Category Archives: manga style webcomic

One Punch Reviews #66: Shädbase

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Hey, kids! Do you like webcomics? Sure you do! But do you think that webcomics have gotten a little … sissy these days? You read Penny Arcade and you say to yourself, “You know, dickwolves was funny. But it sure could’ve been a lot funnier if they’d actually shown the rape. And in graphic detail.”

To which I say: “What the hell is wrong with you?”

But, boy, do I have a comic for you! It’s a little something called Shädbase, by a creator who goes by “Shadman.” It’s a darkly humorous take on pop culture. Shädbase takes references from video games and cartoons, and it physically forces itself on those references without any consent, horribly abusing those references with blunt force trauma, and violating and humiliating those references until they’re emotionally scarred and bereft of dignity.

Suffice to say, links contained in this review are not going to be safe for work.

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The Webcomic Overlook #199: Paranatural

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Some time ago, I was helping some folks clean up an old building downtown. I was there with my wife and a fellow helper. It was getting late… and our companion did the one thing you should not be doing when it starts getting dark: she started telling stories. Namely, that she had seen ghosts here.

She told us of two occurrences. She said she once saw a young girl playing near the pulpit. She seemed like a little girl who was just playing around, laughing and giggling and the like. The girl ran off to the back room. The lady went to check on the girl, but, as you might guess, the girl disappeared. The other ghost she saw was a soldier. The lady had done some research, and she found out the building next door was once an infirmary at the turn of the 20th century. She said that these ghosts weren’t dangerous. They were, in fat, rather friendly. She wouldn’t have thought them to be ghosts except that when she’d run after them, they’d disappeared.

Now, maybe I’m not the type of person who believes in ghosts. Maybe I had nothing to be afraid of, since it was made clear that the ghosts were harmless. Friendly or not, though, you best believe we shut off the lights, locked the doors, and got out of that building as fast as we could. The very otherness of a non-corporeal being is enough to get your hairs standing on end.

Zack Morrison knows this. There are many ghosts in his webcomic Paranatural. Some are dangerous. Some are not. But even the friendly ones possess the sort of innate creepiness that makes you want to lock the doors and get out as fast as possible.

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The Webcomic Overlook #194: Mystic Revolution

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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.


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The Webcomic Overlook #190: Mokepon

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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?

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One Punch Reviews #44: So… You’re A Cartoonist? (Second Opinion)

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(I’m still on hiatus! However, David Herbert was kind enough to do a review while I’m away. In this review, he tackles previously reviewed webcomic So… You’re A Cartoonist? with a different take than mine. It’s time to get hit up with … a second opinion.)

When I first got into webcomics, I tended to gravitate towards comics that were somewhat based in the author’s real life. So when I found this comic by Tom Preston, or Andrew Dobson, it seemed like something that would interest me, not just because I like diary comics, but also because this is about being someone who makes comics and their own tales of doing what they love.

Basically it’s my comic, Living with Insanity, except the writer can draw and it doesn’t devolve into insane nonsense.

However, one of the first things you’ll notice is that the title doesn’t really work until nearly 18 pages in, where being a cartoonist becomes the main focus. Up until then, it’s about being bullied as a kid, watching shows with his girlfriend and stuff his roommate did in college.


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The Webcomic Overlook #183: Turbo Defiant Kimecan

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It’s been almost a decade since I’ve last watched anime. At some point, I think, I just got too old. I began prioritizing artistic and storytelling cues that anime was just not delivering. The characters were just too … young now. The complexions were too smooth and attractive. Nowadays I enjoy visual imperfections that give some character. And, for the most part, the hallmarks of youth — the uncertainty for the future, the need to define one’s destiny, the feeling of invincibility one gets when at one’s peak physique — are now concerns that I haven’t though about for years. Anime and adolescence are intricately tied.

More than anything, though, I think you get to be a certain age where staring at pictures of teenage girls in short skirts gets to be a little creepy. You think “Read Comics In Public Day” is some sort of brave stand against societal norms? Wait until I establish “Grown-Ass Men Read Shoujo Manga Day.”

Westernized manga, though, tends to solve a lot of my most pertinent issues. They retain the art style, the trappings, and the story beats from their Japanese originators. At the same time, they are more likely to mirror attitudes and mores less embarrassing for Western audiences. Take, for example, Ferran Daniel’s Turbo Defiant Kimecan, a manga-style webcomic that hails from Mexico. (For you readers from a primarily Spanish-speaking country, you may be happy to hear that there is a Spanish version of the comic.)

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One Punch Reviews #50: The Goddamn Panty Brigade

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So… do I even need to tell you if you want to check out The Goddamn Panty Brigade? I mean … that title. In the best case scenario, it could be about a regular misfit military unit who wear regular clothes, only some jerk drill sergeant stuck them with the most embarrassing name possible to toughen ‘em up. Or it can be about an all-lady Vietnam commando unit clad only in lacy underthings. Or maybe it’s a whimsical fairy tale about sentient panties. Still, would you be willing to admit to your friends, family, or the public as a whole that you’re the guy (or girl) who reads a webcomic called The Goddamn Panty Brigade?

So who are The Goddamn Panty Bridage? Well, as it turns out … they’re Josie and the Pussycats.

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