is listed as 'Bilaran Wars', I am much more intrigued by one of the other stories on the site.

Being greedy, I decided to read and review both:



We start off with the title comic:

Comic: Bilaran Wars
By: Jess Calcaben (Art/Story) and David Doub (Writer)

Setting and Elements: Fantasy, Magic
Content Type: Action/Adventure

Art Medium: Digital, Inks, Full-Colour
Art Style: Realistic

Is About: When a half-dead man washes up next to the home of a warrior, the warrior and a few others are dispatched to a faraway kingdom on a scouting mission to find out what happened.

Website: http://www.nightgig.com/subcultured/
Frequency: Unknown
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
The flash portal page isn't bad, and the putting the status of the comic on display is a good touch. Bilaran Wars is listed as 'inactive'. Clicking on it brings me to a page with thumbnails. The repeating blue tiles in the background are a bit tacky and don't really suit the feel of the page.

The art is fully coloured and looks intriguing from thumbnail distance, though.


The Concept:
Staple fantasy action/adventure. From the looks of things, we have a bunch of heroes heading off on a quest. not very original, so it's going to have to depend on execution, this one.


The Art:
The art for Bilaran wars could be succinctly described as 'variable art, good colouring'. The art ranges from 'passable' to 'good' and then to 'deformed', but the colouring stays consistently good throughout. The colourist in particular, shows some impressive understanding of tone and hue, and how to use it to convey mood.

The character-designs are consistent. That is, they are consistently identical for the all male and female characters. The male characters are generally buff, over-muscly and for some reason, endowed with extrordinarily short arms. The female characters are all voluptous, shapely, and run around in thongs or skimpy outfits. Some of them have extra-long ears, but that's about it. As a result I had a very hard time telling the character (especially the male characters) apart.

Oh, and in one instance, we also have a hilarious villain who runs around in a pair of nipple-stickers!

(Ping wonders: "Hmm... if she's shameless enough to run around in nipple stickers, wouldn't she be more comfortable running around topless? Not that there's much difference, you'd think.")

Anyway, no prizes for guessing which sex this comic panders to.

There is some nice background-work in the comic, I especially like the painterly approach the artist has taken.

Towards the end, the art does take on a rather intriguing look. There's something very attractive about it when it finally stops trying to be 'tacky comicbook' and goes for 'classical painting'.


The Writing:
The story opens with a very long and drawn-out fight between an assassin and its quarry. The entire fight literally takes up the whole of the first issue! The whole of the fight is punctuated with some rather tedious narration that apparently aims to sound impressive and profound but unfortunately ends up sounding pompous and awkward instead. Here's an example:

(Panel after panel depicting two men fighting)
The reasons why they fight has long been determined.
There is no right or wrong now.
Only live or die.
The time for doubt of misgivings is long past.
Each combatant is fully commited until the fatal end.
Each man is to blame for their current predicament.
But they are also victims of circumstance.

*Ping winces*

Add to this is the narrator's irritating tendency to narrate exactly what is going on in the panel... I often found myself going: "WTF?!"

I mean, really... If you have a picture of the warrior deftly blocking the throwing knife with his sword, there is really no need to narrate "But the quarry is aware and deftly avoids raining death", is there? Sometimes less is really more.

English is obviously not the creator's first language, and I can understand that the flow of language is therefore not likely to run smooth. Regardless, it does distract from the content of the comic itself, because the dialogue and narration just sound unnatural. The dialogue in particular, doesn't so much sound like people talking, but more of someone regurgitating 'impressive' bits and pieces of stuff you see in corny fantasy movies or books.

The pacing is depressingly slow and the descriptions long-winded. I've already mentioned that the whole of the first issue is a giant fight scene. I am sad to report the rest of the other two issues is not much of an improvement. A huge portion of them are pointless fight-scenes, and the remainder seem to be a series of vaguely interconnected (and choppily-transitioned) stories that I suppose are there to build character and develop the plot (what plot?).

Speaking of characters, I must confess I came away from the entire reading without much impression character-wise. The male characters didn't seem to have much of a personality, and females were distressingly stereotyped and seemed to exist only as a crutch for the men. The only one I found that had any redeeming quality was Aria, and even she got saddled with the depressing women-shop-for-fun stereotype.

The comic stops midway through issue 2, the point at which nothing has really happened yet, and the main characters haven't even left town. The status of the comic is currently listed as 'inactive', so I guess the creators realised their efforts were better off elsewhere.


Problems:

Besides the ones I've already grumbled about?

For some reason, Page 27 kept directing me to page 30, resulting a very confused me until I figured out that it was a error.


Overall:

Though not to my taste, I'd recommend Bilaran Wars for those...

Oh hell... who am I kidding? I hate giving bad reviews, but I don't think I can in good conscience recommend Bilaran Wars to anyone reading my blog. Sorry.

There is some nice art and some excellent colour-work, but the writing was... not very good. I didn't enjoy this much.




Now that we're done with that, let's go on to my second pick on the site: Mute.





Comic: Mute
By: Jess Calcaben

Setting and Elements: Modern-day Phillipines
Content Type: Biographical, Survival

Art Medium: Digital Full-Colour
Art Style: Painted, Stylised

Is About: A life of a mute boy, born of a prostitute and abandoned as a baby.
Website: http://www.nightgig.com/subcultured/
Frequency: Completed Comic
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
The presentation for Mute is plain and simple, and a much greater improvement over the presentation of Bilaran Wars. Again I say. Sometimes less is more indeed.

The Concept:
The story is about about young Filipino mute, who abandoned as a child, is forced to grow up an orphanage and then the streets. The story is narrated first-person, which is ironic as the main character is a mute.

A big thumbs ups for originality.


The Art:
The entire comic is done in a very unique style. I see it more as a series of paintings with text narrating them. No clumsy narration boxes. Not odd-looking speech balloons. In many cases the text becomes part of the art.

The art style is reminds me of the works of Berthe Morisot, whose art style often suggested rather than defined. The art for Mute is somewhat similar, and mirrors what it's supposed to be (the point of view of the mute boy) very powerfully. In situations where things are in sharp focus, the comic reverts to inks and lines. In situations where the boy is light-headed or reminiscing, it switches to the painterly technique again.

I've mentioned the artist's ability with colour. Again it's demonstrated very strongly here. In scenes where the boy strikes out in anger the art takes on a reddish hue, in scenes of despair the colours are bleak and the dreams he has of his idealised mother are all in white. The features in the art are sometimes simplified, and sometimes exaggerated to great effect, resulting in an almost surreal feeling to the whole work.


The Writing:
The story is still told in broken English, and every now and then, grammatical and tense errors pop out. And perhaps because of its context (it's being told first person by a boy whose first language is probably Tagalog and not English), it works brilliantly. In fact I would venture to say it works even better than if the story had been told in flawless english.

The story is very well structured and paced. The characterisation is convincing, the narration heart-wrenching. As the story unfolds, you can feel the filth of the alleyways, the panic of pursuit, the hopelessness of the runaway. You can feel the mute boy's silent longing for a mother he's never known. You can feel his desperation as he fights for his very life against the odds.

It simply pulls you into a very different world from the one you're in. And that ending is just staggering.


Overall:
As I write this, I can barely believe that this comic is done by the same person... or at least, one of the same people who did Bilaran Wars.

Because the quality is miles apart.

Bilaran Wars felt like a waste of time on my part. Mute, on the other hand, is an amazing read, very touching and engrossing. In fact, if I may say so, something akin to Justine Shaw's Nowhere Girl.

A Find, what a Find indeed...


The Next Leg:

There are a few little buttons in the links page. Shift didn't seem like something I'd like, so I spotted an old read and picked Stormcorps. Stormcorps was a comic I used to read, but stopped when I lost my previous booksmarks. It should be interesting to see what it's gotten up to since a year ago!

Stopover at Fallen Angels Used Books: Making sure you know it's there

Back in my early Keenspace days, (HA! Look at the way I just said that. As if I'm not still very much on Keenspace...)

Erm, like I was saying, back in my early Keenspace days, new comics came in batches as signups were approved in batches. Add to the fact that signups had been disabled for months and we were on a very long waiting list, it made for a very large batch of comics. Now to get to the point, I was from the (around) June 2003 batch, and among my batch were several comics, but the ones I remember the most clearly are Adrian Ramos' Count Your Sheep and John Fortman's Fallen Angels Used Books.

The latter is what I want to talk about today.



This is the first page of Fallen Angels Used Books. I knew of John's work from his presence in forums, but on actually checking it out, I was incredibly impressed, blown away, and even (only now will I admit this) envious of his ability. The first issue of Fallen Angel Used Books was as ideal a beginning as anyone could hope for, and everything simply promised so much more.

Almost two years down the road now and seven issues later, rereading the archives of FAUB I see lot of things I missed the first time around. I'd thought this was a simple story about prejudice and conflict. As it turns out, there is a lot lot more. This is a very complex story, deceptively straightforward at first, then everything simply gets wierder and wierder.

More than anything, FAUB is a webcomic that makes you feel like you're reading a storybook, not a comic. Even the distinctive art style serves to enhance the urban fairy tale feel. It meanders and takes its own sweet time at telling the story. You feel like you're sitting by a fireside listening to the storyteller spin his tale. For a moment... perhaps a brief moment, you forget yourself and world beyond your computer screen.

The only problem with these kind of stories is that you tend to stay where you are until the story is finished, afraid that if you move you will break the spell. For an ongoing webcomic this is a bad thing, because the story is one of those that needs to be told in entiriety to have an effect on the reader, enough for that reader to go and recommend it to someone else. And as far as I can tell, this story still has a long way to go.

There was a snark not too long ago on websnark where Wednesday White debated whether links and connections are everything. I remember there were some lively comments to that post, in which I mentioned the direct opposite to that school of thought:

People who think if they slave away and produce good work, people will magically find out about their good work, even if said good work is never shown to anyone or displayed outside of the studio and they never tell anyone about it. Then they whine about how it's not fair someone less skilled gets accliam when they can do better. (Well duh!)

Which eventually got distilled down to:

They can't care if they don't bloody know it's there

John's been chafing at the slow growth of FAUB lately. So for the record, this is me making sure a few more people know it's there.

ps: For those interested, here is a guest cover I did for issue 4 of FAUB.

Stopover at Shivae: A gem hiding in plain sight!

I was surfing around Onlinecomics.net recently, trying to think of an idea for my next Comixpedia column, when I caught the sight of an intriguing thumbnail in one of the sponsor links.

So I clicked it, and pretty much found a gem of a webcomic I'd missed.

Remember me mentioning something about comics that hook you from the first few pages? Add Shivae to the list.

This comic is one of the rare ones that do not have any humans in the cast. It's also one of the rarer fantasy webcomics that do not borrow from Tolkien, and has its own original world. Lastly, it's also one of those comics where there are protagonists and antagonists, not good guys and bad guys. Shades of grey.

All those score a lot of points in my book.

Add to the delicious colouring work, the pretty art and the charming storytelling, you have something I really and highly recommend.

I'm sorry to say though, after the first few pages, I noticed the Keenspot banner on the top and my first reaction was: "Huh? It's on Keenspot?"

Now, before you wonder why, I mean no belittling of Keenspot by this... I'm just surprised that it is in Keenspot, that's all. Not because I don't think it deserves it (it certainly does, it's an excellent comic). No, I'm surprised because I read a lot of Keenspot comics, and for some reason I somehow missed knowing about a comic that I wish I had found much much earlier.

The archives indicate it's been there for a long time, and it's apparently done by the same person who does Alien Dice. Admitedly, I don't read Alien Dice, but I've been following Keenspot comics since what... 2000? And I could have sworn I've gone over the listing in main page many times, and although I don't read all of them I thought I knew the Keenspot lineup. Yet somehow... I missed seeing this comic among the lot.

In fact, if it wasn't for Onlinecomics.net's thumbnail system, I may never had stumbled across this gem hiding in plain sight. And somehow that disturbs me that I found it from a webcomics directory instead of the Keenspot site.

If anyone from Keenspot is reading this, I have a suggestion: You know, the mouseover thing on the Keenspot front page is all very cool and all, but how about and extra page with just simple thumbnail links where you can see all of the comics lineup at once? It's not that hard to do, you don't have to even replace the front page, but I think it'd be more effective. Pretty please? Of course, if something like this already exists, and I missed it, please do direct me to it, someone.

But anyway, just goes to show, no matter how many times you look at something, and how much you think you know about it, you can never quite see the whole of it.

It does make me wonder... How many more comics are there out there that I will love and would dump my current read list for instead that I just haven't found?

Argh, like Gianna says: So many comics, so little time...

Stopover at The Noob: Arsemode Rulez!

Because it does!



This is such a bit of obscure gaming humour, but even if the last MMORPG I played was years ago, I'm pretty sure if there was an exploit like that, there'd be people who were willing to look stupid if they could have an advantage.

And the sight of all those players prancing around with their hands on their arses... Ouch, ouch, ouch! I laughed so hard that it hurt.

Gianna, how do you come up with this stuff, woman?

Stopover at LinT: Unabashedly having Fun!

On a personal level, I can thank How Not To Run A Comic for many things. A surprising amount of educational fun, Adam, Srdjan, and me being branded the webcomic nazis of Keenspace (kidding!), and my occasional guilt trip for not being able to give HNTRAC as much attention as I should. (Adam, if I haven't said it before, you're a rock for doing most of the work! Thank you!) And to add to that, I think some of you may be thankful to it for the number of bad comics it potentially deterred from starting. I've been most surprised at the number of people who have candidly admitted they abandoned their ideas for starting a Megatokyo or Real Life webcomic clone after reading HNTRAC.

For the intents and purposes of this stopover however, I'm thankful to HNTRAC for introducing me to LinT by Colby Purcell. Sometimes, even in guest or parody strips, you can tell that you already will like the comic that person creates.

There are a lot of webcomics on my daily reads that I read for various reasons. Some I read out of habit. Some I read for the story. Some for the art. And some I read because they're just so much fun.


This is the panel that had me falling off the bed laughing. I think the cream of the joke here is that it's being told with such a straight face. Note the banana in Xylic's hand..

For pure unabashed fun and comedic gold, LinT probably comes the closest to dishing out that brand of irreverent humour I loved in Elf Only Inn (Sortelli, Sortelli... Wherefore art thou, Sortelli?).

The story is a madcap parody of the usual fantasy cliche of a motley bunch of heroes on a quest to save the kingdom from the threat of an evil overlord...blah blah you know. In this case however, we quickly realise that the quest is barely of any significance (A McGuffin, if you prefer).

The whole point of this comic is just to have fun following the misadventures of the Sangwine's Merry Little Band and their rivalry with the other band of 'heroes'. When you throw a pansy elf, a sock-stealing thief, and irritable empath, an amiable orc and a midget dwarf. (Yeah you heard me correctly... midget dwarf) together, things are bound to be interesting.

And boy it is! I won't spoil any of the stories or jokes by repeating them, but I will say it was this page when I realised how much I liked this comic.

The art, while starting out a bit rough (sketchy pencils and some use of cut-and-paste) rapidly smoothed out and the recent colour strips now look nothing short of yummy. I especially love the covers of each chapter (which are based on classic paintings, I think), I hope Colby keeps drawing them!

In short, while the main reason why LinT ranks so high on my favourite webcomics list is because it's so infectiously funny, the other is that it's also fun. There's no agenda to reach one gadzillion readers, no 'I'm going to make the Keenspot lineup by year so-and-so', no 'I want to make this work so I can quit my dead-end job and go full time'.

Just the pure intent of creating a webcomic to enjoy, and for people to enjoy.



Goodness knows, we really could use more of that nowadays.

Stopover at Darken: Possibly the Lovechild of Zebra Girl and College Roomies From Hell?

My stopovers seem to be reading like "I Read Keenspace So You Don't Have To!" lately, but hey... that's what this blog is here for. Finding the more obscure (but still all goodness) stuff.

I came across this one via our previous stopvers (Nahast, if you recall). They had an amusing end-of-year crossover that was actually good (As opposed to the done-to-death A meet B, fight erupts between A and B, A and B call a truce and then join forces to whop the ass of C etc.). Anyway, it piqued my interest.



I must say, the art for Darken is deliciously distinctive. The closest I can come to describing it is what I have written in the stopover title: a cross between Maritza Campos' College Roomies From Hell (art style and colour) and Joe England's Zebra Girl (Use of crosshatching). Yummy I say!

Oh yes, I should tell you what kind of comic it is. It's basically action-adventure set in a fantasy world. Yes there are elves and drow and all that... and it IS about a motley band of adventurers on a quest.

"What's this?" You say? "Weren't you groaning about how unoriginal and cliched that set-up was a few posts ago?"

"Hah!" I reply. "But there's a twist here! You see, our motley band of adventurers are on a quest to... wait for it...

TAKE OVER THE WORLD!.

And presumably enslave the population and all that. And kill lots of things on the way."

Try beating that for a twist!

It makes me fall in love with the fantasy 'genre' all over again.

Stopover at Nahast: So good that I keep visiting the website and refreshing the page!

I remember my first fanmail.

Some of you who have webcomics may hate me for it, but it arrived barely a day or two right after I started The Jaded on... wait for it... my Onetel ISP webspace. I lost the mail long ago due to computer death, but one line in that mail has always remained in my head:

"I like the comic so much I keep visiting the website and refreshing the page, hoping for an early update."

While this may sound like hyperbole to some of you, let me assure you it really happens to people.

Me, for instance. I read a lot of comics, and some I like straight away, some I dislike at first but grow me on as time passes and some I initially like but get disenchanted with after a while.

And sometimes... very rarely... but sometimes, I run into a webcomic that I like so much that when it makes me do what the quote mentions: Keep going back to the site and refreshing the page.

It's sad, I know, but hey... don't any of you dare tell me you haven't ever felt the same way about something at one point in your lives!

Anyway, this happened to me yesterday... The comic that did it?

Nahast: The Lands of Strife


With a line like that, he pretty much had me hooked from first look. Generally I'm not a big fan of fantasy comics that are derivatives of Tolkien (That includes the DnD derivatives), but this just takes the concept and it doesn't just run with it... it soars like a Skrii'qek through the skies of Beldatz!

Alejandro, I'm sorry, but if you noticed an unsual spike in your pageviews yesterday... but yeah, that was me. *shamefaced*


ps: And here something cool... fellow webcomics bloggers Daku and Zampzon are doing something of an Internet Webcomics Talkshow/Podcast. I love the idea and definitely will be listening in every week! (And by some curious coincidence, it covers 4 webcomics I happen to read, and even mentions Keenspace at the end!) Oh and while you're at it, don't forget to check out the rest of the blog!

ps again: I'm almost three thirds of the way through Dinosaur Comics! Yay me!

Stopover at Digger: Oh my Ganesh...

I hate pigeons. They stalk my kitchen window, and if the window is open anything bigger than a crack, they sneak in the moment I turn my back. After they've wrecked the loaf of bread or my home-baked cookies (SACRILEGE!) or whatever food's around, they leave unwanted offerings on the table and floor that require me and my flatmates disinfecting the kitchen afterwards.

In short, they're rats with wings.

Except that I've never seen the inverse called a pigeon... until now.



(Actually, I don't think I've ever seen the inverse either, now when I come to think of it... heh)

But the CUTE! First oracular slugs and now winged temple-rats... what wonders will that woman unleash next?

One thing's for sure: if Ursula Vernon makes a shirt out of that, I know where my next Graphic Smash paycheck is going...