Continuing with looking at some lesser recognized webcomics, today seemed like a good day to talk about Errant Story.

But wait. Wait just one moment, you say. Errant Story is pretty well known! It’s by Michael Poe, who did Exploitation Now. It’s been around for almost four years now. It has two print collections out!

Well, ok. Fair enough.

But while I know of plenty of people who read the comic… it isn’t something I see discussed all that often.

So here I am, discussing it. Ta-da!

Errant Story, like Girly, is a comic that I discovered due to reading a previous work of the author. And as such, as a comic that I can remember starting, I am sometimes startled by the fact that it is now several years later, and chock-full of plot, and happenings, and all manner of assorted hijinks.

Now, there are good and bad things about Errant Story. It is a well-crafted story set in a complicated fantasy world, and generally follows more than one plot arc at a time. We have elves, we have assassins, we have time monks.

It is fortunate that the strip has it’s own Wiki, because otherwise I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. I mean, a few things are obvious – the little girl and the cat are annoying. The dude in black is a bad-ass. The elves are mysterious. But beyond that? Well, it’s a lot about mysterious conspiracies manipulating things behind the scenes, and various factions plotting and planning against each other.

Being confusing is downright mandatory.

But, you know, being lost doesn’t bother me all that much. Because while the story is a good one (and don’t get me wrong, it is), it is the more personal aspects that are best put together. The characters. Their interaction. Their development. (Even of the scary little devil girls.)

And, beyond that, the sense of humor in the story. I know a lot of people were put off by Poe switching from the sensationalist fanservice of Exploitation Now to the detailed drama of Errant Story – but it is not, by any means, a strip lacking in a sense of humor. I don’t think Poe could write something totally serious if his life depended on it. The man has a gift, and it makes itself known more often than not.

Today’s strip is a good one.

… I’ll have you know I just spent quite a while writing it about it, before realizing that the character at hand in the strip wasn’t who I thought it was.

So I’ll save myself the embarassment of giving you my most assuredly brilliant thoughts on a plot development that isn’t actually there.

Instead, I’ll emphasize the point I would be getting at anyway – this strip, like much of Errant Story, is filled with layers. Yes, layers, like unto an onion.

As mentioned before, the comic is a complex one. The day to day strips aren’t much different – namely due to the fact that they are usually hitting up both the story and the funny at the same time.

Take a look at today’s strip. We have serious, intense moments for the first three panels, and then a character hilariously starting to plummet to his death. We also have the unexpected reunion of two of the more interesting characters in the strip – and we get to see that, for all the harshness of her entrance, Sarine might care about Jon more than she wants to let on.

That is a good deal to pack into a strip with barely more than a handful of words. Now, admittedly that is also a rarity – one of Errant Story’s biggest weaknesses is the tendency to use quite a bit of text.

But I couldn’t really claim the high ground to complain about that too much, now can I?

In any case, the intricacies of the story are far too complex for me to do them justice here (read: I’ve get myself lost in about five minutes.) But for all the uproar raised when Poe left Exploitation Now behind to start this, I think it is the superior strip by far. It suffers from the common ailments of any heavily plot-driven story: sometimes it engages in over-exposition, and sometimes the story takes a while to get off the ground.

But it is well done, with incredible art, a clean layout, and engaging characters. It has a guide to help the readers that do get lost. It has an archive page that… ok, the archive page isn’t actually all that functional. Ah well, one mark against it – don’t let that deter you from checking it out if you haven’t already.

We aren’t in the business of giving out biscuits around these here parts – but today’s strip made me simultaneously laugh out loud, shout with glee, and shudder in anticipation. That sure as hell has to earn something, so as soon as I can figure out what we do give out around here, Mr. Poe has damn well earned one.

Kagerou is a very pretty comic.

Darkly pretty, more often than not, sure. But you can’t deny the power of the art. It started out a tad more humble, but you can quickly see the evolution of the artist – and even early on, the elaborate use of color made for a pleasurable reading experience.

Don’t get me wrong – art alone doesn’t make a strip. But trust me – if a comic is actively painful for me to read, I’m damn well not going to read it. And when the art is strong enough to carry the reader – sometimes forcefully – through the story?

That is definitely a good thing.

So, Kagerou is an epic fantasy tale, of a hero from Earth drawn into an amazing realm of gods and demons and faeries. He becomes the bearer of an ancient blade of magic, and must help overthrow the dark overlord seeking to claim the power of the gods.

Only… wait, no. Sure, thats the story. And it is there, and important, and home to a fantastic cast of characters.

But it isn’t the story I care about.

You see, our hero from Earth isn’t normal by any means. He has his share of issues – enough to have him checked into a mental hospital, back when he was on Earth. He has a whole ‘nother crew of characters packed within his head. He is haunted by a past that is more mysterious, more horrific, and more engaging than anything going on in the fantasy world he’s been summoned into.

That right there? When the epic fantasy story becomes just a footnote in the tale itself? When the true demons are the ones within the hero himself?

Oh yeah. That’s the good stuff.

By no means is the above the entirety of the story – I’ve simplified it, in order to avoid giving anything away. But there is a story there, and it is a good one.

Of course, nothing’s perfect – and this strip, most likely due to its complexity, has proven a challenging one to keep track of as it updates. It is one of those that works best when read in sizable doses, chapters at a time. But what else can one expect from a strip that hops between the present and the past, between Earth, a fantasy world, and the own internal madness of the protaganist?

So go. Read Kagerou. It’s worth it.

I lost track of Sylvan Migdal after he wrapped up Ascent, and only recently stumbled upon his current works.

Spork is just a collection of, well, random stories, and while some of them are a bit less focused, they tend to have his usual charm.

Which is to say, they have that element he is supremely good at – blending the slightly surreal with aspects we all recognize in our daily lives.

For myself? The multi-colored eating algorithm, and the acute agony of trying to ride a bus, are so damn true I couldn’t believe it.

That’s how you connect with an audience. If you want to draw them into your world, nothing does it quite so well as making them realize it is their world too.

Girly is, at heart, a fantasy.

It isn’t your standard fantasy with the magic swords and the flying dragons and the epic quests, no.

But it is about a world of adventure, whimsy, wonder, and above all, love.

This is part of what makes it so appealing. So often in stories the main love interests take forever to get together. Countless hours of angst, and misccomunication, and endless hijinks keep the tension on, and keep the reader desperately strung along.

Girly actually doesn’t spend all that long – it takes a few chapters, but the main leads accept their feelings for each other pretty darn quickly.

I think it says a lot that the story doesn’t end there.

There has continued to be all manner of crazy adventures and ongoing zaniness. It’s great fun.

But for myself, I’m in it for the side characters. Officer Policeguy. El Chupacabre and Autumn. And all the others.

You’re rooting for all of them to end up happy. And all of them, even the ones that might be founded in cliches – Lesnick manages to make them all interesting.

Fortunately, it seems pretty likely that, in this magical world of his, people do end up with happy endings. Coincidence is on the side of the heroes, so to speak, and things have a tendency to… come together.

Now, I think the ending of the comic is a long, long way off. And I suspect we’re heading toward some tough times, giving the many warnings of a coming time of chaos – and given the normal state of affairs, something that passes for chaos must be dire indeed.

Still, that is then, and this is now. And things are looking up for Chuy and Autumn, and thats a pretty rad thing indeed.

Mark Shallow’s ADVENTURERS! may be the longest-running console RPG comic on the interweb, and it is coming to an end.

This… probably isn’t news to anyone. Anywhere.

See, it has been coming to an end for some… oh, two and a half years now. Webrunner announced in February, 2003, that the strip would be coming to an ending. At the time, he did state that the ending wasn’t right around the corner, but I don’t imagine he realized how long it would truly take to bring things to the story’s appropriate conclusion.

Now, I’m quite the fan of the strip. It is an extreme example of a strip with rather humble beginnings that has matured and developed into something very impressive. And while some of the jokes it makes about RPGs have become cliche over time, that is in part due to its own use of them.

The ending of the strip has dragged on a bit, I think it is safe to say. Not to the extent that it isn’t worth reading, or doesn’t still hit some good notes – but I think the length of the ending has cost the strip something.

When I first learned the strip was coming to an end, it starts a process of… resignation, I suppose. Detachment. Embracing the end, and accepting that this is one story that will be wrapping up.

But when the story did not wrap up… it merely meant that I lost some level of investment in the tale. I think it finally is winding down to a close –
Webrunner has temporarily closed production of his other strip, Antihero for Hire (a great strip, by the by, and one that shows lessons learned from his first comic – it is a much stronger, much tighter story.) He has moved to fully updating just Adventurers until it is complete, which certainly implies to me that it won’t be long now.

But while I’ll enjoy the conclusions and seeing what happens to all the characters, in a lot of ways, Adventurers already has ended for me. I went through the mourning process already, as it were. So no matter how much the finale might dazzle and amaze me – there will be something personal missing from it.

Now, I’m not sure what could have been done to avoid this. I am rather confident the length of the ending was unintended. The fact that the final battle took a year and a half to conclude, and the ending sequence itself has been running for seven months… well, sometimes the story has its own demands. But somewhere along the way, amidst the long, drawn out, eternal ending… something was lost.

I suspect Webrunner is as aware of this as any fan. As I mentioned above, his other comic Antihero for Hire is a much more well-crafted strip. I’m not even 100% sure on what the lesson is – I certainly don’t believe that it is requisite for one to plot out the entirety of their strip before embarking upon it.

But while one might not need the strip to be fully fleshed out in advance, I think that an awareness of pacing is a skill that is very easy to pass by when one is starting out. Each strip can remain as golden as the one before it – but it is all too easy to be four-hundred strips later, and have a reader who has lost interest in the comic without even noticing.

In any case, let’s see that ending, Mr. Webrunner. It might be too late to have the fullest impact, but I’m sure it will still do the strip proud.

One might not think a comic almost exclusively about third-graders would have any level of sophistication.

One might, however, be wrong.

There is a tendency to dismiss young children as unintelligent. As unable to operate on the same level as adults.

Sometimes this is true. But I myself remember being young, and still being a thinking, feeling being. A different one then I am now, but a distinct one nonetheless.

I think a lot of people resonate with that. And a lot of people like having characters that can both recall the innocence of childhood while still retaining a sense of identity, awareness, and personality. I used Count Your Sheep as an example yesterday – you can’t see Katie without feeling an overwhelming onslaught of cute. But she is her own person, and for all her childish outlook, someone the reader can emphatize and agree with.

On the Playground runs along the same lines. The cast and crew are kids. And there are plenty of times when they do act like kids. But these are often in stark contrast to when Lizzie is philosophizing or the strip itself is making a point.

Now, this isn’t the first comic to tackle the concepts of growing up, or characters comic to grip with the realities of the world around them. It isn’t even the first one to do so from the perspective of youth.

But it does so, and it does so well. It makes you laugh and it makes you think, and those are the hallmarks of a good comic. It isn’t heavy on the story or the drama – it doesn’t need to be. But it lives up to that tradition of juxtaposing youth and experience. And sometimes the characters themselves don’t even realize their own irony.

It’s a good comic. It’s back online, updating Mondays and Fridays, with a sizable buffer.

That’s a good thing, in my book.