Ladies and gentlemen of the webcomic reading society, we live in cynical times. What’s up is down. What’s left is right. Boys are becoming men. Men are becoming wolves. It’s in an uncertain world like ours that you have to sit down and ask yourself, “What would Gronk do?”
Through its relatively short lifespan as a genre, webcomics have proved they can do things just as good as any other form of media can. They can make you laugh. They can make you cry. They can make you poo your pants when you get a surprise animation of a creepy anime zombie girl. They can make you find the goodness in humanity through the flooded streets of New Orleans, and they can make you feel the frustration of trying to find a loved one in Iran.
And, yes, webcomics can teach. Moreso, I suspect, than conventional print comics can. There are a lot of webcomic creators out there — such as Kate Beaton and Randall Munroe — that actually respect the intelligence of their readers. They’ll give you a set up using an obscure historical figure or an advanced calculus mathematical equation and trust that you’ll laugh even if you don’t get it at first, and that you’ll do more research if the subject piqued your interest.
Take, for example, Sydney Padua’s 2D Goggles (subtitled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage), a webcomic about two historical characters that I hadn’t thought about since my high school BASIC programming class.
It sometimes astounds me how many posts I’ve devoted to webcomics. It’s, like, more than “a lot” and just short of “a buttload.” The peril, at this point, is that sometimes you run the risk of saying the exact same thing about one webcomic that you said about another webcomic. Repeating myself is perhaps my second greatest fear in the world.
The first is my mom’s dog, Cinnamon.
Curse that Japanese Chin his sharp, pointy fangs. Why am I the only person he ever seems to bite?
So when I sat down to write about Tim Sievert’s Clandestinauts (a webcomic that I chose to read primarily because I am a big fan of the world “clandestine” — seriously, when I was a kid, I even created a superhero with that name), I was set to write, “Well, as much as I like the art, I wasn’t too big a fan of the story.” Then I thought to myself, “Wait. Didn’t I write that once? Like, at least five times before?”
If I had the time or inclination, I could probably track down all instances I expressed the exact same sentiment. I’m pretty sure I said the same thing about, say, What Birds Know. But life is short, and plan on spending my free time owning noobs on iPad/iPhone game Valor later, so let’s just say that I’ve said it a lot.
(I’m still on hiatus! However, David Herbert was kind enough to do a review while I’m away. In this review, he tackles previously reviewed webcomic So… You’re A Cartoonist? with a different take than mine. It’s time to get hit up with … a second opinion.)
When I first got into webcomics, I tended to gravitate towards comics that were somewhat based in the author’s real life. So when I found this comic by Tom Preston, or Andrew Dobson, it seemed like something that would interest me, not just because I like diary comics, but also because this is about being someone who makes comics and their own tales of doing what they love.
Basically it’s my comic, Living with Insanity, except the writer can draw and it doesn’t devolve into insane nonsense.
However, one of the first things you’ll notice is that the title doesn’t really work until nearly 18 pages in, where being a cartoonist becomes the main focus. Up until then, it’s about being bullied as a kid, watching shows with his girlfriend and stuff his roommate did in college.
There was a short lived TV series back in the 1970′s called Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. It was created by Sid and Marty Krofft, those crazy puppeteers who made bizarre, psychedelic shows which tread the line between fantastic and nightmare-inducing. They’re likely lost to younger Webcomic Overlook readers these days: H. R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Land of the Lost. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was supposed to be a callback to the much more famous 1960′s Batman series. They wore spandex, rode around in Electri-Car before the Nissan Leaf made it cool again, and fought villains with names like Empress of Evil and Glitter Rock… who, frankly, sound like they should be opening for KISS.
If you could sum up the seventies in the span of one minute, you can’t get more accurate than the show’s opening sequence:
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was never really that popular, and it lasted all of 16 episodes.
And yet … in 2001, some genius decided that it was ready for a reboot. Seriously. And it was as stereotypically 1990′s comic book reboot as you can get. Electra Woman (played by Night Court’s Markie Post) was a washed-up, drunk, divorced superheroine who was brought back into action by an all new Dyna Girl. Now, admittedly this sounds like a pretty terrible concept. However, it’s pretty remarkable when you consider that a) this was a year before Spider-Man officially kicked off the decade when superhero movies dominated the box offices, and b) a full three years before The Incredibles, which rode a very similar premise to boffo returns. (To be fair, though, the whole “washed up superhero” trope had already been done with Watchmen.)
There’s also a webcomic entitled Dynagirl, written by Cary Kelley and illustrated by Harold Edge… and … it’s not that same Dyna Girl created by Sid and Marty Krofft.
Or … is she?
Because, despite the fact that she’s sporting hot pants rather than spandex, Dyna Girl follows what sounds like a very similar story arc as the one Markie Post did in the 2001 reboot.
Chris Sims is one of the top writers at Comics Alliance. His style is enthusiastic, winsome, and often adorable. He’s referred to as the Batmanologist, since he’s many pertinent questions about the Caped Crusader, such as, “If Batman dies, which two superheroes would Batman select as dads for Robin?” He’s also probably a Punisherologist, since he unabashedly admits that he’s read every single Punisher comic published, including that one where he rented out a jet ski.
Along with writer Chad Bowers, artist Matt Digges, and letter Josh Krach, Mr. Sims also co-writes a webcomic entitled Awesome Hospital. It stars a doctor who is also a guy who rides a dirtbike. That’s right: the whole “doctor who is also something much cooler in the eyes of an excitable 7-year-old boy” pioneered by Dr. McNinja is now officially a genre (subset of General Category: Manchild Webcomics).
Having read my share of Scandinavian comics, I’ve come to the conclusion that the folks up North are way more comfortable with nudity than my relatively South East Asian upbringing. That seems topsy turvy to me somehow. My heritage is from an equatorial nationality, and my ancestors lived on a waterfront fishing community. Shouldn’t people who live on a tropical island be the ones more comfortable with running around in the buff, not those pasty white people who hail from the land of ice and show?
Apparently not, as Denmark’s Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler’s webcomic Wulffmorgenthaler can attest. (All links here are assumed NSFW.) It received a one month run in the Politiken national newspaper, got adapted on Danish channel DR2, and became the subject of animated shorts broadcast on MTV Europe.
And yes, at least in the earlier strips, nudity is a matter of fact. People in the comic walk around with no clothes on, sometimes for reasons that escape me. One that really baffles me is a couple that’s naked while robbing banks. How does that help? Wouldn’t running around starkers leave DNA everywhere for police to collect? And how does being naked have to do with the punchline, which is “Women be shopping”?
