Brian Roney’s webcomic reviews

As has been pretty obvious the last few weeks, I clearly don’t have the time to devote to this site that I would’ve hoped I would. Between my sister getting married, various crunch times at work, and looking for interviews for new work because my contract’s running up, I’m swamped.

I still have reviews I want to write, and I hope I will get to them, but this site’s update schedule is hereby “sporadic”. The archives are still going to stay up (as long as I can convince my friend to continue hosting them), so feel free to click through and find some comics you might enjoy. I’m going to put on a bit more draconic comment posting restrictions to chase off some of the spammers that have caught on to the blog’s existence, unfortunately, but please feel free to comment, it just might be a little while until it’s visible on the site.

Sorry to all my readers. Life wins again.

Kagerou (first comic) (nudity, violence, insanity, more insanity, also insanity) is a long story-based, usually weekly (no set update schedule that I can see), color full-page webcomic that takes an unapologetically completely insane main character, shoves them into a fantasy world and demands that he go be a hero. Many people have an image of insanity as either psychopathic killers or raving lunatics, but most insanity is much more subtle than that- it’s some strange way of looking at (or existing in) the world that everybody else doesn’t agree with. Often people who are insane can find a sort of logic within their own worldview or limitations, even if it doesn’t make sense to others. Kagerou is a comic that handles that version of insanity extremely well. There’s 724 pages in the archive.

One of the recurring side comments in Kagerou is Kano (the main character)’s persistent belief that this is all part of the worst lucid dream ever. The other personalities within Kano’s head all seem to take the fantasy world in stride and even fit in better than they did in the real world (shown in flashbacks), but Kano himself has stuck himself with the delusion that he’s actually normal, and all this chaos and magic and such is just hallucinations again. He doesn’t refuse to play along- he’ll play along with the rules until he wakes up, but he doesn’t really believe. It’s a delicate tightrope to walk, that delusion of normality while being functional in an insane world, and Kagerou does a merry little jig along it. As the other characters in the world catch on to Kano’s blindness about his own problems, you can see them do the little mental arithmetic that arrives at the “… I don’t think I want to be the person to break this dam open. I’ll let somebody else do it.” moment.

A decent amount of Kagerou takes place in Kano’s head, and a good amount of Kagerou’s character development is affected by Kano’s personalities and their rules inside his mindscape. A lot of these rules don’t get discussed in the comic, just as a lot of the rules of the fantasy world don’t get covered (or covered late), so often moments will be a little confusing as it’s not entirely clear what’s supposed to work how, and who actually knows what they’re doing as opposed to getting lucky. A lot of this just reinforces the concept of the comic, however. If you can enjoy a little bit of creative insanity, or have completely wild and nonsensical dreams and enjoy them that way, Kagerou is an amazingly written comic.

Kagerou starts off a little choppy artistically- some of the panel layouts aren’t entirely intuitive, and the coloring of text for different characters isn’t entirely obvious quite yet. This improves a great deal over the course of the comic, though, to the point where current Kagerou pages are among my favorite artistically. Eventually (by chapter six or so) the writing and art settles down such that Kano’s different personalities are quite distinct by text color, attitude, and body language, although there’s a few moments of Kano getting angry where the text color shifts but does not present an entirely different personality (I’m pretty sure this will get covered in a future subplot/flashback… eventually…). Some of the other characters are also a little confusing - the Teaolin/Tonbo/Fuuka grouping in particular was a little hard to grasp the relationships between, although a lot of that is trying to keep track of the fantasy world’s rules.

Kagerou’s website also has the most entertaining 404 page I’ve ever seen (visible from a link from the main page, or clicking “next” past the last comic available in the archive). It changes every once in a while, and adds a nice bit of surreality and insanity to the internet.

A note on navigating through Kagerou- each page can just be clicked on to go to the next, but the chapter cover pages require scrolling down and clicking on the “1″ page for that chapter.

Kagerou’s an amazing comic, and despite its erratic update schedule, a comic I find myself drawn to read and remember. If you’re interested in a story of insanity, you should give Kagerou a read.

I’m not dead, but my life has been eating all my spare time recently. It figures that right when I figure out which comics I want to review next and how I want to do it, that I don’t have the time to be able to do it.

I should probably point out the RSS feed for the site - http://brianroney.com/?feed=rss2 so people can add that to Google Reader or some other RSS reader and be able to see when I update next without having to check the site all the time.

I should be able to post this weekend if not earlier. Sorry for the delay.

(Due to several host computer crashes this didn’t get posted earlier this week like I attempted. Also, my computers are also acting up- in particular input is being flaky. So there’s a chance that this site may go on long blackout while I go attempt to have computers repaired.)

Shortpacked! (first strip) (mostly gag-a-day, daily M-F) is a comedy strip about a toy store taken way too seriously. The megalomaniac manager, the toy-collecting obsessed worker, the really creepy guy who doesn’t take a hint, and a guy who’s obsessed with ninjas all man the store, and entertain the audience by playing off of their (and other character’s) quirks. Most updates are a full color page, and there’s 539 pages in the archive. There’s several chunks of filler sketches, although most of them have some humor in them as well.

Shortpacked! is a comedy strip that has slowly added drama elements, occasionally to the point of excessiveness. It has a few characters that were carried over from David Willis’s previous strip, It’s Walky. It’s Walky was a comedy strip that slowly added drama elements to the point of excessiveness. It had a few characters that were carried over from David Willis’s previous strip, Roomies. Roomies was a comedy strip that slowly added drama elements to the point of excessiveness.

I would imagine people have sensed the recurring theme there.

David Willis is a bit legendary in the webcomic world for just that sort of thing, actually. He’s been doing this for ten years, and he’s done quality strips all through that time. His comedy is spot on, his characters are real and interesting, and the interactions between characters provide interesting advancement of plot while being smart and funny.

… and then he turns on the drama.

Now, the drama doesn’t seem forced. He writes it well. The characters are fleshed out enough and interact well together, so the drama works smoothly with the world that he’s created. The thing is, when he writes drama… he writes lots and lots of drama. Soap Opera, the comic strip? Here you go.

Okay. I think I’ve hammered the point enough. I’m going to go over the good points. I laugh out loud at his strips frequently. The comedy and characters are both extremely solid. He’s perfected the niche comic/cartoon/toy parodies, making fun of the ludicrousness of both the companies making them and the people obsessing over them both with casual ease. He makes the most serious of subjects funny, and they’re even more magnificent due to the contrast.

Unfortunately for readers who are jumping into Shortpacked! straight, the characters that have been carried over from It’s Walky have not been explained at all. So, to catch the reader up on things- Robin has sugar-fueled superspeed. Mike worked with her in government work to repel aliens. I _think_ that’s all that’s necessary to understand the main points. You could read through Roomies and It’s Walky to get the full backstory, but that’s ten years of daily comics, several years of worth are pure drama and not much funny. I’d do it, but then, I’m the kind of person that writes a comic review blog. Not advised for the casual reader.

I really enjoy Shortpacked!, especially the one shot comics where he just picks a current comic or toy or cartoon and does a strip in that continuity. David knows that not everybody enjoys the drama for his cartoons, and that people enjoy the one-shot gags. He has a character specifically designed to make fun of the fact that his strip is heading towards drama, for goodness sake. But you’ve got to write what you’ve got to write, and Shortpacked! slowly gets more and more drama-based, and I slowly get sadder.

The beginning is wonderful, though.

You should try Shortpacked! If you get through to the current strip and you still love it, try out Roomies. If you get lucky, there’s ten years of archives for you to enjoy. Give it a try.