3D CG Art webcomics. Brrrrrrr!!!!

The very term sends shivers down the spines of right-thinking webcomic readers and reviewers alike. In the past, I’ve mocked pixel art and stick figure comics as the aesthetic nadir of webcomics. However, no one practicing these two “art forms” ever tries to convince the readers that the artwork is actually good, and the good webcomics compensate fairly well with writing. I don’t know if you can ever make the same excuse for CG art, because in this case the art itself will always be front and center. So I’m not exagerrating when I say that 3D CG Art webcomics, hands down, are the worst looking webcomics EVER.

It’s counterintuitive, because 3D animation does pretty well with respect to movies. It’s gotten so mainstream that we can ignore the technical nuts and bolts and focus on the content… like how both Up and Avatar are both nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture and not just for the technical categories. Unfortunately, your average webcomic creator doesn’t have access to James Cameron money, and, as a result, the stuff coming out of their cheap-o 3D programs is the epitome of terrible.

When you think 3D CG art webcomics, you think dead, unemotional faces. Eyes not fully lodged in their sockets. Stiff marionette poses. Plastic skin textures. On one hand, you have waifish and impossibly smooth 3D Poser lookalikes with slightly different hairstyles. On the other hand, you have the “artists” who put so little effort in their work that they’re basically just captioned screenshots from Sims 3 and Team Fortress 2.

Fellow webcomic reviewer Ping Teo at Webcomic Finds did a better job at distilling the pitfalls of 3D CG art on her blog when reviewing Sunset Grill:

Given that you work with 3D stuff, I’m guessing you should already be familiar with the Uncanny Valley Syndrome…. I think this is the biggest obstacle you are going to have to overcome. People are weird with regards to this thing. The more realistic the art looks, the less they tend to like it. Especially if it’s 3D. I experienced a little bit of this when I started reading your comic, it took a couple of chapters before I could stop feeling uncomfortable about it.

So why am I so keen on reviewing Scott Christian Sava’s The Dreamland Chronicles, a webcomic full of 3D artwork? Chalk it up to an ineffable curiosity and an unshakable faith that any medium can be tamed by a good storyteller. Can the worst artform in webcomics be redeemed by a skillful artist? Or can an artform be so bad that all it can deliver is migraines? Will The Dreamland Chronicles forever be doomed to wander the Uncanny Valley as well?

Writing a review of The Dreamland Chronicles has been a personal goal of mine for a very long time now. It intersects several points of interest. The CG aspect feeds my editorializing bug. Then fantasy aspect stokes my love of fantasy literature, which I quaff by the tankloads. Plus, it’s an all-ages webcomic, which is always appreciated in a world where “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” articles are a huge joke.

Unfortunately, I always hesitated for one simple reason: the length. The Dreamland Chronicles is now over 1000 pages. Daunting doesn’t even begin to cover it. Fortunately, Scott and Donna Sava are good people, and when they came across my blog and discovered my predicament, they helpfully offered to send me Volumes 1-3 of the comic (self-published, by the way), hoping that the print version would be easier to dive into. After a few mail-related mixups over the Christmas Break, I finally got the trades … and let me tell you, my dear readers, the package that the books came in was surprisingly hefty. If I got to say anything off the bat, The Dreamland Chronicles TPBs will give you your money’s worth in bulk content.

So now that you’ve seen a few sample pages: how about that 3D CG art? it is, without a doubt, ithe best looking comic featuring computer-generated illustrations that I have ever seen. It helps that Scott Sava is no amateur when it comes to the 3D arts. In fact, you might say that the man’s a 3D art kung-fu master. According to Wikipedia, Sava has worked on video games, a movie (Casper), and several 3D comics, including one at Marvel written by Greg Rucka (Spider-Man: Quality of Life). All that experience shows.

As a result, the art of The Dreamland Chronicles is very pleasant and easy on the eyes. There are some missteps, and I go over them later in this review. But first, the good.

The vast cast of characters are all very distinctive. You will find no Poser clones here. This is thanks in big part to Karen Krajenbrink and Robin Mitchell, who, as part of the huge Dreamland Chronicles team, were responsible for character designs. (I should mention, by the way, that it takes an awful lot of folks to create The Dreamland Chronicles, and they hail from all corners of the world. The appendix lists 26 contributors, including a whopping 11 people for something called “Character Rigging and Morphs.”) You will find none of the robotic missteps that plague the typical 3D CG art webcomic. There are times when the frame zooms in a character’s face, and you’ll notice that their faces can display a wide range of emotions. True, the most common expression in the comic is shock. (And why not? Weird things happen in Dreamland.) But subtle touches, like characters averting their eyes during moments of romantic tension, come off just as well as they would in ink. Touches like these keepThe Dreamland Chronicles out of the Uncanny Valley.

Secondly, you won’t find the jagged pixel edges that plague most 3D art comics. The rendering tool Team Dreamland Chronicles uses seems to make textures look smoother than output from his contemporaries. In particular, skin textures look less like plastic doll parts and appear more natural, like the skin textures you’d find on a Pixar character.

Also appreciated: the time Sava takes to set up some scenes. Some may find this a waste of panel space, but I personally think the expanded visual time frame is key to selling the reader on the illusion of movement in a CG environment. The library poster (a reprint of which was included at the end of Volume 3) calls it “The Greatest Animated Movie … You’ve Ever Read!”, and given the painstaking frame-by-frame sequences, I think the description is apt.

Finally, The Dreamland Chronicles boasts a pleasantly muted color palette. I mentioned in a previous review of a CG comic that perhaps the best option for most would be to render the panels in black-and-white, since the comparable color versions looked mind-bogglingly fake and awful. Fortunately, The Dreamland Chronicles doesn’t suffer the same issues. From the beginning, the world of Dreamland is bathed in a golden glow that is visually sound. The lighting gets even better in later pages, where I assume Team Dreamland Chronicles has access to better 3D rendering tools. Small flecks of light dance across the pages like tiny flames, and they paint a very serene and mystical setting.

“Yak, yak, yak, El Santo,” you say, making mocking puppet gestures with your fingers. “So you’re fawning over all the pretty pictures. Big whoopty-do, Roger Ebert. But you and I both know that some of the best fantasy webcomics were drawn with pixels and stick figures. What about the story, you logarrheic luchador?”

OK, wise guy. The Dreamland Chronicles an all-ages webcomic about a regular run of the mill college student named Alexander who becomes a dashing hero of sorts after falling asleep and journeying into the land of fairy tales. And, no, it’s not because he had too many tacos the night before. Wikipedia cites Windsor McKay’s Little Nemo as The Dreamland Chronicles‘ prime inspiration. I have never read Little Nemo, and I probably wouldn’t have heard of it if not for the NES game of the same name, so I’ll just say that the flora, fauna, and geopolitical situation of the Dreamland world is not all that different from C. S. Lewis’ Narnia.

Alexander once voyaged Dreamland as a child in the company of Kiwi the chipper fairy, Paddington the jolly rumble giant, and Nastajia the purple-haired elf princess. After recovering a sword from a huge dragon, little Alex wakes up, never to dream again. That is, until one day while chilling in his college dorm he receives a fateful care package from home, which includes a necklace with a sword pendant. That night, when he goes to sleep, he is once again teleported to Dreamland.

He finds his friends again, who are more or less how he remembered them. They’re slightly larger, but from the standpoint of personality they’re pretty much the same. Well, except for Nastajia, who is now a Queen. She’s little frigid, burned with loads of responsibility, and now a major hottie. She’s a little upset that Alexander’s sorta been MIA for a decade or so, but … well, you know girls in these stories don’t stay angry for too long. She lets Alexander in on her little quest: she’s looking for her parents, who are in turn looking for some legendary tablets that may save Dreamland from the rule of King Nicodemus, a wicked king who wants nothing more than to banish children away to the nightmare realm.

Alex is more than happy to help, because … well, it’s Nastajia, the hottie Elven Queen who is also a childhood friend. Who wouldn’t? Also, he’s in possession of a kickin’ Final Fantasy-grade giant sword! The sword has the power to cut through anything, like the Miracle Blade. It cuts through rocks, towers, giant seamonsters, gargoyles, vegetables, beef, poultry… BUT WAIT! Act now and Alex gets a magical suit of armor that turns him into a Medieval Iron Man absolutely free!

Along the way, they meet a racial melting pot of storybook characters. He strikes a friendship with a catgirl named Felicity. At the the same time, she immediately raises Nastajia’s suspicions and/or jealousy that Alex may be developing some catgirl fever. Elsewhere in the webcomic, they fly around on airships and meet mermaids and dwarves and centaurs. From time to time they get into some violent scrapes, which involved a lot of stabbing but is bloodless enough to be kid friendly. Dreamland may be in the thrall of an evil king, but that doesn’t mean that the place isn’t basically one huge amusement park.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Alex has a dickens of a time trying to convince his brother, Dan, that his dreams aren’t just dreams. And also there’s Nicole, who works at the University labs and remains quite skeptical that Alex is really, truly chilling with fairies and elves. She also discovers that when Alex goes into his dream state, he’s legally brain dead. Together, can they figure out how exactly Alex is transporting to a world full of whimsy and magic?

The entire comic proceeds in a standard quest structure. The team travels the length and breath of Dreamland to ferret out the messages behind the tablets. Like I said, it’s an all-ages comic, so the plot and characterizations may come off as being overly simple (and somewhat video-gamey) for older readers. Those looking for the next Harry Potter, i.e. those looking for a dark undercurrent with the fanciful storyline, may be disappointed. In my opinion, though, I think it’s much more difficult to keep a webcomic kid friendly while, at the same time, elevating the stakes. Sure, there’s something to be said for maturing a storyline to keep pace with the age of the readership, but there’s also something to be said for narrative consistency. However, eventhough I am admittedly an older reader, I still enjoyed immersing myself in an old-fashioned swashbuckling adventure. While reading The Dreamland Chronicles, I was reminded of the fine times I spent long ago thrilling to the derring-do Robin Hood or Treasure Island.

Despite the fact that all of the comic is online for free, I think that, especially for younger readers, it’s easier and more rewarding to read the The Dreamland Chronicles in book form. I mean, the print version is an incredibly attractive package. There’s a map of Dreamland in the inner covers to give that extra oomph of fantasy flavor. The appendices of the book is crammed full of goodies, too. There are pages of Krajenbrink’s wonderful sketches that have a great Walt Disney feel to them. Also, there are a few pages of Sava’s initial attempts at a hand-drawn Dreamland Chronicles before he went the CG route. Sometimes I wonder if there’s an alternate universe out there where The Dreamland Chronicles came out as a traditional hand-drawn effort rather than a CG comic … but then, where’s the pioneering spirit in that? The appendices also include pages of fan art, some of them from comic vets like Mike Wieringo and practicing webcomic artists like Sarah Ellerton (of Phoenix Requiem and Dreamless, reviewed here and here)!

Now, for some nitpicks: The Dreamland Chronicles does make a few visual missteps. Take one of the major villains: the big red dragon. I know he’s supposed to look fearsome. Yet, he looks like he’s made out of injection molded plastic, like a Megatron action figure from the old Transformers: Beast Wars line. The other disappointment was Kraken. This seemed like a no-lose proposition: all traditional depictions of the Kraken show him as a terrifying, tentacled Lovecraftian monster. (The Pirates of the Caribbean version being one of my favorite depictions.) What could possibly undermine this briny terror of the deep? How about portraying him with a really goofy face?

Additionally, some of the exteriors, especially early on are unconvincing. Take the dorm settings, for example. First of all, it looks far too neat to be any dorm room shared by two 18 to 22 year old guys. Second, and most importantly, doesn’t it look a little too spacious? The beds, especially, seem a bit too generously proportioned. There are also times in Dreamland where the buildings seem to be built for giants (look at the size of the characters in relation to the chimney).

Fortunately, these are minor nitpicks, and none of them are dealbreakers. Overall, the graphics from early in the run hold up pretty well, which is amazing when you consider the rapid obsolescence of CG artwork. Besides, most of these graphic issues I mentioned are remedied later on in the run. The team behind the comic gets several props for successfully proving that comics rendered in CG art can, in fact, be good (even if it means you have to assemble a large team to do it), and The Dreamland Chronicles is still the only webcomic that CG art has ever been implemented well.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

I thought I’d try out this poll feature on the site. Should this be a success, I may try out other polls in the future.

Rene Engstrom’s Anders Loves Maria just ended. What did you think?

Apologies for no new reviews this week. I’ve been busy wasting time, what with Lost premiering this week, me lurking on Lost communities, me inputting crackpot Lost theories on my wife’s Facebook, and generally being Lost. (Seriously, this is an issue. I think the same thing happened early last year when my wife and I plowed through the first four seasons on DVD in preparation for Season 5.)

(In related news, Joel of HijiNKS Ensue may need to detonate a nuclear warhead to put his mind at peace.)

(EDIT: And while we’re on the subject of Lost, Nedroid’s Spoiler-Free Lost Spoilers.)

Also, the Superbowl. So my mind’s been in several places at once. I will let you get a peek into my next three planned reviews, though, if you’d like to play along this February:

• The Dreamland Chronicles
• Haunted
• Shi Long Pang

Also, once upon a time, El Santo was once in a collaborative storytelling circle, where you post three or four paragraphs and then another writer takes over. It went through a pretty good run until we got bogged down by our own mythology. (Though, now that I look back at it, it was not nearly as confusing as Lost.)

Well, the folks over at Witch’s Brew are trying the same thing, but with webcomics. I checked out a few panels, and frankly it’s badly drawn/copy-pasted and makes no goddamn sense… but it does look like everyone involved is having a lot of fun. And what more could you ask for? The Webcomic Overlook sorta hopes that this kind of thing catches on as a sort of fun past time.

Above image from the webcomic After Lost.

The final season of Lost begins tonight! The Webcomic Overlook is a big fan of Lost, so expect him to be in a completely catatonic state tomorrow.

Also, if you’re up for some Lost-style music, check out music from the Webcomic Overlook’s favorite Lost-themed band, Sonic Weapon Fence. (Believe it or not, The Webcomic Overlook is actually aware of three existing Lost-themed bands.) Check out this sample track about The Others called “Mixed Signals.”

So what’s the word on the street on the new iPad? What, didn’t you read the title to this blog post?

Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Rowland, Randall Munroe, Ryan North, and Chris Onstad give their initial impressions on this interview at Comics Alliance.

The much ballyhooed announcement of the Apple tablet finally arrived this Wednesday, along with the slightly unfortunate name “iPad” and details on what will essentially be a giant iPhone, but with no phone. There’s been a lot of speculation about what this will mean for the digital distribution of comics, much of which was rounded up at CBR and later at Newsarama, while Rich Johnston trumpeted iPads as our “new overlords” and Comixology almost immediately envisioned their own iPad app.

But if the iPad is going to revolutionize the way we read comics — and that’s still an “if” — what will it mean for webcomics, which have been native in the digital world since day one? We asked some of the biggest creators in webcomics for their thoughts.

Randall Munroe, the creator of “xkcd,” replied that “while it’s a nice device — I’ve been frustrated by the lack of ultraportable computers which aren’t just underpowered netbooks — I don’t think it will have any more impact on webcomics than the iPhone did.”

So… yeah. They say, “Meh.”

Wrapping up Friday with some tidbits from around the World Wide Web:

• I’d heard of Axe Cop, the webcomic based on a 5-year-old’s stories, but I hadn’t realized that it was part of an interesting phenomenon where the comic was passed, word of mouth through Twitter. The synopsis provided by Robot 6 sounds fascinating:
  

  One look at its genuinely childlike imagination, action and sense of humor — my favorite bit is when a guitar-wielding supervillain called Bad Santa is defeated when another character gains his powers and becomes Good Bad Santa — seems to have been all it took for the twitterati to get hooked, no doubt recalling all their own afternoons spent making up stories and playing hero in backyards and basements. Indeed, the site has been fairly groaning under the collective interest of the Internet; it was completely down last night, and the strip’s image loading has slowed to a crawl as of this writing.

• In some more Robot 6 news (and boy are they full of webcomic news today), a new charcoal-drawn webcomics comes to life courtesy of Mark Siegel, the editorial director of First Second Books. It’s called Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson.
  

  “It is 1887,” Siegel told Publishers Weekly, “and the depths of the Hudson River hold the unfathomable secrets of two men: the owner of a steamboat, who throws a bottled message overboard each morning, and the boat’s captain, who saves a wounded mermaid. Into this comes a famous writer whose love for one of them will keep both men from taking their secrets to a watery grave.”

• Something’s bugging Fizz over at The Cranky Old Gnome. And it’s webcomic fans who are too critical, and webcomic fans who can’t stand criticism. And its sounds like something I might say:
  

  The ‘hyper-critics’ spent all their time criticizing every aspect of the comic, from it’s art and writing, to the author’s broken promises and lack of commitment. Nothing the author did was good enough for them. Most of the time they complained about the lack of updates, but then even when there were new comics, they called the art hackneyed and the writing trite.

  The ’super-fanboys’ on the other hand blindly defended everything the artist did no matter what. The artist was above reproach. No-one had a right to complain that the comic never got updated because it was free content. Nobody could call the art or writing bad because they aren’t artists–they can’t create anything so they don’t know how hard it is.

  To be honest both sides ended up sounding foolish and childish. All their arguments, even the most intelligent ones, eventually devolved into bitter name calling.

  Anyway, Fizz makes a plea that while it’s wrong to be negative all the time, it’s equally wrong to think art is above criticism, even if it is free.

• The Washington Post is trying to figure out: what’s the best webcomic of the decade? I thought this was going to be a shoe-in for xkcd (again), but surprisingly it’s a dead heat between Penny Arcade and Perry Bible Fellowship. My own list (where Gunnerkrigg Court tops all) can be found here.

D. C. Simpson is probably one of the most successful webcomic creators today. Her first published comic strip, Ozy & Millie, won an impressive number of awards: the 1999 College Media Advisers Award for Best Strip Cartoon, the Ursa Major Award in 2002, 2006, and 2007, and the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards in 2002. (Remember those?) She also struck gold last year when her comic strip, Girl, won Amazon.com’s Comic Strip Superstar contest and was awarded a publishing contract from Andrews McMeel Universal.

So I don’t doubt that D. C. Simpson has talent. But, then again, so did the people behind Dreamcatcher, which was a terrible movie but had a two-time Oscar winner writing the screenplay and Morgan Freeman on screen. Talented people make bad mistakes. And sometimes the worst missteps happen on the most personal, autobiographical projects.

In D. C. Simpson’s case, it’s Raine Dog, the comic she hosts on Keenspot. It’s a webcomic responsible for spawning a minor internet meme, and for good reason: it contains quite possibly some of the most baffling and ludicrous scenes I’ve ever encountered in webcomics.

Raine Dog skips between two timelines: one set in the “present” where Raine walks around a metropolitan city in Dame Edna glasses, and one about Raine’s (the dog’s) more innocent past. Present Raine is sort of a “gal makin’ it in the big city” type, and it’s to the the comic’s credit that it succeeds in accurately portraying Raine as your typical elitist big city douchebag. (More on that later.) She is a dog in a human’s world, which I think is supposed to be allegorical about the struggles and oppression of an unspecified minority.

This allegory pretty much falls apart the minute Raine starts going into flashbacks. Narrating events from her point of view, Raine recalls her childhood, when her name was Princess and she was purchased at a kennel. Because, you know, that’s how most minorities get their start out in life: eager-to-please, drooling-on-the-carpet pets who are subject to leash laws.

When the boy takes the dog home, he does the sorts of things a boy does with a dog. They sometimes play fetch. They sometimes play frisbee. When Princess rummages through the garbage, she gets punished, because that’s what you do when dogs are bad.

Eventually, one thing leads to another, and our boy sleeps with his dog. After which they passionately kiss.

No. Wait. What?

OK, let’s back up a bit. We get some blindingly obvious scenes where Princess awakens to her true self when she starts talking and reading. It’s obvious that Raine Dog is being set up as an allegory — never mind that the comic is set in a bizarro world where creatures who can walk and talk and run pharmacies are still sold at kennels.

But an allegory to what? The most obvious metaphor would be something with regards to D.C. Simpson’s sexual orientation, the particulars of which I won’t go into detail here. If so, isn’t equating homosexuals to pets just about the silliest thing to do? The closest the allegory would ever come to working would have to deal with slavery (and there is imagery suggesting that this is about the civil rights movement). Even then it’s kinda ridiculous to show metaphorical slaves playing fetch and getting belly rubs.

Let’s face it: Animal Farm, this is not. Equating humans to pets totally doesn’t work, and this whole webcomic is based on that flawed proposition. I supposed D. C. Simpson wants us to be upset over a society (and those damned bigots who call themselves “parents”) who won’t let this kid sleep with a minority. But, seriously, given the setup, how else am I supposed to interpret this scene than a kid having sex with his dog?

This culminates into an even crazier scene. After the parents find their kid and their dog making sweet sweet nookie, they have Princess spayed and/or neutered. Think about this for a second.

Really, really think about it. There’s going to be an essay question later.

Eventually, Raine breaks free of her human masters to wander the countryside and run into a bunch of philosophical stereotypes. Cows are mindless followers of The Man, we GET IT! Raine eventually falls in with a colony of stray dogs. The want her to turn against humanity, who have mutilated her. They want her to embrace her dog nature. The force her to hunt for her food. But Raine is a pacifist at heart. Even though she’s commanded to channel the animal within, when she’s faced with killing another living being she fails because killing is wrong and it is better to root around in garbage or be a vegetarian and blah blah blah blah.

Back in the present day, Raine gets all up in your grille with how the world works, man! Reading Raine Dog, I was reminded of a time when the A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin reviewed the movie Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. The heavy-handed liberal moralizing had worn him down to where he wrote:

By this point, my collegiate faux-rebelliousness is but a distant memory, like my hair, dignity, and self-respect. Re-watching Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, I found myself thinking, “Get a job, you f****ing hippies! And would it kill you to shave once in a while? You look like a buncha goddamned yeti.”

Have you ever run into a person who is so annoying and so smug that even when you agree with them, you’re compelled to take the opposite side on principle alone? That person is Raine Dog.

Raine shares her half-baked thoughts about subjects ranging from religion and health care reform. It’s like the liberal version of Chick Tracts. At best, these asides can be described as “preaching to the choir.” At worst, you can describe it as “even the choir is starting to get sick of your preachiness.” Seriously, one of the arguments boils down to “you’re just mad jealous of me.” Yes, that’s going to win people over to your side.

Even Simpson seems to agree that Raine is an annoying, self-righteous zealot. Take a look at how she draws her every time she goes off on one of her self-righteous monologues. That is the face of one of the smuggest characters in webcomics. Only Kranti from Minimimum Security has her beat.

Maybe Raine isn’t a liberal at all. Maybe Raine is secretly a Libertarian dog trying to subversively tick off everyone she meets into becoming an avid follower of Ayn Rand. That’s what I believe.

I suppose I should give Raine Dog some points for attempting to work an unconventional narrative device into what seems to be a starkly honest and ambitious project. But, like I said, it just doesn’t work. The pet/human world is unbelievable, the moralizing is laid incredibly thick, and there are too many ludicrous moments that derail the entire webcomic. It’s the sort of comic where, after every page, you shake your head sadly at the state of affairs and mutter, “Good Lord, what were you thinking?”

Rating: 1 star (out of 5)

BONUS ESSAY QUESTION: Go back to that scene where Princess gets spayed and/or neutered. For some reason, the parents fear that the dog might get pregnant. Let’s forget, for a moment, that this is impossible, and if it were possible in Raine Dog’s world, that this is equivalent to someone spaying and neutering a slave. Is this scene merely illogical, or is it unintentionally hilarious? Can it be both?

A couple of interesting comic-related news stories coming out today:

Apparently, the big news is the iPad. I know this because last night, I couldn’t friggin’ stop talking about it and how this is Apple’s sneaky endgame — which started with the iPod — to steal market share away from Microsoft by focusing on computer items that are not traditionally lumped under the “computer” category. And now they’ve developed something that is kinda a laptop but kinda not. Folks: this is why Steve Jobs is an evil genius.

Brigid Alverson has done an incredible job of collecting several iPad-related articles over at Paperless Comics. I advise you to check them all out, especially NPR’s grand proclamation that the iPad is going to save comics.

In unrelated news, The Beat is going to soon be leaving the Publisher’s Weekly umbrella. Remember to update your links to this excellent comic book news resource.

So you face a dilemma.

You’re a fine, up-and-coming webcomic creator and you want to get as many eyeballs as you can. You don’t totally approve of this firewall that China has up on ethical grounds, what with you being a devoted net neutrality advocate and all (whatever that means). But hey, you barely get 30 regular viewers, and even an infinitesimal fraction of China’s market of a billion potential readers would be considered a success.

Would it really hurt to get some additional viewers, even if they don’t totally get your language and/or Westernized humor?

And how about those Westerners working in China? Should you deny transfer students your awesome brand of sequential art whimsy?

Is selling your soul to Satan really as bad as everyone makes it out to be?

Think about it.

Fortunately, our agents at Webcomic Overlook (i.e., me and the Google search engine) have scoured the web looking for handy tips on how not to get banned in China… freely given, by the way, unlike some other sites. (Wink, wink.)

1. Stay away from posting your webcomic on social networking sites.

   From The Guardian:

   Broadly speaking, most of the big social websites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are all blocked. Many familiar sites, such as Wikipedia, remain but with entire sections or contentious pages disappeared by The Great Firewall. Porn is pretty much outlawed.

   Here’s a partial list of more banned sites. I have no idea if popular webcomic-related sites like LiveJournal, Blogspot, and WordPress are included. I assume those are on a case-by-case basis.

   As for that last bannable offense, that probably means Oglaf, Sexy Losers, and Menage a 3 are outlawed. On the plus side, it’s very likely that Jack is also outlawed.

   Those lucky SOB’s.



This image... probably bannable in China.

2. Be aware of certain words that will likely get you banned.

   ConceptDoppler.org has a pretty nice list of bannable terms here. So, if you made up your webcomic name using a random name generator, and it spit out something ridiculous like “Oriental Red Space Time,” be wary: you WILL be banned in China.

   Or if you deign to make in a cerebral reference to Greek mythological hero Polynices, you WILL be banned in China. (Holy crap, I’m turning into the political version of Jeff Foxworthy.)

   Interestingly, “Chinese Democracy” isn’t specifically called out, so feel free to make as many Guns N’ Roses jokes as you want! (Also not banned: “The Spaghetti Incident?” Though it totally should.)

   All these bannable terms, by the way, do make for an attractive work of art.

3. You probably shouldn’t be posting pictures of Tang Wei.

   The Chinese actress apparently has been blacklisted from getting an acting job in China. (Though I think she’s still OK in Hong Kong, China’s Sin City.) It’s probably robably because, in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, she strips to her birthday suit and engages in some steamy rated NC-17 sex scenes.

   Sooooo…. posting pictures of her is probably a big no no. Not that you should ever be posting pictures of attractive ladies on your website to get some cheap hits.

   No-sir-ee.

4. If you’re writing a furry webcomic, never, under any circumstances, create a silly, bombastic dictator named “Chairman Meow.”
   
   I mean… obviously.


Like this.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s already too late for me. The Webcomic Overlook is banned, banned, banned, and now I only have the wonderful Canadians (who astonishingly make up a whopping 63% of readers) to keep me going.

But I see this as a good thing.

Envision this scenario, if you will. Three years from now, China will probably develop a rather transparent Penny Arcade knock-off. (Just like every other webcomic creator in the Western world has done.) We’ll be laughing at first, like we laughed about the Chinese iPhone. But then Chinese engineers will reverse engineer the elements that make webcomics successful and will suddenly corner the webcomic market with a superior yet easy to manufacture product. And this will end up killing Western webcomics as we know it. Soon, we will just unquestioningly assume that the highest quality webcomics all come from China … until the put out a webcomic that has faulty accelerator pedals or something, and that won’t happen until 30 years down the line.

Meanwhile, they won’t have a superior webcomic review product because they have no baseline to work from. “What is this Webcomic Overlook?” they will ask, totally unfamiliar. They WOULD have known, if they could access it.

Thus The Webcomic Overlook will thrive in the post-Chinese-dominated world. Oh, sure, I’m going to have to make some token recognition about the glories of the Cultural Revolution — but who doesn’t these days, eh?

And then I shall laugh. Triumphantly. For the glory of Chairman Meow.

Er, Mao.

High fantasy is probably the only literary genre in existence where the author has to essentially write two stories. The first is what’s happening now: hero goes on an adventure, fights a dragon, yadda yadda yadda. However, the author also has to write a second story. He has to write a detailed and epic history of the lands and people going back to, say, 1000 years before the hero of the story was even born. The hero’s tale cannot exist in a vaccuum, and his raison d’etre is deeply embedded in the tales that go before him. So, quite amusingly, it’s essential in high fantasy to include stories of a glorious, long lost past in a tale that is itself a fantastic approximation of humanity’s glorious, long lost past.

It’s probably all Tolkien’s fault. The brutha not only inserted poems about elven lovers that were only tangentially related to the narrative of Lord of the Rings itself, he also wrote a library’s worth of back notes (of which the Silmarillon was only but a small piece of the puzzle) to flesh out the myths and beliefs of Middle Earth. It’s kind of understandable in his case. The guy was a professor, and those guys are up to their wazoos in textbooks. Besides, he pulled off the faux-textbook atmosphere so well that to this day people enjoy reading and studying Tolkien as if it were a minor college elective.

The fantasy novelists the follow Tolkien reiterated the superficial aspects. Most fail to come up with anything compelling. One of the best recent efforts is Susanna Clarke’s Hugo-Award winning Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, who fills you in on the history of the Raven King John Uskglass through some of the most ridiculously detailed footnotes you’ll find in fantasy literature today. (It also made me very happy that I sprung for the hardcover. I imagine squinting to read the footnotes in paperback form would be a headache and a half.)

Storytelling is also a key component of Evan Dahm’s fantasy webcomic Order of Tales. Here, Mr. Dahm fills us in on the past through a nifty device: his hero is a plucky little storyteller whose greatest weapon is knowledge — specifically, the legends, myths, and history encompassing his fantasy world.

Evan Dahm first burst out on the webcomic scene with the highly acclaimed Rice Boy. I haven’t read the comic, but people whose opinions I respect tell me that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Believe you me, sliced bread is pretty frikkin’ great.) It’s full of some of the most iconic images in webcomics: the simply designed rice boy character and The One Electronic, a robot man whose got a big spotlight for a head. I will have to read it someday. However, since The Webcomic Overlook favors ongoing series over ones that are concluded, I decided to latch onto Mr. Dahm’s current ongoing project, Order of Tales, which is scheduled to finish some time later this year.

The protagonist of Order of Tales is an earnest young frog-lizard named Koark. He engenders our sympathies immediately, which I think is partially due to his resemblance to Kermit the Frog. In modern parlance, Koark is what we would call a total nerd. He would rather pick flowers than do medieval jock activities like jousting and swordplay. He aspires to be a Teller, one who collects, reads, and sometimes memorizes stories from the various unique civilizations of his land. When Koark’s home comes under attack from evil forces, his father christens him a Teller and a member of the Order of Tales, a once glorious organization of storytellers so decimated that Koark is the last of his kind.

An aside: in a weird coincidence, I’d been working on a fantasy novel where the main character is a story collector involved in a secret society (which I’d named “Order of the Owl”). I thought I’d been pretty clever until I started reading Order of Tales. While I can probably explain this away that Mr. Dahm and I have both seen Star Wars at least once, I still probably have to backtrack to my fallback plan of casting my hero as a pig firmer who finds out that she is The Chosen One.

Moving right along.

Koark finds himself thrust into a quest when he has a chance encounter with the spotlight-headed fellow named The One Electronic (or, as everyone calls him “T-O-E.” From what I’d seen of Rice Boy, T-O-E is often depicted with a human face photoshopped on his circular screen of a face. Here, his face displays nothing but the glassy surface, which doesn’t look so offputting in the context of Order of Tales‘ fantasy setting (provided you allow for the existence of mechanical men in your fantasy universe in the first place). T-O-E is Koark’s Gandalf: he’s wise, world-weary, and is reluctant to reveal everything he knows. He’s also quite legendary, and he has no trouble gaining an audience with Order of Tales‘ power brokers. Does he also have a taste for the halfling leaf? Perhaps.

T-O-E sends Koark off to rendez-vous with a friend at Tenshells. Things don’t go as planned: Koark finds the place ransacked, he’s accused of murder, and he’s unclear of why he was doing T-O-E’s bidding in the first place. After discovering that the true perpetrators were the Blackbirds, Koark snatches their ill-gotten gains from under their noses. There, he meets the Bottle Woman. She’s a surly, transparent gal made of glass with liquid in her belly. Everyone seems to want her so they can use her for their nefarious purposes. When you look at fantasy tropes, you could say that The Bottle Woman is a combination of both the One Ring and the archetypal Chosen One of high fantasy.

(Wait. Chosen One? Crap.)

Koark discovers that The Bottle Woman is as clueless as he is. She doesn’t know to what ends that people want to use her. All she knows is that she feels an undeniable urge to go to Rog, the mysterious and unseen force causing havoc throughout the land. Rog has a history before the beginning of the tale: he’s responsible for the world’s greatest cataclysm, and there’s fear that history may repeat itself.

All the while, Koark and The Bottle Woman run in allies who aren’t friends for long. Most are willing to simply be rid of The Bottle Woman so they can be left in peace. Koark soon learns that there’s no such thing as a safe sanctuary. Those who pledged to defend you may turn on you in an instant, friends may have plans that while altruistic may not be in your best interests … and while those who you thought were your enemies may not exactly be trustworthy, they might be your best option for survival.

Order of Tales follows the most standard of fantasy structures. The heroes voyage from point A to point B, then to point C, then to point D. Standard, yes, but to fans of high fantasy this is the ultimate comfort food. If you’re not going to send your valuable reading time being whisked away to far off lands of magic and whimsy, then why read fantasy at all? I might as well be reading some John Grisham.

Mr. Dahm sends us to some truly breathtaking venues, like the giant nautilus spirals of Tenshells and the majestically tall towers of the Sirpah. And it’s not just a matter of making everyday objects giant-sized. In one part of the story, Koark and The Bottle Woman realize that they have to take an underground path on the way to the town of Imfort. The buildup to the dire nature of the path is highly effective, so that when we get our first chilling glimpse of the path itself we fear for our heroes.

Dahm gets a lot of mileage out of the most simple designs. One of the most noticeable aspects of Koark, for example, are his tiny feet. You don’t notice it at first: in the first chapter, Koark is styling Alladin shoes. But when Koark grows older, sprouts some long stilt-like legs, and wears his traveling shoes, he looks like he’s gliding across the ground. The fact that we can relate to Koark is, incidentally, one of the greatest advantages comics have over print. In literature, it’s very difficult to write a non-human, anthropomorphic character that people can relate to. The only exception is usually children’s literature, and they usually have some handy illustrations to use as reference points. In comic form, it’s easier to make a connection, because now you can see how a frog-lizard moves or emotes.

Following the “less is more” aesthetic discipline are the wonderful designs of the different races that inhabit Order of Tales. The Horned, for example, are basically just horseshoes with giant eyes. It’s an easy look to pull, but yet it’s so versatile. You can string a ribbon and a bell between the horns and — voila! — instant crown. Or you can wrap up one of the horns in a makeshift bandage. It’s almost as if Evan Dahm created the Horned for the specific challenge of creating diversity out of identical looking characters through small visual touches and conveying personality and emotion completely through the eyes.

Interestingly, the Blackbirds, servants of Rog, are indistinguishable from each other both in terms of appearance and demeanor. The are also weak-willed and pressed into service due because they can’t read or write. How Dahm artistically ties this theme together is really rather astounding.

Order of Tales loves to linger in quiet scenes that evoke contemplation. Several of the panels take up the entire page, inviting the reader to embrace the wonder of the epic vista alongside its characters. Even scenes of violence somehow seem to happen in slow motion. When a rock is launched from a catapult, the panels layout urges us to contemplate the trajectory. The entirety of Order of Tales feels very zen, much like the T-O-E himself.

When reflecting on the stories of legends gone by, Order of Tales makes a seamless transition into prose. Some might find this a tad jarring. This a webCOMIC, not a webNOVEL, you say. Personally, I’m hard pressed to think of a better alternative. If the tales were illustrated like any other panel in Order of Tales, for example, it would somewhat defeat the internalized effect that Koark is reciting written and oral history, where images are generated completely inside the mind of the reader/listener.

Plenty of the stories, by the way, are only around to provide color to the world of Order of Tales. However, there are a couple that provide insight into the main storyline. The one about Rog is the most essential, and the story of the Machine Men is probably high on the required reading list.

Dahm’s work is reminscent of Jeff Smith’s Bone… though I don’t know if I’d tell that to his face. Here’s what he stated in Mountain Xpress when asked a similar question about Rice Boy:

I read Bone a little while before I started Rice Boy, so I imagine the influence is there, but I can’t really find it. I think I’ve drawn more influence from the sorts of things Jeff Smith has drawn from than from Jeff Smith himself: old cartoons, mythology and fantasy stories. I have trouble looking for my own influences; I try to make a practice of sucking in the whole world through my eyes indiscriminately and synthesizing it in my comics, somehow or other.

Fair enough. I’ve avoided making comparisons, and I’ll continue to do so now… though, as a parting shot, don’t these guys look a lot like the stupid rat creatures? Still, I think it’s a good starting point. Fans of Bone will find a lot to enjoy when it comes to Order of Tales.

But say you’re not a fantasy reader. Say you’re just looking for a good webcomic to dig in to. This Order of Tales I’m talking about might not be something up your alley. And the length is a bit daunting. Right now it stands at over 500 pages. Do you really want to start reading Order of Tales?

The answer is, undoubtedly, YES. Many times YES.

Order of Tales was one of the comics brought up by a reader when I put together my Top Ten Best Webcomics of the Decade list. I said it didn’t make it on because I hadn’t read it yet, and it would be dishonest to place it there on reputation alone. What do I think, now that I’ve read it?

Order of Tales would’ve ranked first or second… easily.

Seriously, Order of Tales is amazingly put together. It makes no false steps. The comic itself is one of the finest examples of sequential art storytelling I’ve come across: print, digital, or otherwise. It’s eye-catching, suspenseful, memorable, full of wonderful characterizations, and lyrical. Those 500 pages went by quickly because the webcomic is the very definition of a page turner. Order of Tales is so good it’s outclassed almost every single other webcomic I’ve ever read. It should be dipped in lucite and preserved for future generations as how a comic should be.

In the end, that’s why I spent most my time in the review comparing Order of Tales to books rather than to other comics. It’s not just a great webcomic. It’s great literature. In summary: Order of Tales is as perfect a webcomic as you can possibly create.

Final Grade: 5 stars (out of 5).