Rêveillerie is a fairy tale, but not in the way you think.

It starts in an entirely ordinary fashion, with an altogether ordinary looking young girl, lost in the streets of what could be a perfectly normal city. By the second page, that illusion is dispelled – this world may be similar to our own in many ways, but magic is a part of everyday life in Tamhaile, and that’s all the difference it needs. The first people we meet, aside from our protagonist Emilind, are denizens of an only slightly unusual library – but are undeniably strange and elfin.

Of course, Emilind herself is far stranger.

Rêveillerie does a lot of things that have really won me over. The storybook feel is one of them – and something that is the product of far more than merely being set in a world of magic and fae. Little details lend it an almost classical weight – for example, the use of small pieces of text that feel like excerpts from an old-fashioned story. Sometimes these little lines fill in small pieces of background, sometimes they set the scene, sometime they give insights into a character’s mind… but all in all, they give the comic a sense of being grounded in more than merely pretty pictures.

Like any good fairy tale, Rêveillerie is built around a sense of mystery. Emelind is on a quest… though we don’t quite know why, or what she is truly looking for. We know a bit about her past, but not how it all connects, and certainly not what makes her so seemingly special in this strange world.

And as with any good mystery, with every answer we get, only more questions arise.

Rêveillerie has its moments of action, but at heart is a character driven story. Each member of the cast definitely plays their own role, and even the characters that are around only briefly still have enough personality to feel real.

Including Emelind herself, whose status as the hero of the story is slightly undermined by her vast self-centeredness. She treats other characters as… no more than tools, in many ways. They are useful to her if they will help her in her quest. She can’t trust anyone but herself. The opinions of others don’t matter to her, and she has a certain ruthlessness that indicates she’ll do what she has to to get her own way.

Oh, she acts pleasant most of the time, and when she does mistreat others, she seems to feel it was almost accidental – but that attitude is still there, and it is part of what really brings the story to life. Heroes are, after all, defined by their flaws. Hers are very real – and justified, certainly, by the fact that she was abandoned into a world that wasn’t her own, and the sense of betrayal that brings. It is easy to understand why she is the way she is – and again, thats the difference between a character a reader can be invested in, and a simple image on a page.

Not that the images on the page are bad, of course. The art is well put together, with soft colors that fit the mood of the tale pretty much spot-on.

The comic’s only real weakness, like with many on Comic Genesis, is that updates are intermittent. It isn’t any surprise – artists have lives, and work, and school, and making comics often has to take backseat to more pressing matters.

But that doesn’t make the strips themselves any weaker, and Rêveillerie has kept itself going for quite a few years now. Here’s hoping for plenty more to come.

Have you ever had a comic that is so good it’s frustrating? 

For me, it’s The Wings of Change. It’s a strip that has been around for some time now – over half a decade, in fact. I’ve been there with it throughout that entire run, as it began during the Great Framed Escape of ’01 – and let me tell you, that brings back memories.

So it was, drawn by their part in the crossover, that I was there for the first strip of the comic’s actual story. It’s a damn good start, too – we get dropped right into quite a bit of action, in an exciting and clearly fleshed out world with several interesting characters – a dour minidragon who happens to be a ranger, a young (and winged) half-elf who wants to be a ranger, and a sentient unseen tree-being with a somewhat vicious sense of humor.

The strip immediately sets itself up as a fantasy style adventure with a solid emphasis on light-hearted jokes, as our protagonists start out trying to convince an extremely senile elder dragon that he should take on a human form when in human lands, rather than wandering about in his normal massive form and inadvertantly causing a war. Various hijinks ensue, they eventually manage to make him change…

…and his human form promptly falls from the sky onto a pixy house, killing the parents and leaving a half-dozen children instantly orphaned.

It’s a rather shocking transition – but not quite as shocking as the fact that the story doesn’t let this change the tone of the strip. The kids recover, Mitch and Hazel argue over who has to become their caretaker, and life moves on. To the strip’s credit, it manages to make this work almost flawlessly, and the reader finds themselves forgetting the awful incident almost as easily as the cast seems to.

The rangers and the pixies start to settle in, and we get the sense the strip is going to focus on the friendships developing between them, and their own personal growth and character development.

Of course, only a handful of strips later, we get a prophecy (from a surprisingly irreverent godly voice) about a storm on the horizon that might change the very nature of the world. It’s the standard vague and almost entirely useless spiel, but it definitely sets the tone of the strip a few steps higher.

From there… well, quite a lot both happens and doesn’t happen. The artist, Mari Rose, has created this fantastic cast of characters, and almost every one of them is having their own adventure. We get to see everything from the god of knowledge outclassing magic with simple smarts to the botanical version of Gumby squishing deformed mutant fish. The strip is filled with fantastic art, a good sense of humor and a compelling story. Well… several compelling stories, as it were, and that seems to be both a good thing and a bad thing. Right from the start, she’s beset by Robert Jordan syndrome, and that means the plot is going nowhere fast.

You may have heard of Robert Jordan – if not, he happens to write a little fantasy series called the Wheel of Time. It’s a powerful, compelling epic story that has thousands upon thousands of pages to its name… and is in danger of never coming to an end.

You see, Robert Jordan wrote a world filled with interesting characters… and found himself paying equal weight to each and every one of them. Early on, events proceeded without difficulty, but as more and more characters appeared, and each went on their own way… time slowed to a crawl. In one of the more recent books in the series, the entire book essentially takes place over the course of a single day, with us being shown the events of that day for every one of his myriad heroes and villains.

I like most of those characters – but it impedes the story. Without a focus, there will never be progress. This has been one of the greatest concerns regarding the Wheel of Time – and one that The Wings of Change has been suffering from as well.

Let’s compare this strip with Dominic Deegan. The clearly have a similar setting, and both favor a crisp, clear art style. Even aside from those similarities, both comics have the same sense of purpose and the same balancing act between personal developments and epic, over-arching plot lines. Even, occasionally, the same flair for painful little puns.

These days, Dominic Deegan is one of the most well-known strips around. It has had dozens of story-lines and more than a handful of epic, world-changing arcs. The Wings of Change, meanwhile, remains a nice comic, but certainly not a mover and shaker in the webcomic world – and since the comic began, less than half a week of time has passed.

Dominic Deegan started almost a year after the Wings of Change.

The difference, of course, is in the update schedule. It may not be the only difference – but it is the biggest one. I’d easily say TWoC has just as strong a sense of story, art and characterization – but time moves along at a crawl. Updates come once a week, not once a day, and filler is an all-too-common occurance. This doesn’t make it a bad comic, of course, and the artist certainly doesn’t owe us more comics…

But still. You can see that sense of potential unfulfilled. You can see how much more this comic could be, and how far away that inevitable epic plot really is.

Fortunately, the artist saw that too. She recognized the difficulties that have cropped up in folowing so many different characters at once. She noted that more updates certainly wouldn’t hurt. And that’s step one – recognizing the issue. From there… well, that remains to be seen. Regardless of where it goes from here, I’m confident that the strip will at the least continue on as it currently is – an enjoyable look into a world filled with a diverse cast of unique and engaging characters.

And I’ve got a feeling it’s on its way to being so very much more than that.

Nahast: Lands of Strife calls itself a d20 compatible webcomic.

Now then, exactly what does that mean? For those not in the know,  the d20 system is what is used as the rules basis for Dungeons and Dragons, as well as many other roleplaying games. From this, one might expect a comic like Commissioned (Fantasy RPG Arc) or Order of the Stick, with a plot in a fantasy world where you can clearly see the game mechanics functioning behind the scenes.

But for Nahast… no, not so much. Oh, you can see the influence of gaming in the details and development of the strip – but Nahast isn’t a world defined by rules as much as defined by story. Sure, the site has an entire page devoted to translating the world into rules one can use for gaming in that setting – but the rules are defined by the tale being told, and not the other way around.

What it draws from the gaming background is an intense attention to detail – it is a setting with a fully fledged mythology, and a fantastic wealth of creatures and gods, countries and politics. Tons of information laid out on the website to help familiarize readers with the world – and a supremely important cast page. Each person met has their own unique story, whether great or small – and everyone has the potential to be a hero in their own right.

Nahast is a world in full, and we can feel the weight of that with every page of the story.

The main story itself updates approximately once a week, with nicely drawn full color pages. Occasionally something else will work its way in – a retelling of the most important myth of the land, in a different but surprisingly effective style. Or a map of the entirety of Nahast. Or occasionally a written story itself, giving us the background of characters in a fashion that won’t take months upon months to reveal.

Like I said, this guy is all about the world-building, and occasionally busts out everything but the kitchen sink.

Now, I won’t claim the comic is perfect. The art is consistently solid… but there are moments of shakiness. For a story set in a fantasy environment – and one featuring characters who do often speak in a formal manner – it can be disorienting to have characters abruptly saying “my bad,” or to come across similarly out of place language. The website has a ton of nice features, but also seems curiously neglected in the last few years, with the archives featuring a great breakdown by scenes and storyline… that was last updated several years ago. And with updates to the story itself only coming once a week, the plot can be exceptionally slow-moving.

On the other hand, I’ve been reading the comic for several years now, with it consistently being one of my favorites regardless of all the above, so that might say something too.

Now, I appreciate the lush environment of a fully fleshed-out world, and the stability it gives the story itself. I enjoy the story the seems to be coming together in the background, and the skill with which things seem to be woven together. The art has moments where it works, in every way, absolutely perfectly. But what really draws me in time after time… is the characterization.

The main protaganists are what I tend to think of as ideal heroes for a story such as this – each of them exceptionally capable, possessed of unique powers and abilities, and important enough to stand on their own despite needing to come together as a team for the usual reasons – fulfill prophecies, stop evil, save the world.

The secondary characters that have been stealing the show away from that crew are the Hawk Maidens – a pack of young girls training to be warriors and scholars, who each have their own tales to tell. Stubbornly individual – both in appearance and personality – we haven’t even been thoroughly introduced to all of them, and each one manages to be as interesting a character as the last.

And of course, we have the main focus of the comic itself, which the story can’t seem to escape no matter how hard it tries – Derrexi Tzelan. Derrexi is… not very good at calligraphy. She is, however, quite capable when needed. Despite the philosophy of her thoughts, and the formality she is capable of in the setting requiring it, she clearly has a soul of mischief within.

I need to remember to mention this comic as an example whenever people are looking for strips with strong female leads, as she is as perfect an example as I can think of. Capable and self-reliant while remaining deeply human in her thoughts, she’s one of the strongest characters in webcomics period.

Nahast has politics and schemes that span an empire, prophecies and hidden dragons from the dawn of time, action-packed fights with demonspawn serving nefarious purposes, and the tales of a band of young women growing up and learning to walk their own paths in life.

If that doesn’t sell you on it, nothing will.