8-02-05

A little housecleaning before I get into the comicky goodness.  First, if you're a hardline Republican who supports the Patriot Act and opposes anything that sounds vaguely like civl liberties, please stop calling yourself a "conservative".  It annoys those of us who are truly conservative and have a vested interest in conserving the rights of Americans.  Second, you'll notice that one of today's comics has a special button.  I never felt right designing buttons for other people's sites (even if I usually just scaled down or edited one of their own banners), so I've decided if I can't find an 88x33 button for them, they get the "no button" button.  Third, I'm probably gonna pick my mid-week rants back up assuming I have the time.  I find it helps me not be such a bastard in real life.  By way of that, don't forget that the general forum and the Casual Notes forum are both public message bases.  You need not register to post, reply, or participate in polls in those bases.

Four Views of Hell

As July melts into August, those of us in the lower half of the US often find oursleves contemplating Hell.  Seriously.  Thorn-whips and the stench of death notwithstanding, it's got to be cooler (as in less hot) there than Gulf Coast Texas in the Dog Days.  I'm feeling ambitious, so going with the Hell theme, here are four different views of the Endless Summer.

Chibi Hell
Pawn isn't strictly a chibi strip (thank god), but artist/writer Fredrik K.T. Andersson reverts his characters to chibis enough to give it that moniker.  Unlike most webcomics, Pawn is updated in multiple pages as issues rather than one page at a time.  this affords Andersson a lot of leeway in story-telling.  Leeway that he uses to good effect.
          The story is a fairly simple one; one which I'm surprised hasn't appeared as the plot of an actual anime.  Ayanah, a misleadingly cute scholar in the Lena Inverse vein, enters a Famous Deadly Dungeon, and is waylaid by the resident guard demon (Baalah).  Overcoming the demon's challenge (technically her challenge to the demon), she is awarded a wish, free of charge, entitling her to force the demon to grant her free access to the dungeon's treasure.  Baalah is understandably mortified:  her defeat at the hands of a mere scholar will surely be the subject of much laughter in the nether regions.  Oddly, however, Ayanah doesn't want the treasure.
          You'll have to visit the site to find out what she does  want.  It's worth a look.  The story is well-paced, although the action is developing much more slowly than the plot (we already know all of Ayanah's motives, hopes, and fears, but the pair ar still in the dungeon).  And the artwork is pretty.
          Unfortunately, the art work is where it falls down a bit.  Pawn is drawn in pencils.  Intricate, precise pencils that would give an inker no problems in completing the work.  In fact, it should be inked.  Or shaded.  Something.  That's the thing, it needs to have more.  If Andersson is going to leave it as pencil-work, he needs to shade more.  If it's going to be clean, unshaded line work, it really should be inked.  As it stands, it feels like he's posting unfinished work to keep us interested until he gets it done.

Euro Hell
Eric Nault, the creator of Hellbound does not have that problem.  Hellbound is more crisp and polished than many ink-and-paper works.  I don't know that Nault is actually European, but his art certainly is.  The smooth deco lines and shading so remind me of Dali that I'm surprised there are no melting clocks in the panels.  Despite the almost Scandinavian crispness of his art, Nault does a good job using his art to tell his story.
          The story of Hellbound is a simple and timeless one.  Boy gets job.  Boy's boss is eaten by demon.  Demon chokes on bone.  Boy applies mouth-to-mouth.  Demon sucks out boy's soul and blackmails him into assiting her retrieve her own soul.  You see?  Timeless.  Like a Frank Capra movie, only with lots of fire and needless bloodshed.  The bloodshed, by the way, mostly takes place off-panel.
          If Hellbound has a fault, it would be in Nault's ambitious writing style.  The comic is only on page 47, and already Nault has introduced a great number of supporting and returning characters and side-plots.  It can be confusing.  Any more, and you'll need a scorebook to keep up with the players.

Personal Hell
If you're one of the five people on the Internet who hasn't heard of Joe England's Zebra Girl, I don't know what to say to you.  You're missing out on something special.  It's not just that England's strong use of stark light and shadow highlight the theme of his strip.  Nor is it that England's characters somehow transcend the "introspective hero" archetype and approach the realism that is so difficult to acheive in a fantasy comic.  It's the whole thing, and something else.  Je ne sais quoi (literally—look it up yourself).
          If you are one of those poor, unfortunate five people, Zebra Girl is the tale of Sandra, a beautiful young woman who, through the talented incompetence of her best friend's brother, accidentally has her soul grafted to a demon.  All this occurs within the first ten strips.  Everything else builds from that, and there's been a lot of building.  Zebra Girl has been around, and updated more or less weekly, for over five years.   You won't go blind flipping through the archives to catch up, but I'd advise you clear a solid day.

Furry Hell
You should also clear a solid day before treating yourself to David Hopkins' Jack.  Maybe two days, because you're not going to want to read it after dark (unless you're one of those people who likes having the willies all night).  It's freaky how scary Hopkins' vision of hell is, especially considering his art style is so reminiscent of Chuck Jones's Looney Tunes cartoons.  It's a very strange marriage of Jones and Dante, with a little H.R. Giger thrown in for maximum freakocity.
          The strip centers around Jack, the physical personification of the Deadly Sin of Wrath.  One of his "duties" as this sin is to serve as a sort of Grim Reaper in Hopkins' furry world.  (If you're a detractor of furry comics, don't worry, by the end of the second arc, you'll forget that Hopkins is drawing anthropomorphic critters.)  Jack is plagued and blessed by his inability to remember his earthly life, and the sins that caused him to become both damned and a personification of a sin (this actions-in-life method of becoming a personification reminded me a lot of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Imortality series of books).  Unlike his fellow sins, however, Jack is not satisfied with his status as a King of Hell (yeah yeah, stealing from Milton).  He strives to overcome his own flaws and the flaws of the system to which he was born, and find a new life, a new chance, a new Jack.
          Salvation is not so easily gained however, and Jack, who was only recently treated to the first of the many memories he must access and confront, must hoe a long row before he can reach limbo and maybe be reborn.  Of course, all Hell works against him.  Partially, because his new attitude of an "improved Jack" causes him to make enemies of his fellow Sins, but mostly because they're assholes, Jack finds himself often opposing and openly battling the Sins that share his damnation.
          The art is consistent, and, if you do a straight-run reading, you can definitely see how much Hopkins has grown as an artist.  The story is finely crafted, and all of the characters, detestible or not, are well-fleshed and believable (within the story).  There is an idiosyncratic use of the word "fur" that pops up occasionally and can be annoying ("everyfur" instead of "everyone", etc.), but it's easy to look past that.

Pawn
Updates:  Inconsistent
Caveats:  Nudity, chibis
Rating: 

Hellbound
Updates:  Weekly
Caveats:  Barely worksafe, pop-culture references
Rating: 

Zebra Girl
Updates:  Weekly
Caveats:  4th wall breakage, huge backstory
Rating: 

Jack
Updates:  MWF
Caveats:  Nudity, atrocities, willies, dolphin sodomy
Rating: 

Edit:  Turns out Pawn did have a banner section.  I'm just an idiot.