12-24-08

The Sum is Greater Than the Parts

Let's be honest, here.  I've been following Punch an' Pie by Aeire and Chris Daily since it first came out.  Heck, I silently anticipated it when Aeire started pitching it in her blog after Queen of Wands ended.  I've always loved Aeire's writing style, especially her faithful characterization.  Heck, the drop format of the Casual Notice comic is a direct and unapologetic ripoff of Aeire's format for QoW, including the out-of-panel dialogue boxes so I can be as wordy as I want.  I've also always enjoyed Chris Daily's artwork.  Flipping through the Striptease archives and watching the characters go from giant-head cartoon characters worthy of Tumbleweeds or a Bratz cartoon Is one of the rare joys of a webcomic reviewer's life, because Daily starts good and gets a whole lot better.

So why haven't I reviewed PnP before now?  Simple.  I didn't want to.  Mind you, this isn't because I begrudge Aeire and Daily the extra page views they might get from the one or two masochists who still read these scrawlings after my 2008 hiatus-of-death.  No, I didn't want to write a review because I was concerned that I would write a review of the comic and have it shut down (or go on an unannounced and unexplained hiatus).  I have a good reason for this. 

My luck with reviewing comics and having them last is spotty at best.  If the Michelin guide had my kind of luck, half the tourists in New York would be complaining about the table service at empty lots and derelict brownstones.  Click the link to any of the comics in my links page and you have even odds of being sent to either a domain resale site, or a two-year-old page in the middle of an arc.  Keeping that in mind, consider that both QoW and Striptease were as notable for their long gaps as they were for their excellent stories and art.  A reasonable analysis of their past performance would not encourage the investment necessary to write a review any more than a bank would want to lend money to a person with a credit score of five.  And with my track record, I couldn't afford another bad investment.

Well, it's been almost two years, and I'm happy to say I totally missed the boat on this one.  PnP did not, as I feared, start out hot and then tank flame out like a Dallas propane warehouse.  The exact opposite happened; not only has PnP managed to maintain a strict (more or less) Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, but artist Chris Daily started becoming more regular in updating Striptease (which was moved to a Tuesday-Thursday schedule to prevent conflicts).  The few times they've had to go on short hiatuses have been filled with guest strips, mostly by their webhost, Randy Milholland of Something*Positive.  So straight off the bat they get a bonus star for positively affecting another comic.

PnP is the story of Angela, the feisty little polyamorous bisexual whose unrequited love for Kestrel brought a bitter-sweet note to QoW, especially its ending.  The comic picks up several months after Kestrel's departure for Boston, and Angela is now in a steady and stable relationship.  In fact, they're moving in together.  Then, the ninja monkeys attack!  No, not really.  Really what happens is they move in together, and Aeire spends a lot of time establishing the new situation, introducing the new characters, and reintroducing the old QoW characters.  PnP stands on its own as a series, despite being a spin-off for exactly the same reasons that Frasier did and Joey didn't.  There was no first-arc rush to cram everything in before people got bored and switched to Survivor: Paramus Mall.  Aeire knew that the comic would survive on its own or it wouldn't be worthy of survival, and that's the way she wrote it, with measured, carefully-placed introductions and expansions; she expanded the toy store characters from Queen of Wands because the toy store figured more deeply in Angela's life than it did in Kestrel's.  She works in exposition where needed, most often by putting Daily's oh-so-talented art brush to work.

Before you know it, you're hooked.  You care about Angela.  More importantly, you care about her girlfriend, Heather, and their relationship.  Then suddenly, it's over.  Not the comic, of course, but the relationship.  In retrospect, cruising through the archives, one can see the inevitable long before it comes.  Even without the soul-crushing glimpse into Angela's memory during the breathless second where she can decide to try to work things out or accept that she's not ready, the signs are there.  Unresolved issues that build instead of being accepted are quite clearly expressed in both art and words.  It feels like a sucker punch, but it's not, really.  It was telegraphed from the start.

And then they move on.  They're sad and a little grief-stricken at first, but they move on.  There is no Ross-and-Rachel misery play going on.  Angela leaves and even if you're one of those hopeless romantics, you know in your heart that she has left and it is over.  They won't get back together.  There will be no "note", nor will there be any Hugh Laurie on an international airline flight explaining that they were clearly on a break.  Finis.

So in a few months, Aeire establishes this great life with a new girlfriend for Angela, and just as quickly takes it all away.  Even the toy store that figured so heavily in Angela's life is gone.  How can she do that?  Because Aeire is a writer, and a damn good one.  Aeire knows that the best stories revolve around character growth, and characters can't grow unless they are forced to live through the consequences of their decisions, good, bad, and indifferent.  Queen of Wands ended because Kestrel had grown beyond the safe nest she had created for herself.

Punch an' Pie begins ten months after the first strip because Angela can't, but finds herself outside the nest, anyway.  It is that search for growth, that poignant and effective characterization that makes Punch an' Pie a solid comic.  Aeire's plotting and scripting have grown, and because of it PnP has the potential to become one of those rare gems in the world, a spin-off series that surpasses its critically-acclaimed base.  To my knowledge, only The Andy Griffith Show (a spin-off of Make Room for Daddy) and Frasier have managed it.

Of course, this wouldn't be possible for Aeire if she didn't have Chris Daily's art to rely on.  Far beyond merely freeing Aeire to be a writer without worrying about how she's going to draw the next panel, Daily has elevated and interpreted Aeire's scripts in a dozen fantastic ways.  The reimaging of Angela, for instance, takes her from the cute, almost childlike, supporting character of Queen of Wands, to the strong-yet-neurotic star of her own comic.  Daily adopts Aeire's characters without highjacking them, and adds the new ones with the distinctiveness of his own style.  And he manages to do all this while making Punch an' Pie look completely different from his own Striptease—no small feat for an artist with as recognizable a style as Daily.

It's really a shame that my rating system only goes to five stars.  With the bonus star I noted above, Punch an' Pie should get six.

Punch an' Pie by Aeire and Chris Daily
Updates:  MWF
Caveats:  Polyamory, Ambisexuality, Random rants about pop culture
Rating: