Arthur, King of Time and Space
Arthur, King of Time and Space (main site) (first strip) (punny, daily, gag-a-day) is a beast of a comic to review. Not because it’s gone daily since 5/21/04 (1169 strips as of this writing), because other strips have gone longer. Not because it has a heavy pun content or requires knowledge of history or various mythologies to get all the references or has multiple running arcs at once, since we’ve had those before.
AKoTaS is difficult to review because it’s a shotgun comic. It’s all over the place.
AKoTaS is the retelling of the Arthurian legend. If for some strange reason you consider items from the Arthurian legends to be spoilers, skip this review and the comic (and seriously, go read the legends if you feel that way). I won’t be spoiling the comic, but I will be referencing the legends. The special part about this comic is that the Arthurian legend is told from the point of view of various different points in time. The storytelling jumps back and forth between these time arcs as appropriate, and does so often. There’s three main arcs- the fantasy arc, which is the most “traditional” telling of the legends, the contemporary arc, where the characters are set in modern times (instead of knights, they’re in high school), and the science fiction arc, which is set in the future where the head starship is the Excalibur. There’s also multiple other minor arcs, such as the superhero arc, the MASH tribute/parody arc, the generic movie parody arc, the western arc, and probably many others. Each arc handles the continuity that’s current (so the first year of Arthur’s reign in the space arc is still the first year of Arthur’s reign in the western arc, if the comic changes arcs at that point), but each handles it in its own way.
So the first thing a reader’s going to have to get past is the fact that the continuity that they’re currently reading in will occasionally have twists in the storytelling that the others don’t. Main points tend to stay the same, but ordering will often flipflop, often causing issues with timelines. For instance, in the contemporary arc, Arthur and Guenevere don’t get together until much later in the timeline, because in the contemporary culture marriage often is delayed a bit due to schooling and whatnot. The characters generally dress in specific colors to help with identification, due to various physical differences in different arcs (Arthur has different facial hair in each, for instance). To make things worse, the story occasionally makes flashbacks or flashforwards to tell the story correctly or make proper jokes. Combining continuity time travel with actual time travel and arc time travel… it’s often difficult to keep track of the comic. I generally accomplish it by not trying to distinguish between the bits and taking the story as it comes, but if you’re a continuity nazi, you will likely not enjoy yourself.
Here’s the real impressive part- Paul Gadzikowski, the author, is intending to retell the Arthurian Legend… in real time. Which means that he’s got twenty five years of story planned out, one strip a day. So there’s a wide gap in drama- there’s often pitched battles and wars and backstabbings and close calls, because those are in there. But there’s often quiet advancement of characters and jokes and kidding around, because life’s like that.
Now, I mentioned needing to know history. Amusingly, most of the needed history isn’t Arthurian- the standard “I’ve watched a few movies about the subject.” will get you through, as generally new bits are explained by the characters (having an omniscient wizard helps). There are, however, references to Oedipus, Hercules, Socrates, Plato, and various other historical figures. You generally don’t need to know the references to get the fact that the puns are referencing them, luckily. And yes, there are many puns. Worse, they’re very well done.
There’s also often webcomic references- within the contemporary arc, there’s references to Megatokyo, Real Life, PvP, and Dinosaur Comics, at the very least. There’s references to hurricane Katrina, gas prices, various Bushisms, and many other current topics. There’s also often references to the 1970s, as the “Merlin” of the present talks about his past. From references in the strip, I get the impression that Paul works in a school as his day job and is comfortable with his age, and enjoys making references to some of that wisdom (and he does it wonderfully).
AKoTaS contains quite a few strips that the humor falls flat for me. But there are also a few strips that even having read them for the third time, I laughed long and hard. That rarely happens nowadays, and AKoTaS has several of them. Due to the fact that he’s retelling a legend and generally including all the necessary information, often AKoTaS is fairly wordy, although there’s been a few silent comics and everything in between. The drama arcs always feel half-spoiled since I’ve actually read much of the mythology he’s drawing from, although there’s often twists in the individual arcs that I couldn’t've predicted. This is what I mean by a shotgun comic- he’s got something hitting every part of the storytelling spectrum. People who want consistency will probably not find it here, but if you enjoy occasional perfection, it’s in there.
An AKoTaS review would not be complete without mentioning the Daily Grind. Way back in March of 2005, a whole bunch of cartoonists put $20 each into a pot and the last person to miss a daily update wins the pot. Paul’s still in it (and is one of the two people I’m rooting for, out of the people that are left). Go Paul!
AKoTaS is done in MS Paint (as a point of pride, I think), and occasionally has only shapes for characters if he’s feeling a little burned out. The art isn’t much to write home about, although the expressions of the characters are generally very communicative. There’s always a strip, too. And quite often there’s footnotes, although you generally have to scroll down past the navigation bar for that, so it’ll often get missed, and the footnotes are generally for explanation, not humor (although due to the rules of the Daily Grind, the footnotes are occasionally used to have a “second panel”, so you can get two comics for the price of one). Also, for the longest time (and possibly still), Paul updates his site by hand-coding the HTML. That’s hardcore.
I keep thinking I’m making it sound like I’m trying to chase people off, but AKoTaS is an excellently done comic. I just don’t think people should be reading epics without the proper warning.
So, you’ve been warned. Go read the epic. It’s good.
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