Archive for July, 2009
Review: Hark! A Vagrant
One of the marvels of webcomics is that you can find a comic to suit your tastes, almost no matter what your tastes might be. Certainly the results are skewed toward video game wackiness, college wackiness, furry wackiness, and postmodern pretensions disguised as wackiness, but a variety of other comics will show up to cater to whatever interests might randomly come up. As an example of this, I present Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, a comic that’s mostly about history, literature, and other things that people study in college without hoping to do anything with them.
I first found out about Kate Beaton via The Comics Curmudgeon, which linked to a parody she’d done of For Better or For Worse and how the characters were being railroaded into a happy ending. I can’t for the life of me find this comic anymore (and I don’t know if that’s because of any C&D from Lynn Johnston or simply because Beaton doesn’t use terribly intuitive titles for her comics), but it caught my attention enough that I’d go back and read her other comics occasionally. And since then, she’s picked up her own website and put the comics in a more navigable format, which is always a plus.
The art style varies between something resembling FBorFW and something vaguely 70s-ish, for lack of a better way of putting it. By the looks of it, Beaton pretty much freehands the entire comic, giving it a very light feel. Naturally, the rules of anatomy take a backseat to the joke. That’s not such a bad thing in this case, since the people are still recognizable as people.
Her hand-lettering is also legible, which I can tell you is no easy task–though I’m often left scratching my head and wondering where all the periods went. This is a stylistic choice that gets at me because of the whole editing minor thing. It shows up in Garfield, presumably as a way to show that the main character’s just too lazy for end punctuation, but it also shows up in AWKWARD ZOMBIE as shorthand for a character being particularly angry or ignorant. Of course, given the way Beaton depicts some of the historical figures, this just might be intentional.
The writing in the comic is as idiosyncratic as the art. The premise is generally to take historical and literary figures and humanize them by having them speak and act like modern people. Sometimes the result is hilarious, and other times the joke sorta falls flat. Be warned: with the blinders off, you get a lot of bawdy jokes and salty language from people you really don’t expect it from. This isn’t the most work-safe of comics.
The other side-effect of a comic based on random historical figures is that you’ll have to spend a good chunk of time on Wikipedia figuring out who the heck these people are. She also references Canadian politics a lot, but hey–she lives in Canada. She knows what she’s joking about . . . but because the comments section under each comic only gives the comment on the most recent one, her pearls of wisdom are sadly lost.
To add to the randomness, Kate’s younger self occasionally shows up, as does a Shetland pony. And there’s a stretch of some forty comics done in MSPaint for no apparent reason.
So there are things that could be improved code-wise, and perhaps Beaton could stand to focus on either the history jokes or the other random gags, but in all, Hark! A Vagrant is an enjoyable read that never stops finding a left field to come out of.
Comic Rating: Six happy wanderers.
Review: Three Panel Soul
Way back in 2002, I was first introduced to webcomics by my amazing friend Diana, who showed me Megatokyo, by Fred Gallagher. I read through a good deal of it before finding a guest comic by Ian McConville and Matt Boyd, the respective artist and author of Mac Hall, a comic about a bunch of guys living together in a dorm during their college days. But the college days must come to a close sooner or later, and what do you do then?
If you’re McConville and Boyd, you bring the college comic to an end and start up one about the rigors of adult life. Enter Three Panel Soul. As the name suggests, each comic is limited (or stretched) to three panels; this even extends to the sketch pages put up when there isn’t a comic. And where Mac Hall’s comics focused almost entirely on the sorts of raunchy humor that goes on in and around college, 3PS is just as likely to go down the pensive route. I’d call it “soulful,” but that would just accentuate the pun. Except I just did, so the point is moot.
McConville uses an intentionally sketchy art style for the comic. (If you doubt it’s deliberate, take a look at the animation in this page‘s rant box.) That’s not to say that some of the shiny, colorful styles developed in Mac Hall don’t make the occasional comeback, usually for comics set in MMORPGs. Sometimes the super-deformed style makes a comeback as well. In retrospect, the art style changes as frequently as does the mood of the comic. But the sketchy, semi-realistic style is something of a baseline, certainly the most frequent. In statistics terms, it would be called the “mode.” And it’s relatively easy on the eyes, in all its pseudomonotone splendor.
Having but three panels per comic to work with, 3PS doesn’t generally do much in the way of plot. There’s a small story arc revolving around the way Matt reacts to the death of his grandfather, but for the most part, the comic follows the whims of the duo, devoting equal time to mocking commercials, making obscure pop-culture puns, referencing older Mac Hall jokes, turning sentimental moments into introspective comedy, and letting loose with the positively bizarre.
This, of course, is split around the basic slice-of-life material that the comic gravitates toward. Hey, if you want to write a journal, you might as well enjoy it. I personally can relate to this comic far too well, although other comics can really only come from his point of view. And sometimes a certain amount of the surreal peeks through. The jokes are crude sometimes, but sometimes it feels like that’s to be expected from an online comic. Sad, but there you go.
In the end, 3PS is an entertaining comic with a variety of jokes and observations. And a couple of prancing death knights. And a cat named Schrodinger. I mean, how cool is that?
Comic Rating: Three panels.
Review: Daisy Owl
So having lambasted a furry webcomic a couple of weeks ago (please pardon my absence last week; I was at Anime Expo in Los Angeles and somewhat distracted from webcomics), I figure it’s only fair to point out a comic of that nature that I do enjoy. And while it’s not exactly a furry webcomic in the purest sense, Daisy Owl, by Ben Driscoll, is still an enjoyable comic about cartoon animals and their misadventures.
The titular character, Daisy Owl, is a young human girl who was adopted by Benjamin Owl, who is rather aptly named. Wise beyond her years, she alternately teases and provides guidance for her little brother, Cooper. The main cast is rounded out by Steve, Mr. Owl’s grolar bear friend from high school who was raised by humans because of his worth to a honey company.
In spite of my usual distaste for cheese-monkey-random humor, I have to admire the deftness with which Driscoll pulls off the more surreal moments in his comic. Some of this is because the most random moments are generated by child characters, and that’s honestly the way that the average child mind works. And the adults handle their surreal moments in the way that only adults can: downplaying them with a certain resignation . . . and sometimes basking in the latest strange turn that their story takes.
And Driscoll manages to write all this so that the joke doesn’t really feel forced. He’s not saying, “Ha ha, look at how random my comic is! People do stupid things because they’re so totally random!” The randomness comes from normal, slightly-goofy characters doing normal, slightly-goofy things. Sure, the joke kinda falls flat once in a while, but the moment is rare enough to be forgivable.
As for plot, there isn’t much of one. Daisy Owl is a slice-of-life comic first and foremost, even if it’s a rather bizarre life that it’s sliced from. Small plotlines do happen, and occasionally a joke from one comic is revisited in a truly clever way, but for the most part, it’s just a peek at the (ab)normal life of a makeshift family and the friends and frustrations that surround them.
The art style is simple and clean. Characters are white lineart figures on a dark gray background; the setting is implied more often with minor props than with detailed set pieces. And watching over time, the art grows more codified, with sharper outlines and smoother curves.
So there you have it: Daisy Owl is just a fun comic. It’s well-written, skillfully drawn, and good for a smile, regardless of the number of re-readings.
Comic Rating: A hoot and a half.