One Punch Reviews #30: The Intrepid Girlbot
July 21, 2010 at 4:00 am | Posted in 5 Stars, One Punch Reviews, The Webcomic Overlook, comedy webcomic, funny animal webcomic, sci-fi webcomic, webcomics | 2 Comments
Despite my gruff and incredibly manly exterior, the Webcomic Overlook is, in reality, a big softie. I am big on cute. I get weak at the knees over kittens and puppies. This may be why I am a sucker for Diana Nock’s adorable webcomic with the unbelievably precious title, The Intrepid Girlbot.
Continue reading One Punch Reviews #30: The Intrepid Girlbot…
The Webcomic Overlook #124: MS Paint Adventures: Problem Sleuth
June 10, 2010 at 11:03 pm | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, comedy webcomic, motion comic, sci-fi webcomic, stick figure webcomic, video game webcomic, webcomics | 15 CommentsTags: MSPaint Adventures, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth
NOTE: A commenter has pointed out that MS Paint Adventures isn’t actually done in MS Paint. This manages to invalidate about 5 or 6 paragraphs in this review. So please treat these paragraphs as the ravings of a lunatic. Thank you.
MSPaint has been around since Windows 1.0. when it was called PC Paintbrush. It’s a piece of software that has since been bundled into every version of the Windows OS. Thus, it’s the only graphics painting program that everyone has. It’s simple to use with a few features. Airbrush, paintbrush, line, curve, and ellipse are all you have. Colors are limited to 48 selections.
In other words, it’s very very limited. It’s probably something you don’t want to use if you’re creating a webcomic. When you think MS Paint, you think of, oh, Pokey the Penguin. The joke, more often then not, is the awfulness of the graphics. If you want to actually create art, you’re probably better off using a more versatile software.
Or so you’d think. I’ve seen some surprising attempts at art online. Wikipedia, in fact, boasts a few nicely rendered examples. The result is quite impressive since most computer users are already familiar with the effort it takes just to draw a simple stick figure.
Pushing the envelope is Andrew Hussie, who must have a Master’s Degree in Maximizing Bundled Microsoft Programs for Humor Projects. Hussie is co-creator of a series of Star Trek: TNG and ALF edits, and he redefined the art of making deliberately terrible webcomics with Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff. He’s best known, though, for his efforts on a little thing called MS Paint Adventures.
His latest MS Paint Adventures project, Homestuck, is one of the most visually impressive uses of MS Paint I’ve ever seen. However, I decided to check out his first completed work in MS Paint (and the one that really put MS Paint Adventures on the map), the adventure game parody known as Problem Sleuth. It’s an absolute monster, clocking in at over 1700 pages. And yet it’s the easier than Homestruck to get into.
Continue reading The Webcomic Overlook #124: MS Paint Adventures: Problem Sleuth…
One Punch Reviews #29: The Guns of Shadow Valley
May 4, 2010 at 10:12 am | Posted in 5 Stars, One Punch Reviews, The Webcomic Overlook, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, webcomics, western webcomic | 6 CommentsTags: The Guns of Shadow Valley
If movies have told me anything, it’s that the Wild West was a dangerous place to be. Every corner was filled with gunslingers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, banditos, cattle rustlers, and hostile natives. Stakes are already high enough. But how about you throw some good ol’ fashioned superpowers in the mix?
That’s basically what we get with The Guns of Shadow Valley, one of the five nominees for Eisner’s Best Digital Comic. The webcomic was developed by Scar Tissue creators David Wachter and James Andrew Clark.
Continue reading One Punch Reviews #29: The Guns of Shadow Valley…
The Webcomic Overlook #118: Bayou
May 1, 2010 at 7:25 pm | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, adventure webcomic, fantasy webcomic, historical webcomic, webcomics | 9 CommentsTags: Zuda Comics, Bayou
If there’s an American mythology, most of us would point to the era known as The Wild West. Fueled by Hollywood imagery, dreams of wide open plains, and memorable gun-totin’ badasses played by John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, the Wild West imagines a world that is dangerous and tough and yet adventurous at the same time. The truth of the era — which is probably more mundane and not quite as perilous for most prairie settlers — gets glossed over. Part of this mythology is evident in one of Zuda Comics’ most popular efforts, High Moon (reviewed here).
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Deep South in the era of the Great Depression and beyond. This time period is often regarded with utmost seriousness, since it’s highlighted by one of America’s darkest dilemmas. The entire region was gripped by fear. White people were still smarting over their loss and humiliation at the hands of the North in the Civil War. They saw their old world of plantations as a modern day Camelot, and the greedy Northerners took it away.
But for every aristocrat, there are about 100 serfs. If the Whites thought they had it bad, the Blacks — their serfs under the system of slavery — had it worse. Blacks were specifically targeted by angry White Southerners who saw “darkies” as inferior and dangerous. The blockbuster movie of 1915, The Birth of A Nation, didn’t do much to help matters: it’s portrayal of the Ku Kux Klan as heroes and Black people as immoral villains was one of the big reasons the Klan’s meteoric rise in popularity during the 1920′s.
So when it comes to romanticizing any aspect of the Deep South in that era, there’s a very real caution in taking any risks deviating from the real life hardships. Fantasize events, and you run the risk of inspiring the wrong kinds of people to do horrible, dishonorable things. (The Birth of a Nation‘s director, D. W. Griffith, seemed horrified by the reaction to his movie. His next film, Intolerance, tried to teach audiences a lesson about prejudice.) Maybe imagination has no place in real world trials and tribulations, and everything should be taken with the same stone-faced seriousness as To Kill A Mockingbird.
Which is why I was rather astounded when Jeremy Love’s Bayou, a Best Digital Comic nominee for the 2010 Eisner Awards, proved that notion wrong. The author doesn’t gloss over the horrors of that era. There are lynchings. Black people are denied the right to a fair trial simply due to the color of their skin. Police turn a blind eye when white people inflict harm on black people.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for flights of fantasy. Sometimes, that’s jus the thing you need to survive.
The Webcomic Overlook #115: Rice Boy
March 22, 2010 at 1:00 am | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, dramatic webcomic, fantasy webcomic, webcomics | 12 Comments
I was first introduced to Evan Dahm’s Rice Boy about a year ago. Everything I’d read were nothing but highly positive reviews, gushing with unfettered praise. Yet, after reading the first couple of pages, I sadly didn’t feel all that compelled to check it out.
The opening scenes look like something straight out of the comic section in a mid-90′s alt-weekly. It’s one-on-one conversation at a bar, where the patrons are some of the strangest looking hombres around. One character looks like a featureless Grateful Dead bear. The other, which has a flashlight for a head that projects still images of movies and cartoons on his round face, is even more unsettling. Plus the bartender was some sort rejected character design from Klasky Csupo’s Aaahh!!! Real Monsters! cartoon. It’s the outsider look that someone like file under other‘s Shannon Smith would love. But me? Those stylistic flourishes actually turn me off somewhat.
Plus, there’s that “-” in the URL. I don’t know about you, but I’m psychologically predisposed to pooh-pooh anything with a “-” in the URL.
But then I reviewed Order of Tales and loved it. It turns out that Evan Dahm’s style was far more approachable than I initially suspected. At the same time, readers started to strongly insist that I pick up the far more heralded companion piece. (So strongly, in fact, that even Mr. Dahm noticed: “…it still seems like more people got excited about Rice Boy? But I don’t care because OoT will be the best comic I have ever done ever.”) So I decided to give Rice Boy another whirl, now buoyed by the bonhomie of the readers and my good experiences with Dahm’s world of Overside thus far.
The Webcomic Overlook #110: Shi Long Pang
February 26, 2010 at 1:17 pm | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, historical webcomic, webcomics | 1 CommentTags: Shi Long Pang
I once got into a talk with a guy at work about some items that I’d seen at a museum. I mentioned how derelict a lot of the Roman and Greek exhibits look. “You got it to hand it to the Koreans,” I said to my friend (a Korean), “they know how to preserve historical artifacts. I saw a 5,000 year old pottery that looked like it was made yesterday.”
“5,000 years isn’t really that long,” he said. I don’t think he was showing any false modesty or pulling my leg, because he added, “China’s history is longer.”
And he’s right. China’s got a fantastically long history that most Westerners aren’t familiar with. And that includes me. I’m not going to pretend that I know my Qin Dynasty from my Xin Dynasty from my Qing Dynasty. The small taste of Chinese culture from the Summer Olympics two years ago thrilled — and sometimes frightened — the entire world with China’s grandeur and historical scope. With such a rich history, then, it’s a shame that few Westerners use China as a setting.
One of the few is Ben Costa, creator of the Xeric Award winning Shi Long Pang, the Wandering Shaolin Monk. The story takes place at the Fall of the Ming Dynasty, which was “one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history” by the University of Calgary but which we remember mainly for the nice vases. And when the most stable government in the world falls, you probably don’t want to be around to witness the aftershocks.
The Webcomic Overlook #108: Hark! A Vagrant
February 18, 2010 at 7:38 am | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, comedy webcomic, historical webcomic, webcomics | 11 CommentsTags: Kate Beaton, hark! a vagrant
You tend to remember some of the strangest things your teachers tell you. Back when I was a younger El Santo and attending a Catholic school in Detroit, my teacher, who was a bit of a hippie, mentioned in history class that “American people have no cultural identity.” And, so as not to leave out our neighbors across the river, he added, “Canada has even less of an identity.”
It was a baffling statement to hear in the 8th grade. Now that I’m older, I can sort of see what he was talking about, especially in relation to history. The two neighboring North American countries don’t have the 10,000 year history of China or the 5,000 year history of Korea. Europeans, namely excitable message board trolls who have this need to snark on all things American, wonder what in the world is being taught in our history classes. I mean, what is there to learn over the span of 200-300 years of history?
However, the more I travel this country, the more I think that 8th grade teacher of mine was wrong. It’s a mistake, I think, to relate national character to longevity and to isolate a national experience from the continual progress of all humanity. You’ll notice that in most history books, the focus is on wars, one of the most cataclysmic events to occur to a nation. The US and Canada don’t have quite as impressive an inventory as other nations (though the US arguably wins this category).
But maybe the true measure of a national character, not reflected in any traditional history books, should not be measured on how many wars you wage but on how honorable your people behave. A Canadian history buff once said, “Our history is the march of thousands of people across a continent trying to make a life for themselves. How can it be boring?” That person is, of course, webcomic artist Kate Beaton.
So now, with Canada currently making global news thanks to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the time is ripe to revisit one of the most unapologetically Canadian webcomics of all time, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant.
Continue reading The Webcomic Overlook #108: Hark! A Vagrant…
The Webcomic Overlook #105: Order of Tales
January 25, 2010 at 12:38 pm | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, adventure webcomic, all ages webcomic, comics, fantasy webcomic, funny animal webcomic, webcomics | 13 CommentsTags: Order of Tales, Evan Dahm
High fantasy is probably the only literary genre in existence where the author has to essentially write two stories. The first is what’s happening now: hero goes on an adventure, fights a dragon, yadda yadda yadda. However, the author also has to write a second story. He has to write a detailed and epic history of the lands and people going back to, say, 1000 years before the hero of the story was even born. The hero’s tale cannot exist in a vaccuum, and his raison d’etre is deeply embedded in the tales that go before him. So, quite amusingly, it’s essential in high fantasy to include stories of a glorious, long lost past in a tale that is itself a fantastic approximation of humanity’s glorious, long lost past.
It’s probably all Tolkien’s fault. The brutha not only inserted poems about elven lovers that were only tangentially related to the narrative of Lord of the Rings itself, he also wrote a library’s worth of back notes (of which the Silmarillon was only but a small piece of the puzzle) to flesh out the myths and beliefs of Middle Earth. It’s kind of understandable in his case. The guy was a professor, and those guys are up to their wazoos in textbooks. Besides, he pulled off the faux-textbook atmosphere so well that to this day people enjoy reading and studying Tolkien as if it were a minor college elective.
The fantasy novelists the follow Tolkien reiterated the superficial aspects. Most fail to come up with anything compelling. One of the best recent efforts is Susanna Clarke’s Hugo-Award winning Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, who fills you in on the history of the Raven King John Uskglass through some of the most ridiculously detailed footnotes you’ll find in fantasy literature today. (It also made me very happy that I sprung for the hardcover. I imagine squinting to read the footnotes in paperback form would be a headache and a half.)
Storytelling is also a key component of Evan Dahm’s fantasy webcomic Order of Tales. Here, Mr. Dahm fills us in on the past through a nifty device: his hero is a plucky little storyteller whose greatest weapon is knowledge — specifically, the legends, myths, and history encompassing his fantasy world.
Continue reading The Webcomic Overlook #105: Order of Tales…
The Webcomic Overlook #99: The Meek
November 5, 2009 at 3:56 pm | Posted in 5 Stars, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, anime, fanservice, fantasy webcomic, manga style webcomic, webcomics | 24 CommentsTags: The Meek
Typically, in the great tug-of-war over which is most important to a comic — great art or great writing — I tend to think that writing wins out most of the time. A good narrative will get me through a webcomic any day, while nice art satisfies only but for a moment. But, you know, there’s a chance I’m looking at this debate all wrong. What if a lot of webcomic artists are just poor storytellers?
It’s been said that a picture is of equivalent value to about 1,000 words. Unfortunately, most artists only go up to about 200. I’m a big fan of Jim Lee, especially since, back in the 90′s, his art on X-Men was one of the things that got me hooked into comics. But, you know, these days when I look at one of his comics the only words that pop into my mind are “boy, that girl sure has a nice rack.” That’s only eight words Jim.
On the other hand, there’s Frank Quitely. Take a look at Grant Morrison work independent of him (i.e., Seven Soldiers, Batman RIP, Batman & Robin #4-6). Sure, the stories are high concept, but in the end, they come off as rather pedestrian. But pair Morrison up with Quitely and the combination is transcendent (All Star Superman, Batman & Robin, New X-Men). Morrison’s plotting was only, at most, half of the story. The other half was the fantastic storytelling prowess of Frank Quitely. His illustrations alone spoke volumes about emotion, wonder, and action. Batman & Robin #2 opened with Dick Grayson slumped over while sitting on the stairs in his Batsuit, ill-fitted and hardly as intimidating as when Bruce wore it, while Alfred looked on sadly. That single panel was easily the 1,000 word variety… maybe more.
This is probably why I’ve really enjoyed The Meek, written and illustrated by Der-Shing Helmer. The art isn’t just pretty. It’s half the storytelling.
By the way, this webcomic does feature a cornucopia of nudity, so be warned: assume all links are NOT SAFE FOR WORK.
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