Category Archives: comedy webcomic

The Webcomic Overlook #197: I’m My Own Mascot

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Kevin Bolk is a drama queen.

Wait, wait, maybe I should clarify that statement. I should make it clear that I’m not talking about the real Kevin Bolk. In fact, I’m sure that he’s a lovely and wonderfully absorbing person. He seems like the kind of guy I can watch the NHL playoffs with at the local microbrew. For all I know, he might be a volunteer firefighter on the weekends, volunteering at the local soup kitchen on the weekdays, and a friend to all children. Maybe he doesn’t do such things, but I like to think the best in people, especially Kevin Bolk.

But Kevin Bolk, the character starring in the comic strip entitled I’m My Own Mascot, is —a capital D, capital Q — Drama Queen. Now, before you accuse me of being incredibly mean (which I am), the propensity of cartoon Kevin Bolk to overreact to things in “humorous” fashion is pretty much the meat and potatoes of this comic.

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One Punch Reviews #61: Bearmageddon

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Ethan Nicolle made his mark on webcomics with Axe Cop. This much celebrated comic proved that if you added stellar illustrations to a six-year-old kid’s rambling storytelling, you come up with something that’s pretty magical. We all knew though, that it was destined to end. Little Malachai would soon become self aware or tired, and you can only hang on the adventures spouted by a kid for so long vefore it no longer becomes cute.

Fortunately, Ethan decided to follow up his initial effort with a story from his own creation: Bearmageddon. Now, I know what your thinking: between the title and the webcomic’s header image of bears with different animal forms (which looks like a kickin’ rad album cover for a 70′s metal band). You’re saying, “Man, El Santo, not another webcomic with random humor!”

This webcomic does rely on goofy nonsequiturs like an octopus bear. But, thus far, you know what this comic reminds me of? Animal attack movies like Anaconda or Lake Placid. And that is not a bad thing.

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One Punch Reviews #60: Noncanon

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Tom McHenry’s Noncanon is one of those single panel webcomics that feels like they were tossed off on a LiveJournal. They feel sporadic and of the moment, as if they’re just ideas that popped into Mr. McHenry’s mind that were given life on pen and paper (or Cintiq) mere moments later. They’re also quite funny in a way that’s both randomly absurd yet so classy that they look like they belong in the New Yorker.

Heck, maybe they are in the New Yorker. Maybe, just mabe, Mr. McHenry worte a song about it, too.


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One Punch Reviews #59: Smashing Avatar

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Man, you know what I haven’t done in a while? A review of a webcomic about video gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..

…

Whoa. Sorry about that. I think I passed out for a moment there. Anyway, you know what the world needs more of? Webcomics about geeks. Geeks and their geeky lives. And video games. Ryan Huertas and Mike Karell, the creators of Smashing Avatar, certainly created one of those comics.

Now, before we get into the review proper, I’ve got to put a question out there. Look at the sample strip I posted below. Does this look familiar to you? Like, maybe we’ve seen this webcomic before? There’s two gamers… a couch… even the hair looks sorta familiar….

It looks a lot like…

It looks A LOT like …..

Oh, right. Oglaf. This comic looks like Oglaf.

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Random Quickies: Skullkickers

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Skullkickers, written by Jim Zubkavich (a.k.a. “Jim Zub”) and illustrated by Chris Stevens, Edwin Huang and a team of artists has been getting quite a bit of press lately. Robot 6 had a recent piece on how it swiftly reached 500k page views (or 38,000 unique readers) in the span of a month. Skullkickers already had debuted in print, but it seems to be gaining an online following after back issues were posted on Keenspot for free.

Our two amoral leads — a bald dude and a dwarf — fight monsters for money and get in trouble with the local law when they do so. The lovely art has a painterly Heavy Metal feel to it: colorful and keenly detailed at the same time. Skullkickers is also light on plot, aiming instead for action sequences and slapstick humor. Which is fine, because Jim Zub and his team do action and comedy really well. It’s a fun comic for folks who just want to see dudes punch out another dude. But really, would you expect anything less from a comic called Skullkickers?

One Punch Reviews #58: Nerd Rage

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Man, if nerds are known for one thing it’s … not … being … able … to shut … the hell … up. Seriously, man, check out some of the comments posted this AV Club review of the game Borderlands. You’d think that, by not liking a video game, someone just insulted their religion. I’m sure pretty much the rest of you can come up with your own examples… including, um, several reviews posted on this very site.

Heh.

So it’s time to channel that apoplectic manchild within, because today we take a look at a comic about nerds, rage, and the consequences thereof. It’s Andy Kluthe’s webcomic, Nerd Rage, where nerds are more ragin’ than Cajuns.

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One Punch Reviews #57: Legacy Control

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I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I took cartooning at the Detroit Center from Creative Studies. In one class, we went over shapes of characters heads. I’d tried to make a face out of something that looked like a lightbulb. My instructor took a look at the results, sorta made a face, and suggested I turned the shaped 180 degrees.

“A pear-shaped head looks more natural than a lightbulb-shaped head,” he said.

I think he made a good point. I can think of plenty of characters with pear-shaped heads: the principal from Archie, Pete from the Mickey cartoons, Baby Huey. There aren’t that many with lightbulb shaped craniums, unless you’re an evil villain with a big brain like The Leader. Still, with artistic license, I think it can be made to work.

I couldn’t help but think of this while reading Javis Ray’s Legacy Control. Because if this comic has convinced me anything, the one shape that will never work are lemon-shaped heads.


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