Archive for February, 2010
Review: Ruby’s World
Most everyone’s had that moment of thinking wistfully, “If only I weren’t fat/short/paralyzed/skinny/obsessed with my inadequacies/slow-witted/big-nosed/weak/color-blind/etc., life would be so much better. I wish I could just rebuild my body/mind to be the way I want it to be, and then the world would work!” This seems to be the guiding thought behind transhumanism, a philosophy that finds its mascot in the webcomic Dresden Codak. We can use technology to build our species into something better, transhumanism says—can and should.
On the other side of the coin are the usual voices of caution, the ones that say, “But what happens if we get carried away? What if we go down the wrong path and do something horrible to ourselves?” It’s the voice of many a science-fiction horror movie, and it’s the one you can find coming from Ruby’s World, by Neil Kapit. While the title is a bit reminiscent of a certain animated Howie Mandel vehicle, the subject matter is a good deal grittier than anything I watched on Fox Kids. It follows the life and misadventures of Ruby Harrison, a biotech intern turned mutant warrior in southern California.
I will admit that Ruby’s World is a difficult comic to read. The art style is a bit choppy on anatomy, and while some of the more technical details can be impressive, the pen and markers treatment doesn’t translate well to a digital format. As a result, NSFW scenes don’t really feel dirty. Just . . . discomfiting.*
Get past the art style, however, and you find a story about an invulnerable giantess, a lonesome empath, a formerly-autistic robot boy, and a deadpan-snarker normal who have to flee from the spectacularly evil corporation that made three of them the way they are.** The characterization is tremendously unsubtle, although Ruby’s father gets a special mention for a certain amount of displayed character growth.
The main theme of Ruby’s World seems to be that human frailty is exactly the thing that makes us so fascinating, and that trying to rid ourselves of our weaknesses before we understand them entirely is a tragic mistake. It’s a sympathetic message, and one that I tend to agree with, but the packaging could use some work.
Comic Rating: Two parental deaths by backstory and counting.
* The fact that the referenced page is a love scene between a radioactive giantess and a robot that’s supposed to look like a Japanese teenager serves only to further that feeling.
** I’ve already expressed my distaste for “sinister faceless power bloc hates the poor defenseless people in their way” plots, so it really doesn’t bear repeating.
Guest Review: Housepets!
Hi, I’m Gab. Luprand asked me to write up a review for him while he battles technology. Sorry it’s late – my bad!
Do any of you people permit any animal or fowl in your house for company but not for profit? I’m talking, of course, about house pet and how they run our lives. I have three cats at home whom I constantly project human characteristics on, and it really does seem like they own the place. That’s just while I’m watching, too, so it seems inevitable to think about what they might be doing while I’m at work.
Fortunately, Rick Griffin more or less does this for me in his comic Housepets!, which leaves me free to spend business hours mindlessly typing out lines of code like a good monkey. The comic follows main characters Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly on their adventures in the neighborhood, which often involves the local critters and sometimes the human people, too. It’s cute, harmless (which means it’s safe for work and all audiences – yay!), and often times very funny. It feels familiar and nostalgic, sort of in a Muppet Babies / Rugrats kind of way, only more modern and much less pedophiliac. Using anthropomorphic animals is a great vehicle for this, avoiding politically incorrect cliches and making it convenient to have characters acting in childlike ways while still retaining some level of maturity. I mean, they’re talking animals. They can’t be held responsible for the silly things they do!
The arcs are very character driven, which is something that I am immediately drawn to, with one offs scattered here and there for comedic relief. This works fairly well, though some of the running gags fall flat in comparison to the main plot … while other times convey more about the over-all plot than the storyline strips do. Particularly when building up to the climax ends up confusingly in the doghouse with no real resolution. What is this, anime? I don’t think putting a bandaid on the problem will make it go away, but then again…
But whatever. The thing that brought me to this comic in the first place was the art style, which has gone from good to nothing short of amazing over time. Having said that, though, the human designs pale in comparison to the lively-drawn animals whose expressions and creative poses really steal the show.
Just more proof about the house pets taking over! But I can’t resist them or this comic, so maybe you ought to just embrace it before you’re made an unsuspecting slave.
Comic Rating: Three grapes and a peanut butter awesome.
Review: Doomed to Obscurity
The term “evangelist” has shifted dramatically in use and meaning since it was first coined. Once used to describe a messenger with good news*, the term is used almost as an insult nowadays, conjuring up mental images of things like Chick tracts or the sleazier breed of TV pastors. Or in my case, the devoted Linux fanboys back at school who took every opportunity to remind people how awesome their operating system was, compared to those of us unenlightened savages who still plodded along on our Windows paperweights. (You may think I’m exaggerating here, but tact and personal skills were never a high priority for the I.T. students.)
And this, admittedly, is the sort of vibe I get from Doomed to Obscurity, a comic about a Linux programmer, created by “Penguin Pete” Trbovich. If the blazon at the bottom of every final panel in the comic is any indication, DtO is intended to be something of a mascot for what open-source software is capable of. Trbovich’s enthusiasm, however, could use a bit of finesse to match.
The first bit of roughness (and the most minor) is the page design. Things look great, until you get past the first screen of any given page—at which point the reader is treated to the entire archive list in a table that goes for screens upon screens. This would be best tucked away in a dropdown menu or on a separate archive page. The snowbound landscape also seems like an odd choice for background images; while it ties in with the “penguin” theme of the rest of the site, it’s somewhat baffling by itself.
The second rough patch is in the writing. Niche comics serve their purpose (after all, writing to a niche is what catapulted Scott Adams to where he is today), so the obscure puns and inside jokes get a bit of a pass. Strawman caricatures, preaching to the choir, and zany girls with impossible power are a little trickier to deal with. (Also note that this character must have undergone some intensive therapy by this strip.)
And then there’s the matter of the art. I’ll be the first to say that I’ve seen some absolutely beautiful art done with programs like OpenCanvas. So it’s a little bit of a let-down to see blockish people with greatly varying head sizes. Attractive females go from smuggling books up their skirts to . . . this.
Open-source programs are a good thing. Both of my own comic series were done primarily using the GIMP for coloring and resizing, and I’ve known several Ubuntu users who would talk to me about things other than the supremacy of their operating systems. And I think that DtO has the potential to be a good face for the open-source community—but there’s a lot of effort that Trbovich might want to put into it first.
Comic Rating: Four corners on the unfortunate Time Cube.
* In the original Greek, evangelion means (depending on the translation) either “good tidings,” “please give me eight million dollars,” or “post-modern deconstruction of the giant mecha anime genre.” As you can see, the Greeks were well-versed in the art of nuance.
Shenanigan: Out – Cold
Posted by Luprand in Shenanigan on 1 February 2010
The trouble with cold-and-flu season is more than just the fact that you can’t hear anything at parties or events, due to the sniffling and horking noises surrounding you. It’s more than the bottles of grody hand sanitizer becoming even more ubiquitous than ever. It’s more than those pesky Airborne tablets mucking up every other glass of water you drink.
No, the real trouble with cold-and-flu season is that at some point or another, you may actually come down with something yourself—which is about where I am right now. My sinuses are taking turns with which one wants to be stuffed up this time and which one merely feels like being dehydrated and triggering sneezes . . . and all the sneezing has my ribs aching (or rather, my intercostal muscles are, but that’s a bit of a nitpick). It’s not exactly the best state to be giving a fair review to any comics*, so I hope you’ll pardon the lack of a review post.
In the mean time, let me say that echinacea is a truly terrifying herb. Sure, it’s supposed to be useful for bolstering the immune system and all, but the warning text is tremendously off-putting:
Recommended for adults only. If you are taking prescription medication, or are pregnant or nursing, consult your health care provider prior to using this product. Persons with allergies to the daisy family may be sensitive to echinacea. For maximum benefit, do not use for more than 6-8 weeks consecutively. Take only when needed. Echinacea should not be used by persons with autoimmune diseases, AIDS, HIV, collagen diseases, leukocytosis, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus or tuberculosis. Persons with gallstones should avoid eucalyptus products.
I personally think that “Echinacea will murder your family if you so much as look at it crosswise” would be nearly accurate and much more succinct. Maybe it works, not as a supplement, but as a threat.
Ah, well. At least it’s not a scorching case of lycanthropy.
* “Like that was ever a concern,” I hear you say. To which I reply, “Oh, hush.”