Webcomic short stories tend to make a big splash with two audiences: the people who read Reddit and the judging panel of the Eisner Awards. In 2009, for example, a whopping three short stories were under consideration: Speak No Evil, Vs., and The Lady’s Murder. A fourth, Bodyworld, was longer, but structure to come to a finite ending. It’s a format, that, in a way, is more appropriate of an award that bills itself as “The Oscars” of comics. There’s a complete story, a more cohesive theme, and character progression… things that Oscar-worthy movies are typically judged by.

This year, we also have three short stories vying for the Eisner. There’s Sarah and the Seed (which I looked at here), perhaps the shortest work every submitted for Eisner consideration. There’s Bahrain (which I took a look at over here), which muses about politics in the titular country.

Then there’s Outfoxed by Dylan Meconis. Ms. Meconis has, perhaps, more webcomic-cred than the authors involved in this year’s round of Eisners. Her previous works, Bite Me and Family Man, have taken a look at classical horror elements (vampires and werewolves) in historical settings. There’s nothing of the sort in Outfoxed. I mean, maybe a werefox… if that’s a thing.

Outfoxed is a short comic that Ms. Meconis have originally conceived for the Flight anthology, a comics series edited by Kazu Kibuishi to showcase up-and-coming comic artists.

Our story starts with a laundress, who’s hauling a bag full of filthy unmentionables. Soon, she enounters a talking fox, and she hides him from some scary looking hunters in powdered wigs who look like British Redcoats. Well, as it turns out, the fox is magical and a shapeshifter. He turns himself into a man, who looks kinda like the perpetually horny Marvel Comics’ character Starfox. What can I say: the devil hair is all the rage with fox-men these days.

The laundress scoffs. He can’t be a man. To be a man, he has to jet a job and fall in love. The fox-man tries on a variety of clothes and plays around with different jobs. He also declares his love for the laundress. The laundress tells him that she can’t fall in love with him because he’s a fox, suggesting that there’s something deep down that he cannot change.

So the fox turns himself into a lord… the same hunters who’d bedeviled him earlier. Now possessing social status, the fox-man throws it back in the laundress’ face that she’s just a laundress and rides off. In the end, the laundress is totally pissed off and screams Fox’s name like he’d just stranded her on Regula 1 after stealing the Genesis Device.

Outfoxed is a fine looking comic, rendered in muted colors and sepia tones. Ms. Meconis clearly loves drawing period clothing judging from the lovingly detailed outfits she has our fox try.

However, as the Duchess from Alice in Wonderland once said, “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” I’m not entirely sure what the moral behind Outfoxed is, though. That if you help someone in trouble, they become total jerks when they don’t get their way? Is it a cracked fairy tale — specifically the Frog Prince — where the girl stands up for herself? At the end, she doesn’t get any of the riches or power with marrying a lord, but she gains her self-respect and the right to fall in love with someone else who’s more up to her speed.

Perhaps I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it’s not the fox that’s in the wrong, but the laundress? After all, her main problem with not being with the fox is not because he’s a total stranger who’s she’s just met. It’s because he’s a fox. So maybe our laundress is a little … prejudiced? And she pays for it when the fox proves to have upward mobility? Weirdly, I almost prefer that moral to, “Don’t bother helping people, because they will totally sass-back you in the end.”

Rating: Four Stars (out of 5).

… webcomic cookies.

(h/t Comics Alliance)

“My study plan is to extensively research Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution, which I did a short piece about for Cartoon Movement,” Neufeld said in an e-mail. “I plan on taking courses in the history of the Persian Gulf, Islam (specifically the Sunni-Shia divide), and the language and culture of the region. The ultimate goal is to produce a long-form comics-format book on the topic.”

I always love it when webcomics are used as a starting point for something even greater. Neufeld’s accomplishment is a pretty important touchtone in using comics in the field of journalism: “Neufeld is the first comics journalist to be offered this fellowship, and the second comics journalist to receive any sort of American journalism fellowship.”

Here’s the first one, which was shared to me — quite uniquely, I might add — via the Draw Something game.

Small Change by Drew Springer

“Small Change is a webcomic. Small Change has no set topic. Small Change updates every Tuesday and Thursday.”

Meanwhile, the Avengers movie was cool and all (I posted my thoughts about it at my other blog), but I think it would’ve been much more awesome if it had gone something like this:

Well, it’s finally come to this.

If you’d asked me five years ago that I’d be approaching this milestone, I would’ve thought you crazy. My goals were simple when I started this site. I only wanted to review more webcomics than any other site ever has before. I think that mark has long passed. Then, after I’d reviewed my 100th review, I thought to myself, “Well, I have nothing more to prove. I think I’ll wrap up this site in, oh, six months.” Well, it’s been two and a half years since I crossed that milestone, and this site keeps on going.

I have reviewed everything from Jack to Rice Boy to Ctrl+Alt+Del to Lackadaisy. I have seen the stunning heights of Gunnerkrigg Court and the Stygian depths of Grim Tales From Down Below. I’ve seen the fall of Zuda Comics, the controversy over dick wolves, and Order of the Stick netting a bunch of money on Kickstarter. I’ve been interviewed by a Canadian magazine for an article on Kate Beaton, and I’ve presented an hour lesson for a class on webcomics.

And now … just now … I’ve reached the milestone that I thought I’d never achieve.

That’s right: today’s the day I review Least I Could Do, a rather notorious webcomic by Ryan Sohmer and Lar De Souza. It has published a comic strip every single day for almost 10 years now. That is a whole buttload of comics, people. And to a comic with such a deep archive… this is madness. THIS … IS …

…wait. Now’s not the time for a 300 parody. It’s 100 reviews too early, and… LICD has it covered. *sigh* Let’s just move along, shall we?

Readers of this site know that I try to be as thorough as possible when reading a webcomic archive. My original plan was to read the entirety of Least I Could Do from the beginning to end, experience the glory of every strip and every bawdy sex joke. Well, after reading the entire first year, I pretty much scrapped that plan. If LICD has taught me anything, there are, perhaps, only six sex jokes in the world, and to hear the same thing over and over again was seriously damaging my mental health.

Hence, like my 100th review on xkcd, I will freely admit that I did not read every strip. I read through the whole first year, then sampled two to three storylines for every year onward. I payed close attention to the storylines around the time Sohmer lets his characters age. If I missed a key storyline that redeems the entire webcomic, like if Rayne Summers is revealed to be a secret government project to impregnate women with Scott Baio clones, then feel free to correct me in the comments section, where things are always discussed with the utmost sincerity and civility.

Let’s not fool ourselves, people: the truth is that most of you have already formulated an opinion of LICD. Judging from all the people who have requested that this comic be reviewed, it’s also not a stretch to say that most readers of this site hold a negative opinion… which is understandable. I mean, who among us can take a look at Rayne Summers’ face and not think, “This is a face that needs to be punched, and punched often with increasing savagery”? Not I, my brethren. Not I.

And yet, LICD has its fans. LOTS of fans. And these aren’t people you’d expect would be fans — like, say, drunken fratboys and/or one-celled organisms. Many fans are, in fact, rather well-educated, somewhat nerdy, and decidedly multi-cell organisms.

For example, let’s take a look at the multipe awards LICD has won and/or has been nominated for:

• Wizbang!’s Weblog Awards, Won for Best Comic Strip, 2006
• WCCAs, Nominated for Ounstanding Comedic Comic, 2007
• Schuster Awards, Won for Outstanding Canadian Webcomics Creator/Creative Team, 2008
• Schuster Awards, Nominated for Outstanding Webcomic, 2009
• Harvey Awards, Nominated for Best Cartoonist, 2009
• Harvey Awards, Nominated for Best Online Comics Work, 2009
• Havey Awards, Nominated for Humor in Comics, 2009

Sohmer was also accepted as an associate member of the National Cartoonist’s Society.

And then there are the fans, many of whom are far more level-headed in their defense than you may thing. This one, for example, was written by fellow reviewer Eric Burns-White of Websnark:

Least I Could Do … is good Guy humor. It’s cheerful. The women are all busty and beautiful, the guys all handsome (even the ‘short fat guy’ isn’t all that short or all that fat… and it goes without saying that none of the girls are fat). A darn good case could be made that the strip is sexist. I don’t think the strip pretends to be anything else, however. It’s guy humor, pure and simple.

Here’s another one from John Teehan, who, by all accounts, seems to be an affable chap:

It’s a pretty fun webcomic. I’ve heard some accuse the authors of engaging in wish-fulfillment fantasy, but I take it more as a feel-good sort of comic where fun things happen to a guy who knows how to have fun and happens to be insanely lucky enough to be able to act on it.

Good Guy humor, eh? A feel-good sort of comic, eh? Well, I’m a guy, and a guy who likes to feel good, at that. I like typical guy things like pro-wrestling, football, outdoor grilling, go-karting, first-person shooters, and NBC’s hit drama series, Smash. Surely, I’m the target audience for this fine webcomic!

To review this comic, I went and downloaded the LICD app for the iPhone. I do not exaggerate when I say it’s probably the dirtiest thing I have ever done in my life. The intro screen looks like this:

And yes, I sprung for the 99 cent upgrade so I could view the archives. That’s 99 cents that could have gone to feeding the homeless. 99 cents that will instead likely go to adding breast jiggle detail to the LICD animated series. As I wrote this, by the way, I was sitting inside of a Starbucks, looking at cartoons occasionally containing naked women (and, to be fair, naked Rayne) on my high resolution iPhone 4S Retina Display while three young women are sitting at a table right next. Thank you, LICD, for making me feel like a complete perv.

These are the kinds of sacrifices I’m willing to make, people. My only consolation is that, by paying for this app, I proved Scott McCloud’s micropayment theory to be true. Suck on that, micropayment haters! SCOTT-MC-CLOUD! SCOTT-MC-CLOUD! SCOTT-MC-CLOUD!!!

So, for those of you who don’t know, LICD is about a sex man who sexes sexy women. Also he is apparently a big nerd who likes nerd things. His name is Rayne Summers. Now, if you listen closely, to the name and pick it apart, you might notice that the name sounds awfully familiar. It sounds a lot like … “Summer Rain,” the hit song recorded by Belinda Carlisle that hit #30 on the Billboard Hot 100. He is also something of an idiot savant, as he is the successful CEO of IDS Enterprises. Now, I wasn’t fortunate enough to encounter the strip where this happened, but apparently Rayne got the job in a 2005 plot when his friends falsified his resume.

Whatever.

I imagine that this comic wasn’t originally the Rayne Summer Show. In fact, I think that it was supposed to be an ensemble cast, and Rayne was the wacky comic relief guy. Early stories seemed to spread the plot around to the different characters. There’s — uh — the fat guy, the blond guy… er… another blond guy? … and the token female, Issa. I think I know Rayne ended up taking over the show: every other character is an absolute drag. They suck the life out of every scene that they’re in. Which is why most were eventually banished to the background, rolling their eyes, and sighing, “Oh, Rayne, you’re so wacky!”

The character I don’t get, by the way, is Issa. I mean, I know why she’s there: blatant fanservice. But why does she hang around Rayne at all? She’s got that virginal allure going on — well, relatively speaking, as she’s one of the few girls in the series who won’t jump into bed with Rayne. But that’s just it: that’s the only incentive for hanging around the guy. Other than living vicariously through him, which is why I think Rayne’s guy friends hang around. So… what’s Issa’s excuse for sticking around a pompous, leering windbag like Rayne? Because he’s rich? That’s pretty shallow. There’s some guff about her being a childhood friend, but, c’mon. Childhood friendship only gets you so far? They friends from The Social Network parted ways for far less.

In a way, it makes sense how Rayne pulls an Urkel and worms his way into becoming the star. Rayne is the resident sex pervert, and that means you have a built-in excuse to draw ladies who are either scantily clad or fully naked. What can I say: sex sells.

Second, since he’s supposed to be childish and a bit of a moron, he’s covered by the excuse that we’re not supposed to take him seriously. When not doing jokes on sex, LICD pokes fun at religion, namely Christianity. Rayne is the only characters who makes these jokes. Why? Because coming out of the mouth of any other character, it’s mean-spirited. But look! Rayne is saying it, and even though he’s a CEO, he’s a dumbhead! Gotta love him!

At the same time, it’s really, really annoying. Here’s the thing: Rayne cannot be allowed to ever progress from the standpoint of maturity… mainly because he’s a one-dimensional character. Being a sex pervert and a guy with politically incorrect opinions are about the only things that define him. Take that away and, well, you’re left with a comic that no one’s reading. This is why he’s, at best, a supporting character.

To my shock, there are attempts at fleshing Rayne out. There are plenty of LICD parodies floating around on the web where we get a glimpse into Rayne’s true self, revealing him to be an emotional wreck. What surprised me is that, reading LICD, there are a few rare times when those parodies almost come to fruition. Rayne is allowed to experience moments of sweetness, and there are indications that his heart was once broken. He experience some weird moments of ennui.

Ultimately, though, these incremental attempts at character development feel horribly inappropriate and out of place. This is the sort of comic, after all where Rayne coyly suggests branding a potential sex partner because he can’t remember her name. And also where there’s a prostitute loving referred to as “Suck for a Buck”. One side’s gotta give, and the raunchy jokes are the ones that bring in the readers.

I think that’s why a lot of the character progression falls to friend of Rayne, Noel. Noel carries the brunt of the plot development. He dates a woman named Kate. He moves in with her. He proposes and gets married. They have a child. They’re pretty much the most turgid storylines in LICD … and a big part of that is that Rayne Summers has to be shoe-horned into everything. Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer suggests, “Whenever Poochie’s not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking ‘Where’s Poochie’”? Well, Rayne is Poochie. It’s like Sohmer figured that if Rayne wasn’t on the screen, the regular readers would get bored and, I don’t know, watch The Golf Channel or something. He’s probably right, though: stripped of Rayne Summers, the strip becomes as boring and flat as NBC’s new hit drama, Smash.

(Yeah, yeah… that’s my second Smash reference in this article. This is a sordid reflection of my TV viewing habits when we’re between football seasons, people.)

LICD has been through three artists. What it was about the comic that apparently made multiple artists want to sign on, I don’t know. According to Bad Webcomics Wiki Mr. Adams left the strip for a very good reason: he actually respected women, and he saw where the strip was going. Good for him. Beyond that, Mr. Adams does succeed where the other two falter: his style makes Rayne look almost likable. In his strips, Rayne comes across as a goofy doofus.

Our second artist, Chad Porter, has an awkward start. His very second strip contains one of Rayne’s friends looking at a bunch of “sexy” women walking by and commenting, “I think the new artist is trying to get in good with you.” Only these women are bizarre rubber people. They’ve got no knees and squishy faces… which is a big problem when male gaze is a huge part of your comic. Seriously, ma’am, what’s wrong with your faaaaacccceeeee…..

The third and current artist is Lar De Souza. His original depiction of Rayne unfortunately looks a little like Scott Baio. Because when readers of LICD think of an audience identification character who sleeps with all the women, it’s Scott Baio. He is easily the most competent illustrator of the three. His character designs are attractive and unique. He breaks away from the static ground-level shot that plagues most webcomics. His style is the one that comes to mind whenever you mention Least I Could Do. There’s nothing wrong with his art alone.

However, he may be a little too good of an artist. After all, he’s managed to successfully illustrate Rayne Summers are the creepy, smarmy douche that he is.

Some of you are probably thinking that at least LICD has the balls to make a totally unlikable character the star. To which I say, “What are you talking about? Are you not reading this site? This site that reviews webcomics? You know, the medium that spawned the whole video game comic trend? The genre where every star is an arrogant, self-important little weasel?”

Characters who are unrepentant assholes, by the way, are not easy to write. Most writers at least have the decency to make that character charming. Eric Cartman from South Park, for example. He’s a vile little racist who, by all rights, the viewer should not root for. However, he’s often funny in how overblown his schemes get, and he gets hilariously flustered when things go wrong. Cartman has what Rayne lacks: a reason to root for him, despite his terrible morals.

All we get for Rayne, on the other hand, is his typical look set: heavy-lidded eyes and a shit-eating grin parodied in such works as Smug I Could Do. Actually, I’m not even sure Smug I Could Do qualifies as a parody, since it actually downplays the irritating smugness of an LICD strip. He’s less Eric Cartman and more like Soltan Gris from L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth dekalogy.

(Crap. No one’s going to get that reference. Shoulda stuck with Smash. So, does anyone else agree with me that Katherine McPhee can sing well, but she can’t play a convincing Broadway star? No?)

There are times when it becomes very difficult to separate Rayne Summers the character with Ryan Sohmer, the writer. There was a plotline about Rayne buying a struggling newspaper which ended up becoming a rather preachy rant about the obsolescence of newspapers. While I agree with a lot of Rayne’s/Ryan’s points, he comes off as such an arrogant bully that you’re embarrassed to be siding with him.

Then there’s the time where Rayne/Ryan decides to bag on other webcomic artists for not being on a daily update schedule. Oh, and ending this short arc with guys dressed at Stormtroopers aiming guns at webcomic creators? Classy. Because that … proves he’s right? Somehow?

Sigh.

This.

Comic.

Thus, Rayne has carte blanche to be a dick to everyone. The author is always going to give him an out: a strawman argument, an improbable plot convenience, etc. There’s one storyline where Rayne has an event staffed by homeless people. When his gets called out on it, he says it’s to teach the rich people a lesson.

“What do you know about poverty that makes you qualified to educate others?” his assistant asks angrily.

Cue the plot convenience. “I know about living off of seven dollars a week on groceries,” he says. What, seriously?

Then we’re hit with the strawman argument. For no reason I can discern than to show that Rayne is your moral superior, our assistant asks, “Why don’t yo do more to help?”

Rayne goes into super preachy mode: “Like taking care of an orphan who’s petrified of the foster care program, and making sure he has shelter, food, and goes to…” Screw this comic. Seriously, screw this comic. Anyway, it ends, as you may expect, with a sex joke.

The sex jokes, by the way, end up sounding like a broken record. LICD reads like a Mad Libs written by a sex obsessed ten year old who thinks he’s funny, but in actuality is not. Anytime there’s an attractive woman drawn, you know that — surprise! — there’s going to be an awkward sex joke at the end. For example, there’s this exchange from a strip charmingly entitled “Horton Hears a Ho”:

“I really hope you don’t have any kids.”
“Why? Are you offering? I’m flattered, though it’s a little quick. I don’t even know your breast size.”

Wow, that was … a natural reponse.

Then you have Rayne doing some poetry, where he rhymes “nookie with wookiee” and “witty with titties.” Eh. I’ve heard better. I guess this is the “good guy humor” I keep hearing about? Here’s the thing about LICD that probably more annoying than anything else: it is really not very funny.

Something I discovered when I reviewed The Gutters is that Ryan Sohmer is horrible at telling jokes. There’s an early storyline, for example, where Rayne’s friends trick him into thinking that looking like Goku from Dragonball Z will impress the parents of his Asian girlfriend. As an Asian, I’m not really offended by this storyline. What I am offended is by how horribly unfunny it is. Especially how Sohmer has to friggin’ overexplain the premise of his joke.

LICD seems to pride itself in being fresh and current, unlike those stale newspaper comic strips. So why do the jokes feel so old and hackneyed? Are we really going to do a Star Wars “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” gag? Seriously, anything that reminds me that Rayne/Ryan is a nerd makes me loathe anyone who takes glee that nerds have taken over the world (or pop culture, at least). Does simply referencing “Jem” a punchline? Why? Because he reminded us that Jem is a thing that happened?

And then there’s one of the most out-of-date jokes of all: he observes that Shakira’s song “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)” sounds a lot like Fozzy the Bear’s catchphrase. Pay attention to the date that strip was released. That’s right: LICD made the joke a full year after the song was prominently featured at the 2010 South Africa World Cup, when literally everyone had made the same exact goddamn joke already.

I seriously could go on and on, but the word counter says that I’ve gone over 3000+ words and that’s way too much to write about friggin’ LICD. You’ve probably noticed I haven’t touched on the major complaint most have made about LICD: its misogyny. That one’s a little tricky. Rayne is promiscuous, true, but at least it seems that women use him as much as he is using them. On the other hand, the women who do sleep with him are shown to be rather shallow, which puts the ball back into the critics’ court. It’s something that’s been discussed plenty of times on other sites, though, which is why I focused on the other faults. Namely, that this is a boring, unfunny comic with a completely unlikable lead.

So there you go. Y’all can stop writing me now. LICD is reviewed! And…

Wait, this is my 200th review? Ugh. Worst… 200th review… ever. I’ve gotta say, at least there’s no worse comic out there to review when I hit my next milestone.

What’s that you say?

Moon Over June is still out there?

NNNNnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 1 star (out of 5)

Those who’ve only experienced Funky in its current form might be shocked by how bright and funny the comics are in The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume I: 1972-1974 (available from The Kent State University Press’ Black Squirrel Books imprint). Coming across like a hybrid of Doonesbury at its silliest and Peanuts at its most contemporary, the Funky Winkerbean of the ’70s was intended as a pleasant diversion, not a daily reminder of our impending doom. The title character is an ordinary middle-American high-schooler, hanging out with his nerdy friend Les, his activist friend Roland, his feminist friend Livinia, his black friend Derek, and his spaced-out friend Crazy Harry. Much like Morrie Turner’s groundbreaking, multicultural Wee Pals, the “jokes” in the early Funky Winkerbean are often little more than in-the-moment references to some social issue or trend, framed by some character’s raised eyebrows. But Batiuk developed the world of the strip fairly quickly, making the characters distinctive as people, not just generic mouthpieces for punchlines.

And that matters, because too often cartoonists try to make comic strips “relevant” by turning them into cranky polemics.

Long time readers — and I do mean long time readers — might remember that, on the older version of this site, I was periodically obsessed with the current misery of Funky. I never quite maintained the momentum, though it seems that Chris Sims at Comics Alliance has pretty much picked up the slack for all of us with FunkyWatch, chronicling the most depressing Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft strips of the month.

The article, by the way, touches on a point that I raised in the talk on comics I gave at a class recently: while the death of newspapers is one of the leading causes as to why comic strips are falling out of favor with pop culture at large, another major reason is that newspaper strips are just out of touch these days.

For every Peanuts, Calvin And Hobbes, or Cul De Sac—where children’s lives are shown as complex and relatable, even to adults—there are dozens of strips that render kids merely as smart-asses, cutie-pies, or hellacious scourges. One of the worst of the newer strips in that regard is Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker’s Dustin, which debuted in 2010 and is meant to be about the latest generation of underemployed college graduates who are moving back in with their parents because they can’t afford to live on their own. That’s a timely premise, and yet as written and drawn by Kelley and Parker, Dustin himself is a lazy idiot who couldn’t hold down a decent job even if the economic conditions were favorable. There’s little attempt in Dustin to see the world through its protagonist’s eyes; there’s only strip after strip designed to illustrate how spoiled and useless young people are today.

Partly that’s the fault of the newspaper industry itself, which is so stingy with slots for comics that the few new strips that get picked up tend to be bland, sitcom-style cartoons trafficking in the usual clichés: incompetent bosses, wacky neighbors, and These Kids Today With Their Cell Phones And Their Heavy Metal Music. For innovation in the daily comics form, fans have to pick through the ever-growing thicket of webcomics; the newspaper page isn’t exactly leading the way.

I love that term: “the ever-growing thicket of webcomics.” It’s a phrase that’s both optimistic and ominous.

One of the genres that has surprisingly thrived under the webcomic format is the weird western. Now, I ain’t saying that readers cotton it, particularly — the same way they cotton those comics what make fun of video games, I mean. Weird westerns, though, sure do cut a swell during awards time. High Moon, which is about the Wild West with werewolves, won a Harvey Award. Guns of Shadow Valley, which is about cowboys with superpowers, was nominated for an Eisner. It makes sense when you think about it. Weird westerns hearken back to the Golden Age of movies when heroes like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Clint Eastwood lit up the screen. At the same time, they play to more modern audiences when you add some sci-fi, the supernatural, fantasy, and steampunk.

Who could have imagined that The Wild Wild West was the future of storytelling?

Which brings us to Erin Mehlos’ Next Town Over. It sure is a mighty unassuming name. You hear it and you done think to yourself, “With a fancy title like that, this is surely some sort of romance comic.” Which, come to think it it, may not be all too far from the mark. At its heart, this is a webcomic about two lovers. They also have superpowers. And a couple of souped up horses. Set down a spell and you’ll see what I mean.

Let me tell you a story about a desperado named John Henry Hunter. To common eyes, the man is simply an gambler and a lothario in a stylish snowy white duster. ‘Neath that, though, the man is as vile as they come. He is also an arsonist, a murderer, and a practitioner of witchcraft. There is a $10,000 bounty on his head, soon to be raised to $15,000. You ask me, I think that ain’t enough money to cover the trouble. After all, John Henry Hunter ain’t yer typical outlaw. He’s some sort of crazy pyromancer. He can summon columns of flame. He can breathe fire. He can kill horses with a fire sword, then resurrect them as fiery elemental creatures.

It’s going to take someone just as ornery to bring down such a wily villain. That’s when we’re introduced to Vane. She may not look like much. Heck, she looks positively sickly, like someone dying of the typhoid. She may already be dead. But she’s a score to settle with ol’ John Henry Hunter, and she don’t aim to stop lest it take her to the ends of the earth … or the next town over, as it may be. She is so dang determined to send Hunter to hell that even hanging won’t kill her. She’s armed to the hilt, with a couple of six shooters, a fancy steampunk rifle, and … a rocket propelled grenade, apparently. She also has a cyborg horse.

But most importantly, she is crazy.

The two seem destined to knock galley west till the sun comes down. Neither will ever get the upper hand. Neither will ever go down. They’re two overpowered opponents, and like a cyclone rippin’ through Oklahoma, they cannot be defined as good or evil. That’s the best way to describe what these two are, I reckon: forces of nature. Now there ain’t much of a story, but there don’t need to be. Oh, there some mystery there, which can be boiled down to, “Why are these two hosses fightin’?” That ain’t the reason to be reading this. Rather, Next Town Over is an all action webcomic — with shoot-outs, chases, lassoing and the like — and it ain’t ashamed of what it is. It’s for folks who swill Tennessee whiskey and are in the mood for some rootin’, tootin’, shootin’, gun-totin’, sassafrassin’ Texas-sized brawls.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5).

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.

Max is a young, sarcastic 13-year-old kid who’s just moved into Mayview. He has an overactive sister and a very childlike father. Their new home is a convenience store. If you’ve ever seen the anime FLCL, the situation should awfully familiar.

Paranatural has the feel of a goofy Gainax anime. The movements are more exaggerated, and the characters explode with emotion. Max’s Dad, for example, can’t just be happy, he has to treat every new development as if it were the most fantastic thing to ever happen to him. It’s implied that Max rolls his eyes at these antics. You’d imagine that would make him more subdued than the rest of his family. Nope! Max may be surly, be he takes that to the extreme himself. When he changes for school, he does so with a seriousness that can only be described as over-the-top.

This puts him a little at odds with the rest of the town. Max’s dad may be eccentric, but’s he normal compared to the rest of Mayview. Everyone acts like they’re totally overdosing on Red Bull. “I’m starting to think crazy is the norm in Mayview,” Max quips. Now, I’ve mentioned that there are ghosts involved in this story. You’re probably wondering if maybe they have something to do with everyone in the town acting as mad as a hatter. Perhaps … but so far, all clues point to the more likely theory that everyone’s crazy.

The first student Max meets at the school, for example, is a high-strung girl named Suzy who’s rather militant in having Max join the Journalism Club… even though no one reads the school newspaper. She’s so obsessed with talking notes that, when Max forgets where his first period class is supposed to be, she retrieves his schedule right from her notebook. His friends are the sort of kids who will hinder a bully by scooting their desks together so he can’t pass. If he fails to sit next to them at lunch, though, they cry bitter, bitter tears.

Teachers are hardly any better. One rather odd fellow rewards his students with gold stars. He does so by skipping through class, opening a treasure chest full of stickers, and flinging a nice gold star right at your forehead.

After dealing with the weirdness of real life, the ghosts, then should be pretty much cake. Max gets his first clue when he hears strange hissing at his new home. He’s then greeted with a cavalcade of weirdness. Johnny, our story’s resident bully, suddenly has a cute slime creature perched on his head that only Max can see. He walks though halls, thinking that they’re crowded, only to realized in the next moment that the hall was empty all this time. And there are times when he’s staring out the window, there’s a grinning dragon staring right back at him.

The town really is filled with supernatural creatures — or shades, as our characters call them. Some are ghosts. Some are spirits, which never were alive in the first place. Most are friendly, polite, and pretty content to just staying out of the way. There are other creatures, though, who would like to have nothing more than treat other ghosts like delicious midnight snacks. Max has gained the power to be “dead without being dead.”

He can see these shades. He can touch these shades. He can also shape the environment around him with the help of a tool. As it turns out, his tool is a mystical baseball bat… the better for smashing. By pure chance, he grabbed the bat in a moment of duress and now it has given him superpowers.

Max’s gifts attract the attention of the Paranatural Activity Club (known to the rest of the school under the inscrutable title of “Activity Club”). The view the world of the shades as a fascinating ecosystem that can only be experienced by the privileged few. They’re also sort of a Junior Ghostbusters squad, protecting friendly shades from malevolent ones who can make them even more dead. They’re led by Mr. Spender, a teacher who always wears sunglasses and who gets pretty frustrated when people mispronounce his name. His star pupil seems to be Isabel, who boasts an array of powers. She can manipulate paper — which is more impressive than it sounds. Turning paper into a whirling morningstar, for example. She can also shoot energy blasts from her fingers and force spirits to stop being evil.

Her classmate, Ed, seems to be equally talented. His tool is a paintbrush, a humble implement that can double as a scythe. While Isabel is ambitious, Ed is a little more of a prankster. Bustin’ makes him feel good. Isaac rounds out the team. He doesn’t carry a tool. In fact, we haven’t really seen him fight yet. However, he doesn’t seem to be shy about laying down the theoretical side of ghost bustin’.

Max sorta waves off the Paranatural Activity Club at first. He’s not the sociable type, and he’s not sure if he wants to take his talents as a spectral any further. There are also politics to consider: the Activity Club is viewed suspiciously by Suzy, who seethes with accusations of betrayal when she sees Max with them. But soon, Max is pretty much forced to side with Isabel, Ed, and the rest. After all… there were those weird noises he heard coming out of his own house….

To sum it up, Paranatural is absolutely delightful. The wild, blustery gesticulations and exaggerated expressions burst with the crazy energy of a Looney Tunes cartoon. And speaking of cartoons, I love how Mr. Morrison unnecessarily gives a sequence, say, three panels that most cartoonists would give one. When Max falls down the stairs, his butt hits all the steps. He then does a backflip, he lands on his feet, and finally he confronts his dad. It really is like watching an anime.

And then there’s the ludicrous dialogue, full of needless dramatics and ridiculous, made-up slang that makes absolutely no sense:
“Ride, my child, to the top of the hill! To your education!“
“He’s gonna need a whole lotta yeast to rise after one-a your punches!“
“Huh? D’joo scone the local protein already?”
“I’m a-rustlin’ your blankets! I’m a rustler!“

At the same time, the general air of silliness doesn’t detract from the moments of dread and unease. Now, Paranatural never really gets too scary. This is Poltergeist levels of horror, where the main event is suspense and not gore, blood, or violence. Generally, I think it’s fine for kids to read. There are moments that can be pretty unsettling… and, at some moments, Grade-A nightmare fuel. The fun art and the odd characters can catch you off guard, putting you in a mood for whimsy before hitting you with something a little more haunting.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Well, that day is finally upon us, as Axe Cop got the green light on Fox’s Saturday Night animation block. So, heroes, I bring the question to you: what other webcomic would make for a good animated series?