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.

Scenes From A Multiverse takes place in different places and setting across different universes. Theoretically, this means a mix of different settings and locations, with hosts of alien worlds to explore. New worlds and civilizations! Boldly going where no man has gone before! I’m enough of a Star Trek fan to be pretty giddy over the concept.

In the end though, it really could have just taken place in the same world. The aliens, for the most part, looks very similar to each other. They all look vaguely sci-fi, and all the aliens bear pretty much the same round faces with bulgy eyes. (There are a couple of anthropomorphic creatures, but they seem to be exceptions.) It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to image all of them co-existing on the same planet and the same timeline. We spend very little time at one particular location, anyway. Scenes From A Multiverse rotates the settings at a blistering pace. For the most part, you’re at another universe in the very next strip, so you can’t get hung up at any one particular spot (which, for the most part, looks like Earth but with different colors).

Much of Scenes From A Multiverse devolves to talking heads, anyway, and everyone — from a crazy homeless guy to a lawyer to guys impaled on spikes — tends to sound the same after a while.

I suppose it could all be allegorical. The Multiverse could act as a symbolic stand-in for the world, and the sameness of the difference universes parallels how all cultures are gravitating toward the same monoculture.

I think.

The comic’s main gag is to point out the absurdities in life by ramping up the silliness. This is done mainly by spinning the dialogue through goofy little tangents. For example, here’s one vignette where two characters muse over the latest killer app. One character goes on a long monologue:

Forget those other networks. Suprbook Plus is the real thing! Look a the granularity of control you have. You can block unwanted messages. Mute hundreds of people with a single click. Filter annoying friends into hidden buckets. And it’s so new, your parents haven’t even heard of it yet. With Suprbook Plus, you won’t have to communicate with anyone ever again.

So, long story short, this comic is very prosaic.

Rosenberg uses Scenes From A Multiverse to discuss the social and philosophical issues that we used to BS about in our college dorm lounges. (Or, I imagine that’s how the stereotype goes. Realistically, we used our dorm lounge mainly to catch the latest episodes of that X-Men cartoon.) He touches on navel-gazing topics like the nature of reality, intelligence, and self-awareness… namely how you can be over-analytical to a fault.

A favorite target of Scenes From A Multiverse is religion. Rosenberg is a staunch atheist. A good number of comics taking shots at religion, specifically Christianity. You can expect to see a lot of jeers aimed at religion, such as referring to a holy text as a “magic book“.

Rosenberg upfront admits that he’s not the sort of person who respects others’ beliefs, as elaborated in the blog post accompanying this comic: “Why do people assume that their beliefs should be respected by people who don’t share them? I know people who believe shit that makes Winnie the Pooh look like a nature documentary. They do not need additional encouragement.” This is quite possibly because the whole “Love thy neighbor” thing came from the mouth of a magical caveman wizard or whatever.

As a result, Scenes From A Multiverse can come off as a little smug and condescending. Part of me does genuinely admire the testicular fortitude on display here, proudly brazen as it is. Another part of me, though, finds it a little tedious. I’m tempted to repost a link to that reliable Shmorky comic distilling the familiar pattern of most politically-minded webcomics.

Historically, Scenes From A Multiverse seems to follow in the footsteps of Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County. There are plenty of parallels. Ridiculous circumstances are seen for what they are when they are filtered through silly-looking characters. There’s a general air of academia mixed with absurdity. Characters are known for spouting bizarre nonsequiturs. (Opus, for example, hit superstardom when he first misinterpreted a Hare Krishna pledge as, “Pear pimples for hairy fishnuts!”) Both try to stay contemporary with pop culture. Where Bloom County made fun of Star Trek, Garfield, and Disney, Scenes From A Multiverse parodies of Dr. Who, House, and Castle. There’s a very good reason this comic was chosen as the first Reuben Award winner. Of the three nominees, this one was closest in spirit to the comics represent some of the finest the newspaper medium had to offer. Penny Arcade got where it is thanks to a loyal, previously underrepresented geek niche; The Oatmeal got to where it was mainly through social networking. Scenes From A Multiverse, on the other hand, is a true descendant from the lineage of Bloom County, Pogo, and Doonesbury.

However, there’s a big difference between Scenes From A Multiverse and, say, Bloom County. Bloom County could be frequently humorous, even divorced from its political and social commentary. Scenes From A Multiverse is … well … it’s … kinda boring.

One thing that I think hurts Scenes From A Multiverse is the lack of any real characters. There’s no interaction between any of the few recurring characters between universes, and we get to spend so little time with them anyway to get any sense of characterization. It’s probably by design. After all, if any of the characters developed a personality beyond, say, “totally wrong” or “totally right,” then the reader might develop something not unlike sympathy. That can’t happen! If you started actually liking any of these creatures, then hurling polemics at them would suddenly seem cruel and unneighborly.

But that also robs the strip of any character-derived humor. Something that was present in Bloom County, for instance. Like Opus being the naive optimist, or Steve Dallas being a sleazy yet likable womanizer. Their character development tied directly into the larger political and social points that Breathed was making.

Still, Scenes From A Multiverse tries really very hard to make you laugh. Rosenberg’s simple style, where characters all tend to look like mudpuppies, tends to be cute. So, robbed of any characterization, the comic aims for the lowest common denominator of all.

No, not puns. I’m talking internet humor.

How about gags where cute things are gross, messy, or murderous! It worked for Happy Tree Friends! So there’s this one strip where there’s a nonsequitur where a large piece of popcorn shows up out of no where. “I’m popcorn!” he says, showing that he’s a bad widdle boy. Upon reading that, I sorta sighed and said to myself, “This is on a T-shirt, isn’t it?” It was.

I’m not going to fault Mr. Rosenberg for making money off of shirt sales. Heaven Rotting in the ground knows that monetizing your comic is tough business. But that’s what most of the gags feel like: the cutesy, out-of-place “LOL RANDOM” stuff that’s currently infesting webcomic-themed shirts. There’s a joke about the economy that ends with a newscast that includes the caption “OMG HATS“. Characters will spout catchphrase-worthy lines from out of nowhere, like “Entities be crazy delicious.” There’s mention of something called a “funstinguisher“. And yes, just in case you were wondering, there’s a reference to a “knife dildo ninja squad“.

This kind of humor can work. It does work at times for more thematically compatible. Something that’s a pure catchphrase generator. Something like, say, The Oatmeal. In Scenes From A Multiverse, it’s all so obvious, and as a result its ill-fitting. Absurd gags demand spontaneity, and that’s very hard to pull off in a wordy comic like this one. It’s like being at a lecture hall with a very dry professor who, at some point in his lecture, tries to describe this great LOLCATS that he came across. It’s awkward, it’s weird, and at best it gets a courtesy giggle.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

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.

Life In Aggro is a videogame webcomic, dealing mostly with snark on Japanese games and Japanese gaming companies. So, mainly stuff that would find releases on the Nintendo Wii or the DS. This is a two-edged sword. It’s sort of a godsend for guys like me who have spent the last month avoiding Mass Effect 3 spoilers like the dickens. On the other hand, there are plenty of times that I have no idea what these two are talking about. But, hey, that’s half the fun of trying to decipher video game comics, eh?

Ms. Hsaio’s art style draws influence from children’s anime. Bear and Pie look like the sort of characters that should be teaming up with Ash Ketchum to fight Team Rocket’s latest scheme to kidnap Pikachu. The art is fresh, colorful, and, above all, cute. It works with the couple’s comedy sensibilities, which are generally goofier than their gaming comic compatriots. If you’re looking for a comic about Metroid Beach Volleyball where Samus is in ball form the entire time, then look no further: this is the comic for you. Ever wanted a comic featuring the Chrono Trigger guys where the robot eats cake? Here it is.. Can you make an adorable Portal comic without resorting to the Companion Cube? Yes. If you’re looking for a comic where Solid Snake grows characters as body parts… okay, that’s kinda weird, but it’s still cute, darn it.

The style tends to throw you off, though, when the two toss off a joke that tends to run a little blue. The gags about tampons, for example. You’re like, “La la la, ooh a comic about Professor Layton, la la la”, and then, all of the sudden … a bloody tampon. I guess there’s a bit of a double standard going on here. I mean, the Penny Arcade guys and VG Cats gets away with things worse than this. Still, these kinds of jokes seem out of place where everything is so jolly. Looking at it another way, though, I suppose there’s room for jokes about feminine hygiene products in a genre typically dominated by punchlines about male genitalia and bathroom humor.

Besides, for all the stuff that goes over my head, I can’t deny that these two have a fairly original sense of humor. I’ve seen many webcomics talk about Street Fighter, but few ever comment about how Sakura is probably too old to be wearing her trademark schoolgirl outfit. Perhaps it’s not the most gut-busting joke in the world, but it’s original, at least.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

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.

Yessirree, folks, if video game humor is what you’re looking for, you might find it in Smashing Avatar. There’s humor about playing games (which, thanks to Kinect and Wii and that ball-thing PS3 has, offers more visual options than two guys sitting on a couch these days). There’s parodies about games like the one goofing on the kuh-razy game mechanics that lets Link sleep in stranger’s houses. You know the drill.

But, you know, life isn’t all about games. We get some stuff about life, relationships, and man talk… well, geeky man talk. But strip away some of the geekiness, and it’s more or less a Tim Allen routine. Heh, men… they never ask for directions, do they? Augh, augh, augh, augh!

To their credit, Huertas and Karell don’t exactly try to hide which comic inspired them. They mention no less than three times who their influences are. Smashing Avatar hews very close to the same template: similar art, similar jokes. Only, to their detriment, the jokes just aren’t as good.

That comic where the brown-haired fella seethes in rage how the 3DS is adding peripherals. He goes on to whine about how adding the feature is like adding a cupholder and a pirate flag and an “external external thumbstick.” It’s the closest the comic comes to featuring someone in the throes of utter anger. And yet, the expression and the punchline just feels so … neutered. Part of it is the lack of facial expressions and body language. Panel two shows the character slamming his hand against his fist, indicating how upset he is, and yet he’s so blank that he could be complaining about anything. Maybe someone stole his bagged lunch? Or maybe he lost all his money in the stock market? The last panel, too, is rather predictable. Want to know how many webcomics I’ve read where the punchline is a wacky, exaggerated over-the-top example at the end? Too many.

Compare that with a recent Penny Arcade where Gabe expresses his distress over enjoying Downton Abbey. Gabe goes through a range of crazy, fantastically exaggerated expressions before coming the conclusion that liking manor house intrigues will lead him to embracing political causes like Darfur. It’s a punchline that feels both natural and fresh at the same time.

Now, Smashing Avatar isn’t the only webcomic influenced by Penny Arcade. There are a lot that I like: Fanboys, GG Guys, and Virtual Shackles, for example. While starting off with a similar template (geek life, two protagonists, vidya gaems, yadda yadda yadda), each branched off in a different route and forged their own unique sensibilities in artistic style and humor. While Smashing Avatar is not terrible, per se, it’s so similar to its inspiration that you can’t help but make comparisons. Sadly, it comes off an inferior, Chinese-knockoff. Reading Smashing Avatar, all I could think was, “Man, why am I reading this and not Penny Arcade?”

And I’m not even that huge a fan of Penny Arcade.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

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.

It’s a gaming webcomic, so you know the drill. There’s a lot of parody material, like that old webcomic stand-by Mario (who at this point is probably more a webcomic character than a video game character) and Samus making wacky faces in a gag I don’t entirely get. Still, I like that rage face.

Most of the comic, though, stars two nerds: fat nerd and skinny nerd. I’m pretty sure they have names… the fat one refers to the skinny one as “dude” a lot … but given that the “Characters” link is inactive I’m not going to kill myself trying to find it. They could be named “Lethan” and “Ucas” for all I know. Fat nerd is the mellow voice of reason. Skinny nerd, on the other hand, is just so very mad.

How mad? Well, we open the comic with him ranting about how the new Alien movie is going to be a prequel! Oh, the indignity! Fat nerd tries to calm him down, reminding him that the last two Alien films were pretty terrible. Skinny nerd says anything after 1991 is dead to him. “So you haven’t ween Alien vs. Predator?” fat nerd asks.

After a few beats, skinny nerd replies, “I mistook it for a new series about Chris Hansen catching illegal immigrants.” Oh! Shut the front door! ‘Cuz Jay leno’s all up in this piece! He then goes on to complain how the Alien prequel is going to have Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar Binks in ‘em, because… prequels. Amirite?

So strip after strip is basically Angry, Skinny Nerd getting angry over something, as nerds are prone to do. In one arc, Skinny Nerd gets angry about girls in the comic store. Why? Because they are total posers. And then gets angry that the one who isn’t a poser reads Deadpool.

I’m going to give Mr. Kluthe some credit here and say that he doesn’t necessarily share the views of Skinny Nerd, who’s more a parody of unpleasant, argumentative dweebs than anything. You know, the kind who are more bark than bite, and who’d be a lot happier if he’d just let things go once in a while.

The thing that saves Skinny Nerd from becoming another Rayne Summers is that his rage-filled pop-culture obsession generally does make his life seem pretty miserable and pathetic. I liked a recent Valentine’s Day theme strip where our Skinny Nerd is so hung up on Harvest Moon that he tries to win the heart of a girl by bringing her fruit. I admit, I smiled. Quite a few of the gags in Nerd Rage are actually rather funny.

Still, you do have to read through many strips with an indignant, self-righteous nerd. Even if he’s intentionally played for laughs, having to sit through strip after strip of a guy who hates everything can get pretty old.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to respond to a totally wrong post from a Tom Paris/B’Leanna Torres shipper. Paris/Kes forever, GOD DAMN IT!

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

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?”

Gronk was created by Katie Cook, a professional comic artists who has worked on things for starwars.com, Star Wars Mighty Mugg designs, Star Wars the Clone Wars online comics, an ACME Star Wars Empire Strikes Back fine art print, and the Fraggle Rock comic. She also does a webcomic about an adorable little monster named Gronk. And by monster, I don’t mean that metaphorically as in Lady Gaga fans. I mean an actual monster with green skin and scales and a tail. Fortunately, Gronk is one of those friendly monsters, like Cookie Monster, and not one of those Lovecraftian fanged hell-beasts that spread disease and nightmares, like Elmo.

In fact, Gronk is almost too adorable. Like, look at this scene where Gronk cradles a stuffed animal after it’s been ripped apart. Aww, wook at that poow monstew. Dontcha wanna give hew a hug? Gronk chases after kitties, uses supercute phrases like “I had to make a boom boom,” and generally gets involved in After School Specials. And there’s lots of hugging. And hearts floating around everywhere. Which sorta makes Gronk a modern day Family Circus.

After Gronk runs away from her monstrous relatives, she gets adopted by Dale Wilco. Dale is a young woman who live in Middle of Nowhere, British Columbia, which conveniently sequester her from prying eyes who might be wondering why her green-skinned kid is running around naked. She also has a big fluffy dog and a cute little cat, because this webcomic just was not cute enough. Katie Cook Dale is also a big ol’ nerd. She raises Gronk through the power of pop culture. There are plenty of references to Harry Potter, Star Wars, Batman, and Star Trek. Which is… um… (darn it, don’t say cute… don’t say cute… where’s that thesaurus?) … um … pulchritudinous?

Gronk is so darned sweet that prolonged exposure puts you in danger of diabetic shock. It definitely gets far too saccharine for my tastes. Still, its presence is a welcome one. As a whole, webcomics are typically aimed at teens and college students. The humor tends to be cynical and sarcastic. There’s nothing wrong with that: it’s the sort of humor that got me into webcomics in the first place. Gronk, on the other hand, is different. There is not a bad bone in Gronk‘s body.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

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.

The comic centers around the legitimately fascinating figure of Ada Lovelace. Wikipedia tells us that she “was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this she is sometimes considered the ‘World’s First Computer Programmer’.” Well, hot dog!

Adding to the legend is that she was also the daughter of the infamous Lord Byron. You know, the guy who is infamously the origin for the term “Byronic hero”? The kind of guy who, as a former lover described it, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” … and yet cultivates an undeniable aura of bad-boy sexiness at the same time? Honestly, that sounds like a superhero (or supervillain) origin if I ever heard one … only it turns out to be real.

She teams up with the flighty genius Charles Babbage to create the analytical machine, the world’s first computer that runs on giant punch cards. Ms. Padua characterizes them as mad scientists. Despite the gender politics of the Victorian Era, the two are on somewhat equal footing, united by their unique understanding of abstract mathematics. Babbage is a genius, but he retreats into his own personal world of math and equations. Lovelace is more outgoing, but has black moods that mirror those of her infamous father.

Together… they fight crime!

… well, the fight crime as often as the Aqua Teen Hunger Force fought crime. Which is to say, never. Ms. Padua’s blog reveals that this was a one-shot gag that imagined a more exciting future for Ada Lovelace instead of the real life tragedy of her early death at 36. Fans really embraced the idea of action packed of Lovelace and Babbage, and Ms. Padua complied.

The adventures feel like a series of self-contained Looney Tunes episodes with little continuity needed between episodes … or indeed, between even chapter breaks.

To get an idea of the free-for-all-nature of 2D Goggles, let’s take a look at one of the latest stories: Charles Babbage acts on his annoyance over street musicians. In retaliation he develops a harmonic disruptor that creates a destructive interference to destroy the offending instruments.

However, this only causes more problems. The street musicians take marching orders from swingin’ dude named The Organist, who retaliates by turning all of London into a giant instrument and making everyone dance. Meanwhile, Lovelace struggles with her own newly found passion for something completely irrational: poetry.

So you’ve got a healthy irreverent attitude toward historical figures, math and engineering as the basis of smart and clever jokes, and a solid cartoonist doing the artistic chores. It’s set in the visually fascinating of Victorian England. It could probably be described as steampunk, but the most annoying aspects of that genre — the unnecessary addition of flywheels and goggles — seem to at least make sense here. Given my affection for Victorian stuff and my enjoyment cracked historical recollections, 2D Goggles should be the mutt’s nutts! The bees knees! And other British colloquialisms!

And, to my surprise… I’m not 100% on board the 2D Goggles express.

I’m not quite sure why I feel that way. I think I’m a bit thrown off by the juxtaposition of the long from text with the artwork. Much of the humor comes from Lovelace and Babbage are such brainiacs that what passes for scintillating conversation in their circle goes far over the heads of everyone they meet. To accentuate the joke, we usually get long, tortured reams of explanation that show how far away they two are from holding normal conversation, complete with charts and diagrams. And while a decent illustration of how normal people would have trouble following geniuses, it does feel a bit like a reliably overused go-to-gag straight out of The Big Bang Theory.

In fact, most of the jokes center around the same three things: Babbage hates street music. Lovelace hates poetry. They build machines more complex than the task needs them to be. Running gags are fine and all, but resorting to the same goofy themes just feels so … twee.

There’s a gag when Lovelace — realizing that Queen Victoria cannot truly understand the ramifications of their analytical machine — decide to make her happy by printing out a cute kitty. That’s the strip’s most monkeycheese gag … except for the one that actually involves monkeys. I know, I know … it’s funny because it’s the queen and she’s easily distracted by shiny objects, and Lovelace and Babbage are totally acting like the overly self-important programmers of the modern day. Still, it didn’t ring true to me mainly because the punchline is simply that the queen is an idiot and the programmers are pompous. Because 3 chapters was a long way to get there.

Padua also comes from a traditional animation art style. It’s very attractive, admittedly. She has a good sense on how to design each character so uniquely that you can guess the personality just at a glance. Lovelace looks always on edge, Babbage has a manic edge to him, and Queen Victoria looks like a wide-eyed child.

Still, I’m not quite sure it’s the appropriate one to use for this kind of comic, mainly because everyone has to be drawn in a style that exaggerates their emotions to a wild degree. There are many, many scenes of the characters looking slack-jawed and bug eyed. There is no room for subtlety.

It’s a comic where everyone takes everything to be a big deal. It’s almost like they’re always yelling… which, indeed, is probably the case since everything ends in exclamations. It’s very tiring. In comparison, one of the most charming things about Kate Beaton’s Hark A Vagrant! are the slow burns a lot of her illustrations imply. If someone I staring out with a bug-eyed expression, you get the sense that he’s been standing there for quite a while and the realization had slowly dawned on him. In 2D Goggles, people go crazy for no reason like a pack of crazed chihuahuas.

Maybe this is why my favorite character is perhaps Isambard Kingdom Brunel (good Lord, that’s a man’s name). In real life, he’s a celebrated engineer who design several steamships and England’s Great Western Railway. Here, he’s the no-nosense guy who lends and air of practicality. Best of all, he doesn’t do crazy reactions shots. He has the aloof demeanor of a man who just does not give a f**k. He just sorta stands around, cool, collected, with a “who are these buy-eyed weirdos I have to share this comic with” look on his face.

And yet, 2D Goggles is smarter and better researched than your average steampunk webcomic. This is why I’m recommending the comic despite giving it a rather average grade. For all my complaints, 2D Goggles is rather unique, and you’ll certainly learn a lot about British history by reading it.

I also tried the “Lovelace and Babbage” app, by the way, and the comic looks better on the iPad than they did on my desktop. The dimensions of the panels were clearly optimized to the screen. The downside is that downloading issues can get pretty pricey, especially for a guy like me who also tends to drop a lot of money into Comixology’s pockets.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

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.

That doesn’t make the sentiment any less valid, though. One of the things I liked about Clandestinauts was the art. You immediately notice how … drippy … everything is. Creatures are drawn slimy and saggy and uncomfortably organic. People get processed messily through tracks of intestines. If you’re lucky, you might see someone’s eye get poked out.

And that’s OK! A lot of folks in fantasy webcomics — and any media dealing with fantasy in general — tend to look unbelievably clean and well-groomed for folks living in an era before toothpaste or even a workable sewer system was invented. I’m pretty sure that division between popular depictions and reality is what Monty Python & The Holy Grail was making fun of.

Clandestinauts, though, is proudly gross, messy, and very organic. There’s nothing more off-putting than when everything in the world is rendered like a sentient tumor. There’s wrinkles, folds, and bodily fluids everywhere. There’s also a good chance you’re going to run into some NSFW dangly parts. There’s nudity here, but it doesn’t feel exploitative or even raunchy. In fact, a lot of it has a sickly, intensive-care-wing-of-the-hospital-feel to them. There are so many wrinkled, pendulous boobs on display that you start feeling that you might have made the wrong turn into the sauna at your local retirement home.

(Incidentally, I’ve always wanted to incorporate the phrase “wrinkled, pendulous boobs” into my review. Thanks, Clandestinauts!)

However, like I said, I couldn’t really get into this comic… mainly because I have no idea what the heck is going on half the time.

Most of it is by design, mind you. Mr. Sievert explains it himself in his “About” section:

The Clandestinauts is a dungeoneering webcomic updated every other Thursday by me, Tim Sievert. I write this comic in “straight-ahead” style, so I don’t really know what’s going to happen until it happens. It’s a challenging way to tell a story with so many characters and subplots going on, but it’s a lot of fun.

It’s a technique that does work surprisingly well in the fantasy genre. Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, for example, did a fine job with their Dragonlance series, and according to their appendix the trilogy was crafted from an AD & D game that they were playing. And, shoot, that’s basically the mentality I went forward with writing my NaNoWriMo novel.

The difference, though, is that Hickman and Weis did a good job slowly introducing the readers to their cast of characters, telling us why we should care about them, establishing their distinct personalities, outlining their circumstances, and then thrusting us into battle. (At least, that’s what I think happened. I haven’t read Dragonlance in, like, 15 years. I’ve tried to re-read it, but using the lizard-like Draconians as orc stand-ins only gets sillier and sillier as the years progress.)

So what happens in Clandestinauts? We’re immediately thrown into a skirmish with Cavetrool McSaggyboobs and barely a mention to the characters we’re supposed to be following. The group of dungeon crawlers are very, very similar to one another. Oh, sure, they do look different… but are He-Man action figures, and I’d be hard pressed to tell those dudes apart from each other either.

There’s a… robot, I think?

And some guy with a headband and cape?

The longest story arc belong to Rutger, a young warlock with long hair that covers his eyes. He dies in battle… and as much as I’ve praised the art, it took me a third reading to realize that the monster is actually chomping down on our poor warlock here. And yet, death is only the beginning of his story. The guy sold his soul to the devil, it seems, so he soon cold and chained and lying naked on the floor in the bowels of Hell.

It was actually a pretty interesting arc. Through a flashback, we learn that he’s a moral stalwart that refuses to make a deal with the devil, discovers that he cannot really escape his destiny. It’s all when and good to say that you won’t become a servant of Satan. However, when you’re being falsely accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and your very life hangs by a very thin thread, then moral fortitude becomes a secondary consideration to matters of life or death. Our hero, though, soon discovers the true meaning of getting the raw end of the deal.

But then that story segment ends. By this point, I’d assumed that Rutger was the main character, and the intro sequence was a mere setup. But no. We’re back to the visually distinct but lightly defined characters that were introduced in the opening scenes. Only now I have even less of an idea about what’s going on now.

This time the story spits into three: two of our guys have stumbled onto an army. Two of our other guys run into an scantily dressed pudgy one-eyed wizard. And the head-band-and-cape guy (whose name I always keep forgetting but is apparently named Chuck Ronan) finds a naked woman inside a gigantic skull.

I suppose you could say that there’s nothing to worry about. Mr. Sievert, after all, did a fine job fleshing out his first character by splintering his adventures from the ongoing saga. Nothing thus far causes me to doubt Mr. Sievert’s abilities at crafting such a storyline. What worries me, though, is that I think it’s going into too many directions too soon. The “breaking of the fellowship” portion is a beloved and integral part of most fantasy tales, but only after we’ve already established the characters and their relationships to each other. And this hasn’t yet been established in Clandestinauts. It feels like too much, too fast.

This is one of those webcomics that I think I may have a different opinion about once it’s completed and all the threads tie together. Maybe Mr. Sievert will go back and establish the character relationships later on. You can tell, after all, that despite Mr. Sievert’s declaration that he’s making it up as he goes along, he does have a framework in mind that he’s working off of. Clandestinauts feels just loose enough to feel spontaneous yet not aimless.

Still, that’s the big risk with starting things in medias res. You have to trust the readers stick on long enough for the big reveals. I’m not sure that there’s enough to this comic that makes me want to stick around. As a serialized webcomic that’s presented page by page and fights to retain my attention on a day to day basis, I fear that I have to stick with my original assessment: as much as I like the art, I wasn’t too big a fan of the story.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

(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.

And when it finally gets into the subject, it’s mostly him being a tool. He starts off by berating a manga fan for drawing her comics right-to-left because it’s not how it’s done in America, despite portraying the girl as just being a fan of manga who is doing what she loves. Then he gets into the subject of critics. Now, I fully admit, when someone tells me “You suck because I say so” I find it annoying, which is what most pros are talking about when they say “Ignore criticism.” Here however, he has someone who knows what they’re talking about, going into detail on what’s wrong with his comic, and then he responds like a douche.

And yet I identify with him because I’ve been through all of this. I hope I’m not that pretentious, but trying to draw with a tablet when you’re not used to it, constantly reworking scenes in my mind at all hours of the day, even missing out on all the great events at a con because I was so busy dealing with people coming to my table. Hell, the guy who offers unwanted ideas? I know a guy like that. Every con I go to, he comes by my table and tells me I need to make comics that support the wars going on. Getting misty eyed when you hold your own printed comic in your hands? That’s my reaction too.

I think that’s the main reason his comic is always on the front page of deviantArt when he posts it there. The other people are creators themselves and have been through all of this. It’s a niche audience market but it does well for him. The people who wish they paid more attention in art classes. The ones who know they should work, but find the call of video games too compelling. The creators who discovered that doing a regularly updating comic is much harder than most people think.

However, even despite understanding all this, it’s not as good as it could be. The art is bright and colourful, which fits into Dobson’s work as he’s trying to market a kid’s book, and it does a good job of conveying everything that’s going on, but the jokes are quite bland. That’s unfortunately a problem with auto-biographical comics, they’re grounded in reality and so you can’t do much unless you change to semi-autobiographical like Penny Arcade, have a natural charm like Johnny Wander or just have a naturally funny person making the comic, like DAR. Hell, that’s the main reason I stopped being the focus of Living with Insanity, I just found myself to be too boring.

All up, this comic is nothing special but if you like diary comics, or are a comics creator yourself who has been in some of these situations, you’ll probably enjoy it.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

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.

Our heroine is Kerri Masters, a.k.a. Dynagirl. She first appeared in Red Handed Studios’ Fallen Justice, a sort of Justice League-like print comic where everyone looks like they were drawn to as background characters in Subnormality. I’ve never read Fallen Justice, as it seems to primarily exist on the rack of comic book shops in Texas. Dynagirl, however, sorta works as a standalone title… though knowledge of Fallen Justice does help to make a few details a little less confusing.

Dynagirl plays many roles: Single mom. Former waitress. Superhero. She gained superpowers after she’d fallen down a well trying to rescue a childhood friend. The well gave her and her friend … superpowers! Dynagirl claims she’s an energy sponge, absorbing the energy of anything thrown at her. They manifest into has Superman’s powers (flight, super strength, etc.), only instead of shooting lasers out of her eyes she emits energy beams from her hands. In her first outing, she was captured by the villain Simon Hurst, who physically and emotionally abuses her. Sometimes later, Justice Theta — a fellow superhero and live in boyfriend — was killed.

All of these things took a toll on Dynagirl’s mental health, and she spends a lot of time crying. After Justice Theta’s death, Dynagirl retired from the superhero biz, focusing instead on being a mom.

But, like Michael Corleone once said, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” A super-secret corporation somehow not named Cerberus tracks down Dynagirl and give her an offer she can’t refuse: join our team of corporate-funded superheroes, and we’ll make sure your family is provided for.

Kerri agrees to join, but on the condition that she gets to choose her own version of the Justice League. This is, frankly, a lot tougher than it seems, especially since Dynagirl’s world follows immutable comic book laws where two people can’t just sit down and talk like adults. They pretty much have to smack each other around first. For example, Dynagirl visits a woman named Amanda (a.k.a. Mindfire). The exchange goes something like this:

Amanda: “What the hell?!”
Dynagirl: “Amanda, if you’ll just give me a second.”
Amanda: “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!”

During which Amanda hits Dynagirl with her superpowers. Dynagirl makes a big deal that she didn’t come here to fight, and Amanda snaps back that Dynagirl shouldn’t have come here at all, since she put her entire family in danger. Mind you, this is after Amanda has already caused untold property damage by using her telekinetic powers to smash cars, lawnmowers, and televisions in a desperate attempt to not talk to Dynagirl. This was pretty much the standard storytelling device in the 90′s: people just standing around, talking? Boooooring. Hear that click? That’s 13-year-old boys shutting down their browsers so they can go skateboarding or hang gliding or something more EXTREME than watching people act reasonable.

Also joining the team are Waypoint (Kerri’s childhood friend whose truly awful costume includes a half mask and a spandex leotard that’s zipped down to her belly button), Zig Zag (who probably took the only speedster-related name that hasn’t yet been copyrighted by Marvel or DC), and Batman. OK, technically he’s The Knight, which is the most transparent reference to Batman you can muster without calling him Batmanuel. The difference, of course, is that Batman doesn’t have a catchphrase half as cool as “It’s Night Night Time!” His design is oh-so-90′s: The Knight has pouches so big that they’d make Rob Liefeld jealous. The way these pouches cover up his abs makes me wonder if he’s hiding a little bit of a gut underneath.

Since the comic is about a superheroine who’s been emotionally scarred, you can expect this comic to go for big emotional moments. Unfortunately, these are, for the most part, pretty hokey. Take for instance, Zig Zag, who gets all of Issue 3 to develop his backstory. (In fact, he’s pretty much given the role of co-lead. I have a feeling that he was originally slated for his own title comic, but was perhaps shoe-horned into Dynagirl for economic purposes.) Zig Zag is a time-traveler, and he’s looking for someone. He zips to present day and meets his younger self. And then he sees his mother, who is apparently deceased in his timeline. They share a full page hugging scene.

Why doesn’t this scene work? First of all, we JUST got introduced to Zig Zag. We don’t know him. We don’t know his Mom. So does that really merit a full page scene pregnant with emotion. Second, this setup, precluded by — you guessed it — tears welling up in Zig Zag’s eyes, just feels so sappy, manipulative, and unearned. If you try to force me to feel sad for the main characters, I just end up resenting it.

Our heroes band together after a freak storm threatens the East Coast. It’s being caused by Kerri’s friend, Dervish (who last appeared in Fallen Justice), who has the double-whammy power of weather control and speed. Zig Zag, our man with his eye on the future, says that if our team kills him, then millions will die!

Dervish, though, isn’t acting under his own accord. He’s actually being manipulated by his brother, a man they call Cane. He has wicked voodoo magic that lets him summon elementals out of thin air. He’s using these powers to, I don’t know, find a lab filled with cloned superheroes so he can steal toxins or something? I wasn’t too sure about his motivations here, since I have a feeling he could’ve walked into the building without summoning up a hurricane.

He also he wants Dynagirl to be his wife. Yes, Cane is a villain straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. He even does the whole maniacal laugh thing. He generally gets some of the comic’s cheesiest lines:

“Now you pay the price for your interference!“

“Ah! I do love a girl with spirit!“

At some point, I expect him to say, “Tonight, I dine on turtle soup!” Of course, you’ve got to leave the corniest line to Dynagirl herself.

“No suit can make you a hero. It’s your heart that defines you.“

Good Lord, I had no idea I was reading Captain Planet.

The plot is seriously all over the place, and you get whiplash trying to figure out why certain plot elements were introduced in the first place. The first issue introduces Kerri’s waitressing job, a town filled with superheroes, and an initial corporate funded superteam that’s training in the Danger Room. These plotlines are more or less dropped as we head toward the “Dynagirl recruits her new team” plot. Toward the end of the Dervish/Cane saga, when the team is on the way home after a job well done, Dynagirl disappears and somehow travels back in time and has to fight dinosaurs. Well, somebody enjoyed The Return of Bruce Wayne!

In a way it’s charming. Just like TV’s Dyna Girl, this Dynagirl is a throwback … specifically to comics and Saturday morning cartoons from a decade ago. I can sympathize. I am the proud owner of an almost complete run of Chris Claremont’s X-Men Forever, his revisit to the era when Jim Lee was artist. Comics these days to be a little too serious, and I sorta miss the bombastic posturing of the comics from the 90′s and the “all dialogue consists of one-liners” disciple of the 90′s X-Men cartoon. Yet the pacing is too sloppy, the plot is too haphazard, and the characters are all too alike for me to recommend this webcomic.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

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).

The characters of Awesome Hospital all have “awesome” alter egos. There’s the aforementioned Dr. Dirtbike, who we first see cutting an incision while doing a 360 forward flip. There’s his girlfriend, Dr. Robot, who is a frightening machine person and also, somehow, pregnant. There’s a baby who is also a time-traveler, a guitar solo enthusiast, and a bulldog on a skateboard. There’s even a Dr. Luchador, whose presence I would normally laud except he’s hardly in the comic. And the Chief of Staff is Santa.

Hmmm. My diagnosis is “too much sugar.”

Their mission is to treat medical conditions that are too fantastic for other hospitals. Patients zapped by a death ray, for example.

The webcomic starts out as a parody of General Hospital/Dr. House with all its melodramatic twists and turns that, in the old days, would’ve been accompanied with an ominous organ sting. Dr. Dirtbike’s boss … is his crazy ex-girlfriend (dwwwoonngggg! Or whatever an organ sound like.) The entire hospital is folded, and team has been reassigned to … Weakass Hospital! (Dwonnngggg!) To stop an epidemic, the team needs Dr. Super-hero … who is depressed and is under the care of the hated Weakass staff! (Dwoonnnngggg!)

Then later the comic decides to go off the deep end with time travel shenanigans. Eventually, our characters take a fateful trip to the dystopian future of Awesome Hospital 2099. Which is, I’m certain, the sort of cross-time capers that Dr. Gregory House wishes he went on.

Strangely, Awesome Hospital is character introductions. Admittedly, there’s something funny about a guy on the Weakass Hospital staff with the name of Dr. New Country. To know about him anything beyond his one-dimensional gimmick, though, would kill the fun … or so it’s assumed. Every character is no more than a walking punchline, and that can be to the comics’ detriment.

I get what Sims and Company are trying to do: they want to retain a goofy atmosphere by making sure that no one takes the comic too seriously, as if every panel were loudly and vehemently declaring, “Dude, lighten up.” But you eventually get tired of all gristle and no meat. Throwing a bunch of silly mix-and-match action figures on screen works for Axe Cop to an extent, but with Awesome Hospital you can’t dismiss the lapses in logic on account of being written by a six-year-old. (At least … I don’t think it is.)

Awesome Hospital can be funny. It lampoons several obscure bastions of geekdom, like the explanatory caption boxes. I liked the parody of the opening scenes from Star Trek V, which comes out of friggin’ nowhere. However, most of the time, Awesome Hospital doesn’t even try to reach for this simple level of cleverness and, instead, opts for throwing anything against the wall and seeing what sticks.

As a result. though, it’s a comic that’s never truly awesome or weakass. Weaksome? Aweass? I’d go with “terminally average.”

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).