Loneliness is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s kinda nice to be away from people. You can be alone in your thoughts. You never have to worry about behaving or others looking down on you. You are your own master.

And then there’s the flipside. It’s unnerving when the only voice you can hear is your own. There’s no one to help you if you get in trouble. There’s no one to comfort you when you cry, no one to laugh at your jokes, no one to tell you if you look good today.

Loneliness is both alluring and frightening. Thus, it’s a natural theme for most post-apocalyptic stories. Take the movie I Am Legend, for instance. Sure, an abandoned New York can be a pretty cool place where you can play golf on an aircraft carrier or break into houses and rummage through other peoples’ drawers or drive whatever exotic car you want. It’s such an alluring fantasy that there’s even a term for it: “cozy catastrophe.”

It’s also soul-crushing. When Will Smith is forced to kill his dog, you can sense that he lost something even more valuable than his utter surplus of freedom: companionship.

Which brings me to Ben Fleuter’s webcomic, Derelict.

Merriam-Webster has two main definitions for derelict. The first is “something voluntarily abandoned; especially: a ship abandoned on the high seas.” This would seem to be the one most apt to fit this comic. After all, it very prominently features a small boat. The boat is not, technically, abandoned, but it’s assumed that it had been by a previous owner. Considering the main character, though, the second definition would be fitting as well: “a destitute, homeless social misfit” … because that the position our heroine, Dang Thu Mai, finds herself in. A vagrant of the seven seas.

Dang roams the oceans, trying to survive in a world that’s been flooded. Kinda like Kevin Costner in that one movie … Field of Dreams. The story starts off with Dang salvaging parts from a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that has sunk to the sea floor. It’s a silent sequence that lasts a few pages, but it effectively sets up Dang’s situation. She’s out here by herself. If anything goes wrong in this risky operation, there’s little chance anyone is rescuing her. And the world is quiet. Unnervingly, eerily quiet. So quiet that when Dang first speaks, it feels curiously out of place, like she’s disturbing the dignified stillness of the world around her.

It’s a burden on her mental state. She passes the time reading a book that is partly unreadable because the pages are stained. She opens and closes her hands, reaching out at the stars with a look of heavy weariness on her face. In a later scene, she cuts her hair, sees herself in a mirror, and compliments herself. A beat later, her face falls; it’s a sad reminder that the only friend she has in the world is her own reflection.

Eventually the story unfolds in a rather unconventional way. We skip around in time. It can, honestly, be a little confusing. I’ve read Derelict twice now, and I can’t say for certain which is the correct sequence of events. Mr. Fleuter sprinkles clues here and there, and it shouldn’t take too much brain power to piece things together, but for whatever reason I still scratch my primitive monkey brain. It’s best not to dwell on the details and let the mood of the story take you.

Our first clue as to what’s going on happens when, in a very haunting and atmospheric scene, Dang’s boat crosses the path of a drifting container ship. She tries to radio the other ship, but there is no response. She scrambles, and she barely steers her boat out of the way. As the ship passes, drifting like a mindless hulk, Dang hears gunfire on deck. There’s someone out there. But what would normally be a beacon of hope in this bleak, lonely world is now a cause for anxiety.

The story flashes back, and we are gradually introduced clues as to what’s going on. We see Dang scavenging through an abandoned farmhouse. Her activity has attracted attention, and we learn that strange creatures are walking the Earth. They have heads like cattle skulls, vulture-like claws for hands, and wear big, bulky robes. They are called “Gargoyles.” I’m not willing to call them aliens yet. Coupled with the rugged, Wild West trappings of the rustic barnyard, these creatures could just as easily be malevolent spirits straight out of Native American folklore.

Fortunately, Dang is equipped with a crossbow and a UV bolt, which causes searing damage to our pursuers. This is, incidentally, one of the greatest strengths of Derelict. Very little is outright spelled out to the readers. Building an almost oppressive mood of the unknown and forcing the reader to pay attention at all times despite the dearth of dialogue adds to story’s aura of gloom and mystery.

Dang eventually does come in contact with another living human. Unfortunately, it’s under less than friendly circumstances. Dang finds a downed airplane and goes to sleep in the pilot’s chair for the night. She wakes up to see the barrel of a shotgun pointed in her face. The newcomer has one of the creatures as partner, who, unlike his brethren seen in previous pages, communicates with Dang in English. He’s also a bit of a Sherlock Holmes: he deduces that Dang has a boat because of her calloused hands and her soft feet.

So he does what any gentleman would do and … steals her boat. Well, like I’ve always said, human companionship is overrated. However, while Dang may have a permanent hang-dog expression on her face, she proves to be very, very persistent.

This becomes the story’s turning point. The slow, melancholy mood of the first act gives way to scenes where Dang wastes her enemies with frightening confidence and murder in her eyes. The juxtaposition between two time periods accelerates, too, driving home the point that Dang has transformed into a totally different person, from a shrinking scavenger willing to let the events of the world pass her by to a fierce, deadly warrior. It’s a frightening change… however, you can be sure that this new Dang isn’t the sort of person moping in front of a mirror after cutting her hair. The circumstances behind Dang’s transformation, by the way, have yet to be revealed. It’s perhaps a more important mystery than who the Gargoyles are.

With very little dialogue, the burden of storytelling falls on the artwork. Fleuter pulls the task off fantastically. The hazy colors and the focus on the even-changing nature of the mist and the waves from the early chapters establish the cold loneliness of being adrift in the ocean. Later, a bold red and orange color palette are paired with the stern metallic trusses of an industrial setting, heightening the sense of danger and urgency.

Derelict is a very deceptive webcomic. It’s deliberate pace and lack of dialogue can fool you into thinking that there’s nothing going on, when, really, plenty is being established with an expression, with small actions, and with tiny images that seem like tossed off background images that later prove to be instrumental in understanding the entire picture. It’s time-jumping may at first seem gimmicky, but they are techniques that effectively establish character. We seem to be building up to an answer to a big mystery, only to discover that perhaps it wasn’t such an important mystery in the first place.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

P.S. Can anyone read the title of this webcomic and not think of this? No?

No one really talks about RPG/MMORPG webcomics, even though I’ve encountered, literally, a poo-pile of them. 8-Bit Theater. Darths & Droids. Order of the Stick. Erfworld. The Noob. Ding!

Maybe it’s because the source material is not easily categorized. I mean, there’s debate going on whether MMORPGs (or, as Yahtzee Croshaw calls ‘em, “muhmorpergers”) are even games, since they’re really more about tedious grinding and chat room socializing. So it feels really weird to call an MMORPG webcomic a “gaming comic.”

Then there’s the whole dual nature of RPGs where characters often are two characters. There’s the character of the person in the game, which is usually a fantasy race like an elf, a dwarf, an orc, or a bard. And then there’s the flipside… the character in real life. Can the writer reconcile the fictional fantasy life with the real world? It’s not impossible. South Park‘s World of Warcraft episode, I think, did a good job portraying the stakes on both sides.

Many comics choose to ignore the duality. Not Jen Brazas’ Mystic Revolution, where the role-playping aspect is called out continually. Does it work as a webcomic? Let’s find out.

Mystic Revolution is set in an anime-themed MMORPG. (It’s called “Mystic Revolution,” but to avoid any confusion between that and the title of the comic, I’m just going to refer to it as “the MMORPG.”) I assume that it’s a feudal setting, what with the swords and the pagodas, but there’s a really annoying character walking around wearing a sailor scout suit so I don’t know. Maybe that was downloadable content to make your character seem as annoying as possible. (In which case: mission accomplished.)

Our main character is a feisty warrior named Lourdes. Like other stereotypical anime redheads, she is nigh indestructible and short-tempered. She is also one of those characters who acts butch all the time, and when she finds a guy she likes, she acts mean to him because she’s too socially arrested to display her affections in any normal means. She’s so butch that she actually says things like: “See, the problem with girls like that is they believe in this myth that some guy is going to com galloping along his White Horse and they’ll live happily ever after. But the world doesn’t work like a girl has to learn to take care of herself.” Man, that’s totally not wordy and cliche.

She also likes to drink. Wait … is there an in-game algorithm that triggers bar dancing after a character reaches a certain alcohol limit? In that case, can we blame the programmers of this MMORPG for not knowing how a drunk acts, and instead had to crib scenes straight out of Slayers?

So, anyway, the object of her affection is a dude named L33t Ninja, who … ugh … talks in leet-speak. Oh, God. Remember when that was a thing that was kinda cute and not, you know, wretched? He’s also a “ninja jedi.” This basically means he grabbed a light-saber, which was a joke weapon introduced in the game, and managed to wield it so well he turned it into an art. Silly moniker aside, I actually liked this character development.

Lourdes and Ninja are supposed to be this kinda shy couple that are too shy to reveal their true feelings for each other, so a lot of the early goings is some back-and-forth will-they-or-won’t-they stuff… and I. Am. Not. Buying. It. One. Bit.

Look, I get young love, etc. etc. etc. but there is nothing in Mystic Revolution that can convince me that there’s any attraction between Loudres and Ninja. It’s so forced. It doesn’t help that neither character has any personality whatsoever beyond “strong and annoying” and “just plain annoying.” And you can’t use the excuse that this is a light-hearted comic aimed at preteen girls as an excuse. I have read manga and watched anime where the bashful love story has worked well. Ranma and Akane. Keitaro and Naru. Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes.

With Ranma and Akane, for example, Rumiko Takahashi sets up a sweet progression where Ranma, while acting aloof and all the time, slowly feels more and more responsible for Akane’s happiness. Akane, though aloof herself, does notice and appreciates Ranma’s efforts. So when the first rival — Tatewaki Kuno, I think — arrives on the scene, Ranma’s jealousy is believable, even if Akane never was going to fall for the guy. This is probably unfair — Ms. Takahashi IS a master of melodrama, after all, and the first part of Mystic Revolution seems to have been written when Ms. Brazas was either in her pre-teens or early teens. However, the success of the first half of Mystic Revolution pretty much depends on the reader buying into the two being a couple that was destined for each other. They feel mismatched more than anything. I’m given no reason why a competent warrior like Loudres would respect Ninja, who is at times useful but hardly as skilled as any of the other characters in the game.

I mean… damn, Loudres, I may not like you, but you can do a hell of a lot better than a leet-speaking gamer!

Anyway, they get joined by a bunch of other stock adventure characters. There’s some stoic badass guy who’s kind of a jerk but is the sort of guy every gal falls for in anime. There’s the Puritan, bi-curious elf girl. There’s the tempestuous goth girl, who is also a cat. And then there’s the annoying cat girl, who was created to pretty much piss me off all the time. Seriously, all she has to do is say things like “Kawaii desu” all the time, and … oh. There’s probably a bunch more characters, but so many are brought up at the same time that it’s hard to keep track of them.

There was a pretty recent “Half in the Bag” v-log where Mike and Jay go to something called No Brand Con. It’s a convention that revolves around anime. In a running gag, Mike tries to work up enthusiasm for the event, but within seconds of talking it up, he’s on the floor, passed out. Later, there’s a fantastic montage, set to “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life,” where Mike is photographed around the convention, with his face fixed in an emotionless, fifty-yard stare.

What I’m trying to say is that Mike is basically me reading this webcomic. I just wanted to sink down, first to my knees, and then flat with my belly on the floor until I was nothing but a lifeless husk.

Mystic Revolution completely acknowledges that it’s all a game. There’s talk about spawn points and logging off. When player characters die in fights, there’s a little handwringing afterward before rationalizing that the killed character probably respawned somewhere on the map.

And yet, there are flaws to this approach. It’s revealed in one chapter that Lourdes models her character after her appearance in real life. Why? Because her opponent’s attacks are based on crippling her ego by making fun of the size of her chin. That insult wouldn’t work unless the avatar bore some resemblance to the real world appearance. But… why is this even in his arsenal in the first place? Wouldn’t Loudres be the exception to the rule? I mean, who makes an online avatar look like themselves unless you were completely 100% comfortable with his or her own appearance? Don’t most people either construct an online character to be an ideal beauty or intentionally goofy?

Then there’s the relationship drama. Ninja gets all mopey, because, in an unfortunate bit of bad luck, he walks in on Loudres as she’s forcibly kissed by her old ex-boyfriend. OK. I’m not sure that’s possible in an MMORPG. Is there a macro you press to force yourself on someone? Ninja sulks a bit, and can you blame him? To this point, we’ve established that Loudres is a badass, so having her stand limply as she slinkily arches her back on a nearby beam so her ex can get in some hot French action sorta implies that you’re not really resisting. Gothgirl, sensing an opportunity, decides to after the vulnerable young man. One thing leads to another, and, before you know it, they’re in bed together. Ninja feels ashamed, and Loudres, when she finds out, feels betrayed.

OK. Why? I mean, we are dealing with avatars, right, not the real actual people behind them? I understand the concept, but why all these drama over characters who are basically virtual dolls for people back home on their computers? If Ms. Brazas wanted us to get invested in the emotions of her characters, the whole MMORPG aspect probably should’ve been ditched altogether. Otherwise, it seems like every character in Mystic Revolution is mentally diseased … with the exception of Gothgirl, who seems to be reveling in the whole “this is not the real world” aspect of things.

(If I were so pressed, I would admit that, yes, out of all the characters in Mystic Revolution, Gothgirl is probably the best one.)

So, for the majority of the first part of Mystic Revolution (which is Chapters 1-13 and span about two years worth of archives in real time), our characters are, for the most part, just hanging out in this bar and acting like excitable children hopped up on snickerdoodles. Or Pocky, more likely. They flirt, mope, and crack really lame jokes. They also like to out-random each other. Oh look, a penguin in a top hat! Isn’t that cheeky!

Eventually, we’re introduced to our main nemesis: Machiavelli. Like Sherlock Holmes’ villain, Professor Moriarty, she is the one who was responsible for all of Lourdes’ problems to this point. Yes, it was SHE who sent the sexy bishie to seduce Lourdes so she could break up with Ninja! (No, really.)

Lourdes gets recruited by an admin to take Machiavelli down. It turns out that Machiavelli isn’t just ticking Lourdes off… she’s pretty much been ticking off the higher-ups as well. Machiavelli is also an admin, and she’s been abusing her power to the point where the game has been not very fun for a lot of gamers. Lourdes is a former admin herself, and not only that, she’s one of the most accomplished players in the game. If anyone can take down Machiavelli, it’s her.

The next stage of Mystic Revolution kicks off with a tournament. The comic basically morphs into YuYu Hakusho… specifically that rather endless season where everyone was in a stadium doing power-ups and pretending they were in an episode of Dragonball Z or something. I mean, there’s even a version of that show’s anthropomorphic announcer gal. The setting has now shifted primarily to a gladiator stadium, with rabid fans and intrusive video coverage. The works.

Is this how MMORPG’s work, by the way? That thousands of online players willing play the monthly fee to sit their avatar’s butts in an event that they can’t really participate in? Doesn’t that somewhat defeat the purpose of an immersive fantasy world where you can go on adventures beyond your imagination? Is the purpose of an MMORPG to be a couch potato role-playing another couch potato?

This, though, is where Mystic Revolution kinda picks up the pace. There’s still a mess of characters. And most of it does boil down to “this guy” fights “random jobber.” However, the comic does settle down into a more cohesive structure. The fights are imaginative and well paced. The character designs of all the new opponents are generally fun. I, for one, did enjoy the battle between Gothgirl and an angelic archer, which involved a lot of high-flying acrobatics and arrow fusillades. Each fight does hove their moments, and they actually do a better job at character development than all the emo hand-wringing from earlier chapters. However, the endless fighting does tend to drag after a while… like it does in YuYu Hakusho, really.

Ms. Brazas’ artwork improves by leaps and bounds during this arc, which is one of the reasons I think she was brought into Keenspot alongside more polished comics like Skullkickers, Wayward Sons, and Avengylene. The characters get new, more attractive outfits that showcase Ms. Brazas’ new artistic proficiency. I was especially happy that the annoying cat girl is finally out of that stupid Sailor Moon cosplay. And Ms. Brazas shows some great talent in some of her random filler, which uses a design flair that I wish were incorporated into the comic proper.

Recent stuff, though, regrettably seem over-stylized: full body figures don’t seem to be correctly proportioned, and the faces have become over-elongated. I appreciate that Ms. Brazas is trying a style beyond those in a standard anime template. However, I think there’s something a little off with her current style.

Ms. Brazas heroically tries to maintain continuity with a comic and characters that she wrote 8 years ago. A comic that is very, very silly… forgivable if you’re a kid, but increasingly clunky to hold on to as a maturing artist. Here’s the thing, though: at the pace this tournament arc is going, Mystic Revolution won’t wrap up for a very long time. And frankly, I’m more interested to see where Ms. Brazas is going next than folowing the adventures of a cast of rather poorly developed characters.

Rating: 2 Stars (out of 5)

Through its relatively short lifespan as a genre, webcomics have proved they can do things just as good as any other form of media can. They can make you laugh. They can make you cry. They can make you poo your pants when you get a surprise animation of a creepy anime zombie girl. They can make you find the goodness in humanity through the flooded streets of New Orleans, and they can make you feel the frustration of trying to find a loved one in Iran.

And, yes, webcomics can teach. Moreso, I suspect, than conventional print comics can. There are a lot of webcomic creators out there — such as Kate Beaton and Randall Munroe — that actually respect the intelligence of their readers. They’ll give you a set up using an obscure historical figure or an advanced calculus mathematical equation and trust that you’ll laugh even if you don’t get it at first, and that you’ll do more research if the subject piqued your interest.

Take, for example, Sydney Padua’s 2D Goggles (subtitled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage), a webcomic about two historical characters that I hadn’t thought about since my high school BASIC programming class.

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

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

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

Together… they fight crime!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

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).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can you not like this guy?

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

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

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

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

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

And surprisingly, Atticus wins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

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)

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

The first is my mom’s dog, Cinnamon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s a… robot, I think?

And some guy with a headband and cape?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

“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)