Category Archives: 3 Stars

The Webcomic Overlook #202: Scenes From A Multiverse

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Nestled among the sands of the American Southwest lies a city where fortunes are lost under a kaleidoscope of gaudy lights: Las Vegas. There, last week, old men and some old women gathered at the Green Valley Resort to hand out awards named after a quick-witted man who spent his time drawing impossible machines. It’s tradition that dated back to 1946, when a group of cartoonists banded together to entertain the troops. They were here at the resort to hold a black-tie banquet evening to recognize excellence in cartooning. The past honorees are legend: Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Alex Raymond, Charles Schulz, Chester Gould, and Hal Foster, to name a few.

This year, however, an award would be given, for a the first time, to a comic that had been published entirely online. Two of the nominees had readerships in the millions: Penny Arcade, founded by two smartasses from Seattle who had parlayed their success into a larger media empire; and The Oatmeal, created by another Seattle cartoonist who successfully made a profit through poster reprints.

The third was by a guy from New York who had toiled in the webcomic world but had not met the same amount of success. He’d put together two webcomics previous to this one: one that was semi-autobiographical, and another with the unpronounceable name of megaGAMERZ 3133T. This one probably had the oddest concept: a series of small vignettes with few recurring characters set across different settings, which were located in separate universes.

That comic would be the eventual winner of the first Reuben Award for an Online Strip: Jon Rosenberg’s Scenes From A Multiverse. (Gary Tyrell, a judge at the Reubens, posted a first-hand account of the events here.)

It was a boon to Mr. Rosenberg. I looked at the Project Wonderful stats right after a win, and pageviews were up from a typical 24K to a very respectable 120K. To be fair, though, a lot of that new readership arrived from a gracious link posted at Penny Arcade, where Mike Krahulik praised Mr. Rosenberg for being “a great guy and talented cartoonist.”

I think it deservedly won, a point on which I’ll elaborate later.

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One Punch Reviews #62: Life In Aggro

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It’s probably a sign that I’m getting increasingly out of touch with the gaming crowd, but I’m not entirely sure what “aggro” means. The last time I heard that term used in the context of games was in Midnight Club 3. If you were driving a truck or a luxury vehicle, you could fill up a meter depending on how many times you ended up rear ending other vehicles. When the meter filled up, you could activate a mode called “Aggro,” which let you plow through heavy traffic without taking any damage at all. It’s especially useful if you needed to both smash through to the finish line and also to scatter crashed cars in an opponent’s their path.

It was, suffice to say, absolutely ridiculous. I mean, how does that mechanic work when translated to real life? The more damage you take, the more you’re likely to plow over other vehicles? It makes a little bit of sense when applied to a human being; the idea is you’re sick and tired of being a victim, so you reach for that last bit of adrenaline rush to lay the smack down on your opponent. But how does that work when you’re driving a car? Does the car suddenly get an adrenaline boost? And how is it all of the sudden invincible? Is the car suddenly equipped with a force field generator?

Anyway, my meager understanding of the term leads me to believe that “aggro” refers to plowing things down with reckless abandon. If that’s true, I a little perplexed by the title of Casey Vasquez and Fei Hsiao’s Life in Aggro, a webcomic about … you guessed it … video games. The comic stand-ins for the two — Bear and Pie — seem to be chill for the most part, and I can’t see either of them getting into a Cadillac Escalade to tear up interstates in the greater Los Angeles area.

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One Punch Reviews #59: Smashing Avatar

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Man, you know what I haven’t done in a while? A review of a webcomic about video gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..

…

Whoa. Sorry about that. I think I passed out for a moment there. Anyway, you know what the world needs more of? Webcomics about geeks. Geeks and their geeky lives. And video games. Ryan Huertas and Mike Karell, the creators of Smashing Avatar, certainly created one of those comics.

Now, before we get into the review proper, I’ve got to put a question out there. Look at the sample strip I posted below. Does this look familiar to you? Like, maybe we’ve seen this webcomic before? There’s two gamers… a couch… even the hair looks sorta familiar….

It looks a lot like…

It looks A LOT like …..

Oh, right. Oglaf. This comic looks like Oglaf.

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One Punch Reviews #58: Nerd Rage

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Man, if nerds are known for one thing it’s … not … being … able … to shut … the hell … up. Seriously, man, check out some of the comments posted this AV Club review of the game Borderlands. You’d think that, by not liking a video game, someone just insulted their religion. I’m sure pretty much the rest of you can come up with your own examples… including, um, several reviews posted on this very site.

Heh.

So it’s time to channel that apoplectic manchild within, because today we take a look at a comic about nerds, rage, and the consequences thereof. It’s Andy Kluthe’s webcomic, Nerd Rage, where nerds are more ragin’ than Cajuns.

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The Webcomic Overlook #192: 2D Goggles

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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.

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The Webcomic Overlook #187: Clandestinauts

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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.


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