Some quick thoughts
And… I’m back, and mostly recovered.
I had the good fortune to have my Narbonic books arrive (the mail package had a gerbil drawn on it! How cool is that?), but since my last post was on Narbonic, I’ll refrain from excessive exaltation of them.
I’ll likely spend tomorrow catching up with all the things on my mind – for now, I noticed that Modern Tales had added a few new names to its roster. Some are new to me, but look intriguing – but the two I currently read (Anywhere but Here and Irregular Webcomic) leave me with mixed feelings.
I think it’s a good move for Irregular Webcomic, mainly because he is also staying at his old site. Giving the complexity of his archives, and the need for something more robust than the less-then-accessible system MT uses, I think losing the readability it previously had would have been a mistake. But by preserving it, and potentially attracting new readership via MT, everyone comes out ahead.
I’m less sure for Anywhere but Here, but aside from the similar downsides of a weaker archiving system, I don’t think it is a bad move. Now that I ponder it for a bit, it does feel like a strip that is certainly at home in the MT community. It will certainly be nice to see some familiar faces on Modern Tales, and I wonder if they have some more such strips up their sleave.
I suppose it was inevitable…
…but that’s still just so sad.
Phoenix Rising Prologue: Slice of Evil
“Also, yes, this is the start of the next Oasis story.”
Don’t have much time to chat today, but thought this was worth pointing out. I am 96% confident that this upcoming storyline will rock my socks off, if only because an Oasis story likely means a Torg story, and that’s what the readership has been waiting for since That Which Redeems.
Abrams is a clever man. The announcement is enough to make me forgive him – this time – for subjugating us to two weeks of stick-figure torment.
Five things that merit mention on a friday.
1) After my lament yesterday that AMD hadn’t yet returned, we now discover it will be starting back up on Monday. Awesome. Also, Squidi plans to make his place on the internet on a clean slate, with the past left behind – that’s a motive I can definitely get on board with!
2) Gaming Guardians has dropped a big old plot twist on us, and is now going on hiatus for a month! Agony!
The plot twist itself really turned me off at first. We have what appears to be Radical, our heroine, turning into Tartarus, a crazy, and extremely powerful, villain.
Some hunting in the forums revealed that it is likely that Tartarus is merely possessing Radical. This is good. That other plot twist? That Radical, having been driven insane by her inability to save the life of her friends from the villains, has now become that very force which drove her to the brink?
That is a plenty fantastic plot twist, and was quite awesome when it was used last time.
So, I’ve got my fingers crossed on there being some other explanation at work here. Only time will tell – lots of time, in fact, given the hiatus coming up.
3) Penny Arcade again features the dread spectre of continuity – and this time, the normal cast and crew seem likely to be bit players in the scene. That’s kinda nifty.
4) Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has been cranking out two comics a day. Damn. The man’s a machine.
5) Finally, Gisèle Lagacé over at P&A steered us towards No Rest for the Wicked. Given that I’m still on the fairy tale kick from the last few months, I devoured it pretty rapidly, and recommend others do the same.
Public Service Announcement
I think Irregular Webcomic may be in the running for the coolest webcomics auction ever.
Morgan-Mar is auctioning off a notebook in which he has recorded the scripts and planning of hundreds of strips, including some never actually seen.
It’s not a shiny piece of art you can stick on your wall. It’s not a neat little t-shirt with a slogan that may or may not be connected to the comic.
But it is a connection directly to the artist. A direct line into the thoughts that go into his work. You can’t buy that kind of connection…
…oh wait. I guess you can.
It’s late, it’s hot, it’s friday, and I’m rambling. My apologies in advance.
There is a pizza and sub joint I often frequent after my weekly game of Anachronism. Now, they often have a half-price pizza special, so accordingly I have not often given much attention to the subs available.
This last week, I was not so much in a pizza mood (I know, I know, blasphemy), and was perusing their other delectables. As such, I discovered they had a sub called… The Ultimate.
This would have been more impressive had there not been two other subs that were even more grandiose. (I believe they were known as The Fat Daddy and The Beast.)
The Ultimate sub was not, in fact, Ultimate. It was not even penultimate. Truly, we live in sad times.
What does this story have to do with webcomics? Absolutely nothing. I just thought you should know. Moving on to what matters in this crazy world – small pixels on computer screens!
8-Bit Theatre ran a guest strip this week that was exceptionally cool. The best part about it? Now I actually know what the hell black mage’s new costume is supposed to look like!
Seriously, while I’m still somewhat digging 8-Bit Theatre, there are definitely times when the limitation of the artform are felt more than others. And it isn’t even just the artform – I’ve seen good-looking pixel art. Sometime’s 8-Bit just… isn’t up to par, as far as, you know. Being able to make heads or tails of what the pixels are supposed to represent.
In other news, despite not actually having the time to do so, I managed to read back through the complete Narbonic archives. Did I accomplish this through clever manipulation of the properties of space and time, or merely by poor decisions in my own time-management? Only time will tell…
Yadda yadda yadda, the strip is just as good as I remember it, and I especially enjoyed the Dave in Slumberland strips, which are pretty much anything a lover of foreshadowing could ask for.
I’ve been tempted to go and read up on the many and sundry chronicles of King Arthur. You see, I’ve been reading A:KoTaS, and it has struck me that I could make much more sense of the many complications if I just boned up on my history (so to speak.)
However, to do so would no doubt also mean that I would know in much more detail (rather than the generally vague forbodings I have now) about what is to come. Is a greater understanding of events worth risking the ‘spoiling’ of the story? Even for a story that has passed the statute of limitations.
I believe my final decision was that the point is moot, as there are so many variation and retellings of the story as to render any information gleaned useless.
Also, I’m lazy.
Final thought for the day: I enjoy Diesel Sweeties more often than not, but it rarely blows me out of the water. However, I have now resolved that, sometime before I die, I must use this line from Metal Steve.
This I so swear.
The end of the world as we know it?
My, but there have been quite a few webcomics running guest strips this week – though I suppose more than one cartoonist was exhausted by last week’s Comic-Con.
I missed the con myself, primarily due to living some three thousand miles away. Nevertheless, the many and sundry reports of the con made it seem as though I was actually there, only surrounded by words and pictures instead of, you know, people.
But yeah, the panels sounded like they were crazy awesome, and I’m sad I missed it – though glad that people were kind enough to take notes, as it were, and share the lecture with those of us who missed class.
Anyway, I’ve got a dirty secret. The comic that has, this last week, had me on the edge of my seat, religiously checking the updates every day, and gleefully anticipating the next installment… is Garfield.
Whoa, what? Could this be the end of the strip?
Back when I was a young lad, I was quite the Garfield aficionado. I watched the cartoon, I bought the collections. It wasn’t until I was educated by wiser minds on the internet that I realized the daily Garfield in the paper was… well, bad. It hadn’t always been – once, the jokes had been genuinely interesting, the characters had storylines and weren’t simply stuck in an eternal punchline about mondays and lasagna.
But clearly things had changed, and I went with the flow in mocking Garfield (along with 95% of the other strips in the daily papers), and somewhere along the way I forgot that once upon a time, I actually enjoyed the strip.
So it was quite the surprise to see something of an ongoing storyline in recent weeks. A blog about Garfield brought the matter to my attention – and what can I say? I was riveted. Actually having something happen is a ballsy move in any syndicated strip – especially one as glued to ‘the formula’ as Garfield.
And now we seem to have… well, not just change, but possibly a conclusion. I’m sure we’ll know in a day or two if Garfield has actually wound its way to a happy ending, or if it will return to the standard fare.
One thing I do have to recognize, regardless of where Garfield goes from here – the fat cat has genuinely embraced the web. The website is a bit overloaded – but contains an archive with every single strip of the comic. That is a hell of a lot more than most newspaper strips do, and I must give props for that.
What may the future bring?
So, as I’m sure that everyone has heard by now that Narbonic is free again. For those who may have been hiding at the bottom of the ocean, or on the moon perchance – go, check it out, yadda yadda.
In any case, in celebration of it being free, I’ve been perusing the archives here and there. Not the entire thing, being that, these days, I am frightfully busy – but various key segments, especially in light of the grand finale the strip is heading for.
The main arc that I took a browse through was the time travel arc, for somewhat obvious reasons. I had remembered little hints of the things to come, of course – what I hadn’t remembered was the sheer quantity of them, nor how direct some of them were.
I really, really, really like foreshadowing like this. The idea that a story is already thought out years in advance, and that the bones of what is to come are already laid in place, is greatly appealing to me. But it can’t be easy to do – I can’t imagine the thin line an author has to walk between leaving hints versus directly giving away the story.
And how does an author handle it when someone does see what is coming, and accurately predicts the ending? Most seem to stay silent on all counts – you know, smile the mysterious little smile, and let people wait and see. I’ve noticed some take a more active approach – Rich Burlew, creator of the Order of the Stick, prohibits any predictions about the strip that aren’t given the spoiler tag, so he can avoid seeing what guesses are being made, and thus resist the urge to change things and ensure an unexpected plot twist.
On the one hand, I can see the value of wanting the readers to be surprised – but I generally value the integrity of a story more.
In any case, I was pleased to see how well the stage was set in Narbonic – and again, because I haven’t said it enough, go read it if you don’t already.
Dominic Deegan and the Return of the Damned
The latest Dominic Deegan storyline has stirred up a measure of controversy, as the plot was taken in a direction that some readers were dissatisfied with.
For myself, I was overall rather indifferent to the War in Hell. I wasn’t aghast at the plot developments as some readers were, but the arc itself didn’t really leave an impact on me. It is a shame, because I was really excited about the story arc when it first got started, but it ended up focusing on some different characters then the ones I was expecting, and that was some of the let-down.
That said, Mookie has easily grabbed my attention back to the strip with recent developments.
Now, I should note that one of the complaints people have raised about this storyarc was regarding the death of a character whom many still felt had a great potential for development.
I should also note that I held similar concerns over the seemingly pointless death of a character during the last epic storyarc.
Which is why his recent return has convinced me that it is very, very unwise to leap to conclusions in matters concerning Dominic Deegan. Mookie plays his cards well, and I suspect that there may be similarly interesting developments for other characters we’ve written off somewhere down the road.
Now, all that said, I do still feel that if yet another world-shattering epic catastrophe that only Dominic can solve should happen to break out anytime in the near future, I’ll not be all that happy.
But I think it is safe to say that the strip continues to hold the capacity to pleasantly surprise me, and that as long as there is as many good plot developments as bad, I’ll be sticking around to see what’s next.
The Weekend, oh thank god, the Weekend
While others are off carousing at the San Diego Comic Con, I am planning to be quite merrily collapsing at home in exhaustion.
For now, though, some quick thoughts on developments from my weekly webcomic perusal:
I am flat out 100% digging Sinfest since its most recent return. Ishida has been in top form. His latest strip hardly touched on a new concept, but the execution is so perfect as to hit the nail on the head regardless.
Oh yeah! Spamamusement is back and in business, and he’s still got it!
I’ve talked about My Nemesis before, but today’s installment is really nice. Specifically, the use of shadow in the first two panels to make Rob look like a bad-ass instead of, well, like Rob. (Also, the cast page has been updated. Have I mentioned I really like interesting cast pages? Well… I do. So there.)
And finally, CRFH, as always, has me smiling with dreadful anticipation of what might be coming next.
Damn Good Comics 