Once upon a time, there was a TV show called Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place. It was mildly successful, lasting for four seasons and picking up twelve million viewers on its first season. The show then went all, “Hey, man, I’m sorta getting tired of pizza. Want a try something different tonight? Sushi? Mexican? Anyone?” So they dropped the “Pizza Place,” giving the show the new title of Two Guys And A Girl. Eventually, the entire title and most of the cast was chopped down until there was only Ryan Reynolds, who went on to kill the still-in-its-infancy Green Lantern movie franchise.

The show has disappeared beneath the inky black waves of television history, yet that title lives on. It seems that the Two Guys have hooked up with another Guy, because that’s the title of Rickard Jonasson’s Two Guys And Guy.

I guess that “pizza place” is still plum outta luck.

As you may have guessed, the comic revolves around three characters. Let’s start with Guy. The first thing you should know is that Guy is a girl. This is why the webcomic is entitled Two Guys and Guy, and not Three Guys.

Or, alternatively, Three Guys, A Baby, A Little Lady, and a Pizza Place.

Guy got her name because of her huge wang. Before you stare too much, fellas, and try to dissect the art to show that clearly her pants are too tight for … you know … it turns out it’s all metaphorical. She just likes to throw punches because that’s how she rolls… though you can’t rule out demonic possession.

Wayne is Guy’s oldest friend, someone’s whose companionship she’s cherished since childhood. Only .. he’s not, really. It turns out that he’s just some dude she met on the bus that she mistook for her friend, and she’s been hanging around him since. Frankly, Wayne has no idea if they’re actually friends. There’s actually a weird romantic undercurrent between the two. However, Guy has made it clear she won’t hook up with Wayne unless he’s the last man in the world… a scenario that happens more often than you’d think.

Also, Wayne is probably a clone.

Frank is the third member in our core trinity. He always wears shades. He is generally stoic. He is also a mad scientist who conducts ungodly experiments and is probably immortal.

It strikes me that Two Guys and Guy follows a similar structure that has been blazed years before in webcomics. Coupling a the three-person cast with sci-fi weirdness is the formula that’s kept Sluggy Freelance going for all these years. Even the characters sorta line up: Frank is similar to Riff in the field of mad science and fashion sunglasses, Wayne is sorta like Torg in that both are lovesick and jobless, and Guy and Zoe are both girls. Both casts live fairly mundane lives as young people trying to pay the bills until something weird comes their way.

The biggest difference, though, is that Two Girls and A Guy is a straight up three-panel gag comic. The comic thrives on wackiness, which usually centers around Frank’s experiments. There are no ongoing marathon stories, the hallmark and legacy of Sluggy Freelance. However, there are also no bunnies with switchblades, which is a goddamn blessing. (The strip, however, has a lot of similarities to one of my favotire Sluggy recurring features: the generally excellent one-off strips that the Rob and Elliot guys did.)

The three main characters are pretty strong character archetypes, the kind you can explain in one phrase. Guy is the “tough chick,” for example. Additionally, the character design are nice and distinct, passing that all important silhouette test. Frank’s got a hilariously emotionless face, which is accentuated by the featureless shades. Guy has features that quickly alternate from “cute” to “enraged.” Wayne has an adorable Stan-Laurel-esque tuft of hair that makes him look permanently clueless. Just by looking at ‘em, you know what the characters are like.

Normally, the one-dimensionality of a character is a bad thing, especially when it comes to things like character development. This isn’t an issue with Two Guys and Guy, though. This is a gag strip in the Looney Tunes sense. The simpler, the better. Once we have a basic grip on their personalities, Jonasson goes on to screw with our expectations. Sure, a lot of the gags are rather “random.” Though, I should point out, it handles this better than most. It has a mad scientist in the cast, after all, and the punchline hardly comes out of nowhere. There’s one joke, for example, that introduces the idea of space camp in the first panel. When that’s your launching point, a space party with goofy masks really isn’t less random and more a natural progression.

Nevertheless, even the jokes where they’re just standing around and shooting the breeze have a decent set-up, and that’s primarily because the characters are so simply yet distinctly drawn that you know how they’re going to react. You can hear the venom in Guy’s voice, and you can see the defensiveness in Wayne’s face. It’s all aided by Jonasson’s crisp, clean art, which keeps things upbeat.

Still, you know, it doesn’t hurt throwing in a unicorn here and there.

Interestingly, Two Guys and Guys also contains the slightest undercurrent of existential despair. Wayne is more or less the most normal of the three. In fact, there are some hints that he would be well adjusted if he didn’t have such terrible friends. We get a sense that he’s grounded by a sense of inertia, unable to improve unless success is literally handed to him.

“What are you, a stranger to your own generation?” Wayne says. “We’re wishers and dreamers, Guy, not ‘doers.’”

Dang. That cuts to the quick, yo.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

PS Incidentally, before I decided on comparing Two Guys and Guy with Sluggy Freelance, I’d though that these characters also lined up fairly well with the cast of Ctrl+Alt+Del. Wayne is like Ethan, Guy is like Lilah, and Frank is like Lucas. And then I realized that comparing any comic to CAD is a terrible, terrible idea.

I am something of a fan of stories about he software industry. It probably has something to do with taking the driest subject matter possible (programming) and turning it into a story that’s dramatic or epic. One of my favorite biographies is Masters of Doom, the story about the creators behind the revolutionary first person shooter, Doom. It starts off with hard times with the creators being forced the work around the clock in a dank room and ends with a truly remarkable fortunes for its two principle characters: John Carmack went on to become so rich that he amassed enough money to build his own space ship, while John Romero had a momumental rise and fall, going from the rockstar to the laughingstock of the video game industry.

And you can bet that I am totally on board with seeing Man On A Mission, the documentary about Ultima creator and longtime cosplayer Richard “Lord British” Garriott, who also amassed so much money he eventually fulfilled his childhood dreams of becoming an astronaut.

The creators of The Trenches, Scott Kurtz, Mike Krahulik, and Jerry Holkins, also achieved some pretty amazing — albeit less galactic — milestones. Between them, they’ve established one the premiere game expo franchises in the world, emceed the Harvey Awards, were named as Time’s most influential people, and are regarded as the founding fathers of webcomics. Still, I don’t expect this partially autobiographical webcomic about life in the software development industry to arrive at something quite so mind-shattering.

Maybe if one of those lazy bums should get off their butts and build an actual space ship, huh?

The Trenches is staffed by a cast of characters whose noses are represented by various sorts of legumes. Our point of view is anchored by Isaac, a software programmer who’s way overqualified to be testing video games. Still, it’s a tough job market. When you’re living out of your car, beggars can’t be choosers.

We follow Isaac as he tries to desperately get his foot in the door. He finally succeeds when the boss takes Isaac to an Applebee’s, gets drunk, and hires Isaac on the spot. I was going to say that a similar bit happened on the Jaleel White sitcom, Grown Ups, but then I remembered that the boss in that case was a sexy babe, a hot tub was involved, and no one in the world watched that show so I should feel undying shame for even remembering it.

Immediately, Isaac is hated by the people in the company, mainly because his hiring meant someone had to be fired. Chief among his antagonists is Scott Kurtz Quentin McKenzie, a.k.a. “Q”, the team’s Test Lead who’s a big fan of the obscure (and fictional) 80′s cartoon, Lawstar. Isaac makes the mistake of disparaging the cartoon, and he soon finds himself at the tail-end of an office hazing ritual where he has to test a game that doesn’t exist. Fortunately, he finds a friend in Jade Sienna Cora Anders, a veteran who is probably the only normal person in the cast.

If there was a standardized scale gauging the subtleties between Penny Arcade and PvP, The Trenches would fall much closer to the PvP side. First of all, there are no parodies of games, which is the bread and butter of Penny Arcade. The comic is played as a generally straight office comedy with random goofy stuff thrown in. Like, most of the comic will be about the team coming together for crunch time, and then something like a “feral office baby” shows up.

So… PvP, basically.

And naturally, there’s a marketable cute, lovable animal named Mr. Toots. He tests video games because awwwwww wook at the cute widdle bunny wabbit and his cut wittle paws. His presence in the cast that seems to be a throwback to an earlier era of webcomics when everyone was required to have a waaaaacccckky animal somewhere under penalty of death. (Thanks, Pete Abrams.)

All in all, though, The Trenches isn’t a bad comic. It’s shaping up to be on more solid footing than either Penny Arcade or PvP. That’s the way it should be, given the maturity of their creators (despite being the focal points to some of webcomics’ most contentious online dramas, Kurtz, Krahulik, and Holkins have some decent business sense among ‘em). It’s early, so I guess it can be forgiven for being a comic that’s still in search of an identity. Is it going to be a straight-up twisted reflection of the foibles of office culture, like Dilbert? Is it going to be a light-hearted relationship drama? Will it be a comic that’s practically usurped by the cute animal star? Will it…

… Screw it, it’s probably just a rebooted PvP.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5).

Greg Rucka is the sort of comic book creator who’s developed quite a reputation for writing strong female characters. I mean, real strong female characters. Not the unrepentant cheesecake masquerading as feminism that Kate Beaton famously mocked that studios like Top Cow have exploited to the extent that you’re actually more embarrassed reading their comics in public than if you were reading, say, Maxim.

Rucka, though, is the real deal. He was at the helm for the controversial launch of the new Batwoman, Kate Kane, perhaps the first prominent lesbian superheroine with her own title. He turned Batman supporting character, Rene Montoya, into the mysterious, faceless Question, which is about as far from the girls-in-swimsuits look that most superheroines sport. He’s been given writing duties on other notably headstrong female characters like Elektra and Wonder Woman.

His most famous independent work is Whiteout, which starred a female Deputy US Marshall. In 2009, was turned into a movie starring Kate Beckingsale. Another independent series, Queen & Country, centers around a female secret operative who goes no dangerous missions. For his efforts, he’s won 4 Eisner Awards, 1 Harvey Award, and 1 GLAAD Media Award.

Last year, alongside artist Rick Burchett (a fellow Eisner Award winner for his collaboration with Paul Dini and Ty Templeton on The Batman and Robin Adventures), Mr. Rucka also launched his won webcomic: Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether.

The world of Lady Sabre is called The Sphere, a place where, I am told, the aether is absolutely ineffable. The setting is very steampunk. I imagine that if you placed a sample of aether under a microscope, all you’d see are tiny springs and gears.

In the Sphere, you’ll see steam-powered paddleboats flying to the air like some crazy retro Leiji Matsumoto concept and people shoot each other with crazy steam-powered guns. Do you remember that Nissan Leaf commercial where everything runs on gas, even the dental drills? It’s like that, only everything runs on hot water vapor. It makes you sorta wonder of living in the Sphere feels like being in a sauna 24/7.

Masses of land are suspended in aether, each developing a society that roughly resemble those in the late 19th Century. Some are islands. Some are large continents. This information isn’t divulged to us in the comic itself. Rather, it’s included in the fairly prosaic “About” feature, which gives a Lonely Planet-like lowdown on the geography, the major powers, and the local weather. Normally, I’d be annoyed that such key pieces of world building was being relegated to the appendix. However, I think that shoehorning exposition may have been detrimental to the story’s flow. Mr. Burchett likes to use a lot of open spaces. Stretches of Lady Sabre appear balletic and cinematic.

Our heroine is Lady Seneca Sabre, a pirate with a quirky crew and a ship that navigates the vast expanses of space. No, you are not reading Sluggy Freelance‘s “Oceans Unmoving” storyline. (One of these days, were going to find out that The Starjammers was the most influential superhero group to come out of the 1980′s.) We first see her evading a bunch of armed gentlemen who are dressed in what looks like Prussian military dress. She has stolen … something that looks like a really fancy can of Pringles. As the men give chase, she ditches her dress to get into swarthy pirate gear, something that has sorta become standard protocol in stories featuring lady pirates.

And then it’s fight time! Now, I can’t say that Burchett draws the most action-packed fight sequences I’ve seen in webcomics, Shi Long Pang, for example, does a better job of conveying the speed and impact of each strike and each block. However, the fights in Lady Sabre thus far seem to take on a more symbolic nature. As Lady Sabre fights off five armed men, she seems to take on the appearance of a many-armed Hindu diety. A one-on-one fight looks something like a dance sequence. Given the already zen-like nature of the comic, it’s not out of place.

Burchett also does a lot of close-ups of characters’ faces. She possesses a steely gaze, a mischievous smile, and is that a slight twinkle in her eye? I’m impressed by how much personality Burchett is able to convey through subtle expressions.

So Lady Sabre gets away, and suddenly, the action shift to … the (wicki-wicki) Wild Wild West! And a new cast of characters! It’s Drake and Drum. They’re the slickest they is. They’re the quickest they is. Did I say they’re the slickest they is? It’s a world full of card games, saloons, six-shooter duels… but, sadly, no giant mechanical spiders.

And I have to say … the transition is a little jarring. I mean, at this point, we hadn’t learned much about Lady Sabre, and now we’re in another genre altogether? It’s like you’re in the mood for some swashbucklin’ Captain Blood action, and instead someone slips in a DVD of John Wayne’s Rio Lobo. I mean, cowboys? Really? I thought I was reading Lady Sabre And the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, not Mustachioed Marshall, His Bowler Hatted Friend, And The Wild West Bonanza.

The Drake and Drum story, though, gets us some nice gunfight action. It also eventually dovetails with the A-story when the Marshall comes up with a key that likely belongs to the case that Lady Sabre is futilely trying to open. I suppose that, in the long run, this whole comic is going to be a huge genre mash-up. There’s hints, in a visit to the fortune teller, that there’s going to be a trip to a medieval-themed continent, too. This gonna turn out to be The Dark Tower, isn’t it, Greg Rucka?

Now, I have one complaint that is going to be incredibly nitpicky. Hell, it’s so nitpicky that I generally avoid it because when other people point it out, it’s one of those annoying complaints that make me want to say, “OK, get over it.” But I’m going to do it. I’m gonna get mad at fonts.

I mean, look at this sign. I mean, Papyrus font? Really? Comic Sans gets all the hate, but for me, Papyrus (a.k.a. “The Massage Therapist Font”) is the worst. And it only got worse when James Cameron latched onto it and used it prominently in Avatar. And that’s not the hell of it. The words underneath it are rendered in a head-ache inducing grab-bag of standard fonts and mismatching colors. Everything else in this world has a hand-crafted, old timey look to them. This sign for the fortune teller looks like it was pounded out of Microsoft Office in five minutes.

And it’s not just that sign where I have troubles look at the font. Any time Burchett uses onomatopoeia, the results look really slapdash. It really stands out, too, because the art that it’s covering up is so nice.

Lady Sabre And The Pirates Of the Ineffable Aether is still pretty much just starting out, so it’s very easy to catch up to the story. It’s just wrapped up Chapter 3, and we’ve yet to be introduced to the characters beyond Lady Sabre and Drake and Drum. It is a very solid introduction, presented with the confidence of two seasoned comic book veterans.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

It would probably be fair to say that I was too old to get into the whole Pokemon phenomenon. Oh, I watched the episodes when they first aired on the Kid’s WB. I did have a younger brother and sister after all, who, I suspect, actually watched the show semi-ironically.

The magic of the show, too, was that it was one of those rare instances that a young adult or adult can watch a kid’s show without feeling too weird about it. Frankly, I blame Beanie Babies and Tamagotchis… which, for you youngsters, were like NeoPets but way, way more annoying.

However, if you asked me to identify a Pokemon beyond, say, the core 20, I’d probably be at a loss. I would totally fail those infamous “Who’s that Pokemon?” stingers, thus bringing shame to my ancestors. I never played the game on the Game Boy, nor was I part of the card craze, nor am I familiar with the show after Ash, Misty, and Brock disappeared. I don’t remember the name of that lame-o Brock replacement guy. Hell, I was totally befuddled by the whole “Gary F***ing Oak” meme and had to google it just to get caught up. Let me tell you, when you have to resort to “Know Your Meme,” then you know you’ve truly lost the pulse of what makes young people tick these days.

So you’d think that I’d be the totally wrong audience for Mokepon, a webcomic on Smack Jeeves written by someone who apparently goes by “H0lyhandgrenade.”

Au contraire, mon ami! Mokepon turned out to be a surprisingly fun read, full stuff that can entertain even a reader with only a passing familiarity of Pokemon. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Strangely enough, despite my a-little-more-than-cursory knowledge of Pokemon, the Mokepon webcomic and I go back a long way. I first came across it when had just started up back in 2008. There were perhaps only 20 pages up. While the idea of a cynic’s take on Pokemon was a promising one, I didn’t have much material to go on. It was mentally earmarked as something I would get to later.

And now it’s three years later, which is a surprisingly long time for a Pokemon fanfiction comic to be going. And yet, somehow has H0lyhandgrenade found new twists on age-old Pokemon gags, she’s also figured out how to craft an enjoyable cast of characters.

Mokepon is set in the world of Pokemon, the same one with cities named Pewter City and Viridian Forest and populated by the likes of Ash Ketchum and Professor Oak. Our hero — of you can call him that — is a sneering, sarcastic slacker named Atticus Brent. He can be easily be identified by the permanent scowl on his face and the cigarette dangling from his lips. And he doesn’t want anything to do with Pokemon. He seems more like the kind of guy who’d enjoy kicking back, watching General Hospital, and popping Vicodin pills, if you catch my drift.

How can you not like this guy?

Unfortunately, his mom doesn’t feel the same way. For being a master at Pokemon means everything. EVERYTHING. So Atticus gets thrown out on his butt and he’s not to come home until he makes a big name for himself in the world of Pokemon.

And so that is how Atticus got his first Pokemon. He calls him “Dragonthing.” (It’s Charmander.) Atticus decides to train Dragonthing the best way he knows how: through utter neglect. He figures Dragonthing can learn more by learning how to fend for himself, and lets him wander around, getting into fights.

Surprisingly, it turns out to be a pretty effective training technique. You know what they say: give a Pokemon a command, they’ll fight for a day. Leave the Pokemon alone so he can figure out how to breathe fire by himself … well, he’ll probably bite you, but at least it didn’t cut into your brooding time.

Atticus finds a rival in Kahn Miles. Atticus has a pretty irrational hatred of Kahn (KAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNN!!!!), mainly because he’s good and unselfish and is pretty devoted to becoming a champ in this Pokemon thing. Their relationship is a bit like the Homer Simpson/Ned Flanders dichotomy. It’s one part Atticus’ refusal to accept defeat, one part jealousy, one part a petty and innate desire to destroy anything pure, good, and innocent. Hey, who can’t relate? I’m pretty sure we’ve all had moments where, like Edward Norton in Fight Club, we’ve wanted to destroy something beautiful.

To fuel his hatred, Atticus accuses Kahn of stealing his Bulbasaur. They’d dueled earlier for the Pokemon. Kahn had wanted to win it for his sister, Mana (who, compared to Kahn, is quite bubbly). Atticus, though, is a little miffed. Though he was definitely outclassed by Kahn, he didn’t think that they’d finished the fight and that Bulbasaur was still up for grabs. They reignite their duel. Atticus sends out his Dragon Thing to fight off Kahn’s three Pokemon.

And surprisingly, Atticus wins.

It turns out, though, that Kahn had been training his team all day, and his three Pokemon were already half dead. Kahn, though, is such a chill bro that he didn’t have the heart to tell Atticus about it. The battle, though, catches the attention of a masked stranger who assumes Atticus has been poaching helpless Pokemon trainers. He summons a towering, dinosaur-sized Pokemon, and Atticus realizes he’s suddenly in for the fight of his (and Dragon Thing’s) life.

Half the fun of Mokepon is how Atticus just does not buy in to the “Pokemon training is about friendship” mantra. It’s easy to forget that he’s supposed to be 14 years old, given his
world-weary demeanor. Driving that point home is how much older Atticus seems than the other contestants. A lot of the trainers he’s competing against are cherub faced kids with big saucer eyes.

There’s George, for example, a Pokemon obsessive who will follow Atticus around like a lost puppy. She guesses, probably correctly, that Atticus (who she calls “Brent,” since Atticus doesn’t think they’re on a first name basis) has the potential to the a great Pokemon champion. However, she’s appalled by his coarse attitude and his slash-and-burn tactics. They make a good pair, actually: the wide-eyed innocent that could probably use a few few lessons in how the world is a brutal place, and the hardened cynic who could probably stand to lighten up a little.

And besides, it’s not that Atticus is completely in the wrong about the way he views Pokemon. His more practical view of matters turns out to be an asset, especially when he comes face to face with a new, more homicidal Team Rocket.

So maybe you Pokemon fans … Poke-fans … um … Poke-heads … Poke-men? No that can’t be right. Anyway, you Pokemon fans can probably refresh me on this: what were Team Rocket up again on the show? Were Jesse and James really given the one job of capturing Pikachu, which they failed to do day in and day out? Why? Was it a special Pikachu? Or did Team Rocket HQ know that Jesse and James were totally useless and had them casing the world’s most thankless assignment?

Anyway, that seems like small potatoes to what the new Team Rocket has up their sleeves. This version of Team Rocket, Thad and Trix, look more like charter members of the Pewter City Biker Club. They’re cruel, they’re murderous, they swear a storm, and they have no use for Meowth. That’s right! Their plan is to breed so many of the insect Pokemon in Viridian Forest that random encounters become inescapable. I think this crosses the line beyond denouncing the evils of truth and love and into outright terrorism.

Maybe … just maybe … the only thing standing in their way is a cynical jerk with a nicotine addiction.

H0lyhandgrenade generally sticks to a very solid and very appropriate manga style for Mokepon. She does add a few flourishes of her own — the hand written word balloons, for example — that lend her own personal touch without straying too far from the Pokemon house style. She’s especially adept in setting up the sight gags. They remind of Rumiko Takahashi’s work on Ranma, where she would similarly set you up for one scene (say either a heroic attack or a sad, inflective scene) and then completely undermine your expectations on the very next panel. Which is to say that while Mokepon is, in one way, just following one of the now standard conventions of manga, H0lyhandgrenade executes it so well that it doesn’t matter.

And, well, Mokepon is just so much fun. What impressed me is how much I did genuinely like the characters, and how, when I reached the last page, I was a little sad that I couldn’t follow their adventures any longer. It got to the point where it no longer mattered if this was Pokemon fanfiction in the first place. I thought that Brent, George, Dragonthing, and Kahn were highly enjoyable characters in their own right, characters owned and licensed by the Nintendo Corporation be damned.

Is this … is this truly the magic of Pokemon? To view these fictional characters as … friends? As George says in a wisdom beyond her years: “This journey’s all about making friends. If you don’t have friends, or people to enjoy the adventures with, is there really that point in doing them?”

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

It may be my old-fogey-ness talking here, but the things kids find hilarious these days seem to be about being super-annoying. Take that Fred character. The guy talks like a squeaky helium balloon, which is pure comedy gold for the kids but is like nails on chalkboard for anyone over twelve.

Or that Problem Solverz show on the Cartoon Network. Granted, I have no evidence that anyone actually watches it, but, again, it seems to traffic with the same premise that “funny” and “headache inducing visuals” are the same thing. When I was younger, I had the vague sense that my parents were rolling their eyes at a lot of stuff that I found funny. Now that I’m on the other side, I suddenly know why, and it makes me feel old as hell.

It makes me want to buy a rocking chair, put a shotgun on my lap, and warn young whippersnappers to stay off my property. Partly because of the symbolism … but mostly because rocking chairs are hella sweet.

Which brings me to Psyguy and Supadave’s video game webcomic, GG Guys. At first glance, it seems to be something aimed at the Fred crowd. Will all the eye-rolling cause my eyes to come unscrewed from their sockets, thus preventing me from reviewing webcomics ever again?

Let’s find out.

I’m not quite sure what the “GG” stands for. Go-Go Guys? Guys-Guys Guys? Eh. The “stars” of GG Guys are the writers — Dave and Psy — and a bunch of random female characters that are rarely more than sexy eye-candy. Well, the Shannon character is more of a manic pixie dreamgirl character, but that just means she’s eye-candy for anime fans. It actually doesn’t matter if they’re Gabe and Tycho or Ethan and Lucas or those two guys from Fanboys. The presence of these two is completely superfluous.

The comic is, in fact, rather rather self-conscious about itself. Check it out, the female characters are only there for fanservice, but we know we’re being sexist! The writers are totally slaves to Joystiq’s weekly video game comic thingy! And that it’s all penis and boob jokes!

I mean, I was going to talk about how GG Guys is like the misbegotten child of Reddit Rage Comics and VG Cats, but it turns out that Psyguy and Supadave already did that joke. Awfully kind of them to take care of the actual criticism for me. Still, I sorta feel a little robbed. Nam qui criticae artis indiget sequential cum ipsa sua arte sequential Criticus? (“For who needs webcomic critiques when the webcomic is itself its own critic?” in Google Latin.)

GG Guys is made up of head-scratching gag strips with loud, hyperactive visuals. Take an early strip for example. It involves characters from Atomic Bomberman. They’re zooming around the corridors until they finally come in contact with each other. OK. So far, it’s a standard video game parody. Then the violins comes out, one of the guy’s goes, “Gentlemen, it’s been an honor serving with you….” And we cut to Rose and Jack floating outside getting jolted by the explosion hitting the already sinking ship on the horizon.

Wait, what? Titanic parody from out of nowhere? What?

This is more or less the template all GG Guys strips follow. There’s a gag about Super Paper Mario ends with the villain kicking down a mountain of Play-Doh for some reason. There’s one where Ryu faces off against M. Bison, and it concludes with him acting emo on his Facebook. Or a joke about the story-based Sonic titles that end with a disturbing image of Donald Trump.

And, perhaps my favorite, a Star Trek: The Next Generation parody that leads to Borg Mario. I can’t help it. I have a weakness for Star Trek gags, and I can totally hear Jonathan Frakes’ voice in my head at the end.

As I mentioned before, everything is done in that brash, hyper-exaggerated aesthetic that all the little children love. Admittedly, it can get really insufferable, to the point where I just want to say, “OK, cut down on the Red Bull, guys.” The characters go all all bug-eyed and there’s lots and lots of yelling. This comic doesn’t have sound, and yet I still wanted to stuff dinner rolls in my ears from time to time.

GG Guys containing all the elements that should, by all rights, make me hate GG Guys with the passion of a thousand burning suns… but if I was being honest, I actually sorta like it. Psyguy and Supadave make no secret that they were inspired, among other things, by VG Cats (which I did not care for at all). While it would be tempting to compare the two, I think it’s easier to just say that GG Guys is better than VG Cats in every way.

While the gags may be random to a fault, Psyguy and Supadave do an excellent job setting up multiple jokes in one sitting. There’s a strip about Mario and Sonic facing off, and it turns out the challenge involves Mario doing ballet. Ha, ha, random humor, right? The payoff, though, is seeing Sonic: he’s moved by the performance, he’s got big teary eyes, and the words “Beautiful” come out of his mouth. That part was totally unexpected. The last panel is gleefully unpredictable, and many times they never fail to get a big laugh out of me.

While Supadave’s art can be headache-inducing, there are times when he reins it in enough to get a nice chuckle. His renditions of a giggling Tetsuya Nomura and a drooling Tommy Pickles totally save the otherwise tame strips they’re in. Who can see Nomura’s amused little eyes or Tommy’s zonked expression and not smile a little?

Not every joke is a home run. They did, in fact, do a Toy Story joke that has been done by literally everyone by now. Still, even the bad strips brim with this ridiculous crazy energy to them that you have to respect.

Besides, GG Guys accomplished something that I haven’t seen before: they managed to make a couple of poignant and icredibly-stupid-but-still-funny jokes about Words With Friends, the iPhone app that’s also my current addiction. Hell, I’m playing it even as I’m typing out this review. And if GG Guys can make a joke that us old geezers can relate to, then them young whippersnappers is alright by me.

Hey, maybe I’ll even learn to enjoy Fred, provided I can stuff enough dinner rolls in my ears.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Ever since Alan Moore decided to expand his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe beyond the era of Victorian England, fans have been speculation what other pop culture characters would work well in a crazy mash-up. Some speculation have been serious, but much has been tongue in cheek.

One of the best was an April Fool’s gag at Comics Alliance in 2010, where the writers imagined a 1980′s superteam. This League included Doc Brown, B.A. Baracus, Jack Burton, Lisa from Weird Science, and the GODDAMN MacGyver. You’d have to work hard to come up with anything more idea than that, which was a weirdly more compelling premise than, say, The Black Dossier.

But did you know that this isn’t the first time someone attempted to do an LXG pastiche in the Me Decade? I didn’t either. It wasn’t until Comixtalk linked to this piece on Newsarama that I learned of the existence of Wahab Algarmi’s The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies.

Like LXG fills its roster with public domain characters you were forced to read about in elementary school, The Society fleshes out its roster with young female characters from 1980′s sitcoms: Punky Brewster, Evie from Out Of This World, Vicki from Small Wonder, and Wednesday Addams.

OK, so why is Wednesday Addams there? I mean, the Addams Family was a product of the 60′s, and the movie series would start up until the 90′s. (And this doesn’t even count the original comic strips, which come even earlier.) Shouldn’t she be palling around with Gidget and Elly May from the Beverly Hillbillies? Maybe they could, I don’t know, try to find the seven survivors who disappeared somewhere off the coast of Oahu during an ill-fated three-hour tour.

That doesn’t matter though, because… Robot Vicki kicking ass! I mean, seriously, that’s straight out of the pages of my fanfiction! That… I haven’t … written yet. Anyway, the very idea of an emotionless (but at the same time, darkly humorous) automaton in a young woman’s body is one of my favorite themes ever. It’s probably why I really enjoyed robot Lois Lane from the recent Lex Luthor-helmed Action Comics run. It’s probably why I loved R. Dorothy from Big O, who was, let’s face it, Vicki from Small Wonder in anime form. Seriously, this webcomic already had me at “Vicki, Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

Despite my enthusiasm for the potential of seeing Vicki vaporizing her enemies with laser eyes, I still think that Society of Unordinary Young Ladies hits a rough patch early on. We start with a crack commando unit infiltrating the Soviet Union to find the missing Agent Bartakamos. OK, so far, so good. But who make up the members of this crack commando team? The cast of Facts of Life.

OK, I get that this is an 80′s parody, and we’re casting the most unlikely characters a secret agents and whatnot… but the cast of Facts of Life? Did anyone want to see this? I don’t want to offend any big-boned readers on this site, but Natalie, in particular, doesn’t look of adequate build to be go on top secret government missions. At least the core Society that shows up later seem to have superpowers naturally tied to their TV personas. It’s a roundabout way to get Ms. Garrett on the cast… though, honestly, I would have much preferred Mr. Belding with the far more athletic cast of Saved By The Bell doing the espionage work.

Something goes wrong with the mission, the girls are caught in the Chernobyl nuclear fallout, and international relations collapse between the US and the Soviet Union. I guess you could say that it turned the Cold War … hot! Desperate times call for desperate actions, and the US Government puts a new Special Ops team of superpowered girls into play.

Our main character is Punky Brewster, an orphan girl who’s haunted by nightmares. If you have to ask, “What nightmares?”, then you’re apparently someone who’s never watched Punky Brewster before. Because anyone who was a kid in the 1980′s already knows the answer to that: Punky has recurring dreams of the magic Indian cave. That episode emotionally scarred me as a kid, and it apparently scarred Mr. Algarmi too.

Punky is the team’s muscle, and she’s often seen getting the snot punched out of her. I like Punky’s character design, by the way, which is incredibly similar to the one from the cartoon with the magic badger thing. (Seriously, who watched the Punky live action show and decided that what the show needed to really hit the big time was a furry leprechaun?) She’s paired up with Evie, a teenage alien girl who has the power to stop time any time she wants. She’s also the Society member who’s the biggest departure from her TV counterpart; he originally wholesome, innocent appearance gives way to something more grungy and hard-bitten.

Oh, Evie. What as Wahal Algarmi done to you?

The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies is filled with tons of strangely phrased quotes that are supposed to trigger nostalgic memories of pop culture but are, instead, kind of awkward. Observe:

“I’m sorry Edna, but … I’m putting Charles in charge.” Insert comedic trumpet sound here.

“I told you. ‘I’m here for the DeBarge concert.’” You know, because it’s the 80′s! And DeBarge was so totally lame!

“She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.” Wait… can they really use that line and not make it a reference to Ricky Shroeder?

On the flip side, you get some really inspired cameos, from Judge Harry Stone of Night Court to Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote… plus a ton of other ones that go way over my head. Yes, the glut of references can be unapologetically obvious … but that’s the case with Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, too.

If you didn’t grow up in the 1980′s perched in front of the TV for too long, then you’re probably not going to get much out of Society of Unordinary Young Ladies. You are, in fact, probably going to hate it. I predict many comments along the lines of, “Go to bed, OLD MAN!” For starters, there’s not much of a plot. Punky and Evie go on rather cliche missions where they gather more members of their team and slowly learn to distrust the government. In fact, the story sort of gets in the way. I grew rather impatient during long stretches of exposition trying to establish the viewpoints of the respective global superpowers. Just get on with the Punky Power already!

The art is decent for the most part, especially the spot on caricaturizations of the TV stars. However, I’d be lying if it didn’t bug me a little from time to time. A lot of the characters expressions, especially Charles’, default to an unsettlingly blank smile. It’s commentary on both the shallowness of 80′s sitcoms and a tie to Saturday morning cartoons, I think, but it seems incongruous with the fairly grim Ludlum-esque main story. Recent revamps of 80′s animated properties on Cartoon Network successfully changed the styles of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and He-Man to suit the more serious tones of their stories, and I think a similar stylistic choice would’ve worked here.

At the end of the day, though, The Society of Unordinary Ladies isn’t about story. Nor is it about characterization. It’s about the efficient and effective delivery of childhood nostalgia, and there, Society delivers. Now, anyone who’s been to the multiplex or turned on the radio or visited ThaGuyWithTheGlasses.com recently knows that The Society of Unordinary Ladies is hardly the only form of media that’s currently exploiting the fertile mines of the 80′s. Those, though, generally focus on the easy targets: the toys, the cartoons, the John Hughes movies. The Society of Unordinary Ladies seems to be the only one interested in dusting off these mostly forgotten sitcom characters.

While the girls are put through some rough situations, you get the sense that Mr. Algarmi really loves his subject matter. His affection is genuine and with few traces of irony. It’s fun to look back at how big a part these characters played in our pop culture universe when we were growing up. As trivial as their original sitcoms really were, the girls who make up The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies were important, and they mattered. We remember how Evie Garland won us over with her perky attitude, her smile, and her ability to awaken some funny feelings in young males everywhere.

Also, did I mention that Robot Vicki does a HALO drop and wrecks stuff? Sweeeeeet! It makes me want to read this comic with shoveling down mass quantities of Golden Crisp just to get the full effect of being a kid again.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

As you may have guessed from my online handle, my image of myself if a silver mask, and the banner with an image of Eddie Guerrero with an iPhone for a head, I’m something of a fan of pro-wrestling. I blame my sister, who was all over that stuff in the mid 1990′s. This was in the middle of the Monday Night War, and both WWE and WCW were throwing up crazy storylines and outlandish gimmicks to try to grab the viewers. As someone who’d been a casual viewer in the 1980′s, I preferred WCW since it featured several of the wrestlers I knew, like “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, “The Macho Man” Randy Savage, and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan.

Also, we only had basic cable, which, at our house, meant that we had TBS (where WCW aired) and not USA (where RAW IS WAR aired). That’s right: my intro to wrestling was the much-maligned WCW Thunder. Which, frankly, wasn’t a terrible show. While the big name stars got the spotlight on Monday Night Nitro, Thunder focused on the mid-carders, who were, by far, the better wrestlers. There was Chris Jericho, Booker T, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, and my first introduction to the luchadors: Rey Mysterio, La Parka, Silver King, and El Dandy. Seriously, who are you to doubt that guy? There was a refreshing can-do spirit to those guys, all trying to become huge stars through a combination of showmanship, athleticism, and incredibly corny gimmicks… like that time Hugh Morrus rebranded himself as the military-themed Hugh G. Rection. (Seriously.)

I haven’t really been watching wrestling that much recently, but I do know enough that Raw is now the John Cena show, Triple H is taking the Vince MacMahon role of WWE president, former wrestler Brock Lesnar caused a tidal wave of pride from wrestling smarks by winning one of the top belts in mixed martial arts, and The Miz, CM Punk, Sheamus, and Jack Swagger are all former champions. Oh, and apparently Hulk Hogan is still kicking around in TNA Impact Wrestling.

When you have a niche but rabid fanbase, inevitably someone’s going to try to make a webcomic out of it. While James Hornsby’s Botched Spot isn’t the first wrestling-themed humor webcomic I’ve come across, it probably does the best job at capturing the zeitgeist of wrestling fandom.

(Incidentally, while the title sounds like a particularly lewd and filthy sexual position, Botched Spot is named for when a wrestler badly screws up a move.)

I discovered Botched Spot mainly through the wrestling parodies. In my opinion, wrestling is one of the most difficult things to joke about because everything is already so cartoonishly loony. And I’m not even talking about the Rock ‘n Wrestling era. A wrestler named “Sexual Chocolate” getting it on with octogenarian Mae Young, which leads to her giving birth to a hand? It happened. It’s nigh impossible to come up with anything to approach the sheer inanity of that sketch.

However, you soon treasure moments like that and Katie Vick and a mumbling zombie character and Shawn Michaels forming a tag team with God, because, in a way, they actually give you some easy targets to make jokes about. Hornsby started writing the comic in 2008 … and I’m hard pressed to think of any angles that approached that level of insanity. Both the WWE and TNA were intentionally toning down their product (and, in effect, making both shows blander) for economic and political reasons. (WWE CEO Linda MacMahon cleaning up Raw because of her Senatorial bid, for example.)

Botched Spot acquits itself pretty well, even if a lot of the jokes are pretty low key. He touches on the last vestiges of the remaining cartoonish gimmicks: when the the Undertaker chokeslams Edge to Hell, he literally finds himself having a conversation with Satan. There’s a silly gag on why Sheamus is so pale and why Randy Orton is so orange. I imagine this aspect of the comic would have thrived better in the 80′s or the Attitude era, when there was a heck of a lot more to make fun of. The best gags are generally rather insider, goofing on backstage politics and the double standards by the carny-esque owners.

There are times I think certain strips could be better laid out, like one where a joke about wrestling announcers gets trounced by a punchline robbed of its surprise impact. Still, the hits generally outnumbered the misses, and I did like how the WWE superstars looked when rendered in Hornsby’s drawing style.

The surprise, for me, was how much I liked Hornsby’s original characters. Botched Spot follows two wrestlers trying to make it in a small, indie wrestling promotion. Our hero is Rad Bad DeBone, a pale, scrawny cruiserweight who looks something like Zack Gowen if he had two legs. He’s a generally nice guy, but his scrawny build and his lack of any real gimmick means that he’s destined to go nowhere. At least he’s a little realistic and aims a getting into the more cruiserweight-friendly promotion formerly known as TNA … but even that turns out to be a dead end.

It turns out that there aren’t that many interesting stories to tell about a nice, clean cut guy. There’s even a strip that sorta spoofs that. So, naturally, the comic’s focus oftentimes shifts to the other regular characters.

He’s joined by Olav Orlav, an older wrestler who’s unfortunately been stuck with a Soviet gimmick. Seemingly based on Nikolai Volkoff, Olav had a career playing the evil foreigner and jobbing to elderly good guys until the Soviet Union fell and his gimmick became suddenly archaic. Among his old wrestling partners are a Nazi and a bear. He has no problems taking questionable pharmaceuticals as long as he’s not caught, he’s a terrible wrestling teacher, and he has no problem screwing over his friends as long as it gets him a world title (which, in general, are ultimately useless).

Still, Olav remains very likable and he’s often in the starring role. Perhaps because years of sitcoms have predisposed us to liking curmudgeonly old men. But perhaps it’s because he’s often the underdog. Many times, Olav tries to do the right thing, and it always turns up biting him in the end. Former friends turn on him based on flimsy rumors and accusations, people prey on his trust to cheat him out of a job, and his knowledge is ultimately useless in the modern wrestling world. You can sorta see where Olav’s coming from.

There’s also a third character named Russell, who’s both an unpleasant little troll and the character that most readers can probably relate to. Russell is a smark — which is shorthand for “smart mark,” a breed of fan that knows that wrestling is fake and is more interested in the behind the scenes actions. Think of the smark as a wrestling hipster (not to be mistaken with a hipster wrestler, which also exists in the world of Botched Spot). Smarks root for wrestlers who they feel are unjustly depushed, but when they do become popular, then they turn on them in a heartbeat.

Anyway, Russell is some sort of uber-smark. He not only spends most of his time lingering on wrestling message boards, he also runs a blog and attempted a podcast, where he spends most of his time grumbling about the state of wrestling. Not that he would have it any other way. There’s a story arc where Russell, with the help of a tiny Shockmaster, learns that his dream wrestling scenario is one where all his nitpicks about wrestling come true, since there’s nothing he’d love more than to complain all the time on his blog.

Wait… why does that sound familiar?

Russell is also the catalyst to what, I think, is Botched Spot’s most entertaining storyline. He recruits Olav to go undercover and infiltrate a sketchy wrestling federation and to report on the findings to his blog. Olav pretends to be a manager, and he drags Rad Bad into his scheme by disguising him as a hardcore wrestler interested in joining the fed. When they find the owner, a scrawny kid named Jerry, they discover that not only is he still living in his Mom’s house (which I think is a reference to ECW’s Paul Heyman), he also has no idea how to actually run a wrestling federation, which turns out to be of the backyard variety.

One things leads to another. Rad Bad gets exposed for his lack of hardcore wrestling skills, Jerry’s mom takes over the fed and tries to clean up her son’s mess by making the fed more family friendly, the disgruntled wrestlers get revenge on Rad Bad by scrawling “I HATE JESUS” on his face with permanent marker, yadda yadda yadda, Olav becomes the new owner of the fed.

It’s a refreshing and reinvigorating change of pace for the comic. With Olav running his own fed, we’re soon introduced to a whole roster of eccentric back-up characters (including some minor ones reintroduced from earlier in the series). There’s Barbwire Betty, a lady wrestler with a string of wire in her beehive hairdo who has no problem fighting the guys, and Branwen, an emo-based wrestler who soon discovers that people don’t really hate emos that much anymore. The build-up to Olav’s first big show is chaotic and fun, and everyone learns a very important lesson: sometimes, it’s better to be hated.

Real life forced Hornsby to abandon Botched Spot early this year. He only recently returned to drawing the comic last month. Since the return, though, it’s been mainly wrestling parody strips. I suppose that Botched Spot may be going down the path of the similar genre-focused and infinitely more successful Penny Arcade, where the characters are merely avatars of the writer. More than likely, these pop culture editorials are what get the precious eyeballs, and an experienced wrestling fan knows you go with what gets the biggest reaction. Still,… I miss Olav, Russell, Rad Bad, Barbwire Betty, emo guy, and lady who appears once a year, mainly because they got to the heart of the wackiness of why we defensive smarks love watching a fake sport/soap opera for men with so many deep seated problems.

But let’s get to the important question: is there, at any point, a reference to el Enmascarado de Plata?

Mmmm…. sorta.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

If there is one comic that I’ve always been dying to write a review for on this site, it’s Pete Abrams’ Sluggy Freelance. This webcomic is virtually a first ballot Hall of Famer. Sluggy and me: we go way back… despite never having read the comic until relatively recently in its run. (And by “relatively recently” I mean four years ago.) I used to frequent a science fiction/fantasy message board with an incredibly passionate Sluggy Freelance fanbase. I think some even had online handles of “Zoë” and “Muffin the Vampire Baker.”

At the same time, Sluggy Freelance has its share of detractors. Sluggy, in fact, was one of the comics reviewed on the “Your Webcomic Is Bad (And You Should Feel Bad)” blog. (I don’t remember any of the main complaints about Sluggy, though, beyond the disappointment over the comic not being about a hard-boiled detective slug.) So, 4 years ago when I started this site, Sluggy made it on my short list of comics I had to review.

I read three or four months in the archives when I came to the startling realization that, despite having read 150 strips, I had read less than 3% of the entire comic.

So that was that. Two years later, I got in touch with a fine paragon of a fellow from New Zealand who used to post fairly prominently on that old message board. He found out that I did webcomic reviews. He was like, “Hey, cool! Mind if I make a request? I’m sure you’ve never heard of this comic, but … how about doing a review of Sluggy Freelance?”

I said OK. I promised myself that this time … THIS TIME … I’d push myself to the limit. I tied a necktie to my forehead like those dudes studying for the final exam in those anime. I would brave all the slings and arrows of Sluggy Freelance. I’d withstand the overuse of the word “nifty,” stomach all the super-precious moments with Kiki the poinging weasel thing, stare down all the dated pop culture references (remember when Dr. Laura Schlessinger was a thing), and prevent my eyes from rolling when I’m reading a comic where there are characters named “Slappyhoho.”

It is time to face your reckoning, Sluggy Freelance!

By the time I reached the three year anniversary strip, it dawned on me: despite buckling down and setting a goal to finish this comic, I’d spent TWO WHOLE MONTHS TO GET TO THIS POINT! That was two whole months I could’ve spent reading other webcomics. Or rambling about my opinions about the state of digital comics. Or feeding the poor. Or joining an underground band of resistance fighters in North Korea. Or (and this is the most likely scenario) watching my MST3K DVD’s for the fifteenth time. I’ve gotta give Pete Abrams credit: it isn’t easy doing a comic that updates every single day. He is a prolific little bugger.

After fourteen years of daily updates, Sluggy Freelance has accumulated over 5,000 strips. Typically when a webcomic gets this long, I can justify skipping around a little. Sluggy Freelance is the sort of webcomic, though, that makes you feel like you’d be missing out if you skipped anything. Storylines and characters accumulate at rapid speed. New characters are added every three months. Important plot elements are introduced every week. Even having read every single story up to 2005, I can’t help but feel a little lost.

Anyway, after failing for the second time, I learned something about myself. Sluggy Freelance was just too long and too dense. It was destined to be one of those webcomics I would never, ever review.

Until now.

Our hero’s name is Torg. That’s right. Torg. He has a friend named Riff. Their names are par for the course for Abrams’ sense of humor, which is to give everything names that would embarrass George Lucas’ kids. That title, for example: Sluggy Freelance. What does it even mean? Remarkably, Riff and Torg aren’t the stupidest names in the entire comic.

Torg is the resident idiot who’s got the heart of a champion. He’s often seen wearing a flannel shirt … which makes realize that this comic has been going on long enough to see the end of the grunge era and to see the day when flannels were retro cool again. Riff, on the other hand, is a genius inventor who looks like a sketchy drug dealer. Hey, he was created in the 90′s, and pairing a leather coat with a long ponytail was the uniform of heroes. And just like those 90′s heroes, he invents really big laser guns that would not look out of place in an X-Force comic.

One of the biggest weaknesses with Sluggy Freelance is the artwork. I just can’t embrace their overly simplistic character designs. With his parentheses eyes, Torg, especially, looks like a character from those hastily scrawled free pamphlets they gave you in school that taught you about how to save gallons of water by completely turning off the tap or how brushing alone won’t get rid of the bacteria between your teeth.

And yet … would you be surprised to learn that Pete Abrams graduated from the only accredited school devoted entirely to cartooning? That’s right: Abrams is a graduate of The Kubert School, whose noteworthy alumni include Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch, Adam and Andy Kubert, Alex Maleev, and Adam Warren. There are some moments, in fact, that are reminiscent of the style adopted by the school’s namesake, Joe Kubert.

So, in all likelihood, Abrams adopted his more simplistic style to maximize storytelling efficiency. While it can be a little hard on the eyes sometimes — especially the moments he uses are really cheap looking gradient fill for the backgrounds — he does manage to keep the plots moving at a brisk, manageable pace. And, trust me, that’s not as easy as it looks.

So… what is Sluggy Freelance about?

Sluggy follows the freewheeling adventures of Torg, Riff, and their friends. We have their female friend, Zoë, who is relatively normal. There are stretches where she goes to college and tries to live a normal life while the rest of the cast goes into space or something. She also gets involved in some really fanservice-y moments … though, to be honest, this applies to every other female character in Sluggy Freelance. Their's their other female friend, Gwynn, who wears glasses. She's supposed to be some sort of witch or something. She disappears for long stretches at a time, yet she feels far more integral to the cast than the other gals (Sasha, Angela, Beth … I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some others) who end up staying with the guys.

And then there's Bun-Bun… the bunny with the switchblade who is the mascot of Sluggy Freelance and its fans. Oh, how I hate Bun-Bun. I know a lot of fans really embrace the little guy, but he rubs me wrong in the same way that Scrappy-Doo makes me cringe. He just screams “Hot Topic T-Shirt,” in the sense that a foul bunny with a switchblade is supposed to be edgy and cuddly but in a way that makes you look like a total poser. Bun-Bun is involved in Sluggy’s least essential storylines… namely the ones where he fights Santa (who gets infected by an alien nyuk nyuk nyuk) and tries to take over all the Holidays. We have to put up with the elves, and, if I haven’t made it clear, they have to most headache-inducing names in the entire comic. This is when Abrams can cut loose with his goofiness … and by God can it get too precious at times. I’m willing to bet a million billion imaginary dollars that most negative reviews center around the character of Bun-Bun.

Everything else between 1997 and 2003 is a blur. I mean …. how did Aylee join the cast again? And wasn’t she a hot chick at some point? I remember the characters going into space in a mega parody of Star Wars, Gundam, and Transformers, but I completely forgot about that one guy that looked like a melting Darth Vader. There’s also a guy who says “crotch” a lot. I guess it’s my own fault for not following the … sigh … Niftypedia.

Overall, though, Sluggy Freelance stories turn out to be a mix of good to decent stories. My eyes tend to glaze over any stories dealing with Bun-Bun or Aylee. On the other hand, despite all the bad press she gets sometimes for being a poor man’s Summer Glau, I generally have an uptick in enthusiasm whenever we get to an Oasis storyline. What can I say? I’m totally the target audience for mysterious, butt-kicking female assassins.

Even though Sluggy Freelance incorporates several references to pop culture, it strikes me as being the most old school of current webcomics. I’ve recently been reading some old Popeye comics where Olive Oyl rescues an island of hairy-armed creatures called goons by kissing their arm-shaving enemies, the Oids, to death. Abrams’ channels that same silliness, like when Zoë transforms into a camel whenever someone says the word “Shupid.” And all those pop culture parodies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, and Battlestar Galactica are merely descendants to Al Capp’s recurring Dick Tracy parody within the panels of Li’l Abner.

So, rather than try to summarize the first half of the webcomic trying to recall storylines that can hazily remember, I’m going to focus on the one story that falls squarely at the half-way point: “That Which Redeems.”

One of the great things “That Which Redeems” has going for it is that it’s set in an alternate universe called the Dimension of Lame. It’s actually a nift- … decent entry point for new readers. Long time readers will get a kick out of the bizarro versions. However, since these are all effectively all-new characters and very little previous knowledge is needed, it’s not a bad place to jump in from the cold, either. The Dimension of Lame is a topsy-turvy world where everyone’s super nice to the point of being super annoying. They even test the patience of Torg, the most easy-going member of the cast. In this dimension, Bun-Bun is a sweet, friendly rabbit, and Kiki is a sadistic monster. Riff’s inventions work (supposedly), and Zoë is more openly affectionate.

Lord Horribus, a demon from the Dimension of Pain, is driven by blind rage to get revenge on Torg. Now, I, for the life of me, can’t remember who Lord Horribus was, or why he wanted revenge … and yet the story was structured tightly enough that knowing the back story wasn’t essential to enjoying it. Horribus brings his demons, and the people in the Dimension of the Lame are too … lame to mount any sort of resistance. Torg becomes the de facto hero, especially since he’s equipped with a talking sword that can kill demons. The downside: the sword’s powers can only be activated when it comes in contact with the blood of an innocent. This means that for Torg to save the world, a lot of people have to get hurt.

“That Which Redeems” is a perfect example of how Abrams can simultaneously wring drama, suspense, and humor out of the same situation. There’s a tense sequence where world leaders discuss launching a nuke to put an end to Horribus’ reign once and for all. It’s an engrossing page-turner as Torg tries to find Zoë before the nuke hits. Slight spoiler here: it ends with a joke. This is Abrams’ go-to joke, where he sets you up for something dramatic over the course of a week, only to punk you out at the last minute. And I fall for it.

Every. Single. Time.

For a story set in a Mirrorverse, “That Which Redeems” is surprisingly heartfelt. The central unrequited romance of Sluggy Freelance is Torg and Zoë. Here Torg’s dreams come true when he and the alternative universe Zoë get together… and to Sluggy‘s credit, the two are a very cute couple. So when the crap starts to hit the fan, you a really, really emotionally invested in seeing them both get out of it alive.

True to Pete Abrams’ sense of humor, Torg has to release the goodness back into the world … which is, somehow, stored in a sandwich baggie inside the Demon King’s fridge. The cost is high, though, and while Torg finally saves a lame dimension that he friggin’ hates, it nevertheless takes a huge emotional toll. At the end of the story, Torg returns to his own dimension completely drained as he collapses in front of Sluggy-616 Zoë.

And you know what? That moment was completely earned.

For my money, “That Which Redeems” is Abrams at his best. Unlike some Sluggy storylines, Abrams keeps his long-winded recap passages to a minimum. In fact, when he decides to get into the backstory of the demon Mosp, the aside feels like a natural extension of the main narrative. True to the entire body of Sluggy Freelance, the story shanghais you with several unexpcected twists, and yet they feel true to the characters that we know.

Finally, I got a sense that this story represented some real emotional consequences for Torg. In Sluggy Freelance, Torg has seen some pretty brutal stuff, and generally he’s shaken it off and remained his sunny self. The consequences in “That Which Redeems,” though, feel more permanent. It got to his heart. In the aftermath of the story, Torg seems to have changed, with his attitude tinged with bleakness and regret. Man, was I stoked to see what would happen next! Finally… finally the story was moving fast enough so I could finish the entirety of Sluggy Freelance! I could probably finish the entire comic before the end of the month.

My enthusiasm for Sluggy Freelance was at an all time high … until we got to the next story arc: “Oceans Unmoving.”

Rating (1997-2004) : 4 stars (out of 5)

(Part Two coming … in about two years. Seriously, when the hell is that damn space moose going to shut uuuuuuppppppppppp?!?!??!)

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Malaak: Angel of Peace!

*cue heroic sounding music*

Yes, it’s Malaak, strange visitor from deep in the forests who came to the city with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal women! And who, disguised as a student at a great metropolitan university, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice, and the Lebanese way!

Malaak was created by Joumana Medlej, a Lebanese illustrator. She has done drawings for children’s books, specifically a Lebanese heritage series. In her FAQ, she descibes Malaak as “Lebanon’s first and only superhero or adventure full-length series.” This comic is similarly aimed at readers who are typically younger than the current American fanboy crowd … that is, younger than 30, at least.

So who is this Malaak, and how does she gain her superpowers? It’s perhaps one of the strangest origin stories to come out of the last few decades. The spirits that for generations have guarded the land weep for the country and the violence that has torn it apart. They send a hero to protect it. And, so, a pine cone falls from a tree branch, and, swiftly, it mutates into a ten-year-old girl. Malaak is then adopted by kindly parents who raise her as their own.

This origin is probably way too goofy for modern readers. We’re used to more “realistic” origin stories, followed by a lengthy (and typically angsty) period where the hero comes to terms with his or her powers. Personally, I found it a rather refreshing throwback to the Golden Age, when all you needed to tell the readers was that someone came from a distant planet, had a bat smacked onto their window, was born from a lump of clay, saved from near-death by a glowing lantern, or zapped by lightning while playing with chemicals. And when this comic is being aimed at a younger audience, the simple origin is all you need.

At the same time, Malaak’s origin just the right touch of realism to feel plausible and modern. Malaak’s story is set in war-torn Lebanon. When Malaak’s parents discover the catatonic young girl in the woods, they leap to some dire assumptions. They think that Malaak’s real parents met the same fate as many other children and were killed during the war, and that the trauma has reduced the girl to a catatonic state.

It’s a solution that’s elegant when you think about it. Let’s look at the updates to Superman’s origins in 1986. To make the Man of Steel more believable to modern audiences, John Byrne jumped through several hoops to try to explain how the Kents could have a baby that managed to bypass hospital birth certificate records and social security. The solution was that a huge months-long snowstorm hit Smallville some time after the Kents discovered baby Clark. The Kents then lied and told the townsfolk that Martha had the kid while they were stuck in their home, unable to get to the hospital. My, how conveeeeeeeeenient.

I also thought that the war-time setting was a novel one. Again, it feels more true to the origins of the Golden Age heroes than the domesticated settings of modern day. The 1940′s were a far different era: readers were looking for heroes in the days when the Great Depression made people desperate and global developments of frightening magnitude were pushing people toward a second World War. Kids in a Western society can’t relate, but I’ll bet kids growing up in Lebanon can. That country saw a long, bloody civil war between 1975 and 1990. Even now, there’s no peace: a conflict between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government in erupted in 2008, and the government collapsed in January of this very year.

As a result, Malaak has to deal with armed soldiers and snipers who strike from crumbling buildings and confront civilians in busy city streets. But too much realism isn’t fun, and this is a superhero comic after all. So behind all the turmoil are ancient, malevolent spirits, specifically the Jinn. Some look like demonic parrots, while others take on human form.

As you might guess, I love superheroes. However, I’m really more of a fan of heroes who interact with folks in the real world. I love seeing Superman punching dudes through buildings or Spider-Man getting entangled in Venom’s sticky symbiotic skin. Good artists and storytellers can convey a sense of physics and heft, and the actions of the heroes that defy the rules make them seem spectacular.

I’m less a fan of supernatural/psychic comic superheroes, like Dr. Strange, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost. The problem is that these heroes spend a lot of time in an ill-defined astral plane, a place where rules of physics typically do not apply and you can always conjure something out of nothing. The rules of these kinds of adventures are generally loosely defined, and most of the time you’re stuck with boring monochromatic background scenery. And Malaak definitely does a lot of mystical traveling. She at least gets to travel to a dimension that’s very dreamlike and misty, which gives it a better artistic direction than most astral planes.

The illustrations where Malaak visits the Guardians are nicely rendered admittedly. Generally, Ms. Medlej’s art is unconventional for a superhero comic. Her style, though, never seems out of place. It succeeds in depicting both Malaak’s athletic grace in action sequences, the otherworldiness of the dream sequences … and even the beautiful costumes of ancient characters during flashbacks. It’s a combination of elements I don’t think I’ve seen in a superhero comic before, feeling more like Windsor McCay’s Little Nemo than Fantastic Four.

In the physical world, Malaak has some sort of second sight that lets her see past the Jinn disguises to see them in their true monsterous forms. Also, she can shoot green things out of her hands. And agility, I’m guessing. (Though don’t hold me to that. Lebanese students in Malaak tend to undergo a lot of combat training.)

In civilian life, Malaak is a mild-mannered college student. While she tries to keep her identity a secret, she’s not very successful at it. It’s only four issues in, and two of her chums have already figured out that Malaak and the local “Guardian” is one and the same person. However, the whole thing about people find out your secret identity? It turns out that it’s not much of a liability in the end. It’s actually a good thing.

One such friend, Adrian, turns out to be a fellow soldier in the battle against the Jinn. He ends up becoming something of Malaak’s sidekick. With the help of the guardian spirits, Malaak even crafts him a sword made out of salt. It’s not effective against human thugs, but a powerful weapon against the Jinn. (Also, a suspect, a vital ingredient in seasoning.) There’s a double standard at play: while Malaak has to save the city in costume, Adrian does not do the same … and this turns out to be the reason why her second friend guesses her superhero identity.

Stop being so self-conscious and swallow your pride! Just wear a matching superhero outfit already, Blondie! You could be “Guardian Lad.” Or “The Fantastic Mr. Salty Swordsman.”

OK, maybe not that last one.

Then again, Malaak’s outfit — which was designed by Adrian — does look kinda silly. Malaak herself thinks so. Was Adrian a huge fan of 90′s anime, and did he model Malaak’s costume after Frieza? Maybe it’s supposed to resemble the national flag, like the duds that nation-based heroes like Captain America and Alpha Flight wear. If so, that I think the costume would look much, much better if there was a green cedar on there somewhere. It might be clearer to the authorities that she’s the hero.

Of course, it’s not like the authorities mistrust her. They question the existence of a spandex-wearing hero for maybe two pages before they start hailing her as the city’s Guardian. One guy even has little heart bubbles coming out of his head. She gains their trust shortly after her debut when she knocks down the previously suspicious commander to save him from a stray bullet. Yup, nothing suspicious there! She’s completely trustworthy, what with her glowing green eyes and looking like a Dragonball Z villain and stuff.

Still, this general sense of bonhomie is completely compatible with the innocent world of Malaak. There’s a clear-cut split between the forces of good and evil. The people of Lebanon look up to Malaak unequivocally as a hero you can trust.

Even Malaak’s civilian life tends to be uncomplicated. When you get a cast of 20-something college students together, you’d sorta expect some soap opera style plots, wouldn’t you? But no: they tend to come across as people that Malaak sits down with for a midday lunch or spars with at the gym. The lack of emotional drama in Malaak’s personal life is almost subversive, in that it’s closer to how real-life relationships actually work.

You could argue that it’s a little one-dimensional. Older readers looking for a more mature take on superheroes (i.e., the current audience used to characters drawn at a towering 8-3/4 heads) may struggle with the uncomplicated storytelling of Malaak: Angel of Peace. But, as something of an aficionado of comics history, I thought the perhaps unintentional throwback to Golden Age stories to be quite refreshing. I’m reminded of a comment someone made about Christopher Nolan’s supposedly realistic take on on Batman: you can try to stick to less colorful villains who don’t fit your standards and explain away all of Batman’s technology … but in the end it’s still a story about a guy who dresses up like a Bat and beats up clowns.

Bringing superheroes back to a younger audience that would appreciate the action and adventures that superheroes used to represent may be one of the most daring and logical moves in recent memory.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Female action heroes have had a difficult road to travel in comics. Beyond societal gender politics of eras past, female comic heroes have fairly lascivious origins. Take Wonder Woman, for instance, one of the first female superheroes. She is a very heroic character, no doubt, but her reputation will always be tainted because her creator was Dr. William Marston, the feminist psychologist who was way into bondage and polyamorous relationships.

Superhero comics have traditionally been bought by pre-adolescent males, which means that female heroes often cater to the “boys rule/girls have cooties” and “girls are hot” extremes. Even when comic publishers try to update their female superheroes to modern times, they fall into the same problems. Sue Storm, for example, begun her career in the 1960′s with the weakest power (turns invisible) and was pretty much the damsel in distress. Then Marvel was all, “That sort of ignorant 60′s characterization doesn’t fly in the modern day!” So, to keep up with the changing audiences… marvel introduced a “sexy” Sue Storm with a boob window in the shape of the number 4.

Oh, the 90′s.

We’re still recovering from that, by the way, with DC recently passed an edict that, in their new rebooted universe, the superheroines gotta wear pants. OK, a good step in the right direction … but one that might be taken too far the wrong way, too, since all of the sudden we’re passing standards where the ladies have to cover up.

I see webcomics as something of a fresh start. A way to break away from all this madness. It’s a relative new medium unsaddled by the sometimes misogynistic origins of the past. So, to highlight the hard-hitting, high-flying, ass-kicking ladies of action in webcomics, I’m resurrecting the “Girl Power Week” concept.

First up is Otherworld, created by Toby Gard. This comic is rated 16+, borderline NSFW, for scenes of graphic disembowelments and naked boobs.

So, who is Toby Gard? The Otherworld site will proudly tell you that he’s the guy who created Lara Croft. Damn if that wasn’t enough to get me to read the webcomic. Look, I’m not the biggest Tomb Raider fan. I think I may have only finished half of Angel of Darkness before selling off my PS2. Some time after that driving level where you couldn’t see crap. But give the guy credit: Lara Croft is one of the few video game characters not created by Nintendo that can be recognized by the mainstream public.

According to a piece that Gard did for Top Web Comics, Gard got the idea for Otherworld when he was writing NaNoWriMo. See, people! NaNoWriMo isn’t always an exercise in futility! Time to resurrect that tale of the hero stuck on a desert island who’s constantly fighting off ninja zombies and is 68% your favorite recipes because you needed SOMETHING to pad the length to 50k words.

Here’s how Gard explains his premise:

Otherworld is not like Narnia or Wonderland (other than that all three worlds are a fantasy other-dimension parallel to our own) because Narnia and Wonderland are entirely made up, while Otherworld is based on folk myth. Otherworld is not standard fantasy like Middle Earth or the glut of other DnD-like worlds out there, but it is based on similar source material. Otherworld is not like normal Urban fantasy story, which asks the reader to believe that there are really vampires, werewolves and such like in this world, but we somehow have never caught, dissected or experimented on one. Otherworld is based on the real world with one single “What if?”

What if the Sidhe, the Tuatha De Danann really did return to the Otherworld centuries ago and they took what we call magic with them. If you are unfamiliar with these older folk tales, I’m talking about the Book of Invasions and things like WB Yeats Celtic Twilight.

Now, I don’t want to bring up Lara Croft too much in this review…. but when you think about it that doesn’t stray too far from how things work in Lara Croft land. Which is to say that it’s the same “fantasy is real” philosophy employed by its predecessor, Indiana Jones. Again, I’m not familiar with the game, but I have seen the movie. And there, impossible fantasy elements are treated matter-of-factly. Like that scene where a multi-armed statue comes to life. Or when Lara combines two halfs of a magical nacho to travel through time. Or when Lara’s dad is implausibly played by Jon Voight.

Otherworld is set in modern day Britain. It’s rooted in the magic tradition of the Celts, where there’s a regular world and one where the faeries come from. It’s a world full of ominous hills and spooky haunted forests, and it’s crawling with half-elven, half-lizard things that roam the land and attack outsiders.

Enter Katlyn Liu, one of the two heroines of our tale. She’s part of an assassin squad that offs folks who display signs of magic. This organization (and others, like the Vatican) are doing their part to eradicate magic from the world and to perpetuate the lie that magic is a myth.

Katlyn’s powers of telekinesis manifested at a young age. While this delights her father, this also attracts the attention of a super secret organization known as The Order that would like to train her in their Jedi ways. To acquire her, they kill her parents and made it look like an accident. On older gentleman in a long white beard served as her mentor. Sensing Katlyn’s potential, he put her on the fast track. She got to hone her skills against the elite fighters and got to witness firsthand the horror of seeing her intestines spill out of her own belly. Fortunately, The Order has its benefits, and one of them is an all-purpose healing brew. Disembowelment is but a temporary condition.

So Team Kill the Wizards track three girls down at an abandoned theater. Before you can say, “Toad Style is immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon,” out team of assassins have dispatched two of the girls with deadly efficiency. Katlyn has to kill the last one, a total newbie named Eden. Her comrades watch intently, wondering if Katlyn will embrace her destiny as a killer for hire. Katlyn displays her power and smacks Eden around with her magic. And then… SPOILER ALERT! ….

… she betrays The Order and decides to save Eden’s life.

How did The Order not see this one coming? It’s like they never watched Salt before.

Then again, we eventually get the explanation that Katlyn has been planning this escape for years in secret. She’s even been throwing fights to lull her former allies into a false sense of superiority.

Gard’s artistic style is very simple. The girls look a little Disney-ish. Katlyn looks a lot like Mulan, and Eden reminds me of that girl from Tangled. Overall, though, Gard’s style works well will all the action scenes. She zips about the page… leaping, kicking, and swinging swords. Her opponents respond in kind. The characters, then, all look lithe and wiry and designed to bend at crazy, impossible angles. The action scenes are dynamic and are easily the best part in the comic.

Katlyn is somewhat of a generic stoic ninja woman character, but Toby Gard makes it work. While she’s cold and confident as you might expect, she’s also tightly wound and is just a hair’s breadth away from completely snapping. At one point, Eden, ever the ingenue, mentions that all this stuff about faeries is completely ridiculous. Katlyn responds like a rageposter, quoting various facts from Wikipedia and basically sneering at Eden’s ignorance. I like how she pulls the Plato card. “What, you think you’re smarter than Plato, the founder of Western philosophy and science? Yeah, I thought so, little girl.” When you think about it, Katlyn is a total magic hipster.

Eden, on the other hand, is our POV character. She’s got some magic mojo of her own, but has no idea how to use it. Her purpose is to point out and be amazed by things that are far from normal. She hasn’t had much character development yet, but so far she comes across as a rather sweet character who doesn’t know jack about Plato.

The only complaint I have thus far is that the plot isn’t exactly the most original one in the world. Otherworld is very predictable, and I was calling the twists about three or four pages before they happened. Despite Toby Gard’s insistence that this is different from Narnia and Wonderland and D&D, there’s little to separate the story from the standard Joseph Campbell high fantasy novel template.

Still, if you were looking for a story where a kick-ass female warrior whose knowledge of transdimensional folklore-based magic is only outmatched by her zest for kung-fu treachery, then Otherworld is a fine webcomic indeed.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)