Comical Musings

Art and writing hold a tenuous balance in webcomics. The best writing on the Internet doesn’t do much good if it’s smudged over a page of pencil sketches done by a nine-year-old or squeezed into badly-hyphenated word balloons in eight point Arial. And all the pretty landscapes, curvaceous females, and other assorted eye candy to come out of Photoshop can only support a lackluster plot and stale jokes for so long*. In fact, this is true in any medium where words and ideas are expressed; writing and presentation have just as delicate a balance in music, TV, video games, and theater.

That’s where PartiallyClips, by Robert T. Balder, throws a wrench into the works. In other comics that I’ve reviewed, the art style is a major contributor to the quality of the comic: Weregeek‘s free-flowing lines help set a whimsical tone, while AWKWARD ZOMBIE‘s art is blockier and more stylized, lending well to its frequent use of exaggeration for comedy. But PC doesn’t really have an art style, because the comic itself is nothing but clip art. Other than the rules that Balder sets for how he uses the clip art, none of the visual portion of the comic is from his effort.

He even letters his work in Comic Sans. It’s almost like he’s daring people to pay any attention to the art, other than as a backdrop to his writing.

So then what’s to be said about the writing? Well, from the get-go, PC demonstrates why “for grownups” is part of its subtitle. A lot of the humor is pretty raunchy, although it can be quite subtle about it at times. Other times, the phrase “ham-fisted” seems both inadequate and somewhat unsettling in context.

A lot of the humor in PC comes from upending the reader’s expectations. A cheerful dollhouse is populated by crazy dolls. The legions of evil have random drug tests. Philosophy gets compared to Mr. Roboto. Accordion music turns out to be even more sinister than you thought. Cute animals are not so innocent. This brand of humor can get rather old, as you’ll recall from my review of Rob and Elliot, although PartiallyClips tends to space it out a bit more.

Another seeming standby is to toss in a quick jab at religion. It probably doesn’t seem all that frequent unless you’re archive–binging the way I do when I write these reviews, but it does stick out a bit. As for the man at church who so heartily recommended the comic, I’ll have to give him a good-natured joshing about it later.

So is PartiallyClips worth your time? It certainly can be. There were more than a handful of comics that I thought were funny enough to share (these three comics, for example), and the archive page, while bloated from the comic’s near-decade of existence, is easy to search through. Just avoid reading it when the kids are home.

Comic Rating: Three nearly-identical panels.

*Yes, I’m aware that the “tits for hits” phenomenon is alive and well and probably the only reason Sore Thumbs continues to run, but I remain a purist.

Back in the summer of 1996, I was assigned to read Rascal, by Sterling North, to prepare for seventh-grade English. It’s a charming and bittersweet story of what happens when you adopt a baby wild animal . . . and it grows up. I hate to spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it, but young Sterling has to release his pet raccoon when little Rascal gets too old and wild. Nowadays, there are rehabilitation centers that deal with the aftermath of baby wild pets growing up.

This is why I have mixed opinions concerning Sandusky, by John Prengaman, Jr. On the one hand, it’s a gently humorous people and talking animals comic rather like Sandra and Woo (though I should note that Sandusky is the older comic). And on the other hand, the plot takes an 87-page detour that depicts in great detail the trauma experienced when a wild animal raised in captivity gets dumped into the wild. It’s one of those have-your-cake-and-eat-it situations; for all the maturity with which Prengaman deals with the realities of a wild pet, there are just as many “Aww, lookit the cougar! I want one!” moments.

Moral quandaries aside, though, the writing in Sandusky is pretty tight. After a brief prologue of sorts, the comic follows a series of tidy little story arcs, each of which comes to, if not a resolution, then at least a pleasant gag to round things off. Sometimes it seems almost too convenient, but it’s usually the results of a lot of things going on behind the scenes.

Pop-culture references abound. Be prepared to run into musicians, geography, Warner Bros. classics, movies, video games, Crocodile Hunter, more musicians, redneck comedy, famous paintings, and even more musicians. Heck, the eyes on the human characters pre-“Rocky Mountain Lion” make me think of those Precious Moments figurines. About the only thing more prevalent than the shout-outs . . . are the poop jokes.

The art style makes a sudden leap after the massive effort of “Rocky Mountain Lion” (compare this scat joke with this one to see the difference). And while the thinner outlines make the comic seem more “sketchy” than it used to, the rest of the art style is more . . . confident. It’s not something I can entirely pin down, but if you look back at those two examples, you’ll probably see what I mean.

So while I have my misgivings about a setting that tries to have it both ways, and the name-the-cubs arc felt like it went on a bit long, I still enjoyed reading through Sandusky. As the many links to various wildcat foundations will attest, Prengaman is passionate about what he does, and it shows in the way the comic is so enjoyable to read.

Comic Rating: Five minutes before you realize that the female cougar has eyelashes.

For the year and a half before my recent move, I was on-and-off dating an amazing young lady who happened to work at a movie theater. (Speaking of which, if she’s reading this, hi! You remain awesome.) Her hours and mine were sometimes wildly incompatible, meaning conventional dates were out of the question, but we’d often take walks through downtown Provo and chat about various things. Occasionally, the conversation would turn to the latest bit of drama among the theater staff or the latest bit of head-turning cluelessness from the patrons. She even started sketching a few comics to vent her frustrations.

It turns out, however, that she’s not the only one who’s wanted to do such a comic. Take, for example, Multiplex, a soap opera-style comic created by Gordon McAlpin. The stupid, impolite, and disingenuous customers certainly show up in force. The emphasis of the comic, however, is placed more on the tangled ball of relationships resulting from a hectic workplace with a variable staff of teenagers and young adults. And let me warn you now: being a soap opera with plenty of young adults, Multiplex is not. Work. Safe. McAlpin even hangs a lampshade on the fact.

Keeping up with the story gets a little tough, however, when there are so very many different characters to keep up with, most of whom only get a few fractions of a page of face time. Sure, it’s realistic to have unfamiliar faces show up, but half the time when a side character gets pulled into the spotlight, you’re left scratching your head and saying, “Who was that?”

Adding to the confusion, the staff characters like to cosplay as characters from current movies. This is often also a means of making various subtle references to features of the movies or to the goings-on backstage. Those who aren’t up-to-date on the latest celebrity gossip will frequently be left clueless.

The comic also tends to delve into political and religious disagreements, but over the course of the comic, McAlpin puts in the effort to be fair. Sure, one Christian is a certifiable airhead, but then she and the other Christian get more depth as characters. And while the progressive-minded atheist of the group gets his moments to feel superior to the ignorant among the faithful, he also gets his comeuppance now and then. The comic walks a fine line, and it’s a testament to McAlpin’s skill that he can keep it from tipping over.

Multiplex was originally meant to be a series of Flash cartoons (as alluded to here), and the art style reflects it, starting mainly as easy-to-animate colorforms. The style has grown slowly more complex, though, and sometimes the scenery is simply mind-blowing. McAlpin bases the comic in his hometown of Chicago, and the familiarity really shows.

So on the one hand, Multiplex is a crude comic full of sex scenes, crude language, innuendo, and racial slurs. And on the other hand, it’s a very well-written comic with intertwining plots, thought-provoking concepts, and a willingness to be unabashedly nerdy on a specialized subject. It’s likely to be a guilty pleasure for anyone who spends a lot of time at the theater, on either side of the counter.

Comic rating: Eight sides (at least) on the love polygon.

Over the weekend, I went with my family to see the movie Julie & Julia. It’s an entertaining film, rather humorous, and manages to skip the awkward moments that so many comedy films seem to thrive on ever since Meet the Parents. And it centers around a blogger who rose to fame and a comfortable income, so you can imagine the tiny spark of glee that got set off somewhere in the back of my mind. It’s rather similar to the spark that gets set off in people’s minds when they see comics like Schlock Mercenary, whose creator can now live off of the earnings from his comic alone. So they set up their own webcomic, with dreams of advertisements, a well-stocked Cafepress store, and a PayPal tip jar dancing in their heads. Heck, that’s part of how I wound up making online comics.

So don’t immediately want to condemn Familiar Ground, by Cedric Atizado, for seeming to do the same thing. Sure, the main page has an advertisement at the top, one at the left, one at the bottom, and two on the right. Sure, a lot of his auxiliary pages point out how he’s selling originals of his strips (at an increasing price as they get older, natch). And sure, he’s set up a Zazzle store with exactly one item in it. But money-making doesn’t seem to be Atizado’s main goal; his author page indicates that he’s more interested in telling a story and learning to draw in the process—even if the process seems to be fueled by how much attention the comic garners.

The story is still in its fledgling state. We know that the main characters are a trio of helper animals in a very Dungeons & Dragons-inspired world: two familiars and a paladin mount. The idea of telling an epic story from the sideline characters’ point of view isn’t a new one, but handled well, it can be entertaining. For how new the comic is, though, the characters have already been established in their roles: Coco, a celestial horse who serves as a paladin’s mount, is the self-centered idiot fighter; Toad, a frog and familiar to an ungrateful wizard, is the grumpy straight man; and Lady Sasha, a cat who might be the familiar to a streetwalker, is pensive, clever, and probably evil.

The plot itself is looking like a typical fantasy storyline: a lackluster first adventure gives the setting just enough of a baseline that the world can need saving with just enough of an emotional pull that the reader wants it saved. And where Sandra and Woo pays homage to Calvin and Hobbes, Familiar Ground goes it one better and outright borrows a joke wholesale. Update: Check the comments section on this one. Strange minds think alike, it would seem.

Atizado is, as he’s made clear, still learning how to draw comics, so I won’t ding him too much for the art style being unpredictable. The main characters each seem to be pulled from a different cartooning style, with Coco seeming almost Dilbert-like and Lady Sasha more like a French poster circa 1920, and the difference can be rather jarring. However, with enough practice and repetition, the art style is bound either to improve or to codify into something smoother.

Now, I may have painted Atizado as a “wanna-be” cartoonist. But let me assure you, that’s not a bad thing. Pretty much everyone who isn’t among the first wave is a wanna-be of one sort or another, and a particularly dedicated wanna-be can improve greatly (compare the first-ever Mac Hall comic with Three Panel Soul for a particularly drastic evolution over nine years). Others sort of peter out over the course of time. So which will Familiar Ground be? Time will have to tell.

Comic Rating: Three hidden easter-egg jokes in the alt-text.

Since last week’s review involved a comic that seemed like the Internet’s answer to Calvin and Hobbes, perhaps I’ve been in a bit too much of a mood to compare webcomics to popular things in other media. It doesn’t work all that well, though, because sometimes there’s nothing to compare and sometimes there’s too much. For example, if there’s anything in the older media that compares to Furthia High, I’d rather not know about it. This week, however, there’s a bit too much to compare.

At first, it’s tempting to describe Evil Inc., by Brad Guigar, as Dilbert with supervillains. After all, it’s set at a big corporation and occasionally gives extra attention to a specific department or the workers’ union. You even get the occasional jab at office misogyny from a super’s perspective. In fact, at first gloss the only apparent difference from Scott Adams’ oeuvre is that the art is considerably higher in quality and the plot lines are more complicated. (This plotline kinda resolves here, but its effects are still apparent here and may continue to dominate the comic plotline for some time yet).

Well, then the differences start to crop up. For one thing, you’ll notice that Guigar loves his call desk puns. He really loves him some call–center comedy. It doesn’t matter if there’s a plot in progress; if there’s a random pun to be made by Lightning Lady on a headset, the comic will be inserted. And if you take a good look at the comics I just linked to in this paragraph, you’ll notice that (with the exception of the Iron Dragon one) most of those panels do some heavy panel recycling.

Reusing panels for throwaway gags isn’t a terrible thing to do, but after a while it gets sort of grating (which I imagine call center work also does). Mostly, it’s disappointing. After all, Guigar does both dramatic and cartoony art well enough to transition smoothly from one to the other in one strip. And once the color comics start, you get to see every curve of … well, let’s just say that Guigar follows the example of comic book artists everywhere. So while seeing repeats of Guigar’s art isn’t as bad as seeing the sort of thing that Powerup Comics actively spoofs, it’s still a little let-down from someone whose fresh art is so appealing.

The writing is heavy on the parody, as the above examples show. There are certainly enough comic book cliches to mock out there, and Guigar mines them for all they’re worth. But, as with most long-running plot-based comics out there, it starts to experiment with more serious fare. This can be good or bad, depending on whether it adds maturity or detracts from the humor.

It’s not until you get into the supplemental information that you find out that Evil Inc. is actually a spin-off from Guigar’s previous comic, Greystone Inn. Apparently Lightning Lady started with a minor role in that comic, then garnered enough attention to go for a solo career of sorts. In which csae, perhaps Evil Inc. isn’t so much Dilbert after all, but whether it’s a Frasier or a Joanie Loves Chachi is still up in the air.

Comic Rating: Three and a half days he will RUE!