Category Archives: gothic

The Webcomic Overlook #109: Haunted

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When I put together a list of the webcomics I’d planned on reviewing for February, I had no idea that two of them had something in common. It wasn’t apparent immediately. One was about a haunted house, the other was about a shaolin monk living at the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, when scanning the press releases, I came to a surprising discovery: both were awarded a Xeric grant. It’s wacky ka-winky-dinks like this that lead to this site’s impromptu theme weeks/months (see also: Zombie Week). Thus, by the power vested in me, The Webcomic Overlook hereby declare this week to be Xeric Week! Cue fireworks!

But wait, what is a Xeric grant? And what is this so called “Xeric Foundation” that’s running it? Judging by the name alone, shouldn’t they be bad guys in a Marvel comic, sworn enemies of the Starjammers and the Shi’ar Empire? No, actually they’re a charitable organization, founded by Peter Laird (who you should know was one of the guys behind a little thing known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). While involved in several charitable organizations, the Xeric Foundation is best known for donating money to support independent comic book artists. I’ve talked about them before on this blog, mainly in my review of Joe Chiapetta’s Silly Daddy. (Silly Daddy itself is not itself a Xeric winner, but Chiapetta is a grant winner for a previous work, A Death in the Family.)

According to Wikipedia, “The Foundation tends to support work of an alternative or non-’mainstream’ nature, reasoning that if a comic has strong commercial appeal, it would be picked up by one of the major publishers. Therefore, it is an extremely valuable supporter of ‘art for art’s sake’ comics, and has helped launch the careers of a number of ‘literary’ cartoonists.” In other words, indie comics. The kind with unsettling art and embarrassing personal confessions. This criteria isn’t explicitly stated on the official Xeric site; they only say that “Among the qualities that we will be looking for are: originality, literary and artistic merit, and a sense of commitment to the work.” However, a glance through the supremely unconventional Silly Daddy will have you convinced that the Wikipedia description is right on the money.

Or are they? Your honor, I would like to present to you Joshua Smeaton’s Haunted, one of the 5 grant winners in May 2009. The most surprising thing about this indie comic is that Haunted looks — both in terms of aesthetics and content — like it’s got the chops to win mainstream approval.


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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: My Immortal

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My Immortal, a webcomic by someone who goes by Chazie, stars a vampire named Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way. I know what you’re thinking, but no… despite the name, Ebony Way is not a person of African descent. In fact, she is very pale. Ebony is a seventeen-year-old vampire, and like many vampires her age, she loves Hot Topic and dresses in a black corset, fishnets, and combat boots.

Also, she goes to school in England. Namely, a little place called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

As the “real” Harry Potter himself explains at the beginning of the webcomic, My Immortal is a fanfiction. Or rather, it is based on a notoriously bad fanfiction written by xxxbloodyrists666xxx. So, yes, dear reader, for my concluding “El Santo vs. The Vampire Women” review, you are in fact reading a post written by El Santo about a webcomic created by Chazie based on a fan fiction written by xxxbloodyrists666xxx which in turn was based on a series written by J. K. Rowling. Will you find any other review with this many levels of absolute raw talent? I think not!

My Immortal: The Comic — not to be confused with My Immortal: The Fanfic, My Immortal: The Song, or My Immortal: the Actual Immortal — has thus far serialized Chapters 1 through 9 of the original 22 Chapter fanfic. (EDIT: I was wrong. It turns out the original is a whopping 44 chapters.) While this sounds like dumptrucks full of fanfic, Chazie limits each chapter to one page. The truncated storytelling eliminates a few essential story elements (my favorite being Dumbledore yelling, “They were having sexual intercourse in the Forbidden Forest!”), but for the most part, what you read in the fanfic is what you see in the story … with a few MST3K-like modifications to help My Immortal go down easy.

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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: Danielle Dark

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Danielle Dark, a webcomic by Jay Bradley, starts with our title character leaving the romantic, scenic, and culturally inventive city of San Francisco for a city that’s pretty much the polar opposite: Indianapolis. And with how well the Colts are doing, who can blame her? And, uh … there’s the Indy 500? (Holy crap, I just realized a racecar driving vampire on the Indy circuit would be a great idea for a webcomic!)

Danielle must move because if she stays in one place too long, someone might notice that she doesn’t age and you can only use the “plastic surgery” excuse so many times (though I’d think that would apply more to SoCal than the Bay Area). And with the emergence of Web 2.0, she has to be more vigilant about secrecy than ever.

Danielle however is taking a risk going to Indianapolis because she’s been there before. There’s a chance she might run into someone who recognizes her. But the city also has old friends. She runs into an couple of long-lived witch acquaintances at a Warlock’s Coffee (snarf snarf), where carrying a punch card means you are one of the damned. These witches practice White Magic, which makes them the Jedis of the haunted community. There’s Berniece, who is 470 years old and Talia, who’s 650 years old, takes Danielle in, and wears unholy gobs of Tammy Faye Baker clown make-up.

While not as old — compared to her friends, Danielle is young at 150 years — Indianapolis’ ties are strengthened by powerful memories. Once upon a time, she grew up tall and she grew up right as an Indiana girl on an Indiana night. This was the city where she was first turned into a vampire. This was the city where her husband was murdered.

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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: Blood Bound

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Most practitioners of vampire fiction have deal with a sticky situation: how do you make vampires sympathetic when they’re murderers, cannibals, and rapists? Most sidestep the issue completely by creating vampires who prefer chocolates, vegetables, or synthetic blood substitutes. Others have their vampires drink prepackaged blood or emphasize that their victims don’t really die. And then there’s the ones whose vampires acknowledge that they can’t control their hunger, but devote their lives to hunting down and destroying their own kind, Daywalker style.

Then there’s the rare ones who write their vampires act exactly like how they should traditionally behave: demonic creatures who kill with neither pity nor remorse. Not surprisingly, the protagonists of these tales are pretty much the most despicable characters around. But hey, you’ve at least gotta credit Blood Bound for pulling no punches.

Before I start, I should tell you that, in all likelihood, Blood Bound is some sort of fetish comic. All the links in this review should be assumed Not Safe For Work. Also, Not Safe for Children. Now, I’m not exactly sure what fetish is being addressed here, but there’s a lot of boobies, one instance of a girl getting chained up naked and whipped, a few scenes where guys get humped to death, and one or two images of anthropomorphic-dog-on-woman action.

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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: Abandon: First Vampire

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We begin our story with Laila McCarthy and her trusty pal Kimmy on the run from a crack squadron of the world’s most metrosexual vampires. When they finally corner the two girls, it turns out that they have a fairly reasonable request for Professor Laila: translate two tablets of hieroglyphics, or the girl gets it. Laila, instead, goes for Option C. Short of telling the guys that the tablets belong in a museum and not being a big fan of fellas with frosted tips, she hacks her attackers down with a big ol’ samurai sword. Hey, what’s the use of carrying a sword around if you’re never gonna use it?

The battle won, Laila turns her attention to the tablets. The writing turns out to be a love story between two ancient Sumerian demons. Their forbidden love, we later find out, is predicted to bring about the end of time. After some gratuitous girl-on-girl action (which is, tastefully, left mostly to the imagination), Laila becomes pensive.

For, you see, she may be mild mannered professor Laila McCarthy to her friends and colleagues, but in real life she is none other … *gasp* … Lamashtu, the first vampire!

Abandon: First Vampire is written Greg Carter and illustrated by Elliot Dombo. If the first name sounds familiar, it’s because Greg is a frequent visitor on this site. Not only has Greg been very illuminating on the subject of creating vampire fiction, he was also very gracious to include a link to this blog on his site’s Links page. While I’m tempted to go easy, there’s a reason this feature is called “El Santo Vs. The Vampire Women” and not “El Santo Takes The Vampire Women Out to the Chocolatiers for Fun Times.”

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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: Annyseed

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Getting tired of all these reviews of chibi-vampires? Too bad. El Santo cares not about your weariness over comics where the girls have eyes as big as saucers and dress like they only shop at Hot Topic … or designed to appear at at shirt in Hot Topic. Chibi-vampires are gold. Chibi-vampires are boffo. When it comes to vampire women, there is only one dominant strain … the otaku strain … and its examples are legion. There’s Annyseed, for example, a webcomic written by U.K. artist Stuart J. Brown.

In fact, Annyseed is so otaku that it even comes with its own kanji subtitle. How hardcore is that? I will admit, though, that this is a slightly incongruous detail since the story takes place in The Isle of Skye … which looks, more or less, like the British Isles. Celtic runes would’ve been more appropriate.

Although she looks like she’s a pre-teen, Annyseed, our title character, is much older. She became a vampire at an early age, which permanently stunted her physical maturity at the age of 15. We join her in the modern day. Trust me: despite presence of decrepit buildings and characters wearing clothes straight out of Oliver Twist, her diary entry, as well as the bare midriffs on teenager girls, places this comic in 2009. This makes Annyseed 70 years old and eligible for social security if she were a human.

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El Santo vs. The Vampire Women: School Bites

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Names carry with them the heavy weight of expectations. Say your name is Charlotte Webb, like the heroine of School Bites. Surely you should be spending your days hanging around in the rafters of some barnyard and spinning words like “radiant” or “some pig.” Not so with Charlotte. Perhaps that was her destiny, but it all changed that fateful day she she found out she was a vampire.

This may be why she changes her name to Cherri Creeper. Sure, it still sounds like she should be a rollergirl with the Yakima Valley Vixens instead, but it can passably be a vampire’s name, too. Plus she’s got a cherry embroidered in her t-shirt. That counts for something.

Speaking of names, School Bites is written by Holly Golightly, who by all rights should be a Bond Girl rather than a comic book creator. I was delighted to find out that Ms. Golightly already had a few comics in print, most with gothic overtones: Nightmare Theatre, Archie Comics’ Sabrina, and Vampfire. When not drawing comic books, she’s apparently living the life and dressing up in skull tees like a real life Abby Scuito (and I think I just might get my ass kicked with that last comment). According to her site, Ms. Golightly also likes to be referred to as “Holly G”, which I won’t be using in this review unless it’s preceded with “The Divine.”

Personal preferences.

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