Brian Roney’s webcomic reviews

Ozy and Millie (first strip) (daily, anthropomorphic, gag-a-day) is a wonderful example of a comic strip version of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. They become friends and play together. Ozy and Millie is a philosophical and often political comic that takes a look at various philosophies taken to extremes through the eyes of children. Usually M-F daily, although with rare breaks that sometimes last as long as a month, there are 2,221 strips in the archive over the last nine years.

Ozymandias, the Ozy of the strip title, is a young wolf who has been taught zen philosophy from an early age, and spends much of his time in quiet contemplation of life around him. His calm acceptance of things around him quickly makes him friends with Millicent, the Millie of the title, a ten year old fox tomboy who never seems to quiet down at all. With Millie’s chaos and Ozy’s calm, the stage is set for most of the strip’s hijinks. Also frequently in the cast are various representations of school stereotypes- a nerd who spends all his time playing roleplaying games and believing that eventually he will make a lot of money with computers, a jock who bullies people because he can, and two characters that are both obsessed with being “cool” (a girl already in the in-crowd and a boy that desperately wants to be). The (single) parents of Ozy and Millie and the various adults at the school round out the cast. All of the characters are extremely distinctive both visually and philosophically.

The anthropomorphic nature of Ozy and Millie doesn’t come up all that often- occasionally it matters that the characters have tails or fur, and the dragons have a culture of attempting to control conspiracies, but otherwise the characters and just normal people. Well, where stereotypes and extremes can be considered normal. Millie’s chaotic and creative semi-insanity, while amusing, can only loosely be considered anything related to normal.

The early Ozy and Millie strips are often much more political than the current strips (and with much worse art, something that improves constantly). In Dec 2006, the author made the decision to separate his political commentary from his main strip, and so started the website I Drew This to host those rants and comics. The strip remains heavy with commentary regarding capitalism and politics in general, but specific complaints have been shifted to his other comic. Ozy and Millie has always had a lot to say about philosophy and politics, and most of the points are interesting to think about. One of the downsides of this is that it often takes a lot of text to set up the jokes, and often the jokes really aren’t all that funny, although they’re amusing. This is also why I’ve marked Ozy and Millie as a newspaper strip even though I don’t think it’s published anywhere- it has a consistent level of humor which is family safe and fairly broad. I would expect a lot of different people to enjoy Ozy and Millie, even if they don’t end up laughing loudly from it.

One of the things that Ozy and Millie does very well is point out the silly things that people treat as commonplace. Sayings that we’ve adopted into our language that don’t mean what they should, customs that have lost their roots, parenting and teaching methods, and everything related to corporate America. The strip manages to capture the spirit of both Ozy and Millie very well- the strip is often random, haphazardly covering different subjects, and then it will calmly sit and talk about something beautiful to ponder.

I’ve enjoyed Ozy and Millie for years, and it’s easily worth a read. Go give it a try.

Sheldon (first strip) (daily, gag-a-day, newspaper strip) is a fine example of a newspaper strip that I find entertaining. More interestingly, it was a webcomic that became a newspaper strip and still had the full archives online (and has since gone back to being an independent webcomic). Sheldon updates daily with extra-sized and color Sundays. Updating since November 30th, 2001 with sundays starting in 2004… that’s roughly 1950 strips in the archive.

Sheldon is the story of Sheldon, a ten year old boy, a computer geek who has managed to write a piece of software that speeds up the internet. He starts a company, goes public, and is now worth billions of dollars. He then downloads an encyclopedia into the brain of a duck, which gives it the power of speech. He lives with his grandpa, who is 65, retired, and quite a bit overweight. He has a friend, Dante. I’ve now covered the source of the vast majority of the strip’s humor. Like most newspaper strips, there are very few major changes. Storylines are fairly short and have no major plot to them, they just provide a setting for the punchlines. Other than other minor characters in the cast, pretty much everything is a riff on- Sheldon being rich, Sheldon being a geek, Sheldon being ten years old, Grandpa being fat, Grandpa being old, and the duck being not very good at being a duck.

But the setup and punchlines are great. Sheldon has great pacing on his setups. I often want to talk to Dave Kellett and see whether he’s this snappy of a speaker in real life (and what I vaguely remember of him from Comic-con 2003, he is). His characters all have the same pacing to their speech, but it’s the witty, rapid-fire joking speech that provides solid amusement. I’ve laughed several times while skimming through Sheldon’s archives to refresh my memory, and I have a few strips from the archives that I remember and keep in my head in the hope that I will eventually be able to pull out the punchlines on somebody.

I comment that much of the humor fits into particular categories, and while that’s true, those categories still leave a lot of leeway. Just the “Sheldon’s a ten-year-old geek” jokes alone cover much of what many geek comic strips will touch on. Most of these jokes are fairly general, but that means that you don’t need to have any obscure knowledge to enjoy the jokes. They’re still amusing.

The art’s well done for the strip. The characters have fairly cartoony expressions, as befitting the exaggerated expressions they need to pull off some of these punchlines. There are a few strips that are visual gags that depend on the art to sell the laugh, and they’re done quite well.

I suppose really the only gripe I have about Sheldon is that the background of the strip is generally irrelevant to what’s going on. The fact that Sheldon has a lot of money generally isn’t mentioned for weeks or months at a time, something that I’ve always wondered if it confuses new readers. Reading a Sheldon storyline is like listening to a stand-up comic. You know they’re telling a story, because clearly they are. You just can’t remember the story afterwards, even if you can remember the jokes that tied it together. It just wasn’t important.

Sheldon’s got some good laughs, and is worth a try. Go give it a read.

Evil, Inc. (first strip) (daily M-Sa, mostly gag-a-day, occasional adult situations, punny) is a strip that I’ve been wanting to review for a while now, but it never really seemed like a good time to review it. The strip has been mostly gag-a-day, but every once in a while drops into dramatic storylines like the one going on right now, and I didn’t want to get people started into a strip at a cliffhanger. Evil, Inc. started on May 30th, 2005 and has had no breaks in the M-Sa streak (This is the other strip that I’m rooting for in the Daily Grind), meaning that there’s about 700 strips in the archive.

Evil Inc. is set in a world where superheroes, supervillians, mutants, freaks, and aliens all exist and have existed long enough that the cliche matchups and organizations have settled into patterns. Hero fights villian, villian is thwarted, goes to jail, gets out, fights hero again. Until one day a villian (Evil Atom) decided to start a corporation to organize these villians, which would follow standard business and accounting practices. Which, in this sort of world, means that they manage to do a lot more evil because they’re doing it legally. There’s laws against robbing banks, but there’s little stopping them from organizing a hostile takeover. There’s laws against mugging, but not against credit card fees. And if at the same time Evil Atom can organize the supervillians, henchmen, lackeys, and all the other evil requirements for a nice tidy profit… all the better, right?

Evil, Inc. is a nice, witty strip that covers a lot of ground in an area that doesn’t get mocked thoroughly enough. The Incredibles and various other stories have done a fine job parodying superheroes having to live in a world, but Evil Inc. takes things past that and lampoons everything - superhero/villian genetics, child care, flirting, fame, costuming… nothing in the superhero genre is safe. There’s several regular characters, Lightning Lady, Miss Match, Captain Heroic… just enough characters to hit most of the main parody subjects but few enough to keep everybody straight. Sometimes the speech patterns of the characters run together a little bit, but they’re all distinctively drawn (and the art’s pretty good for B+W line art, too).

Evil, Inc. feels remarkably like a newspaper strip in pacing- and yes, it’s syndicated in several newspapers. I’m frequently surprised with the kind of innuendo and suggestive situations that go into the comic that can make it through the syndicates, but more power to him. Like most of the good newspaper strips, Evil, Inc. doesn’t often make me laugh hard, but I get a good set of chuckles out of the archives, and the humor’s pretty broad. There’s occasionally a pun punchline, but generally it’s part of a snappy comeback as well.

The part that I feel Evil, Inc disappoints in is during the dramatic storylines. There’s a good solid plot going through the strip, and while there’s gags for most of the bits, every once in a while the story requires a climax and the strip goes dramatic for a bit, and I generally find these bits to be a little slow. It looks like it’s just coming out of a dramatic arc now, so hopefully the funny will be coming back shortly.

Evil, Inc. is vaguely a sequel to Brad Guigar (the author)’s previous strip, Greystone Inn, a comic about the behind-the-scenes work to produce a comic, if such work required having a set and script and such. Mostly it’s a sequel in that the characters from Greystone still exist in Evil, Inc and occasionally have parts. Lightning Lady originated from Greystone, for instance, and some of the minor characters in Evil, Inc. were main characters in Greystone as well. You don’t need to know the strip to get any of Evil, Inc’s humor or story, however. There’s only a few scenes where they end up calling some of the bit characters in Greystone, and some backstory about Lightning Lady’s boyfriend.

Evil, Inc. is an engaging read, and a comic I suggest people try. It starts out strong and gives a good indication of what the comic is like for the rest of the run, so it’s very easy to figure out whether you’ll like this strip just by reading the first ten strips or so. Go give it a try.

Freefall (first strip) (MWF, gag-a-day) is the story of a science fiction crew in a rather silly world. Freefall balances silliness with competence remarkably well, and often manages to make fun of science fiction, the current world, and educate at the same time. Alien viewpoints will be examined and mocked, human viewpoints will be examined and mocked, robot viewpoints will be examined and mocked. There are currently 1457 strips in the archive.

Florence, a Bowman’s Wolf (anthropomorphic wolf genetically engineered to higher intelligence) is one of the main draws to the strip, as part of the plotline is that there’s very few Bowman’s Wolves, and so all of her interactions are with humans and robots. Having only a single character be anthropomorphic was fairly unique when I started reading the strip, and still is (other comic strips have low numbers of anthropomorphic creatures, but Freefall still has the highest example of low population and differing viewpoint). Florence is highly intelligent, logical, and kind, but also has a good chunk of wolf instincts that are played up for humor value. She generally ends up being the least silly of the group, and as the engineer, leads to the most educational dialog.

Sam Starfall, on the other hand, the alien captain, is lazy, deceitful, larcenous, a scavenger and a thief. Everything he does he does for his own personal gain, although often his idea of personal gain is twisted enough from the human norm that things don’t quite turn out as you might expect. He does not tend to follow logic… as strictly as Florence does, and thrives in a silly environment. Florence has decided that one of her major goals is to rehabilitate Sam to not break laws any more, while Sam has decided that one of his major goals is to corrupt Florence. There does not seem to be any rivalry in this- Florence is too nice and Sam doesn’t seem to be concerned with grudges. There’s an awful lot of being disappointed in each other, though.

Helix, Sam’s robot, also thrives in a silly environment and doesn’t tend to follow logic very strictly. He claims his area of expertise is to pick up heavy things, moving them, and putting them down. For readers, however, his area of expertise is asking questions about what is going on, being amazed at a rule of life that he hadn’t grasped before, following silly rules to their even sillier conclusion, and having a collection of stuffed animals.

I’ve mentioned a few times that Freefall teaches things, and that’s one of the things that I like about it. There’s no need to go into the strip knowing any information about engineering and physics, but there’ll often be little bits that are thrown in. Like recently, there’s been cameos of real or fictional robots in the backgrounds of the strips, and a footnote as to what that robot is. There’s a few quotes from people, including philosophy and politics. There’s discussion of engineering, nuclear physics, and other topics. None of these things detract from the humor, and much of the time adds to it. I greatly respect a strip that I don’t realize it’s teaching me things until I sit down to review it. There’s also occasionally references to current culture, such as the Gore/Bush election in 2000, but these are fairly rare, as it is a sci-fi strip and hard to fit in.

Freefall has a long plot and advances all the time, although the story seems to progress slowly (largely due to conversations being dragged out for additional gags). Due to this slow progress, the consistency of the humor level (above entertainment but usually below laughing-stage), I consider Freefall to be a “newspaper strip” style comic- the humor has wide appeal but no particular punch behind it, the comic’s family safe, and plot develops slowly. It’s certainly in the top list of those kinds of strips I know of, however.

There’s a lot of explanation over why all the characters are where they are, and a lot of development of all the characters as the interact with each other. The story combined with the dependable entertainment, the solid characters and the occasional interesting point to think or learn about makes Freefall a great comic. The art’s quite good, too, especially perfect for the silly-ish world they’re in.

You should go give Freefall a try.

Strip #4, 5, 6: Kevin and Kell (first strip, On the FastTrack, Safe Havens)

This one’s a special case because I’m reviewing Bill Holbrook more than I’m reviewing the strips individually. For those of you who are not aware of Bill Holbrook, Bill Holbrook writes and draws all three strips above. All three strips are daily, with double sized sundays. TWO of his strips are professionally in syndication and available in newspapers. As far as I can tell the only reason Kevin and Kell _isn’t_ is because he didn’t feel like it.

Yes. Bill Holbrook has so many syndicated comic strips, he has extras. He has never missed a day. Occasionally he does extras. He has a buffer of two months. He has been doing these three strips for over ten years (Kevin and Kell starts in 1995. A daily strip, fully available on the internet. Over 4000 strips. Think about that for a bit). Bill Holbrook is a machine.

Okay. Enough tooting Bill Holbrook’s horn. Let’s review the strips.

First, I want to point out that in webcomic land, “newspaper strip” is an insult. It refers to Garfield, or Cathy, or any number of comics that are on the “funny papers” through inertia. I do not share this opinion. I adore 9 Chickweed Lane, Foxtrot, Frazz, For Better Or For Worse (yes, I know. I think certain plots are creepy too. But that’s a whole other review) and many others. Admittedly I do dislike Cathy and Garfield, but I do not disparage newspaper strips as a whole because of them.

However, the category does have merit, since it does indicate to what quality a comic becomes… I suppose “bland” is the word. You can be edgy on the newspaper… but bland works too.

None of the three strips I’m reviewing in this review are as bland as Garfield or Cathy. They deliver new, interesting comics every day. But… they kind of blend together. There’s no great “laugh out loud” moments. They’re fun reads. I enjoy them. But I can’t remember a single great moment. They tend to borrow each other’s themes (all of them deal with cyberspace and computers a large amount), and all have the same pacing (as you might expect from the same writer, to be fair).

Safe Havens and On the FastTrack only have a month’s worth of archives online, due to them being in syndication. Both of them work in apparently real-time, with characters that age and graduate and whatnot. They also cross-over between each other occasionally (something you can do with relative ease when you’re writing and drawing both of them). Sadly, they’ve both got good long term plots going on, which makes the month of archives really just… not really get it. You really have to read it for a month or so to have the archives really gel together, which isn’t really going to happen unless somebody really likes Kevin and Kell or goes insane on a comic reading spree (I’m sure we don’t know anybody like that around here).

Kevin and Kell is where the real meat of this review belongs, though, as it’s entirely available on the net.

So. To refresh my memory I’ve done a quick scan through… oh, who am I kidding. I can’t scan through ten years of archives. I did look through the storylines of the first five years, though.

Kevin and Kell is a plot-based strip with occasional one-shots (the other two strips are too). Various plots come up again and again (Vin Vulpen, Rudy’s domestication, cross-species relationships, interactions between the wild and civilization…), and they’re generally tackling new problems each time. Some plots come up again and again and finally get resolved, and new plots come and take their place. Kevin and Kell starts out being a solid comedy strip with plotlines, and around 1998 (year three) starts going more and more for story instead of comedy. Websnark defines this style of evolution as the “Cerberus” effect, where a funny story goes for drama instead… but for Kevin and Kell it never really feels like that’s the case, since very few of the stories are really _dramatic_. They’re just… stories. Good, well told stories of a bunch of people. Occasionally funny, occasionally dramatic.

Mostly, good strong stories of interesting characters. Remember how I mentioned reading Sluggy because I wanted to see how the characters ended up? Imagine a Sluggy that doesn’t do ZCom tribute strips or Harry Potter parodies or random timeless space plotlines. A Sluggy that is not necessarily the Sluggy of the past, where it was spiffy, but a Sluggy of now, with the characters and backstory, and just lived. That’s what Kevin and Kell has. And has had for years. And nails, every single day.

It’s… comfortable. Which is again one of the insults people throw at newspaper strips, but most “newspaper strips” that get insulted don’t _change_. Cathy is always Cathy, Garfield is always Garfield. But Kevin and Kell is occasionally Lindesfarne or Rudy or Fiona or Candace… all while still being Kevin and Kell. The characters grow, they age, they graduate, they have children (well, two that I can remember). Bill Holbrook creates worlds. And then he lets us watch them change and grow.

If you need a comic to be funny, or dramatic, or exciting or new, these are not the strips for you. But if you like characters and plot that can grow and change over years and years of backstory… then give Kevin and Kell a shot.

Strip #3: PvP (First strip)

Okay, this is going to be a weird one, due to the very nature of the strip and the cartoonist.

We’ll start out with the basics that people need to understand before setting forth on the journey that is PvP. Scott Kurtz was one of the most widely disliked artists in the webcomic community. He’s arrogant, loud, has an ego the size of Montana, and enjoys creating humor by insulting his core audience.

PvP is a geek humor strip, about a group of characters that work at a game review magazine. It’s also quite good. Going through the archives gave me a few direct out-loud laughs, and considering the amount of comicry I’ve built up an immunity to, that’s fairly impressive. PvP’s also remarkably consistent- Kurtz bangs out a strip a day and every one of them’s good. He’s attempted to make the business decision of taking PvP to the newspapers, and is even letting newspapers run PvP for free as opposed to paying syndicates, on the assumption that what Kurtz will be making for is the merchandise that he will be selling. I don’t really know how well that’s working for him, but PvP is a strip I’d be happy to see in my newspapers. It’s clean enough that it could go newspaper without too many modifications, and it’s edgy enough that it’d actually be entertaining and provocative.

Kurtz occasionally uses his strip to derail his PvP plot and make real world jokes or references, and these are often the strips that he takes the most flak for. He’s directly insulted the Penny Arcade guys, for example, and that turned into a storm of epic netdom (which has since cooled down to friendship, amusingly enough). When he went after Keenspot for shoddy business decisions there was also a lot of chaos. See the part about arrogance and loudness. Apparently most of his rivalries have settled down into the “friendly rivalry” bit, but there’s always been a “Wow, Kurtz is an asshole.” sentiment floating around the webcomic community.

On the other hand, his writing is awesome. Take a look at any of Websnark’s analysis to see what I mean- Kurtz has woven various subtle threads into his strip that most people won’t even see them until you point them out. Comparison and contrasts between characters as archetypical beliefs, seeing a character only through the perceptions of others… all while being funny, consistently.

Worst thing I can say about PvP’s writing is Kurtz’s inclusion of so many running gags. Admittedly, he changes them up each time so they interact with the story differently so they keep you surprised each time you see them again, but there’s only so many panda attacks and spit takes and Skull guarding the door before it feels like they’re being used as placeholders. Still, he does twist them well.

Considering PvP’s geek humor, it’s not for everybody. If you don’t play video games or read any other webcomics, you might not get a lot of the references. However, when you’re pitching a webcomic to somebody you’re usually pitching it to somebody who’s played video games or reads webcomics, so this usually isn’t a problem. But it does make it a bad “intro” to geek culture.

Also, PvP is a grand example of one of the few successfully run comic businesses on the internet. As such, you’ve got to respect what he’s done, even if you don’t respect the person that’s done it.

Overall, PvP’s miles over Sluggy when it comes to quality, and still nails the consistency and quality. My personal style of humor leans more towards Something Positive and some of the other strips, so if I had to choose a select few I don’t think PvP would make the cut, but it’s still an excellent strip and is staying on my daily read list for the long foreseeable future.

To start things off, let’s do the obvious and the first on my list, and tackle the 800 pound gorilla:
Sluggy Freelance (will open in new window) First Strip

Sluggy Freelance may have been the first webcomic I got pointed at, I honestly can’t remember at this point. I do recall that my introduction was senior year of high school via Harvey Mudd College’s LookBook, which included the “They mailed me my grades on a postcard.” strip (”Would you like fries with that?”).

I remember visiting the San Diego Comic-Con and discussing “popularity” of comics. There was a fun bit about how the popular comics are not always the “good” comics and vice versa, but it was interesting to see how the demographics of each comic changed. Being a little curious to see what he’d answer, I asked Damonk (author of Framed!) what he’d suggest as a link to introduce the average person to webcomics as a genre. Without hesitation, he responded (paraphrased, this was four years ago), “Sluggy Freelance. It may not be the strip I like the best or the strip that would be the most appropriate for people with more specific humor styles, but for a person you don’t know anything more specific about, Sluggy Freelance.” I agreed with his assessment then.

Nowadays I’m less confident in Sluggy’s mass-appeal. Sluggy Freelance has very rarely made me laugh recently, and I find myself waiting through the storylines just to see what happens to the characters, not out of any particular interest of the storyline as it happens. Whole plot arcs have fallen “flat” for me. Ever since the “Punyverse” arc I’ve been more aware of Sluggy’s weaknesses, and every arc since has just emphasized those (with rare exceptions, of course). I read it now because of the history behind it and the sheer amount of time these characters have had to develop and grow, and every once in a while I smile at the strip. But it’s not a comic I expect somebody to pick up and be addicted to, it’s a comic I expect people to go to and read the archives of.

I think Sluggy starts out a little slow, as Pete gets into the rythm of having continuity and running gags and a full _style_. Once you hit the ‘98 archives, he’s going full steam and it’s really excellent- these are the strips that hold readers and lock them into loving the strip, and deservedly so. Game Called On Account of Naked Chick is wonderful, and just surreal enough to work in the sluggyverse. The Bug, The Witch, and the Robot is a beautiful shot into what websnark considers “Cerberus Syndrome”- dramatic storytelling with continual humor. There are a few strips within that storyline that just absolutely floored me- in particular the 010318 strip, where there’s something like six different “punch lines”, a dramatic climax to a story, and a bad ass robot firing a laser beam all in the same strip. Pete continues to nail the strip dead on until late 2001, with the Punyverse storyline. Even the Punyverse strips are very good- the Jedi spoof on “You will lie down and take a nap.” had me laughing. On an amusing note, the August 3rd strip showed at just the same time as a bunch of Keenspace/spot cartoonists decided to put in a in-joke in their comics and show a large CHOP sound effect somewhere in their strip. We assumed Pete’s version was completely coincidental, but it still made us feel spiffy.

My problem with Pete’s late 2001/early 2002 section is not the strip quality, but the storyline goals. It’s around this time that I started feeling like Pete was drawing his strip out of momentum. His storyline resolutions started using the “magic button” cop-outs more and more, he changed the look and feel of main characters drastically just to change them back again through a fake-out or brainwashing or just lazy storytelling, and a quick jump sampling shows a much higher percentage of “art days” in 2002. 2003 starts to show Pete actually accomodating his changed vision of the strip a bit more- he had Ian McDonald draw Saturday strips, leaving him extra time, and I believe started hiring staff to organize his strip’s real life backbone. In 2003 Pete pulls not one but two Harry Potter parodies, and several guest strip weeks, and the strip seems to have found a home for its quality level (decent but nothing to link people to) that it’ll keep up fairly consistently through to the present.

I actually started having hope that Sluggy was going to come back to the forces of awesome with the “That Which Redeems” storyline, which while it started weak, had a very nice dramatic conclusion (although started to lose the humor in places). That hope was dashed when Pete started to do Z-COM tribute strips for god only knows what reason. Hope rose again with Wayang Kulit… to be hit by Stick Figures in Space. Hope again with another Oasis plot… and a month-long christmas hiatus filler. and the realization that Sluggy isn’t even trying to be funny any more, and most of the time it’s not even trying to be dramatic.

So, yeah. Sluggy isn’t funny any more. I read it the same reason people read most newspaper strips- to see if there’s anything to pull you back in into liking it again. If I had to link a completely random person to a webcomic, I’d likely still choose Sluggy, as its blandness gives it the wider appeal (which is the same reason comic syndicates are still in business), but I’d suggest to them that they don’t expect it to stay amazing the whole way through the archives and to tell me what things they liked so I can point them to something more appropriate for their humor style.