The Pensive Citadel » Comics

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It — With Rhinos

gypsycat — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:49:35 +0000

Aaron Neathery of Austin, Texas, has created a wry and brilliant webcomic, Endtown, about what happens after the apocalypse. This is not your standard Mad Max scenario: the ‘good guys’ live in an underground suburb called Endtown, where they live on whatever canned food (mostly beans) they can scrounge from the shattered cities on the surface. Mutagens in the atmosphere have turned the majority of them into animals, making Endtown a fun mashup of Looney Tunes and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Neathery riffs on such cartoonists as Chuck Jones and Walt Disney, populating his underworld with bureaucratic rats, drunken bears, and a corrupt mad scientist, Professor Mallard, who, if it were not for his foul mouth, would not be out of place on Duck Tales. Al, the main character, is human, but his wife, Gustine, has become a rhino – and, as Al discovers, sometimes it’s useful being married to a one-ton animal with the ability to smash through doors.

(Click to enlarge:)

The plot starts taking off when Gustine consults an oracle and discovers a way she can become human again, and she and Al travel to the Topside to find it. There, they run into mutant monsters, purification squads, and a host of even stranger threats. Almost every strip ends with a twist, keeping the suspense high. Neathery’s signature wit underlies it all, keeping things from getting too dark or too portentous.

A talented artist with a confident line and a fine command of perspective, Neathery makes Endtown a treat for the eyes. Just check out this beautiful landscape and the crosshatching on these rhinos:

Fun, fast-paced, original, and tongue-in-cheek without ever getting pretentious, Endtown is one of the better webcomics out there. Be sure to check it out.

(Plus, there’s the occasional Star Trek joke):

Elizabeth Bennet Is My Wonder Woman

gypsycat — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:35:07 +0000

Pride and Prejudice and comic books seem to belong to two separate universes: one’s high tea with scones and clotted cream, the other’s hot buttered popcorn; one’s a hike through the Cotswolds, while the other’s a snowboard ride down a slope with plenty of moguls. But now, the two worlds have collided: There’s a P&P comic book, and geek girls everywhere can rejoice.

In this odd mashup, the Austen genes prove dominant. It’s definitely more of an illustrated P&P than an action-packed spectacle. Writer Nancy Butler faithfully adapts Austen’s words, and takes most of her dialogue verbatim from the novel. Readers looking for something more along the lines of the X-men may find it stodgy, but Austen fans will heartily approve.

The character design follows the 2005 version of the film: Lizzie bears a distinct resemblance to Keira Knightley, Jane to Rosamund Pike, and Darcy to Matthew Macfadyen (yawn), not Colin Firth. Wickham even sports a long blonde ponytail like he does in that movie. I would have liked to have seen more originality in the look of the characters.

The artist, Hugo Petrus, is skilled at capturing subtle facial expressions: anger, contempt, regret, and awakening love shine in his Lizzie and Darcy’s eyes. He’s also good at drapery, delicately hinting at the forms beneath those flowing Empire-waisted gowns. Parts of his characters are sometimes out of proportion, though: their arms can look distractingly emaciated and their hands too small.

The palette of the comic is lovely, all faded Venetian golds and yellow-greens and burgundies.

The covers are also fun: the first three of them are parodies of fashion magazines bearing such headlines as “Bingleys Bring Bling to Britain,” “Army Boys: 34 Reasons We Love Them (Other Than the Uniform),” and “Spring’s Randiest Ribbons.”

Also amusing are advertisers’ attempts to reach the P&P-goes-Marvel audience. Somehow I doubt that Janeites are going to become potheads or join the Navy (though we do like our cute cars, and the single gals will be glad the comic’s Got Hugh). But the worst ads have to be the ones that will convince women to stay far, far away from any comic book that doesn’t feature Mr. Bingley and the Bennet clan: I’m talking about the ones featuring “heroines” with boobs the size of their heads. Most offensive are the Marvel Divas, whose skintight uniforms suggest they were designed for (and possibly by) hormonal 13-year-old boys. The description on the Marvel site for this series reads:

The Marvel Divas. They'd fight crime, if they weren't so busy posing.

“What happens when you take four of the Marvel Universe’s most fabulous single girls and throw them together, adding liberal amounts of suds and drama? You get the sassiest, sexiest, soapiest series to come out of the House of Ideas since Millie the Model! Romance, action, ex-boyfriends, and a last page that changes everything! Let your inner divas out with this one, fellas, you won’t regret it! Parental Advisory.” Suds and drama? Oooh, maybe they’ll get into a pillow fight!

Blech. I’ll stick with P&P, where “sexy” means a romance between a smart, witty woman and a tormented lord in tight breeches, and not four pouting minxes in latex.

This Web Comic Has It All: Swords, Sorcery, Snark, and . . . Lemurs?

gypsycat — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:05:18 +0000

Cross your favorite Saturday-morning cartoon (but with better art) with The Princess Bride, add a kickass Rubenesque redhead and a talking lemur named Lloid, stir well, and you’ll get Adam Prosser’s Lemuria, a fun satire on the swords-and-sorcery genre. The comic features Sorcera, a somewhat ditzy student of magic at a girl’s school, and Swordi (“I’m a silly person,” Prosser says in regards to his characters’ names), the aforementioned redhead. Easily the best thing about this comic, “Dee,” as she is nicknamed, is a wandering adventurer with a quick wit and an appetite for violence. Prosser has chosen to make Dee a plus-sized woman who’s not a token or a joke—a rarity in pop culture of any medium, but all the more so in comics, where the women usually have stilts for legs and breasts the size of watermelons. But even if she resembled, say, Wonder Woman or Aeon Flux, it’s hard not to like a character who describes her ‘average day’ by saying: “I break into a temple, swipe a bunch of valuables, set the place on fire, and then sell your holy artifacts for booze . . . Everybody wins!”

Prosser’s drawing style is clear, colorful, and pleasing to the eye, and his plots are fast-paced and always funny. The first plotline involves sadistic nuns, virgin sacrifice, a demon god in need of some counseling, and a dungeon reminiscent of the original Super Mario Brothers. Oh, and did I mention there are lemurs?