Every time I come across a reference to Maritza Campos’ Power Nap, there’s always a reference to College Roomies From Hell. I’ve never read that comic. I suspect it’s a blind spot that will prove to be my undoing, like that time I didn’t know what Penny Arcade and Ctrl+Alt+Del were. (Oh, to return to those blissful, innocent days.) It’s long, and it never really seemed something that was up my alley, anyway. I’ve never really been a fan of college roommate comics, let alone one where they’re apparently from the eternal netherworlds of the damned. So I’m not the guy to go ask if this is better or worse than CRFH.

It doesn’t much matter, anyway. First of all, it’s visually distinct from CRFH. This time around someone else is handling artistic duties. Power Nap is penned by Bachan, a Mexican illustrator who also does Vinny. It seems to be about a werewolf of sorts.

At a quick glance, Power Nap looks to be catered towards Bachan’s well-honed skill set of drawing monsters. It’s a highly visual story filled with fantastic images of monsters and giant hands. Some of these are induced by the three-dimensional production values invested into getting the man on the street to pay attention to loud and intrusive advertising. Some of it, though, is going on in the mind of our main character, a harried office worker by the name of Drew Spencer.

The world of Power Nap is … well, not necessarily dystopian, per se, though it does share a lot of similarities to the beloved cracked-mirror future societies of 1984, Brazil, and Fahrenheit 451. A new drug called Z-Sups has hit the market that has made sleeping a thing of the past. Unfortunately, Drew is allergic to Z-Sups. His sleeping, once an accepted routine of the human condition, is now seen as an abnormality. It’s the sort of premise that almost screams to be taken seriously. Perhaps it should be presented in a black-and-white indie comic format with art by David Mazzucchelli or Dave Gibbons. Campos, instead, plays things for laughs. Bachan complies, with cartoony, almost Looney-Tunes-style artwork filled with bulgy eyes and exaggerated features.

And somehow, it works.

By setting the story in the future, Campos introduces an element of uncertainty towards Drew’s condition. We’ve all experienced the effects of sleep deprivation. The jumpiness. The irritability. The hallucinations of a serpentine dragon with an umbrella. The new technology, though, introduces an element of doubt to Drew’s life. Is he imagining things? Or are they the newest visual technologies, capable of generating intimidating glowing hands, that only merely seem as if they’re self-generated figments of a tired mind? In a future where marketing has gotten so viral that some ads are reenacted using real props and devil cosplay is a regular thing, there’s no way to be truly certain whether or not something you’re seeing is the real deal or not.

And yet in the humor is a touch of despair. Drew can’t hold a relationship because he’s seen as abnormal. He keeps getting bumped down the corporate latter, because — while his condition acts as a disability that keeps him from getting fired — he’s seriously under-performing compared to his fellow employees since he can’t function 24 hours a day. Hence, his job as a guy stapling papers. No one understands why his IQ keeps falling, or why he can’t stay awake for some whoopee. It’s problem after problem after problem… one that, in a flashback, caused him to snap and burn the office down.

And, like all decent sci-fi stories, it re-contextualizes real world problems and makes them personal. Deep down, beyond the cutesy references to JJ Abrams Jr. and the silly dragon that keeps trying to offer Drew and umbrella, Power Nap is about struggling through life’s indignities and the stomach-churning realization that no one has any idea what you’re going through.

Rating: Five stars (out of 5).

There are two ends of the reviewing spectrum that make me a bit nervous. The first, as I mentioned in the previous review, is when a webcomic looks so amateur that you’re a bit hesitant to talk about it.

Then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum. Sometimes a webcomic is so polished that you’re sort of taken aback by how good it looks. “Wait,” I say, “is this even a webcomic, technically? I’m pretty sure this was always meant to go straight to print.” I’m not slamming the art in webcomics, by the way, which can be quite stunning. However, most have a distinctly non-commercial flavor, where the art is geared close to the heart of the creator. I’m talking about comics that seem so ready for prime time that you’re surprised that there isn’t already an animated adaptation airing on Cartoon Network with a live-action movie deal in the works.

That’s how I feel when I read Tony Cliff’s Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant (not to be confused with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch), a webcomic about swashbuckling adventure in the 1800′s.

Our action begins in Constantinople (Istanbul). Our point-of-view guy, Selim, serves as a Lieutenant in the Turkish Jannisary Corps. It is a highly thankless job. When it comes time for bonuses to be handed out, Selim has to strip to his skivvies and fight for the wealth in a humiliating exercise that provides amusement to the higher-ranked officers. He’s also a pretty mellow guy, preferring the simple pleasures of a good tea to war and swordplay.

Enter Delilah Dirk. Accomplished assassin. Saboteur. She trained worldwide so she can punch higher than her weight class. As a child, she learned archery in France, survival in India, acrobatics in Indonesia, swordplay in Japan, and a few unspecified skills among the American Indians. She has fought against Sikhs, conquistadores, aborigines, lions, and one large Mongolian man.

She’s also totally unassuming, especially in the culture of Constantinople where the male-dominated society view women as weak and timid. In fact, chauvinism is so prevalent that Selim is sentenced to death for merely repeating the story that Delilah tells him about her background.

Fortunately for Selim, this is all going according to Delilah’s plan. In a True Lies moment, Delilah tells the prison guard how she’s going to escape, does it, and drops the mayhem. She rescues Selim from being executed. Selim, having nowhere else to go, reluctantly follows Delilah on her quest to tick off as many nobles as possible by stealing their stuff.

At the star of the story, I admit I was a little nervous Delilah might turn out to be a Mary Sue. She outfights all the jannisaries with very little effort. She is nigh indestructible. Plus, she has a flying boat that makes travel a breeze. She is, to coin a phrase from Mary Poppins, “Practically perfect in every way.”

A hero without flaws, though, runs the risk of being a tad boring and a little hard to relate to. Indiana Jones, for example, is a cocky superstar archaeologist you can trust to find the ancient artifact. However, he’s an easy guy to relate to. Sometimes he gets savagely beaten down by more powerful opponents. Sometimes he’s paralyzed by his crippling fear of snakes. Flaws may seem a sign of weakness, but weaknesses are what humanizes characters.

We learn later, though, that despite her physical acumen, her confident attitude of derring-do, and her flying boat, she does have a flaw: it’s her confidence. Does that sound like the sort of flaw that you’re supposed to point out when interviewing for a job? Yeah, sorta. But it’s just as paralyzing as Indy’s fear of snakes. Things go badly for Delilah when pirates track her down and shoot down her flying boat. Faced with a scenario where everything goes wrong, Delilah loses it and freaks out, waiting instead for a Great Space Goose to scoop her up and take her away.

It’s not clear, initially, why Delilah keeps Selim around despite the fact that he’s quite inept at a lot of things. She claims it’s because he makes great tea, though there’s probably something deeper than that. Twice Delilah not so subtly hints that Selim is free to go with own way, but Selim cannot, mainly because he’s a marked man and he’s safer under Delilah’s protection.

However, I think the most interesting aspect of the relationship is that Delilah can’t dismiss or kill Selim because he’s too gosh-darned nice. She rescues him from execution because he, quite meekly, got into that position because he tried to speak highly of her abilities. Later, Selim suffers a crisis of conscience when he debates whether or not he should let Delilah continue with her criminal activities. Ultimately, he decides to side with Delilah and turns down an offer of hospitality — which raises suspicions and puts him into trouble even further. Delilah even suspects that Selim may have considered betraying her — perhaps even planned on it as an excuse to ditch Selim once and for all — but Selim’s good heart comes through in the end and botches everyone’s plans.

Plus, unlike Delilah, Selim actually stays cool under pressure. There’s a scene where they’re stuck in an aqueduct with rubble falling around them as they’re bombarded by artillery. It’s Selim who formulates a plan to fake their deaths and pick off the scouts sent to look for their bodies. The adventure is the first indicator to Delilah that the Turkish Lieutenant may actually prove to be a useful companion. Selim may not be much of a fighting man, but he is a strategist.

The artwork is absolutely outstanding. Let’s start with the character designs. Delilah Dirk, while attractive at some angles, is not drawn like a conventional heroine. The first thing I noticed, in fact, was her prominent Grecian nose. This is surprisingly rare; most cartoonists seem to be ashamed of large schnozes on women, opting instead to render them as minuscule dots. The other thing you’ll notice is that Delilah is almost always sleepy-eyed. It doesn’t matter if she’s just chilling on her boat or mowing down soldiers through expert swordplay. The heavy-lidded eyes convey that everything is routine, the challenges are beneath her, and she’s totally cool and in control. However, when her eyes are wide open, Delilah takes on a wild quality that shows how badly she reacts when things get out of her control.

Selim, on the other hand, has soft, almost delicate features. Just by looking at his placid face, you get the sense that he’s out of place in the military.

And the backgrounds… oh, the backgrounds. Everything in Delilah Dirk is illustrated, inked, and colored with masterful confidence and a draftsman’s keen eye and expertise. The sweeping panorama of Constantinople is so lovingly drawn that you can almost feel the ocean breeze on your skin and hear the hustle and bustle of the crowded 19th century marketplace. It makes me want to take a vacation in Istanbul, something I had not ever before considered.

Everything here is so wonderfully detailed, from the steep columns of the aqueduct to the intricate pieces of armor. Delilah Dirk is a pure visual feast. Tony Cliff is especially adept at rendering scenes from multiple angles, lending a sense of drama and movement to the breathtaking action sequences.

So strap yourself in for adventure and treat yourself to Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant. It’s a Turkish delight on a moonlit night.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

“But wait, El Santo,” you say. “Aren’t you taking a break?”

I know. I’ve got to admit something to you: I’m terrible at this whole taking a break thing. And the worst part of it is… I’m breaking hiatus for something that is not, technically, a webcomic.

Twins Peter and Bobby Timony’s The Night Owls is, in fact, closer to being on the digital comic side of the scale than on the webcomic side. It could have been considered a webcomic when Zuda was around. But then Zuda died, a good number of my Zuda-only webcomic blogger compatriots disappeared, and the remaining Zuda issues have been banished to the nether realms of Comixology.

If you want to read The Night Owls anymore, you must download it for $0.99 an issue … though the first issue is free. The Night Owls has since ended, capping off at 9 issues, so a full run of The Night Owls is going to cost you $8 (and a bit more more if you’re going to spring for the print version on Amazon).

I suppose a site called “The Webcomic Overlook” should probably let this one go… but then who would review it? From my experience, most sites reviewing digital comics are focusing on much the same things as their print comic sites … namely DC’s New 52 initiative.

As fate would have it, though, I rediscovered The Night Owls whilst downloading the newest issues of Green Lantern, The Flash, Suicide Squad, and, yes, Aquaman on to my brand-spankin’ new iPad. While I’ve been pleased for the most part, I’m a little miffed that much of the actual content has been very light on story. Aquaman, for example, has been my favorite thus far … but really, he spends the entire issue deflecting criticisms at a fish n’ chips place. If I submitted that as a chapter in NaNoWriMo, someone would probably and inevitably shoot back: “Too much padding.” Are these issues really worth the $2.99 to $3.99 cover prices?

It’s all part of the general trend of decompression. I entered comics in the 90′s, so every issue was just one part of a three part storyline, so stretching things out to six issues seems overly self-indulgent. But I sure that in those days, there were old timers who were railing against the three-issue arcs, reminiscing of the days when you could have a whole story in one (which, to my eyes, just weren’t epic enough). And before then you had three-in-one stories, and before then, the adventures serialized in newspaper strips.

Which brings me to The Night Owls, which hearkens back to the tight, fast paced newspaper strip structure that you’d fin in Terry and the Pirates and Little Orphan Annie. First, let’s compare prices: it’s $0.99. But that’s one thin dollar that’s worth it. For that price, you get pretty much two and a half fun storylines, a bunch of enjoyable characters, and quite possibly a ham sandwich thrown in. Now that, my friends, is a bargain!

The Night Owls (who, incidentally, have a swank as heck logo) are a team of paranormal private investigators. They consist of Professor Ernest Baxter, a bespectacled poindexter who’s the brains of the operation and who can’t go out into the daylight; Mindy Markus, a chipper and athletic young woman who’s seriously rushing on our clueless professor; and Roscoe, a gargoyle who talks like a cabbie. Looking for character development? The Night Owls does have it, but not in the ways you’d expect. In the spirit of retaining a free-wheeling cartoony aesthetic, so developments are often non sequitur and tongue in cheek. Want to know something more about Mindy Marcus? We do find out about her father… or should I say fathers. One of them, her adopted father, is Rumpelstiltskin. The other is a very chauvinistic king of a magical realm. It’s a pleasant surprise, mainly because it runs so contrary from the personality traits that we grow so familiar with and fall in love with.

The cartoonishness of The Night Owls is a big part of the charm. It’s got the innocence and manic creativity of a Golden Age comic. There’s a storyline concerning a villain by the name of Mr. You, who looks like Dick Tracy villain The Blank. He has the frightening power of stealing people’s identities and taking on the appearance of his victims.

Well… he just straight up rips the entire face of a dude like it was a rubber Halloween mask. While the pain is probably excruciating, the victim turns out to be OK (Mr. You can kill his victims, because dead they can’t impart their identity to him), and they have no problem reattaching their faces back on. The biggest problem, in fact, is if Mindy delivered a shiner while Mr. You was wearing your face. But that’s more of a cosmetic issue than anything. Nothing a little Maybelline can’t fix.

The rest of The Night Owls treats us to other goofy otherworldly concepts such as a gangster with a magical lead pipe that can dispel banshees, a werewolf being framed for murder, and vampire gangsters. Seriously, they had me at the vampire gangsters. Everything is rendered in glorious sepia (except for the issue where the team enters a technicolor fantasy realm), getting me in a very Charlie Chaplin mood.

The format and the generally light-hearted tone, in fact, made The Night Owls always feel a little out-of-step with the rest of Zuda. Bayou, High Moon, Azure, and the others were far more somber and serious. The Nights Owls is also ostensibly about horror. However, if the rest of Zuda was My Chemical Romance, The Night Owls was The Charleston: lively, upbeat, and made you want to kick up your heels.

If there are any flaws, it’s the way The Night Owls ends. They were setting up an intriguing love quadragngle between Prof. Baxter, Mindy Markus, handsome detective Bill McRory, and sexy Apache woman Hekalu. But then, as of issue 8, everything seems to have gone into wrap-up mode. Loose story elements were re-introduced just to be hastily tied up. I imagine that the Timonys had a longer term plan, or perhaps plans to keep The Night Owls going on indefinitely, when Zuda folded last year. Perhaps, caught a little off guard, they plowed forward to the all-too Hollywood ending where Baxter faces his greatest challenge with all his friends cheering him on.

Rather than cheer along, I was left with a sinking feeling of, “Wait, that’s it?”

Almost as an added bonus, The Night Owls turns out to be one of the easiest comics to read on the tiny screen of an iPod. The pan-and-scan option feels unnatural for most comics. Not so the case for The Night Owls. Each page is roughly 6 panels long — which makes The Night Owls the most webcomic-like of all its Zuda brethren. When the reader zooms in on them and you slide your finger across the screen from one panel to the next, the transitions feels seemless. No more having to tilt your iPod sideways and having to zoom in on microscopic speech balloons!

And, well, it looks great on the iPad, too. Zuda Comics were designed with the reader held horizontally, and the images generally come out nice and crisp.

So there you have it! The Night Owls: a steal at $8, and definitely a better bargain than most of DC’s overpriced new comics.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

The artwork for Gigi Digi’s Cucumber Quest is so adorable that you start to wonder why this isn’t a webcomic that has a hundred different kinds of t-shirts on display in its virtual storefront. In an alternate universe, shirts sporting different kinds of Cucumber Quest characters would be seen on the racks at the local Fuego, on iPad slipcases, on backpacks, wallets, and purses, and on a baby’s disposable diapers. Cucumber Quest characters would give Hello Kitty and My Little Pony a run for their money.

Cucumber Quest is filled with cute rabbits with big fuzzy faces and rounded ears. Ms. Digi’s art makes you just want to cradle their soft, huggable heads of our two principle characters, Cucumber and Almond. You want to nuzzle their hair affectionately, which no doubt carries the refreshing fragrance of fresh cut vegetables or the faint sweetness of roasted nuts. Ms. Digi doesn’t ink the outlines and renders her characters in soft tones and brush strokes (or whatever passes for brushstrokes in the computer art world), which increases the adorability by a factor of squee.

Some cute touches slip your attention initially, but when you catch on, you can’t help but smile. One character named Carrot, for example, has hair that’s bundled up to look like carrots. Cute! But then you notice that another character named Dame Lettuce has lovely locks that look like lettuce leaves. And then you notice Sir Bacon’s coiffure, which looks like little strips of everybody’s favorite savory breakfast. The visual and verbal cues engages senses beyond the visual. It’s hard to see and read about Sir Bacon without also imagining the smoky, alluring aroma of sizzling pork fat. In a way, the food’s characteristics subliminally add to his personality.

As you might expect of a place where the characters are all bunnies who are named after foods, the color palette is bright and sunny and maybe even a little girly. But, really, what can you expect when one of the principle locations is a giant tiramisu? The world is awash in baby blues and sherbet orange and strawberry pink. You half expect Strawberry Shortcake to show up at some point. (She very nearly does.) It also gives you a nice warm feeling inside.

But lest you think you wandered into the webcomic equivalent of a baby shower, let me tell you something important: it’s all a front. The highly adorable visuals — I think this is the third time I’ve used “adorable” by the way, and it’s hard to describe this comic in any other words — are meant to distract you from the fact is dripping with some unexpectedly snarky (but never mean-spirited) humor.

Cucumber Quest starts with our villainess, Cordelia, planning no less than WORLD DOMINATION! This involves collecting a bunch of Dragonballs Disaster Stones to summon a large, horned fellow called the Nightmare Knight, an ancient terror who has currently been sealed away. A noble named Cabbage, who’s stationed in Doughnut Kingdom, panics and shoots off a letter to his family. He calls for his son, Cucumber to put an end to this and to become a man.

Cucumber, though, doesn’t want to go. He wants to go to Puffington’s Academy for the Magically Gifted And/Or Incredibly Wealthy, partly to prove to his father that higher education is no waste of time. Unfortunately, everybody wants him to go on this quest. His mom kicks him out of the house. The magical, fairy-like Dream Oracle bestows upon him the status of legendary hero who must restore peace to the world.

However, Cucumber figures that, really, it’s not his problem. After all, shouldn’t a person called “the Dream Oracle” be the one doing the heavy lifting? Wouldn’t it be easier to destroy the Disaster Stones to prevent the resurrection of the Nightmare Knight? Cucumber is too clever for his own good. He’s the legendary hero who can unfortunately see all the plot holes in Campbellian mythmaking. However, he also sees that he doesn’t have much choice in the matter, so he goes along begrudgingly.

There’s a bit of a feminist undercurrent in Cucumber Quest. Cucumber is incompetent, but everyone pushes him to be the hero of the story. Meanwhile, his spunky little sister, Almond, is forbidden to join him on his adventures. “Little sisters aren’t legendary heroes,” says the Dream Oracle. So of course, Almond does all the butt-kicking with little to her credit while Cucumber is reduced to the role of spectator.

The rest of the men are pretty useless. When we first see Carrot, a sort of secondary hero on a quest to rescue the Princess Parfait, we see him hiding in a tree from a scary bear … who really isn’t all that scary once you get to know him. Cucumber’s dad is lazy, manipulative, but overall ineffective. The only guy who isn’t useless is Sir Tomato … and he’s really just acting as a henchman for the much more powerful Cordelia. Women, on the other hand, are the clever ones: conquering kingdoms, thieving priceless weaponry, fighting battles, etc.

That may be a point of contention for some. I assure you, though, that none of it is preachy. Besides I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know that, for a lot of them, the female characters are usually annoying traveling companions that are tolerated, there for the sole purpose of getting the hero to move to the next spot, or non-existent. Yes, even plenty of the ones with a female protagonist. But a fantasy epic where the men are stuck in those roles? That’s actually a pretty clever inversion of the standard Campbellian formula.

Besides, Cucumber is not totally useless. It’s just that he’s not cut out for the particular task of saving the world. He’d probably be much happier going to school. Or baking a cake. Being the Chosen One, though? That’s not his thing. To coin a phrase from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, sometimes you got to know your role.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

There’s a place in San Francisco called the Tenderloin. It’s a sketchy area filled with crime, drugs, and prostitution. In its past, the neighborhood was filled with boxing gyms, gambling establishments, and speakeasies, and today it remains the same, only replaced with liquor stores and strip clubs.

The seediness is almost a point of cultural pride. Dashiell Hammett, author of the Maltese Falcon, immortalized the area as the base of operations for hard-boiled detective Sam Spade. He elevated the Tenderloin to mythical proportions by transforming it into a place that seethed mystery and danger.

When I visited San Francisco a few years back, I stayed in a hotel a block west of The Tenderloin. Trust me, I wasn’t quite so well versed in San Francisco geopolitics at the time. One thing you notice immediately is that the place is full of homeless people. Generally non-threatening homeless people (at least from what I encountered), but quite numerous nonetheless.

Massive Black Entertainment’s Transient Man is a romantic adventure about the homeless of the Tenderloin. The story is told through a homeless man named Bob who talks to interdimensional beings that aid him on his journey in saving the universe. This high concept premise is already so inherently intriguing that it would have to work incredibly hard to fritter away any goodwill.

After a prologue that ties the story to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (which had massive effects on the Tenderloin), we’re introduced to Bob. Bob has been seeing strange creatures all his life. As a kid, he thougt they were his imaginary friends. His concerned parents, though, had him see an psychiatrist, and with the help of some pills, Bob stopped seeing the creatures. Later, when Bob started experimenting with psychedelic drugs in college, he saw the creatures again. He wrote them off as after effects of the strange brew.

Bob got a nice job, married, and raised a kid. The creatures who only he could see wouldn’t stop coming, though. These were grotesque but generally friendly, and they told him that he was destined to save the universe. Bob was reluctant. He wasn’t sure that these creatures weren’t a result of a mental breakdown, and, besides, he had a family to take care of now. But they eventually got to him. One night, Bob just walked out the door, abandoned his family, and began living on the streets, reluctantly embracing his role as The Chosen One.

What follows is a clever parody of every Campbellian hero’s quest saga ever. After one of Bob’s friends get killed when he’s swallowed by a light that explodes from somewhere in his chest, Bob undertakes a mission to bring his killer to justice. He must venture to the far off land … of Sacramento!

As he goes on his journey, he’s joined by several of his fellow homeless. Fernando is sort of his Sam Gamgee, a jolly former insurance adjuster who knows which dumpsters hold the best scraps of food. Peaches is a crack addict who becomes Bob’s love interest. There’s also a large, childish Black man who the group imagine is a mighty barbarian warrior.

It’s never clear if these visions are legitimate or if they really are just hallucinations. It reminds me a lot of Slaughterhouse Five. You generally trust Billy Pigrim’s recollection of events (which portrays of author Kurt Vonnegut’s real world horrors in Dresden) until you get to the part where he talks about getting kidnapped by aliens from Tralfamadore… which makes you wonder if the narrator was off his rocker after all. Similarly, Transient Man play with the same contrast between stark reality and fanciful imagination to the point where the reader can’t be too sure if Bob’s recollection of events can be fully trusted. It simultaneously puts us both in the shoes of Bob and how friends, family, and strangers view Bob.

Take, for instance, one of the comic’s most visually arresting characters: an man whose entire body is covered in a cloak made of pigeons. Bob sees him as a dangerous bounty hunter for his main enemy, and that his pigeons are his eyes and ears (like Saruman’s crows in Lord of the Rings). Now, the guy is clearly dangerous. He’s seen brutally killing several innocent people who get in his way. He smashes one guy’s face in with a blunt object and wields a security guard like a baseball bat. There’s no question that the threat itself is real.

But is he magic, or is he just a garden variety homicidal maniac? After all, just because pigeons follow him around doesn’t make him magic. There’s a scene where Bob has to fight off a flock of these pigeons, and it can be interpreted as either a standard fantasy scenario where our hero valiantly fights off mystical creatures … or, as seen through his friend Fernando’s eyes, it’s just some crazy homeless man getting freaked out by pigeons.

This uneasy divide gets to a very interesting truth: Bob’s world, whether real or not, is a far more fascinating place than the “real” world that he left behind. So what if it turns out to be an elaborately constructed fantasy world? And then you get into the delicious conundrum of what should or shouldn’t be regarded as realistic in fiction. Is a homeless man being guided with transdimensional aliens really all that more bizarre than a knight in shining armor who takes magical weaponry from a lady who lives in a lake?

But let’s take a step back from the philosophical and let’s talk about the art a little.

Holy crap, is it good.

I’m not sure who to praise here, since I didn’t see any credits listed for Transient Man beyond Massive Black Entertainment. Maybe that’s all I need to know. Massive Black provides concept art for some highly regarded games. Games with titles like BioShock, inFamous, and Dragon Age. If you’ve ever played any of those games, you can probably guess that the art feels grimy, rusty, and worn … but yet it still inspires a sense of wonder. You get the same sense in Transient Man.

Dark alleys, freight cars, and freeway underpasses are so realistic that I instinctively swat at imagined houseflies. At the same time, the thick, painterly brushstrokes and the generally warm colors bring forth a subtle touch of magic realism. There’s a point in the story where, after pages and pages of anticipation, Bob and his friends finally arrive at Sacramento. The palette has generally be faded and yellow, but now it bursts into green. When we catch a glimpse of Sacramento it’s … basically what you’d see from someone’s travel photos or something included in a travel brochure. It’s normaller than normal. But you also see it from our transient’s eyes as a strange, far-off Emerald City. The remarkable thing is that by this point, seeing misshapen monsters are no big deal. Sacramento is approached with the same fascination as when Sam Gamgee almost fainted from joy after seeing an elephant for the first time.

The creators behind Transient Man bill it as a graphic novel, and, for once, I’m going to say that this moniker is apt and well deserved. Once you start reading Transient Man, you start discovering the depths of the many different layers within the story. It’s never pretentious — presenting the narrative from Bob’s humble point of view presents that — but it can be pretentious if you want it to be. By the end of the comic, I had several ideas about literature, psychology, and mythology stewing around in my head like some crazy academic stew.

At the same time, it remains delightfully tongue in cheek. The creatures that interact with Bob lose their ethereal aspect once they open their mouths and talk in a matter-of-fact dialect. Magical artifacts take the form of cheap-looking trophies. Fortune-telling Native Americans mark maps with delicious pudding. It’s quirky. It’s unexpected.

It’s black comedy.

For a story about someone who may or may not be a crazy homeless man, Transient Man has a lot of heart. While there’s a chance that all might not be right in Bob’s head, he remains sincere and likable. We sort of forgive him every step of the way, even when his friends are put into peril or when his son, who has grown into a good man, gets brushed aside as he pursues his quest to save the universe. He inadvertently causes pain to the people around him, yet he remains sympathetic.

More sympathetic than those PETA activists who wanted to changed the name of the Tenderloin because it was insulting to cows, anyway.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Back in the day, when I entertained my wild-eyed dreams of becoming a New York Times bestselling novelist, I used to take part in NaNoWriMo. Oh, but for the riches I would have reaped if I could only write more than 10K words in a month! I even went to a meet-up, where prospective writers would meet at a bar on the first day and talk about the stories they would like to write. Typically, most would be sci-fi, fantasy, or horror stories. If you’ve ever taken a glimpse of the typical NaNoWriMo story, this should be a surprise to absolutely no one. You have to wonder, why would we be rehashing the exact same themes?

There are many theories, but one guy at that meet put it best. He said he didn’t know what kind of story he wanted to write. However, he wanted there to be monsters. Not the allegorical human kind like serial killers and corrupt government officials, which, I am told, is the most frightening kind of all. Actual monsters with bumps and scales and may or may not breathe fire. The ones that are as big as a house. Maybe even bigger. They grab the imagination. They elicit awe and wonder.

I mean, you can see regular human beings every day. You can see the “human monsters” every night on CNN. But big dragons, weird space aliens, Cthulhu-inspired tentacle creatures and other assorted monsters that are larger than they should be? These are the sorts of creatures that can only be brought to life through the power of imagination.

It’s one of the things that catches the eye when you read through Ashley Cope’s Unsounded. She hits us with one big beastie after another. In chapter one, our heroes encounter a large, hulking beast made of earth, rocks, and plant matter. Later on, we see more docile beasties: big dogs that serve as beasts of burden. There are also giant half-frogs, half-robot things that can lift trees with one hand.

However, if the “humans are the greatest monsters of all” theme is more up to your speed, then you’re also probably the sort of person who likes to argue why Gormenghast is superior to Lord of the Rings. Surprisingly, Ms. Cope has you covered.

Before I get into that, let’s talk a little about Ms. Cope’s art. It is, to put it simply, is absolutely breathtaking. It’s done in a manga/anime style that’s crisp, clean, and colorful. It’s one of the better examples of the form I’ve seen. Ms. Cope especially does a fine job with the fluid and dynamic action scenes by effortlessly illustrating the characters from different perspectives. It brings home both the emotional and physical impact of each stirringly choreographed sequence.

Ms. Cope also does a great job drawing faces. I like how expressive she can make them. She also does a great job drawing characters with facial features that don’t fit strictly within the Toonami-approved guidelines of how to draw an anime character. There are, for example, characters who aren’t strictly pale-skinned, a rarity in both the manga/anime and fantasy genres. OK, sure, she does throw characters here and there that look like they were lifted from previously existing works, like one delicate-looking platinum blonde who sort of looks like Lucius Malfoy as drawn by any number of DeviantArt members. Yet, in the same comic, Ms. Cope also draws diverse physical characteristics and successfully populates her fantasy world with people of different races, namely those of African ethnicity. Her artistic style remains consistent, though, and the subtle variations don’t look out of place standing next to characters using more traditional designs.

The world of Unsounded bridges both European and Japanese influences. The woodland and town settings wouldn’t look out of place in either medieval Europe or feudal Japan. Heightening the romanticism us the color palette. Depending on the mood, it can be eye-catchingly vivid or drearily somber.

Maybe the colors get all swirly and mystical when someone casts a spell, and you’re all, “That sh** is correct!” But then Ms. Cope goes gets all creative. She takes advantage of the slightly-larger-but-not-infinite canvas and comes up with some dope as hell page layouts. And then she gets all painterly on your ass, and it is off the hook, yo.

Unsounded‘s main character is Sette Frummagem, a young girl with a tail. She’s proud to be from a very rich (though legally disreputable and highly duplicitous) family. Sette can be quite grating, at least initially. She’s brash, loud-mouthed, and more than a little greedy. The words coming out of her mouth are nigh inscrutible:

‘ere, I’ll present me bac to ya, like so. Ya get a sniff’ve the potent brainal odour comin’ out me ears. Nibble, if you’re brave. Nibble!

It’s the comic equivalent of Jeff Bridges’ marble-mouthed ramblings in True Grit. (“It astonishes me that Mr. LaBoeuf has been shot, trampled, and nearly bitten his tongue off, and yet not only does he continue to talk but he spills the banks of English.”) The longer you spend time with Sette, though, the more you grow to like her, and by the end of Chapter 2 I was genuinely enjoying her presence. She’s like a spunky little sister.

She’s joined by the gray-skinned Duane Adelier, who fit more closely to the grim, swashbuckling fantasy action hero type. He’s a sorcerer who is ethereally patient with his motormouthed companion (most of the time). He may or may not be a zombie. While he was hired by Sette’s father on a mission to confront Sette’s cousin on behalf of the family, you get a sense that he’s got an agenda all his own. He ignores his original mission when he discovers the existence of Unsounded‘s human monsters: slavers.

There are several countries in Unsounded, some where slavery is legal. These slavers, though, deal in a particularly despicable sort: child slavery. Ms. Cope really sells the horror of it. There are uncomfortable scenes of child slaves suffering abuse at the hands of their captors and moments of desperation when a slave realizes that freedom is out of his grasp due to a language barrier.

However, the children aren’t the only slaves. Perhaps you’re a little tired of zombies in comics, and I don’t blame you if you are. Unsounded takes a fairly novel approach, though: the zombies here aren’t a terrifying horde, but are, instead, forced labor. It’s probably closer to the original concept of a zombie from voodoo mythology. There’s nothing to suggest that they’re anything but mindless monsters… except that Duane, whose smarter and more articulate than most other characters in Unsounded, isn’t all that different from them. And he’s visibly distressed when they’re whipped.

The two clearly need each other. Duane, though level-headed most of the time, isn’t always in control of his rage, and he needs Sette to calm him down from time to time. While Sette is strong-willed, is seems like some of Duane’s innate honor is rubbing off on her. They’re a Dynamic Duo of the fantasy era. They share several great character moments, and they’re fun to follow.

(And if Sette was older, it would be almost romantic. It’s not like Unsounded is unaware of that: Sette, many times, calls that sort of relationship out on being highly inappropriate, even playfully chiding Duane for being a “child-lover” … so let’s just say that the two have a father-daughter relationship, hmmmmm?)

In addition, Unsounded‘s story is a real page turner. There’s danger at every corner, especially from “good guys” who think our duo are dangerous highwaymen. Ms. Cope’s suspenseful pacing keeps you on your toes. So there it is: great art, great characters, and an involving plot. If you liked The Meek, you’ll enjoy Unsounded.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

One of the most intriguing aspects about Ryan Pequin’s Three Word Phrase was the name. What did it mean? Most of the strips contained more than three words. I thought maybe it had something to do with the titles of each strip being three words long… but no. They were often less than three words. The webcomic site itself is rather barebones, none of the links offering any explanation.

It turns out I’m not the only person wondering about that name, and eventually someone got a response from Mr. Pequin on his Tumblr:

It’s kind of a joke about how a lot of webcomics have names that are made up of three word phrases, and also it’s kind of a dumb self-referential thing (“three word phrase” is a three word phrase). It doesn’t really mean anything beyond that, though.

Ohhhhhhhh.

On to the review!

I think that some people too easily dismiss Three Word Phrase as yet another knockoff of Perry Bible Fellowship (hey, a webcomic with a three word phrase as the title!), only with art that’s not as painterly. And seriously, several of the strips, like one where kids toss anther kid into the carpet, do have that intangible head scratching moment where you try to figure out what the joke is. Three Word Phrase, though, is far less straight-laced. One of the main criticisms of PBF was that once you sensed the pattern, the punchline was a little too predictable. With TWP, you’re never sure what you’re going to get. It’s a webcomic that revels in the senseless.

Sure, there are times when Three Word Phrase can get darkly ironic, and oftentimes there’s no rhyme nor reason to insert some gory violence. But then, once you figure out that that’s what the formula’s all about, Pequin flips the script around on you. All of the sudden, you get comics that are too darned cute and just plain goofy. A strip about “weird internet searches” sets you up for something crass; what you get are some funny, and surprisingly less ribald, permutations of the definition.

Maybe I’m being a little childish when I laughed about strips where the punchline is barfing. Or butt abs. But, damn it, I can’t help myself. The timing of the punchlines are just right, and the generally straightforward comedy matches the simplicity of the cartoons. Three Word Phrase hits the nice sweet spot between the zen professionalism of PBF and the unhinged id of KC Green’s comics.

Besides… the president … is a BIRD?!?! Beating Matt Stone and Trey Parker to the joke has gotta count for something!

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5).

Winter ended two months ago. In Seattle, that means that it rains less than it normally does. (Like, six days a week instead of seven.) Around the time between spring and fall, I get a little eco-conscious, take my bike out of the corner of the garage, and try to bike to work for at least three out of the five work days. I was riding an old Diamondback earlier this year, one that I’d modified for road use.

On my way to work one day, I had to stop at a red light where I had to turn left. Trying to show some courtesy to the cars behind me, I pulled off to the side of the road to let them pass, after which I would follow from behind. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I’d pulled off to the side of the road, the guy driving the car behind me pulled right next, honked the horn angrily, and then flipped the bird before peeling off.

Now, if you’ve ever ridding a bike on city streets, I’m sure that, at this point, you’re nodding your head and commiserating.

There is no love lost between cyclists and auto drivers here in the fair city of Seattle. Mayor McGinn in an active advocate of biking, and it’s been causing friction on all sides. A recent hiring for a bike advocacy position caused a huge stir in the media. A recent piece in the Seattle PI on replacing storm grates hazardous to cyclists drew several angry comments that the money could have been put to better use if the Mayor wasn’t such a … if you pardon the expression … such a cyclist.

And then there’s the democratic response. There are plenty of blogs out there that defend the pro-cycling position. What you might not know is there’s a cycling webcomic out there, too. Today, I’m reviewing Rick Smith’s “slice of cycling life” webcomic, Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery.

The webcomic takes place at The Kickstand Cyclery, a quaint little bicycle shop that sells and services a wide range of bicycles, offering a little bit of something for everyone — from the performance junkies to hipsters who want custom painted bikes. The shop was once run by an elderly man named Fred Banks, but he was killed in a senseless hit-and-run accident. There’s a white “ghost bike” chained at the store’s entrance in his honor.

The current owners of The Kickstand Cyclery are two friends, Yehuda Moon and Joe King. Of the two, Joe is the more level-headed and business-minded. He’s the guy who gets the latest light-weight bikes and wears the latest equipment. Joe’s goals are simple: compete against the nearby Rival Bikes, get customers to spend more cash, and beat the one cyclist who manages to outpace him every time. He’s a little grumpy — especially when he feels he’s the only one doing the work at The Kickstand Cyclery. And yet, Joe is a good friend. Yehuda loses a bet with Joe; and he’s forced to ride a car (to his horror … more on that later). But, just to show that he’s a good sport, Joe takes up the losing bet, too, and ends up riding a (fictional) Van Sweringen. My guess is that he’s the character most cyclists can relate to.

Yehuda Moon, on the other hand, is a bit of a hippie. (That shouldn’t be a surprise. THAT NAME.) He can be identified by his scraggly beard and a hat that he fits snugly over his eyes. Yehuda is very old school when riding. He owns an old fixed gear bike that seems to have its own thoughts and feelings. He places practicality above the latest cycling fashions. Why wear bike clothes when you can bike more cheaply by simply clipping your pant cuffs?

Yehuda is also our story’s crazy idealist. He’s on the extreme spectrum of being a cycling advocate. When the city council refuses to provide bike lanes, he goes out and paints them himself. He hatches a daring “bike sharing” plan and leaves free bikes on racks (that he set out in another crazy scheme) scattered around the city to promote bike riding. He splashes oil on cars to make a point, carries a police whistle to stop traffic, affixes warning labels on car ads, changes the speed limit, and holds anti-car rallies. He is also very sincere about his beliefs, and he practices what he preaches. He bikes to work every day (even during heavy winter snowfalls) and refuses to wear a helmet because he believes that it’s a car problem that can’t be fixed with a Styrofoam hat.

If you haven’t caught on yet, Yehuda can get a little preachy. Which is fine That’s a solid character trait. Smith takes great pains showing characters call out Yehuda on how preachy he can be. What may turn off people, though, is that the world as established in strip is in line with his righteous indignation. We get strip after strip of drivers being rude and nasty and lazy and generally being enemies of the environment.

There’s an entire multi-year plotline where an evil bike hater almost kills Yehuda by driving him off the road. But that’s not all! It turns out he also runs an anti-bike webcomic and does a radio show where he makes jokes about running over cyclists.

Whenever people are introduced to bikes, their response is unrealistically rapturous. One city council person is unfortunately drawn with a rather smug expression whenever he sits down someone to patronizingly explain how bikes are good for you. I assume cyclists everywhere are supposed to stand up and cheer whenever little lost lambs everywhere have their eyes opened to the wonders of cycling. Personally, I think it’s a little bit of preaching to the choir, and that it does little to dispel notions in the mainstream that cyclists are smug and elitist.

At the same time, the activist nature of Yehuda Moon and The Kickstand Cyclery means that the comic will also, quite often, strike on problems that do deserve more exposure. More than a few strips, for example, lament how when a cyclist is killed by a driver, it hardly makes the news. And even when it does, it’s reported with the assumption that the cyclist was to blame, and not the car driver. One of the first major story arcs, for example, deals with Yehuda and Joe’s futile search to find Fred Banks’ killer, who the police won’t pursue since it’s merely a cycling fatality. Are Smith and current co-writer Brian Griggs being overdramatic? Sadly, no. A quick google search reveals that there were several such incidences in only the last few days.

Incidentally, I don’t want to give the impression that Yehuda Moon And The Kickstand Cyclery is some sort of dour nanny comic. It’s something like Peanuts: there may be some serious messages buried within, but, first and foremost, it’s a fun comic. There’s a bike ninja that bedevils Yehuda with weaponry shaped like bike parts. One storyline deals parodies the increasingly lightweight materials on modern bikes when The Kickstand Cyclery and cycling mega-chain Rival Bikes (a spoof of Performance Bikes, maybe?) search for a floating bike made of arborium.

The cycling gags tend to be very strong, centering on some really clever in jokes and observations. Like the ridiculously long time it takes to wiggle into your bike gear. Or how you suddenly become reliant on The Weather Channel all the time, and how it almost seams like the weather man is wrong. Or the joys of catching a tailwind. What can I say? Rick Smith is clearly an avid biker, and he’s got our number. He and Griggs know about the silly little cliques (within the already cliquish cycling world), the frustration dealing with chain store cycling employees, the shameless acceptance of spandex as a fashion statement…. It’s the same thrill, I think, that gamers feel when someone mentions a inside joke. That “Man, I thought I was the only one who thought this!” moment.

The cast of Yehuda Moon proves to be very strong. There’s Thistle, a working mom who’s recently rejected her minivan. There’s a cast of Shakers which include Brother Pilot, who took a vow of silence until Fred Banks’ killer is brought to justice, and Sister Sprocket. There’s also Sweetroll, a running buddy of Yehuda who used to be an avid BMX’er but has since grown out of it. Each member of the cast exhibits a distinct, sharply focused character traits.

There’s a strip, for example, where Sister Sprocket reveals that she respected Fred, and the reason she gets ornery is because she can’t stand how Yehuda had turned the store into his personal soapbox. The strip felt completely earned. In the previous two years, she’s seen as a very relaxed character. She’s the only one we ever see chilling out and smoking a pipe. But when she’s around Yehuda, her snarky side surfaces. She gets mean, sometimes secretly sabotaging him. When it’s revealed why she still works for The Kickstand Cyclery yet has so little respect for one of its owners, her feelings feel like a completely natural extension of her established personality.

(It also creates a sort of charged sexual tension, which I think is 100% intentional.)

Smith’s illustrations look great. The character designs remind me of the highly streamlined designs you find in today’s comic strip pages. They’re all basic geometric shapes and thick lines, styles that were pioneered by 50′s and 60′s comic strip icons like Mort Walker and Dik Browne. Simple, yes, but at the same time simple and iconic. They’re paired with a solid, earth tone color palette. There’s usually very little to depict the background — maybe a few lines here and there to remind the reader whether we’re inside or outside — but it’s still effective. The Kickstand Cyclery gets a sense of mustiness, as if it’s an unchanging, infinitely spacious shop where you can kick back and relax.

There are also the silent panels, which, in my opinion, are the best silent panels you’ll ever find in webcomics. Sometimes they deal with one of the greatest pleasures of cycling: slowing down and enjoying the scenery that you’d miss if you were just whizzing by at 60 mpg. Sometimes the silent panels take a sad, somber tone, like when Yehuda and Joe take their yearly Ride of Silence to remember the departed Fred Banks.

Qualms about the preachiness aside, I’m going to give Yehuda Moon my highest rating. In the end, Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery is a delightful comic that can, at the same time, be incredibly educational. Have you ever ridden a bike in your life? Then you’re sure to like this comic. Like a well-built Van Sweringen, the craftsmanship of this comic is top notch. The art is consistently enjoyable. The characters are well developed, and the premise is pretty darned original. Webcomics were supposed to open the door for all sorts of crazy, unique comic ideas, right? Well, you’d be hard pressed to find any other comic out there set in a bike shop.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Iran is a terribly tricky country to talk about. On the one hand, we all know that it’s a potentially frightening country from a political standpoint. There’s concerns about government corruption and their nuclear capabilities. We know about the official stance of Antisemitism and the Green Revolution protests. That’s serious stuff.

On the other hand, a lot of news that comes out of that country is completely ridiculous. Not too long ago the Iranian government threatens to threats to boycott the 2012 London Olympics because they claim that the logo spells “Zion”. And remember Boobquake? Remember when Hojatoleslam Kazem Seddiqi claimed that immodestly dressed women were the cause of earthquakes? This somehow spurred the really silly “Boobquake,” a viral tongue-in-cheek internet movement set to discredit Seddiqi by proving that naked boobs do not cause earthquakes. (I’m a little frightened, by the way, to see if Seddiqi has been using the recent worldwide tragedies in Japan and New Zealand to somehow prove that Boobquake was, indeed, to blame.)

So Iran is both a known threat and a punchline. Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen … we can understand. Iran remains a country most people just can’t figure out.

Amir and Khalil attempt to convey the problems in Iran with Zahra’s Paradise. The comic deals with one man’s attempt to find clues as to the whereabouts of his missing brother, Medhi. The story and characters are fictional. Several real life events, however, make their way into Zahra’s Paradise to give the reader a full picture of the oppression that people in Iran face every day.

Who is Zahra? The name is mentioned several times in the comic. There are three sources. Zahra is the name of the mother looking for her missing boy. It is also a reference to Behesht-e Zahra, the largest grave in Iran, where several Iranian officials and deceased soldiers are buried. The third is a woman named Zahra Kazemi, whose story is told in the comic. She was an Iranian-Canadian photographer who, unluckily, was caught taking pictures outside one of the prisons. She was incarcerated and then raped, tortured, and beaten to death by Iranian officials in 2003. The name “Zahra” is used very often in the comic, and it can be sometimes confusing who the writers are referring to.

Medhi was only one of many young people who disappeared during the Green Revolution. When he doesn’t come home, his mother, Zahra, and his unnamed brother visit several sites to determine if he’s been jailed … or even if he’s alive. They meet several characters: from an opinionated taxi cab driver to a sympathetic rich woman. The voyage eventually becomes less about finding Medhi and more about stitching together a tapestry of Iranian society. Independent people with personalities and dreams, all dreaming of a better world.

Medhi, meanwhile, unintentionally becomes something of a spiritual entity… more idea than a person. We, the readers, never really see him. Our impressions our shaped from people has has come in contact with. Officials know of him. They become highly irritated when his name is mentioned. When a former cellmate confirms to Medhi’s brother that he has seen Medhi alive, he describes him as an enveloping presence of love and sanctuary.

Even the mere image of Medhi becomes an agent of change. Sepideh, a young independent-minded woman, takes a missing persons poster with her on a whim. She’s also involved in an affair with an Iranian official. When the official reacts angrily to the poster, Sepideh knows that Medhi’s image has made her life dangerous, but has also provided her leverage over the political establishment. “It’s as if Medhi was holding me back,” she says when she explains why she palmed some dangerous evidence to Medhi’s whereabouts.

There are times I thought Zahra’s Paradise stretched the story a little too thin. There where times I felt that the same points were brought up one too many times. Other times, I thought the act of informing the reader undermined the story, which felt underdeveloped. As I mentioned earlier, Amir and Khalil go on tangents often to include as many real life accounts as they could. Some of the segues, though, feel awkwardly shoehorned in.

For example, there’s a point in the story where a former prisoner talks about how he was raped by the guards. The rapists start haranguing their victim with blatantly political taunts like “Looks like he’s unhappy with his vote” and “Ali will have to stop hiding in the ballot box!” Maybe that’s based on something that really happened … but, to me, it veered too close to the territory of cheesy editorial cartoons, where everything is labeled in bold letters. Yes, yes, the rape symbolizes the election. I get it.

The less obvious criticisms and insights turned out to be more valuable. We get to see how oppression work, and how it seems more familiar to readers in a Western society than we at first realize. When we think of dictatorships, we imagine antiseptically uniformed, impeccably groomed, faceless officers herding cowed, brainwashed civilians. Perhaps looking something like how the Gestapo of Nazi Germany are portrayed in movies and propaganda films.

Zahra’s Paradise, though, shows that the real faces of a dictatorship are government officials who look less groomed and more disorganized. They’re fat, sloppy, and hairy. One man sneers arrogantly at people who dare tell him how to do his job, yet he spends a good portion of his day digging under his toenails. You can imagine that if it weren’t for his ties to the government, he’d probably be an auto mechanic or the guy behind the counter of a bait shop. The officers at the prisons don’t look any neater. They’re fat, boorish, and blustery.

The subtext is clear: Iran is controlled by unqualified middle-aged bullies. It one where no one in power cares for you, and where bureaucracy is oppressive. We may not live in a situation so severe … but it’s also not a scenario so alien that we cannot relate.

Women play a large role in Zahra’s Paradise. They are depicted as cunning, daring, and headstrong. A man can easily loose his swagger once a stern old woman informs him that she’s close friends with his superiors. A beautiful young woman can draw secrets from a man by placing him in a compromising situation that can ruin him socially and professionally. So, while women in Iran must live with the specter of the depredations suffered by Zahra Kazemi, they are by no means powerless.

Amir and Khalil do not sidestep how ridiculous Iranian politics sometimes appear. They see the politicians as overeager, competitive children trying to please the father figure of the Ayatollah. Yet there are moments that are sober and upsetting, like when two homosexual men are lynched and hanged from cranes.

The artist effortlessly employs several stylistic devices. It uses both the old-school cartooniness that you might find Mad Magazine and a simple, elegant quality you’d find in classical Persian illustrations. The world of Zahra’s Paradise is both one that tangible and easy to relate to and also one that’s steeped in a culture that’s curiously strange to readers seeing the world for the first time. We all know what a traffic jam feels like, but we may not know what one feels like in Iran. It only takes one panel for Zahra’s Paradise to let you know what one looks, sounds, and even smells like.

Other illustrations are steeped in symbolism. It’s lyrical. The writers seem to have been influenced by Omar Khayyam, the infamous Iranian poet mentioned several times in the comic. One of the earliest stories in Zahra’s Paradise deals with a man beating then drowning a bag full of innocent puppies. There’s probably a direct interpretation to the events depicted in the comic, like the suffering of innocent civilians in Iranian jails. I thought that the scene most importantly established a sense of sickening wrongness … one that lingers throughout the comic without any direct reference. Later on, an elaborate panel shows a nightmarish factory with the Ayatollah spitting out robotic citizens. It looks like something straight out of a nightmarish expressionist film, and it negatively contrasts against earlier panels that lovingly depict the details of Iranian architecture.

A beautiful culture corrupted by the perfidy of politicians.

When I first heard about Zahra’s Paradise, I’d though it was going to be about how new technology shapes modern revolutions. Medhi’s brother is a blogger. Politicians view cellphone cameras and social networking with suspicion. Yet there is a dark side. We all know how it turned out. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retained power. Nothing seems to have changed.

Most frightening is that the Iranian government seems to be computer savvy themselves. They know how to use technology to further suppression. While it may be true that “the world witnessed what could no longer be kept from view, through YouTube videos, on Twitter and in blogs”, it also means that webcomics cannot be hidden either. Amir and Khalil, after all, choose to remain anonymous for political reasons. Web 2.0 can be liberating, but it’s fair game for both sides. It’s a path fraught with dangers.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Once upon a time, Zuda Comics, DC Comics’ dalliance with a new digital paradigm, was shaping up to be an awards season powerhouse. It had built up a heck of a momentum in 2009. Bayou took home a few Glyph Awards, and High Moon took home a Harvey Award. Sadly, the imprint came to an end last year, which means that one of the awards that the Speech Bubble Loading Screen Brand will never be able to claim will be the Eisner Award.

Zuda, though, will be in the 2011 Eisner Awards in spirit. Caanan Grall — who, with such a colorful name, should probably consider taking up a career in adventure/archaeology — was once a Zuda writer. In fact, his 180 page comic Celadore was the last Zuda book published; it was the at the printers when the division came to an end.

Mr. Grall scores an Eisner nomination with his most recent effort: the gag-a-day comic strip called Max Overacts. It’s about a young boy named Max who — surprise, surprise! — overacts.

Comics about problem kids are nothing new. Child terrors have been around almost as long as the 19th century, when The Yellow Kid was causing consternation to the decent folk living in his ghetto. But when I mean “overact,” I mean that literally. As in the Merriam-Webster definition: “to act more than is necessary.”

… as in, theatrically.

Max is more of a young Frasier Crane than a little Vince Vaughn. He is a boy of culture and refinement, and his overacting carry with them an air of prestige. He is a thespian, an actor, a fashionista. A bon vivant.

At least, that’s the meticulously crafted image of himself he’s got running in his mind, anyway.

A brat like Calvin might show his affection for Susie Derkins by giving her a bunch of dead flowers. Such amateur tactics, while arguably effective, are beneath our boy Max. A true gentleman knows that the proper way of pitching woo is with candlelight and song.

An uncouth boor like Dennis the Menace farts in the bathtub. How low-brow! For Max, pranks are performance art. Imagination demands more descriptive settings, such as a lion stalking a herd of zebras. Or, if getting your hands soiled is necessary, is it not better if your efforts were for science?

The magic of Max Overacts is that Max is a menace because of his own self-inflated sense of superiority. He may just be a little kid going to class like everyone else, but that doesn’t stop him from being condescending toward his fellow students. The feeling is mutual, though. Max tends to bug the heck out his peers, his teacher, his sister, and even his parents. The only person who seems to feel completely at ease around Max his best friend, Klaus … and even he knows how trying being Max’s friend can sometimes be.

And yet, for all his arrogance, Max is also very easy to love. He’s ultimately a rather sweet kid. His blustery attempts to get his classmate, Janet, to notice him usually fall flat … but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t find it touching. (Janet, by the way, is just as arrogant as Max … but her career as a child actress probably means that she probably earned that right.) It’s heartbreaking for her when Max suddenly ignores her after he falls for a girl who actually … you know … appreciates him. As a gag-a-day comic, Max Overacts can typically be read at random. However, it was worth it to read in order just to see Max and Janet’s puppy love relationship develop.

Besides, you grow to respect Max. He’s delusional, yes… but who wouldn’t want this sort of delusion? It’s the sort of wild-eyed craziness where you’ve fooled yourself into fulling committing your life to pursuing a ridiculous dream. Max is so committed to becoming an actor … but, by God, he’s so deluded that when he grows up, he just might make his dream a reality! Max’s mom said it best when his sister asks why he didn’t get grounded after he skipped school: “Max didn’t run off to get drunk, chase boys, or get anything pierced! He ran off to chase his dream!” Max is trouble, alright, but it’s the kind of trouble that’s going places.

There’s only that comes to mind when I see Grall’s illustration, and that’s “delightful.” Every panel makes me want to smile. His characters are incredibly expressive, and they have to be. Their reactions to Max’s antics — which range from anger to bemusement — are priceless. But none are more expressive than Max himself. He’s alternates between manic and innocent at the drop of the hat. His eyes alternate between beady and extremely wide-eyed, and they totally sell his Don Quixote complex: mischevous, but also full of inquisitive wonder. He’s also got great body language. Max is incredibly animated, flailing about comically like a kid pretending to be an adult, yet, at the same time, earnestly giving his all.

The cast of Max Overacts is filled with lovable and believable characters. Max’s mother is blessed with saintly patience, and nothing that Max does seems to faze her. Max’s sister, Andi, is a rebellious type, and while she cynically tries to always get one over on both Max and her parents, there’s no doubt she also loves her family. Then there’s Max’s harried teacher, who almost always seems like she’s on the verge of having a Max-related mental breakdown.

And then there are elements that seem to have been borrowed from the legacies of other “problem child” strips, yet molded into something wholly original. Max’s neighbor, Sir Allan, is almost like an upper class Mr. Wilson. He’s a retired actor, and he’s cranky and snooty. Is it no wonder that Max looks up to him? Max even has his own Hobbes: a creepy wooden puppet named Curio who seems to have a mind of his own. Max also has a bear puppet who is slightly less creepy.

Overall, Max Overacts is a very strong contender for the Eisners. It’s funny and charming with fantastic art. It’s as if Caanan Grall knew the whole precocious kid genre needed a kick in the butt, and he delivered something both familiar yet wholly original.

Max Overacts also features a tangential comic called Squirrel & Pigeons, which Grall posted during one of his down times. It’s about a guy who picks up litter, gets harassed by woodland critters, and is ignored by the ladies. I think this is Grall’s excuse to draw cute squirrels (which Grall viewed for the first time when he came to North America and found hilarious) and hot dames. (Or is it “cute dames” and “hot” — … no, no, definitely the former.) Not that Max Overacts proper isn’t filled with attractive ladies but … well, since the comic’s main POV is a little kid, anything that might be remotely objectifying would get a little weird, dontcha think?

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)