It used to be that, to get webcomic reviews, there was just this site and a couple others. Not anymore. There seems to be a webcomic reviewing renaissance lately, though, which is a great thing! Need help finding perspective on a webcomic out there, and you can’t find my opinion on it in my dauntingly huge archives? Try your luck with some of these fine sites! I’m also listing the platforms they’re being blogged on, as that’s become increasingly important with they way writers and readers communicate with each other these days.

The Webcomic Police: The site is designed with a cheeky law enforcement theme. Notably, ratings are given on a 5 doughnut scale. The site boasts several reviewers, each “arresting” their webcartoonists with a different style. Platform: Blogspot (also Tumblr)

Your Webcomics!: A very clean, very bright and minimalist site with webcomic reviews, creator spotlights, and interviews. From the “About” page: “I wanted to create a modern, easy-to-use, user generated content site focused on webcomics.” Platform: WordPress.

Wild Webcomic Review: The site updates Fridays, which is … kinda… wild! Author Eishtmo had been doing reviews on online forums. The reviews are direct and to the point; no screenshots, just opinions. Platform: Blogspot.

Altertainment: Hey, remember ComixTalk? Well, Xaviar Xerexes is still blogging, only at an all new site. Lately he’s been following the Strip Search series, so if you’ve been longing for more coverage, head over to his site. Platform: WordPress.

Comic Spectrum: Comic Spectrum covers print and digital comics. They also do reviews of webcomics. Lately, they’ve done a few from the contestants at Strip Search (Citation Needed got 1.5/5). That header banner’s pretty eye-searingly loud, though. Platform: WordPress.

Shitty Webcomics: Looking to feed your yen for hating on terrible webcomics? This site focuses on hating Minimum Security, Two Kinds, and Sinfest, among others. Platform: Tumblr.

So the Reuben Awards are still a thing! Raise the roof, y’all! I mean, where else can you see awards go to Red and Rover … and …. Rhymes With Orrraannngggggggggggg…..

Oh, crap, nodded off again.

Well, anyway, last year was supposed to be a banner year for webcomics, as it introduced the first ever Online Comic Strip category, which was won by Jon Rosenberg for Scenes From A Multiverse. Anyway, this year was controversial from a webcomic front.

The good news! There were now two categories: one for long-form comics and one for short-form comics.

The bad news! Three off the short-form nominees were from GoComics, which is as stuffy and old-school as you can get.

But… look at it this way. Those folks at GoComics? They’re pretty much the ones who’d be most stoked from winning an award that’s been given to Garfield, Zits, and Pearls Before Swine. I mean, I thought the current crop of webcomic creators were too cool for such buttoned down affairs.

Gary Tyrrell at Fleen, who judged last year’s awards, has this to say:

The thing is, if (as webcomics boosters have said, and we at Fleen are no exception to this) webcomics should be allowed to compete against whatever you can define (if anything, at the point) not-webcomics, without distinction to medium of distribution, then the three nominees in Short Form make sense — they were chosen for consideration by the NCS jury without consideration to where they came from, and may well be seen as representing a step towards not having “online” as a separate category of the NCS awards.

Would I prefer to see Girl Genius or The Abominable Charles Christopher up against, say, Fables, Johnny Wander or Girls With Slingshots up against Pearls Before Swine, and Becky Dreistadt dominating the Book Illustration category? Absolutely, and I’ll be certain to get right on that as soon as I’m in charge of the world. In the meantime, progress.

Not sure I agree, but whatever. It’s the Reubens. It’s like getting upset that Downy didn’t get the Better Homes & Gardens Fabric Softener Award this year.

Despite the lingering controversy, congratulations are in order for the winners. Winning the “On-Line Comics – Short Form” Award is Graham Harrop of Ten Cats.

(See what I mean when I say the GoComics nominees are old-school?)

And taking home the “On-Line Comics: Long Form” is Vince Dorse of The Untold Tales of Bigfoot.

The big award for “Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year” went to Rick Kirkman of Baby Blues and Brian Crane of Pickles. Now, I’m not the biggest Baby Blues fan. I am just not a fan of the style.

But Pickles? That comic’s pretty friggin’ awesome. More old folks owning the hizzy, please.

When I reviewed Ant Comic, I figured — perhaps prematurely — that I’d run across this entry’s “weird” nominee. Predecessors include Dash Shaw’s Bodyworld and Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo. You know, the ones that seemed like they were written after the creator huffed a ton of paint?

It turns out that I was partially right. While Ant Comic is, in fact, realy weird, I could at least figure out was was going on for the most part. The same can’t be said of all the Eisner nominees. For instance, I have a hard time making heads or tails of Farel Dalrymple’s It Will All Hurt.

It Will All Hurt is billed a “a weird, sad, silly, and sketchy, fantasy adventure strip with magic and science-fiction and some fighting action.” I found that maybe four of those words were true. I’ll stump for the “weird,” “sketchy,” and “strip.” The “science-fiction” part is pretty true, too, if you steer away from the “battlin’ robots” side of the scale and toward the “last 10 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey” extreme. It Will All Hurt is probably better defined as a stream of consciousness comic.

This assessment is supported by the story itself. After a rebus-like passage filled with animal imagery, Alemndra (our first of many lead characters) muses:

Being here is like having this repeating dream that my house or a building I am in is about to explode or is on fire or something like that.

I’ve mentioned it before, but there’s an inherent weakness to dream logic. Ever had someone tell you what’s what’s happening in their dreams? Maybe retelling it is enlightening an relevant to the teller, but to the listener it eventually becomes confusing and boring. It’s just too unstructured to hold your attention for very long.

Alembra turns into a squirrel and launches her self into a pit where hairy, sasquatch-like creatures are gonna snack on a dead dude. She turns back into a human and scares them off. But… oh no! The dead body has weird tentacles growing out of its orifices like Wesker from the Resident Evil movies! So, with regret, Alembra burns the body up with a green flame.

Then we cut to outer space. We’re introduced to another character after an abrupt transition with a caption that reads “Meanwhile, somwhere above Alemdra’s head.” We’re introduced to an elven-looking fellow who is later given the imaginative moniker of “Alien Astronaut.” He’s surrounded by multi-colored bubbles, which seem to fill him with whimsy. Eventually, his round spaceship gets attacked by a bunch of shadowy gentlemen who seem to be led by Baron Samedi. Are these the same creatures that attacked Alembra? Alien Astronaut escapes by plunging through the planet’s atmosphere, which he seems to have survived. Later he meets up with people dressed up like the cast of Mad Max, and a magic bald guy makes him disappear because he sensed his loneliness. And so it goes.

Cut to… the planet again. We’re introduced to another kid who is later referred to as Blam Dabbit. Blam is a master at making music by blowing through an empty bottle. It makes an old homeless guy, who looks like Spider-Man villain the Vulture, shed tears of sorrow and regret. Blam can make butterflies out of pink goo, which is a pretty neat trick. But then he’s invariably attacked by dark shadow things. Later the Vulture guy approaches one of the hairy shadow creatures and he goes, “He has 72 days.“

I know, right?

Later, there’s a violent confrontation between furries, which is the climactic bout promised on the cover of Chapter One. If you were waiting for this moment to arrive, you’re going to have to stick around all the way to Chapter 3. One belligerent wears an extremely fetching piece of headgear that wouldn’t look out of place in ancient Hyboria; the other is styling a giant head like he was Brutus Buckeye. It ends with a furry getting burned in fire. (So many people getting burned in this comic!)

Then a robot that does absolutely robot things, like contemplate the meaning of life in front of an empty chair. And then we’re introduced to a sword wizard who lives in a Stone Henge. This sword wizard for some reason does not use his sword for combat. Instead, he uses magic to shoot a missile. I guess I should point out that this missile is not a magic missile. No, it’s the kind of missile that you’d normally see launching out of a Gundam.

Also the narrator is a cat. Named “Gato Gris.”

I don’t know either.

So you can kinda understand what I’m talking about when I say this is like someone trying to describe their dream to you. However, when we break this down to essential plot elements, I don’t think I’d be too amiss to basically call It Will All Hurt a really pretty zombie comic. Sure, there’s magic, and there’s kids trying to figure what’s going on, and there’s spaceships and pink goo…. But at it’s core, it’s a zombie comic. The rest of the stuff is just window dressing. It’s World War Z filtered through they eyes of an artsy indie film.

Dalrymple’s aesthetic style is the sort you’d find in moleskines all over the world. handdrawn and sketchy, plenty of crosshatches and colored by either marker or watercolor. The panel borders are uneven, and there’s negative space everywhere.

Although this comic has a very “artsy college project” feel about it, it is a bit of a welcome change from the incredibly polished look you typically find in most other webcomics. The nervous lines imbues It Will All Hurt with a sense of motion. During a campfire sequence, for example, the art suggests small flickers of light passing across the characters’ faces. Here’s the magical part of it: the flickers of light aren’t actually depicted in any way, shape, or form… the perception of such was all in my imagination.

Dalrymple’s style, incidentally, reads quite nicely cellphone. Each chapter is laid out in vertical format, and the text is large enough to be legible on a tiny screen (at least one equipped with Apple’s retina display; I’m not sure how this looks on other makes or models). Rereading It Will All Hurt on my iPhone for the sake of this review turned out to be a painless experience. So good on ya, Farel.

In the end, though, I really couldn’t warm up to It Will All Hurt.  Is it being pretentious, being weird for weirdness’s sake, or is it wryly poking fun at pretension?  Probably a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.  Bottom line, though, is that I didn’t find it much interesting.  A webcomic like Rice Boy, for example, is quite relatable despite its weirdness. The readers are grounded by title character and his shared perspective of the world unfolding around him. With It Will All Hurt, all the main characters are alien and a tad inscrutable.

I think the esoteric atmosphere is meant to intentionally evoke a sense of alienation at both the magic and science fiction elements.  Is it to introduce the reader to the sensation of viewing a futuristic culture that he or she cannot full understand?  Perhaps.  At the same time, though, it’s a little being that listener to someone telling you about their weird dream.  At some point, you’re impatiently waiting for them to finish their confusing little story so you can get on with your life.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

So apparently the XBox One (which The Gameological Society dubbed the “xbone”) was announced last week, and gamers were frothingly rabid, as predicted. No backward compatibility! Kinect is mandatory! No way to share games! This is the end of gaaaaaaammmmiiinnnngggg!!!

So on and so forth.

Of course, it’s a field day for the gamer comics. Starting with Ctrl + Alt + Del:

Jeez, Buckley, a porn joke? What is this, the 1990′s? How original. Moving on to Penny Arcade:

….

Huh.

Jimmy Palmiotti has done many things. He is probably best known for his highly acclaimed run on the Jonah Hex title. He once formed a publishing company with Joe Quesada, the former Editor In Chief of Marvel Comics. He co-created Painkiller Jane, which became a show on the Sci-Fi Network.

He also writes DC’s Digital First comic,Ame-Comi Girls.

When the AV Club had a crack at it, they had this to say: “DC’s Ame-Comi Girls line is a perplexing thing. These digital-first comics are based on T&A anime statues of DC heroines like Wonder Woman, Power Girl, and Batgirl, but it’s unclear who the audience is for this book. The stories by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray have an all-ages simplicity, with bright, cartoonish artwork by artists like Ted Naifeh, Sanford Greene, and Amanda Conner, but the exploitative costumes make for an uneasy disconnect between plot and design.”

Here the thing, though: these are ladies in superhero outfits, already a racy prospect to begin with. So if you assemble a bunch of superheroines in one place… well, you’re going to have a lot of skimpy and skin-tight costumes. (On the flip side: assemble a bunch of male superheroes in one place and there’s gonna be a lot of pecs, abs, and flexing.) In fact, I’d say it might even be a little toned down. Wonder Woman here? Wearing the Amazonian power armor, she’s actually dressed more conservatively. In fact, she’s practically a Mennonite compared to the bathing outfit she wears in her regular comic.

Turning Braniac into a female tentacle monster, though, may have been taking things a step too far.

I’m gonna say that Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray knew exactly what they were evoking with that scene.

So, to answer the AV Club question, who’s this comic aimed for? Starting with the manga-inspired art, you can probably make a pretty direct connection between Ame-Comi Girls and Japanese magical girl series… namely Sailor Moon. Both have an all female roster of costumed heroes. Both have a penchant for long action beat downs. And yes, both can get somewhat racy at times (without falling off the slippery scale into full-on fanservice). Was there a tentacle monster in Sailor Moon? I only ever caught the series in bits and pieces, but I’m pretty sure there was one. Thus, the audience should intersect neatly on the same Venn Diagram scale. Does that mean it includes both pre-teen girls and creepy neckbeards? That’s for you to decide.

But yes.

As for the story… there is none. Female superheroes show up, and they fight female supervillains (and other female superheroes). This seems to be set in a world where the male counterparts of the ladies just don’t exist. So there’s no Flash, but there is a Jessie Quick. (Which is fine by me. I actually like the character quite a bit.) Batgirl and Robin strike out on their own … which is a significantly different dynamic than Batman and Robin, as both girls are high schoolers who are far more upbeat than their stentorian counterparts.

The main appeal of the comic is seeing your favorite DC Comics heroic archetypes a) drawn as ladies and b) drawn in a manga style. Batgirl’s outfit, for example, gets a costume overhaul that seems less at home with Gotham and more visually consistent with the Gatchaman series. Joker’s Daughter (who’s been brought into this series since having Joker in here would violate the “all lady heroes” rule) sorta resembles less a murderous clown and more a cute Gothic Rei Ayanami.

There seem to be no real animosity between the heroes and villains. While blows are exchanged, it comes off like a tiff between two minor cliques. There are some fun moments, though. After the battle with Braniac is won (Spoilers: the heroes win), Steve Trevor shows up to try to organize the Ame-Comi Girls as an official branch of the Federal Government (a la the Avengers). Power Girl has some major reservations though — mainly because Batgirl and Robin are technically not adults. So what does she do? She drags the girls to a meeting with their parents and spills their secret identities.

I love how, in this scenario, it’s Jim Gordon who’s in the wheelchair. The parents are super upset about the superhero activities, but Power Girl does stump for them by saying that hey, they did save the world. If Ame-Comi Girls had more moments like this, I’d place it right up there with the many comics out there that I find cheescake-y, but still worth reading.

Sadly, most of the comic is disposable action stuff, which seems to be the bulk the New 52 these days. The superheroines fight, then they find a new enemy, then they fight some more, then they find another new enemy causing the former rivals to team up, and then there’s more fighting. Old comics used to pause for breathers. Shoot, classic Spider-Man is remembered more fondly for his dilemmas in the home life than the brawls with Doctor Octopus. But, you know, comics these days: it seems to be standard to have five issues of brawling and one issue of interesting stuff.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5.)

As proved by the “Shill Your Webcomic” post that I put up not too long ago, there are several readers who visit this site who also make webcomics. To you fine bunch of creators, I pose the following question:

Why do you make webcomics?

Is it the faint chance that it will one day become a cultural touchtone like Calvin & Hobbes? Is it a social exercise to meet new people? Is to enough just want to make people laugh? Or is drawing so encoded in your DNA that you just need an outlet for expression?

To you, I cede the floor.

So rumors of Comics Alliance‘s demise were greatly exaggerated. The site came to an abrupt close some time ago after AOL decided to cease publication. After a series of Batman themed teaser panels, though, Comics Alliance is back at the same Bat-time, same Bat-channel Bat-website.

What happened? Let’s Be Friends Again creators Chris Haley and Curt Franklin explain everything in the first post back through a handy-dandy webcomic — clearly the communication world’s most unassailable medium.

Comics Alliance reports that DC Comics is dipping its toes in the digital world with the illusion of choice.

DC Comics announced two brand new digital comics formats Tuesday evening, one that might look somewhat familiar to readers of Marvel’s Infinite Comics, the other which puts a new spin on the classic “choose your own adventure” book.

DC2, which will feature actions such as word balloons and sound effects popping up when readers swipe their screens, will debut in writer Jeff Parker and artist Jonathan Case’s Batman ’66 series later this summer. DC2 Multiverse, which enables readers to choose different paths through a comic story, will first appear in a Batman: Arkham Origins video game tie-in comic.

DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee told Variety that the DC2 Multiverse format is meant to mirror what video gaming is about: choices.

The pop-up word balloon and sound effect format has been tried in webcomics before, though I’m hard-pressed to remember exactly who did it. (My personal opinion: it’s way too gimmicky and distracting to be any sort of legitimate artistic choice. Sure, you can make an argument that the entire piece of art is worth enjoying … but that’s what blog posts are for.)

As for the “Choose Your Own Adventure” thing… I’m pretty sure a webcomic creator has tried that before. Andrew Hussie tried to put an early MS Paint Adventures called Bard Quest… probably because all the work in doing a branching narrative doesn’t beat a solidly told story.

Besides, choice in this thing is always meaningless. I know that Comics Alliance brought up video games, but how many endings do you get in those things, anyway? And there’s always one “true” ending, which gets followed through when the sequel comes out.

Even so, “Choose Your Own Adventure” books were still kinda fun, even if they were disposable and a little unmemorable. (The only one I remember was the one where I was on trial in England. Lying meant you get get to stay. Telling the truth meant getting deported to Australia. Oh, “Choose Your Own Adventures” and your cynical view of the justice system!)

The Joe Shuster Awards, Canada’s award honoring the men and women in the comics field, announced their nominees yesterday. These included nominees for Créateur de Bandes Dessinées Web (or Webcomics Creator for you anglophones).

• Attila Adorjany (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Metaphysical Neuroma
• Jayd Ait-Kayci (Artist /Dessinateur) – The Fox Sister
• Sophie Bédard (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Glorieux Printemps 9-20
• Michael DeForge (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Ant Comic
• Iris (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Folk
• Salgood Sam (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Dream Life
• Ty Templeton (Cartoonist /Auteur) – Bun Toons

Canadians have had a very strong presence in webcomics. Previous winners include Karl Kerschl and Cameron Stewart. However, I have to say I’m not that familiar with this year’s crop of nominees. (Nor am I all that familiar with Emily Carroll’s work, which won in 2011 and 2012.)

Also, here’s a weird anomaly: the Joe Shuster Award has never gone to Kate Beaton (though she has been nominated from time to time). However, it HAS gone to Ryan Sohmer and Lar deSouza.

Let that sink in a little.

Over at Robot 6, Corey Blake looks at the latest innovations from Marvel and DC in the field of digital comics. He gives a brief synopsis of the evolution of digital comics, mulling over the innovations that have gotten things to this point:

… it’s becoming clear that after years of digital and webcomics primarily mimicking print comic books and comic strips, a new kind of comic is emerging, one that is changing how they’re made and read.

These current platforms were far from the first to experiment with digital. Artists like Cayetano Garza Jr. began experimenting with limited effects and layout as early as 1998. Scott McCloud’s infinite canvas theory, in which digital could break free of the confines of the limited dimensions of a page, was proposed in 2000, ironically in the pages of his print book Reinventing Comics. Experiments with using an infinite canvas followed, but it never grabbed hold as a standard format. Mostly, webcomics have echoed the structure and dimensions of daily newspaper strips with the occasional experimentation.

Which leads us to the new innovations at Marvel Infinite and DC2. Blake is ecstatic over the new possibilities. He points to Yves Bigerel’s experimental techniques, which are up at DeviantArt.

The simplistic brilliance of Bigerel’s concept is that instead of spreading panels out across an infinite canvas, he stacked them up on each other like animation cells. It’s essentially a PowerPoint slideshow using comics. And most importantly, the reader controls when the next slide comes up.

While this simple change retains the language of comics, it fundamentally alters how the comics read and how they’re created. The writers, and probably more so the artists, have to re-think how they approach their storytelling techniques. There are benefits. Surprises can be controlled better because there’s no risk of a reader’s eye scanning over the opposite page and seeing the reveal of the big monster. Page breaks become clicks. Layering is one of the biggest advantages. Instead of a sequence taking place from left to right, it can happen in the same spot, with additions to the image adding more information with each click. For the letterer, the reading order of dialogue can be controlled more. There’s less chance of confusing the reader over what to read next when you can have the dialogue become visible in the correct order.

So what do you think? Is there a significant paradigm shift coming ahead? Or will this kinda fizzle out like the whole infinite canvas thing?

Out of the Eisner-nominated titles, Ben Towle’s Oyster War is probably the one we’d most conventionally associate with the term “webcomic.” By that, I mostly mean the layout. This Will All Hurt is a metaphysical zombie comic where all the pages of the chapter are laid out vertically. Bandette is available as a digital comic on Comixology, the preferred format for the big piracy-averse publishers and arguably not really a webomic. Our Bloodstained Roof is a short story (most webcomics have runs longer than four installments), and Ant Comic is a bizarre little creature that looks like it would be more at home in the pages of an alternative magazine.

Oyster War, on the other hand, is a webcomic webcomic. Handy navigational buttons at the bottom of the page, familiar layout with a snazzy title header and sidebars, and a sensible pace of one page per post. It’s about as standard-looking as you can get on the no-frills WordPress format. There’s benefits to trying something new — in fact, it could be argued that because they’re more experimental, that they’re more deserving of award attention.

Oyster War shouldn’t dismissed, though. Mainly because it seems to have earned Eisner consideration on the merits of it being good.

We start the story in the charmingly named town of Blood’s Haven. It’s set some time in the late 19th century, after the Civil War and long before Nightwing cleaned up the streets. Blood’s Haven is oyster crazy. Parts of the town are built on oyster shells. It’s a crucial part of the booming economy. Oyster harvesting brings in the cash, and the shucked shells are tossed into the bay, creating new land for development. The place is also a little seedy — shocking for a place with the respectable name of Blood’s Haven! Yes, folks, this is a place where prostitutes in full view and people are entertained by big men punching other men’s faces. (It’s actually a nifty detail to remind us that pre-Marquis of Queensbury rules, boxing was a disreputable sport.)

Off-shore, though, there is something more disreputable still: pirates. The oyster pirates, led by a fellow named Treacher Fink, just do not give a crap about maintaining the sustainability of Blood’s Haven’s economy. (Yikes! That’s a lot of apostrophes.) These cowardly brigands strip the sea floors of oysters using a harmful harvesting tool called an oyster dredge. There are rumors, too, that the pirates are in possession of something that aids in their triumphs. Something … magical.

Like wicked voodoo magical. Not prom week magical. The pirates, for example, have a woman who can shape-shift into a seal, and they’re not afraid to use her. What I’d initially thought was an ecological fable has suddenly transformed into Monkey Island. There’s even a plot involving a tentacled beast resurrected from the Stygian Abyss and an island that appears out of nowhere. Clearly, the combination of the arcane arts and oyster thievery can prove to be problematic!

To combat the pirates, the local authorities enlist the help of Commander Bulloch, a naval officer who looks like he should be part of Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem. Bulloch, who has an affectation of malapropisms, is also a former Confederate soldier who now works in the the service of the Union, but is still suspicious of those damn Northern carpetbaggers. For example, when he’s briefed on the ecological ramifications of the oyster harvesting, he dismisses are someone else’s problem. But when he finds out the pirates are from the North? Well. It’s game on, gentlemen.

Unfortunately, the Oyster Navy — as the anti-pirate revenge squad of one ship is called — is working on a limited budget. And thus Bulloch, to his consternation, has to command a very ragtag (yet multicultural) crew and an rusty old paddlewheeler. Luckily, they’re also suitably capable of counteracting the pirate menace, filling in roles that had not been foreseen. They’re smarter and haler than he gives them credit for. Bulloch, for example, is a capable enough leader. However, he has a pretty big blind spot: he doesn’t believe in any of this magic nonsense. So it’s actually fortunate that among his crew, there’s an old gentleman who knows how to handle the ins-and-out of fairy tale mysticism.

Besides, Bulloch knows when to respect scientific reasoning when he sees it. One of his crewmates is a Polynesian, who suggests navigating the waves with the aid of a totem made of sticks. Bulloch blows this off as dumb magic until the crewman explains that the totem is based on the motion and height of waves as they approach a distant shore. Satisfied with the scientific explanation, Bulloch becomes 100% committed to using the Polynesian’s method.

What I like about Oyster War is how genuine all the little details feel. There’s a part of the story where the crew has to find an old Civil War submarine. While it may look like a ridiculous steampunk contraption, it’s actually based on a real life sub called The Alligator. And that’s not all! Towle has clearly spent some time thinking about the mechanics involved in raising the sub. The crew sets up a system of ropes and pulleys supported by nearby trees. If the sub is underwater, though, doesn’t mean that the ballast tanks are filled up? Yes, so Bullock has to swim in and flush out the water to regain buoyancy. It’s methodical, but in getting to the details Towle has opened up an avenue for storytelling.

And then there are the artistic flourishes. Oysters are so lovingly drawn they make my toes tingle a little. (Cuz I have gout. Oysters and shellfish are a known trigger to excruciating foot pain.) Blood’s Haven is rendered with plenty of horizontal and vertical elements and crowds of people. It feels alive but also somewhat hemmed in. Even though you only see it in bits and pieces, you get a strong sense of location, as if a building had always been at the place it was drawn and not just randomly placed. (It also reminds me a little of Sweethaven, Popeye’s home town.) When the crew gets out to sea, the vast expanses of water and the miniature profile of the ship feel unbounded and less claustrophobic.

Towle takes great advantage of visual language and using it to tell the story. One page particularly impressed me. The first mate is trying to gather up some crewmates. We get a glimpse of the list, filled with empty positions which we hadn’t seen beforehand. The first mate knocks on a door, after which we see a scene where he’s scratching names off the list. This is a great way to introduce the spots on the roster to the reader without flat out telling you in exposition. It works wonderfully well, and yet it’s also quite elegantly simple. This gets to the heart of what I like about Oyster War: no flashy gimmicks, just solid storytelling using the tools readily available in the comics medium.

Not to say that there isn’t plenty of exposition. Chapter One is only 13 pages long, but what a dense 13 pages those are. The packed so much content that I was a little surprised that, by the time I’d reached the end of the chapter, I was a little surprised it wasn’t page 50. Yet, while the style highly economical, it’s also entertaining. It’s not tedious, like some comics that choose to exposit the story through a couple of space moose doing tiresome comedy pratfalls. There’s a lot going on while we’re learning the Oyster War backstory. There’s oodles of character development, organic world-building, and and actual plot. Where exposition drags other stories down, here it’s used most effectively to get the reader to the meat of the story as soon as possible.

Oyster War is a refreshing webcomic that’s exactly what it sets out to be: an adventure story with quirky characters that moves along at a confident pace. It has the discipline and sensibilities of an old school comic in the best way possible.

Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Click, click, click.

This is the sound of the future of digital comics, as the pundits say. Though, in my case, it was swipe, swipe, swipe.

There’s been some talk about how the “powerpoint” style of comics is going to become the next big thing for digital comics in the future. Now, I know we’ve heard the talk before, and a lot of us are plenty skeptical. The reality, though, is that the big boys, Marvel and DC, are both rarin’ to try it out. Over in their corner, Marvel’s been trying the technique out in their newly launched “Infinite” brand, which is digital only and available on the Marvel app; most are not currently on the Comixology app.

Aside: the awkwardly titled Ultimate Spider-Man Infinite IS available on Comixology for free. I would suggest not getting that one. It’s … pretty horrible. I know, it’s aimed for kids, but man, even if I was part of the intended age bracket I’d feel cheated by such a lightweight story with parts where Spider-Man goes super-deformed for some reason. Seriously, the Spidey Super Stories were less pandering. Also, for a title that includes “Ultimate” in it, it’s a comic about Peter Parker, and not Miles Morales, the current Spider-Man in the Ultimate titles. In fact, pretty much none of it, save maybe the Sam Jackson Nick Fury, seems to be set in the Ultimate Marvel Universe. (And even then, the Sam Jackson Fury is the current one in the baseline series.) Why even use “Ultimate”? Why? Why do you have to make things so hard, Marvel?!?!?!

So anyway, back to Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite #1-4, which are currently free to download on the Marvel app.

So what in the world is Guardians of the Galaxy? Well, clearly they’re currently Marvel’s hottest property at the moment. They’re being prominently featured as the next big Marvel movie franchise, which will directly lead up to the second Avengers movie. One of the characters even showed up in the latest Marvel vs. Capcom game.

Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either.

And really… no one has. The Guardians of the Galaxy are Marvel’s space-faring superhero franchise du jour. Now, an old comic fan like me is far more familiar with the Starjammers or Adam Warlock or that one team that had the guy with the huge mohawk. But Guardians of the Galaxy? Wikipedia tells me that they’re based on an obscure team created in 1969 by Andrew Drake and Gene Colan. The original incarnation had team members with names like Martinex T’Naga and Yondu Udonta. Not … not quite Thor or Captain America. At this point, though, pretty much most of the well known heroes have had movies made out of ‘em. You kinda have to give Marvel some mad props for taking risks and digging deep into some ridiculously obscure concepts, then securing the budget to make a movie out of them.

Then again, Hollywood just recently made a movie based on the Battleship board game, so maybe it’s just full of people who’re throwing money at every stupid concept coming their way.

There’s plenty of things that Guardians of the Galaxy has going for it. First of all, thanks to the double whammy of J. J. Abrams (Star Trek) AND J. J. Abrams (Star Wars), space opera is all of the sudden cool again. Second of all, the current roster is not quite as inscrutable as the original line up. Marvel (and parent company Disney) are probably banking that general audiences will probably thrill to at least two of the characters: a surly, talking raccoon who was named after a Beatles song and a space tree. What do the Starjammers have? Cyclop’s pirate dad in an open-shirt disco outfit and an albino cat girl? Get out of town, ya weirdos!

Now, while the raccoon and the tree are self-explanatory, the rest of the cast needs some explaining. Who’s this guy that looks like Piccolo from Dragonball Z? Who’s the green lady? And that guy wearing the Call of Duty outfit? Clearly each of them needs a dedicated story … and that what each of the Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite digital comic brings, one issue at a time.

And these comics are not tossed together throwaways by a bunch of C-list creators. At the helm is none other and Brian Bendis, the guy who’s been charting Marvel’s destiny for the last decade or so. The art’s pretty stellar too. Michael Oeming is probably the best known contributor… and surprisingly, he’s probably the weakest one on the title. Ming Doyle (on Issue #2) and Michael Del Mundo (on Issues #3 and #4) may be less known, but their styles resemble the sort of thing you’d find in an issue of Heavy Metal … you know, if it was done for the PG crowd. Doyle loves to draw aliens stuffed in fashions that look like they were purloined off the shelves of Wal-Mart, and Del Mundo has a painterly style that emphasizes how blindingly bright everything is on otherworldly planets. Those styles, to me, are more appropriate for stories of a space faring crew as opposed to Oeming’s more standard superhero poses and gestures. (Though, let’s be clear here, Oeming’s stuff isn’t bad. In fact, plenty of his scenes look positively Kirby-esque.)

Also on hand? Why, it’s our old pal, Yves Bigerel! I hadn’t realized it back when I linked to his project on DeviantArt, but Bigerel is Marvel’s go-to expert for all the creative scene transitions in the Infinite titles. His name even appears in the credits for the Ultimate Spider-Man Infinite comic. I’m being completely sincere when I say that I’m genuinely happy that one of the Big Two comic publishers was willing to give him a platform to put his experimental theories into practice.

Now, as for actually how that theory’s put into practice…. Back when I talked about this method the first time, someone in the comments suggested that reading this sort of comic is a lot easier if you use the space bar. I imagine there’s truth in it. Hitting the spacebar is easy, tactile, and natural. However, I was reading this comic that the industry insists is the right way to read digital comics: on my iPad. Which means: slashing right to left on your screen. For those of you who were complaining about clicking with your mouse, let me assure you that this is way, way more annoying. Sometimes you’re swiping across the screen to get to the next page, and it won’t do it because the image is still loading… and thus there was more than one moment where I was staring at the screen like an idiot waiting for the scene to change.

As a comparison, I downloaded the same comic on my iPhone, and it is a lot easier to swipe across the screen with your thumb while the phone is comfortable cradled in your hand. Downsides: you have to hold the phone sideways, and the text gets way too small.

The “infinite” format is used in Guardians of the Galaxy Infinite (Good Lord, that is a long title to type out) comic to emphasize movement and action This means that Brian Bendis really doesn’t have that much to do. You don’t get much of the witty repartee that you’d find in his Ultimate Spider-Man comics. It’s actually more like some of his Avengers comics. In that respect, I do have to say that Guar… um, GOTGI does a better job executing. With Avengers, the interminable action sequences, often lasting 6 issues, felt excessive and gratuitous. (Seriously, does anyone remember anything that happened in Bendis’ Avengers other than the standard “team comes together” plot?) Here at least you get to see different settings and it serves to establish the characters… even if their only traits, it seems, are that they’re all badasses who punch a lot.

The creative frame-to-frame transitions achieve varying levels of success. The first two are kind of awkward. Frames within frames. Static images, except with one character moving and different word balloons. Is the “infinite” format better than if the same story was told with a traditional layout? I can’t say the Drax the Destroyer and Rocket Raccoon chapters would pass the sniff test.

Things pick up considerably when Bendis and Bigerel are paired with Del Mundo. The chapter on Gamora (who, it turns out, is a green lady and not a space turtle) is nice, but the real stand out is the chapter on Groot. Here, the pace slows down a bit, which is a blessing to my pointing finger. Early on, we see two alien farmers are hauling junk that’s landed on their field. They stare out into the bright skies, which gradually reveals to be tiny dots of light in the bright sky where an interstellar battle rages. The pan to the that shot? Fantastic. Later, after Bendis wisely holds off on the reveal, we come face to face with Groot (the aforementioned space tree). We get a good look at his face, then with a swipe we pan down to his hands. One swipe later, his hands transform into clubs for pounding. It looks great. The less jumpy the frame of reference, the more successful the execution, it seems.

It’s still a little early in Marvel’s little experiments with the “infinite,” so there’s definitely doing to be some trial and error involved… as well as, perhaps, discovery of new techniques. Still, for an early foray into this technique, it wasn’t too bad. I wish there had been a little more content: four issues in, and I still have no idea what the Guardians of the Galaxy are about. But that wasn’t the aim of these comics. No, the aim was to have the characters in flip-book style semi-animated fight sequences. (The really important and essential stuff is probably being saved up for the movie.) Some of it worked. Some of it didn’t.

I’m still not convinced that this isn’t going to turn out to be anything more than a short-term gimmick, destined to be tossed into the same pile as motion comics and Zuda-like Flash-style comics. However, I do admire the drive to experiment with something new. And, unlike some of Marvel’s recent efforts where they ask you to pony up $4 an issue for more or less the same thing, at least these GOTGI digital comics are free.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5).

Hey, do you have some disposable income to throw at a piece of Internet history? Namely, a piece of webcomic history? Well, eBay has a treat for you!

That’s right, seller “absath_the_artist” is auctioning off the original panel of… well, here’s the product description:

This is the original sketch for the infamous comic “Loss”. Now you can own the original art from the comic that spawned a thousand parodies! Pencil sketch on 8.5×11 paper. Auction includes a signed copy of the finished comic- the only copy of this comic that I will ever sign

Hurry now! There’s only two days left to bid, and as of this writing the value’s up to $122! And, well, if that’s out of your price range, absath also has a lovely Napoleon Dynamite action figure that’s a steal at $10.

A couple weeks ago a buddy and I were watching Game 6 of the Miami Heat/Indiana Pacers game. Guys like Chris Bosh and LeBron James were flopping to the ground to get the referees to call the fouls, our discussions turned to our favorite teams. My buddy was a big fan of the Heat. (He was pretty much the only one in the bar rooting for them. Everyone else was pulling for the Pacers to upset.) Me, though, I had to vouch for the team nearest and dearest to my heart: the Detroit Pistons.

And when you’re talking about the Pistons, inevitably the discussion turns to the legendarily thuggish team of the late 80′s-early 90′s called The Bad Boys. Dennis Rodman. Isiah Thomas. Bill Laimbeer. Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson. Joe Dumars. “Man, I miss those days,” I said, pointing to the players as they gingerly hit the ground after every foul. “Back then, not only would they have taken the elbow to the stomach, they would’ve come back at you and returned the pain tenfold.”

(Ah, the glory of being a Pistons fan. Even when they’ve won the championship as recently as 2004, you never forget your first love that is The Bad Boys.)

Am I naive to dream of earlier, more brutal time? Maybe. But maybe it’s also… the future! At least, that’s how it looks in Scott Sava and Alex Kolesar’s basketball themed webcomic, Hoop Fighter.

The names of both creators should sound awfully familiar. Scott Sava is the creator behind the long running fantasy webcomic The Dreamland Chronicles. Alex Kolesar’s name may be less so, but he’s the artist behind No Need For Bushido. Together, the two imagine a future where basketball and MMA are not separate sports, but are, in fact, one in the same.

It is the future of 2212. The world has mostly a utopia, after a… well, I’m not quite sure, but there are domed cities in the middle of some deserts. But, not to worry. The average citizen has cell phones, moving sidewalk, and —most importantly — they’re being entertained by the greatest sport ever devised by Man: Kombasketball. Its players are gladiators of the court, bringing hope to a hopeless audience. And at its heart is a large player from the Blades with an incredible dunk (and probably horrible free throw shots) named Kal “The Prodigy” Jones.

By the way, if Kal looks familiar to any of you… yeah, it’s Shaquille O’Neal. In the first page, Sava mentions that they were working closely with Shaq to produce this webcomic. I have no reason to doubt him. I mean, it’s not like Shaq hasn’t been involved in some really bizarre projects in the past. Shaq-Fu, anyone?

Ah, but there’s a bitter dark secret at the heart of kombatball: it turns out that the games are all fixed for the benefit of the team owners! Oh, my God, that means The Sports Guy was right! Shaq Kal, though, has too much respect for the game. He’s benched after he defies his coaches orders when asked to throw Game 6 so the owners can get a lucrative Game 7. In his place is his teammate Rhino, who the coach confidently assumes will job to the rival Vipers.

But no, it turns out O’Neal Jones lit a spark in his team, and he’s going to try to win the game. It comes at a great cost. Trying to win the game, Rhino is powerslammed into the floor and paralyzed as retaliation for trying to win a game against orders. At this point, something in my brain turned on. I think it was my spirit guide, Sylvester Stallone. And he told me something simple yet quite profound: “Yo, this is, like, the plot of every 80′s action movie.”

You said it, Sly.

This atrocity is finally too much for Shaq Diesel The Prodigy. His friend is injured, his faith is shaken, and most importantly they disrespected the game! It’s more than he can take. He flips the hell out. He tosses his coach through the window and tries to go to the press with stories of how the game is rigged. All of it’s to no avail. It gets worse — it turns out the refs are in on it too, like it was the Super Bowl or something! It looks hopeless!

But the Blades are not a team filled with give-up-itude. No, they’ve got no-quit-itude! And Raditude! They rally around their leader and bring down the hammer! Refs giving you call after call that’s not going your way? Only one thing to do: beat their asses down! Because kombasketball ain’t about the fame, the fortune, or the killer robots built for dominating both sides of the court … it’s about the fans.

So Hoop Fighter is really goddamn ridiculous. But what did you expect? It’s called Hoop Fighter. It’s also about par for the course for the basketball fiction genre, which one saw Bugs Bunny and Jordan play b-ball against a bunch of over-muscled space aliens, Charles Barkley challenge Godzilla to a one-on-one hoops contest amidst the wreckage of an exploding city, and Rob Liefeld throw down in his Levi’s 501s. Everyone is always big and blustery. The CEO’s are ridiculously theatrical … though way more subtle about it than David Stern is. It’s all just a big excuse to see dudes with massive biceps and impossible torsos wail on each other while exhibiting stellar ball control.

But, oh, how glorious those scenes are. This webcomic is all dumb fun, and it knows it. The majority of webcomics, following in the footsteps of Dr. McNinja, throw the absurdity in your face. Hoop Fighter is glorious in its restraint. The webcomic is goofy, but the characters in the webcomic themselves take everything so seriously. Sure, Kal “The Prodigy” Jones is just Shaq with a dumb boomerang tattoo on his face. But he always looks like he’s a man working through an epic inner turmoil, fighting a war for the very heart and soul of basketball kombasketball. (Even if that lesson basically boils down to “greed is bad.”)

I also have a feeling that Shaq is a man after my own heart. Hey, buddy, if someone fouls you, you take that elbow like a man! Don’t go to the ground like you got shot by a sniper bullet! What is this, soccer? See, this is why kombasketball eventually takes place of the regular variety in a couple of centuries: the upstanding manliness.

If I were to level any serious complaint, it’s that those uniforms are all fairly horrendous. I think Kolesar was going for apparel based on Tron, but in a fairly well lit environment like the one on the b-ball k-ball court, the epic light piping just doesn’t stand out. Plus, the Blades look less like athletes and more like cyber-tracker from the future, sent back in time to hunt down the Savior of Humanity. Not the sort of gear you want to be wearing if you’re supposed to be a hero to the little children everywhere. May I suggest a lovely teal, red, and gold combo with an ebony laser horse and plenty of flames?

… Is that a no?

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

I’ve mentioned this webcomic before, but it seems high time to revisit this gem again. Tyler Rhodes’ Castle Vidcons was around during the previous generation’s console wars. The Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 were depicted as rival kings doing battle in a sepia-tinged medieval landscape. Now that E3 has come and gone, the knives are out again this year. Xbox One and PS4 are cruel new usurpers, parroting the fears, anxieties and loyalties all over the Twitterverse and the Tumblrverse. Given how hyperbolic and pitched the fight has gotten already, Castle Vidcons is the only way to watch this epic struggle between warrior kings with consoles for heads unfold.

The inaugural season of Strip Search, the first ever reality show to pit webcomic creator against webcomic creator, is coming to a close. I didn’t care much for the first couple of episodes, but I know there were plenty online who loved it (including my webcomic blogging compatriots Xaviar Xerexes and Gary Tyrrell). Granted, I didn’t stick around past Episode 5, so I’ll allow that the show got orgasmically awesome in its later installments.

What do you, the viewers at home think?

It happens every single time. There’s a new interpretation of a superhero out… but it’s totally different from what we’ve seen before! We grumble, whine, and complain about how the new directors are pandering to the terrible sensibilities of kids these days, ignoring the elements that made these heroes so beloved in the first place. But you owe to to yourself to step back a little. Dig up the source material and really look at it. Read the first issue encased in that anthology series, or even that first self-titled comic, and ask yourself: isn’t this always what Bob Haney and Nick Cardy intended?

That’s right, I’m talking about Teen Titans Go! It’s positioned in the enviable task of following up the highly well regarded Young Justice series. The way fans are going after it, it’s like … well, it’s like when the original Teen Titans cartoon debuted in the shadow of the much beloved Justice League series. (Teen Titans eventually became a well loved franchise in its own right, hence this new series which follows the character design of the original but is geared at a much younger age set.)

Yet, while the first episode of Teen Titans Go! follows “the team on a trip across the globe to find legendary sandwich ingredients”, you gotta realize that the original Teen Titans? They were pretty far out, man.

The Teen Titans were created by the Silver Age super team of Bob Haney and Nick Cardy. I talked about Cardy’s work back when I did the Know Thy History of Aquaman. It’s very action packed. So who’s Bob Haney? He’s probably best known for throwing in high concept ideas and never stopping once to explain anything or to let the reader catch a breather. For example, why does a Hellship float around containing full scale replicas of Gotham, Metropolis, and the Wild West in its hull? Never explained. As podcaster Tom Katers once said on his Aquaman podcast: “Bob Haney don’t care! Bob Haney gonna do what he wants!”

The original Teen Titans consisted of the superhero sidekicks of three of DC’s main characters: Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad. It was the early 1960′s, when Baby Boomers were reaching their teens and represented a huge emerging market. Elvis and the Beatles were hitting the airwaves. Hip surfer teen Gidget was conquering the movie screens and soon the TV. And comics with teen protagonists, especially the ones featuring Archie and the Riverside Gang, were taking off. And thus, DC assembled a team of boys in short shorts to stick to those square adults who didn’t just gets the hip new lingo, man.

Of course! No teen-ager ever uses the word “music”! Robin, you magnificent bastard!

You know, I hear the accusations that comics were run by old men who had no idea how to write teenagers and their crazy slang. Comics historian Les Daniels wrote: “The attempt to reach the youth culture then embracing performers like the Beatles and Bob Dylan impressed some observers as strained.” I have an alternate theory. Your parents (or grandparents) totally talked like this, and they DO NOT WANT TO ADMIT IT.

Anyway, it sets up the generational battle lines that would be a common theme in the early Teen Titans comics. The kids (Baby Boomers) are mad because the adults don’t understand them. (“If we don’t get our new teen-age clubhouse, we’ll go on strike!”) The adults (the Greatest Generation) are upset the kids are lazy pieces of crap. (“I propose a curfew to solve our town’s teen-age problem!” says the senile old mayor.) I agree with the grown-ups, by the way. Today, it’s clubhouses. Tomorrow, it’s staying up after 9 and going to ice cream shoppes unchaperoned. In that path lies madness.

Wait a minute. On strike from what?!?! Being a lazy teen-ager?

The bad guy in this story is a guy named Mr. Twister. He is also creepy as sin. What’s he’s been doing? Well, he’s been stealing all the teen-agers. That’s… way skeevy for a Silver Age comic. Comics Code Authority, were you sleeping at the wheel on this one? Seriously, he’s a toothless, unshaven drifter in a dirty Revolutionary War reenactment outfit who goes around kidnapping underaged teenagers. Good innocent fun! (Surprisingly, he’s not the creepiest villain introduced by Team Haney & Cardy.) He’s defeated when Robin discovers he can use a firetruck ladder to get to the level of the flying menace. The teen-agers are saved! (Though psychological scars will be forever.) To show their support, the rescued teens have changed their picket signs to say, “ADULTS — WE LOVE ‘EM!” (Clearly a forgery. If they were real teen-agers, it would read, “ADULTS — WE DIG ‘EM!” Ya feel me?)

Eventually, the team is joined by Wonder Girl — who, incidentally, would create a massive continuity headache. Bob Haney brought her to the team assuming that she was a new character when Wonder Girl, in fact, was an imaginary teenage version of Wonder Woman that was only ever featured in “impossible tales” (like the ones where Superman uses a supercomputer to see the non-existent kid he raised). This was the beginning of decades long retconning with the origins for Donna Troy, a mess for DC that continues to this very day.

Like Katers said, Bob Haney gonna do what he wants!

Together, they fight bodiless giants straight out of a Salvador Dali nightmare (for real, this looks like something out of a crazy indie comic)…

… a giant robot conquistador named El Conquistadore while on an innocent peace corp mission…

… and a creepy neckbeard named Ding Dong Daddy.

That last scene? Seriously creepy. Wonder Girl — who is not of legal age, may I remind you — is seducing the villain by dancing awkwardly and saying things like “Ring-ading-ding!” Which is actually working and totally turning on this greasy as hell older dude. Whose name is Ding Dong Daddy. And who’s wearing a shirt that says “Ding Dong Daddy, The Go Man.” Where is Chris Hansen when you need him?

The Silver Age silliness wouldn’t last long, though. Shoot, it wouldn’t last 25 issues. The teeny-bopper generation would turn into the hippie generation so quickly you wouldn’t have time to catch a breather. Eventually, Bob Haney’s sensibilities would be replaced by DC’s new directive at tackling social issues of the day. Green Lantern was being yelled at by an old guy for not caring about black-skins, Lois Lane was turning black, and Wonder Woman traded in her star-spangled panties for karate gear. And over in Teen Titans, Neal Adams got on board to punch up the art while Marv Wolfman worked behind the scenes to punch up the scripts. Protests over the right to create teen-age clubhouses were superseded by anti-war protests.

See what you did, Teen Titans? You killed a peace activist. The most important man in the world. Coming from The Flash, that means something. Batman’s so disappointed … and Superman is SO mad at you. Look at that accusatory finger. No more crazy teen scenes for you.

The trend toward storytelling from a mature perspective would continue all the way through the 80′s, when Marv Wolfman and George Perez would take over and rebrand the title The New Teen Titans. This is the roster everyone remembers. Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy joined up and went on adventures where they fought living brains, Deathstroke the Terminator, evil cults, and the devil himself. Incidentally, check out that bikini on Starfire. What do you got to say about that, David Willis?

Some time later, the title would spit into two. The title followed the trend of going dark and gritty in the 90′s, several characters died, there were a few hundred reboots, yadda yadda yadda, we’re pretty much back to square one again with Silver Age weirdness and teenage funtimes being the in-thing again.

So that pretty much covers the origins of the Teen Titans: crazy silliness that we’re somehow looped back to today. Got anything left to say about these Teen Titans, El Conquistadore?

You said it, man. Fantastico.

While I don’t typically report Kickstarters, I do like this particular comic quite a bit. So when the creator notified me that they were starting a Kickstarter to finish it off with a hardcover edition, I was happy to pass the news. From the press release on the Guns of Shadow Valley website:

Wild West Webcomic “The Guns of Shadow Valley” kicks off Kickstarter campaign

Santa Barbara, CA – June 14, 2013 – Dave Wachter and Jim Clark are comic creators and Wild West aficionados. Starting their comic book “The Guns of Shadow Valley” in a traditional format five years ago, they could not land a publishing deal, so they began a webcomic instead in the summer of 2009.

Since this humble beginning, they have had a large following of thousands of readers per week, over 100 pages of story, and nominations for Eisner and Harvey awards for excellence in digital publishing.

Then, everything came to a screeching halt.

“I’ve loved working full time with IDW and Dark Horse comics, but the paying gigs kept me from my dream project. It’s the one that I was really wanting to make a reality,” said Wachter.

So, the two decided to bring the story full circle by finishing the epic tale with an oversized, hardcover edition of The Guns of Shadow Valley.

“We have everything else in place, now we just need the financial resources necessary to complete the project,” said Wachter. “We are turning to Kickstarter and comic fans across the world for help.”

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding site where individuals can invest in projects they feel are worthwhile. The Guns of Shadow Valley campaign will kick off on June 14th and end on July 15th. The goal is $24,000 which will complete the second half of the comic storyline, print the entire story as a hardcover book, and throw in lots of extra incentives.

“For us, this is our opportunity to finish what we started. Our readers have been begging us to start it up again,” said Clark.

Readers can pre-order a signed and numbered copy of the hardcover edition for $30, and there additional benefits and rewards, such as T-shirts, original paintings, and even cameo appearances in the story.

The western motif is infused with other elements such as sci-fi, steampunk, superpowers, mysticism, and folklore. “If you can imagine ‘X-Men meets The Magnificent Seven’, then you have a good idea of The Guns of Shadow Valley and its theme,” said Clark.

Interested parties can visit the Kickstarter page at www.gunsofshadowvalley.com/kickstarter to learn more about the plans for the project and pre-order the book.

“We can’t wait to show everyone how this ends,” said Wachter.

To see the actual comic, visit www.gunsofshadowvalley.com

So followers of The Webcomic Overlook may know that I’m not someone who was too keen on Strip Search. From the standpoint of a reality show, I thought it was too boring. From the standpoint of a webcomic show, I thought it was baffling. (A t-shirt design show? Really?) So before they even got to the show that had to do with contestant interviews, I was out. I mean, geez, if I have to sit through people sweating why they need to get a paying job, at least I should be getting HR money, feel me?

It seems that I may be the only person feeling that way, though. A poll on this site showed overwhelming approval of Strip Search. Or… overwhelming approval of Shakira, perhaps? The YouTube views support it. As of this writing, Episode 30 has had 20K YouTube views. I mean, that’s not Game Grumps bank, but it’s still super respectable. Thus, I suppose it’s time to tune in for the last couple of episodes and see if the show has anything more to offer.

We are down to our final three contestants: Katie Rice, Maki Naro, and Abby Howard. Surprisingly, I’m actually kinda happy with these three. I mentioned in a previous review that Maki and Abby were my early favorites just because their personalities were so appealing. And I’m happy to see Katie Rice there, too. She’s the one who looks like Kate Beaton.

Apparently, the three were asked to return to their studios and work on their final pitch, which includes a character sheet, some strips… and a T-shirt design. Now… come on. Someone tell me that there were other challenges in between that involved other pieces of merchandise. Like a plushie or a bumper sticker or a dorm room poster or something. (That last one is at least something a webcomic creator like The Oatmeal guy has had fantastic success in monetizing.) But, yeah… webcomic artists are T-shirt salespeople. I don’t know, it seems totally inorganic for me to say that the success of a webcomic depends on how great you are a designing a T-shirt. But I’ve already harped on this and I’m sure half of you are already accusing me of being a backwards troglodyte guy who doesn’t know heads or tails about making money (true!) so let’s move on.

The challenge: each contestant is to take a crumple piece of paper out of the waste basket to draw a theme for the final challenge. (Great use of that Kickstarter money, guys!) Each contestant has to create a comic out from two of the three themes. One by one, the contestants pick out their words: “Creation,” “Good vs. Evil,” and “Morality.” “It looks like there’s a Genesis thing going on, mah peeps,” says Gabe or Tycho. (I’m paraphrasing.) I have a feeling that the Strip Search guys were clearly trying to suss out a religious theme for this one, though. What did the other crumpled pieces of paper say? “Communion”? “Redemption”? “Movie portrayals of Superman”?

So our contestants have four hours to create a series of strips. They get to their tables with their computers and papers and they get to work! Incidentally, we are more or less watching this show in real time. This episode is a half hour long. I can’t remember when they started the clock… but by the end of episode an hour has elapsed. That is a long time to watch people drawing … and we don’t even get to see what they’re sketching half the time. So there’s a lot of shots with Katie, Maki, and Abby with their necks craned over their drawing surfaces.

There also seems to be a studio audience this time around. Where they always there? Where did they come from? I’m thinking that these final episodes were maybe filmed at PAX, but I’m not sure. I guess they can come and go as they please, too, because wow 4 hours is a long time to watch people draw.

So to pass the time, Gabe and Tycho grill the contestants over their comic pitches. (I seriously cannot remember which is which. I think the bald one is Gabe. Just to be safe, though, I’m referring to them as “Gabetycho.”) Katie Rice talks about Camp Weedontwantcha, which are kids in a “Kids in Game of Thrones” type environment. She talks about how she would update once a week, since three panel strips are not her thing. Gabetycho comment that a three panel strip is great for discipline when it comes to updating, which Katie kinda blows off. Gabetycho really like the character designs, though (expected, as Katie has an animation background), and they comment that they’re “ready for merchandise”. Little dollar signs would totally have popped up in their eyes with a “Cha-ching!” sound if this was JonTron.

It’s on to Abby Howard’s The Last Halloween, which is about a little girl who fights monsters. She claims she’s got 200 pages written, and if it were up to her she’d upload a week’s worth of content uploaded on one day. Gabetycho look a little disappointed that their three-a-week update schedule, which is a core value that propelled their webcomic to international fame and fortune, has been pooh-poohed by the second contestant in a row. Abby gets kinda defensive, saying, “I don’t want it to be a formula, I want it to be fluid, I want it to make sense.”

It’s actually interesting that the first two pitches are nominally long-form webcomics. When Strip Search started, is this what Gabetycho were looking for? Between them and associates like Scott Kurtz, Brad Guigar, and Kris Straub, you’d think that another gag-a-day comic would be a more natural fit in the stable, right? Additionally… do any of these comics fit the Penny Arcade audience? Because, let’s face it, everything about Penny Arcade is video games. A charity that gets games for kids. Video game news. Shows about game theory.

And… a webcomic about either a little girl fighting Halloween monsters or kids fighting war at a summer camp? Daring, to be honest … but a weird fit.

Finally, we get to big, cuddly Maki. His strip, Sufficiently Remarkable, probably had the least interesting premise. He introduces it as a slice-of-life comic, which puts it in good company of, say, 30,000 other webcomics out there. But Maki’s got a pleasant and winning personality. Plus, he’s got some decent-looking art. He’s also the only contestant who’s thinking out doing the three-times-a-week update schedule, something that you know is honey to Gabetycho’s ears. They praise him for the character design of Meg, who seems to be the breakout star despite not being the main character. They especially like how Meg looks on T-shirts.

Since there’s a lot of time to fill up, the discussion eventually turns to trolls. Gabetycho ask if they ever read the comments. Maki talks for him and Abby when he coolly says, “We both go into 4chan.” This flips Gabetycho’s wigs, as they were referring only to the ones posted on their videos at Penny Arcade. Abby adds, “Hateful comments stick with me a lot more.” I’m sorry, Abby. I’m sorry I quit the game so early. I coulda given you power. Real. POWER.

Katie talks about her friends in animation giving her crap for being on the show, causing her to swear more bitterly than when Abby was talking about hateful comments online. The talk moves on to mortality. What would happen if they’d died before they reached the final contest? Maki relates a sparkling anecdote about subway pushers in New York City, while Abby and Katie offer up general observations of death and whether they would be mourned. A pretty somber subject for a webcomic series, but weirdly consistent with the stuff they drew out of the garbage can.

Wait… if everything ties together…

Oh, God…. on Tuesday… they’re all going to die, aren’t they?

Run, Maki, Abby, and Katie! Run for your lives!

Just an aside, the Webcomic Overlook has reached over 3 million pageviews! Woop, woop, y’all!

Thank you to all the readers who keep checking in on this site for webcomic reviews, news, opinions, and historical comic tidbits. Here’s to 3 million more!