Category Archives: action webcomic

The Webcomic Overlook #191: Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether

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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.

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The Webcomic Overlook #189: Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant

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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.

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The Webcomic Overlook #187: Clandestinauts

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It sometimes astounds me how many posts I’ve devoted to webcomics. It’s, like, more than “a lot” and just short of “a buttload.” The peril, at this point, is that sometimes you run the risk of saying the exact same thing about one webcomic that you said about another webcomic. Repeating myself is perhaps my second greatest fear in the world.

The first is my mom’s dog, Cinnamon.

Curse that Japanese Chin his sharp, pointy fangs. Why am I the only person he ever seems to bite?

So when I sat down to write about Tim Sievert’s Clandestinauts (a webcomic that I chose to read primarily because I am a big fan of the world “clandestine” — seriously, when I was a kid, I even created a superhero with that name), I was set to write, “Well, as much as I like the art, I wasn’t too big a fan of the story.” Then I thought to myself, “Wait. Didn’t I write that once? Like, at least five times before?”

If I had the time or inclination, I could probably track down all instances I expressed the exact same sentiment. I’m pretty sure I said the same thing about, say, What Birds Know. But life is short, and plan on spending my free time owning noobs on iPad/iPhone game Valor later, so let’s just say that I’ve said it a lot.


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The Webcomic Overlook #186: The Night Owls

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“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.


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Random Quickie: Power Play

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I got an email recently from Reilly Brown that Power Play, a comic he illustrates with writer Kurt Christenson, will be making a debut at New York Comic Con next week. I got a chance to see an advanced copy, and I have to say it’s very well done. Young men and women gain superpowers, but rather than learning that with great power come great responsibility, they show off their skills in super parkour and live to get tons of hits on YouTube.

Enter Mac, a full-bodied college-aged slacker who gains his powers the old school way of getting zapped by lightning. Suddenly, he finds out he can take on the properties of any material he touches. So, sorta like the Absorbing Man. He comes into contact with beer, and he starts leaking gallons of yellow fluid. His “friends” quickly see dollar signs in their eyes … and decide that he’s destined for fame and fortune in the Power Play tournament, which is extreme sports for people with superpowers.

Thus far, it’s a fun, lighthearted tale… something like the Archie gang meets TV’s Teen Titans. Some of the hip youth dialogue is kinda corny (“Oh, snap! Tentacle Bitchslap! Bam!”), but that’s part of the charm. The superheroes we meet have interesting designs: one looks a little like Mandrake the Magician, and other is an octopus in a hoodie. Who can hate that? And I admit, I have a fondness for the Ice Queen, a skimpily dressed ice skater with a Schwarzenegger-like vocabulary of cold-based puns.

Power Play is available online only at Comixology, which is currently running a free preview.

Crabcake Confidential: Shockwave, Darkside

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The say that in space, no one can hear you scream. But can they see you wearing rectangular glasses where one side is red and the other side is blue?

Shockwave, Darkside is a webcomic written by Jay Weisman and illustrated by Weilin Yang and team (who are the same art team behind previous reviewed Keenspot stablemate Wayward Sons). It’s a comic based on an indie movie of the same name. Despite a title that sounds like it could be title of a weepy Tori Amos single, Shockwave, Darkside is actually 3-D sci-fi movie where two factions on the movie fight over patches of water. That’s fairly ambitious for a film without a big Hollywood budget. The movie’s most prominent actor is a fellow by the name of Bill Sage. Also it has Filipino actress Mei Melancon, who played Psylocke in X-Men: The Last Stand.

Wait a minute… Psylocke was in that movie?!?!?

The comic is, in a way, equally ambitious. Because along with being tied to a risky indie project, it’s also coming atcha… in 3D!

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The Webcomic Overlook #185: Dynagirl

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There was a short lived TV series back in the 1970′s called Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. It was created by Sid and Marty Krofft, those crazy puppeteers who made bizarre, psychedelic shows which tread the line between fantastic and nightmare-inducing. They’re likely lost to younger Webcomic Overlook readers these days: H. R. Pufnstuf, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and Land of the Lost. Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was supposed to be a callback to the much more famous 1960′s Batman series. They wore spandex, rode around in Electri-Car before the Nissan Leaf made it cool again, and fought villains with names like Empress of Evil and Glitter Rock… who, frankly, sound like they should be opening for KISS.

If you could sum up the seventies in the span of one minute, you can’t get more accurate than the show’s opening sequence:

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was never really that popular, and it lasted all of 16 episodes.

And yet … in 2001, some genius decided that it was ready for a reboot. Seriously. And it was as stereotypically 1990′s comic book reboot as you can get. Electra Woman (played by Night Court’s Markie Post) was a washed-up, drunk, divorced superheroine who was brought back into action by an all new Dyna Girl. Now, admittedly this sounds like a pretty terrible concept. However, it’s pretty remarkable when you consider that a) this was a year before Spider-Man officially kicked off the decade when superhero movies dominated the box offices, and b) a full three years before The Incredibles, which rode a very similar premise to boffo returns. (To be fair, though, the whole “washed up superhero” trope had already been done with Watchmen.)

There’s also a webcomic entitled Dynagirl, written by Cary Kelley and illustrated by Harold Edge… and … it’s not that same Dyna Girl created by Sid and Marty Krofft.

Or … is she?

Because, despite the fact that she’s sporting hot pants rather than spandex, Dyna Girl follows what sounds like a very similar story arc as the one Markie Post did in the 2001 reboot.


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