Andy Samberg once inspired a country to consume Red Vines and Mr. Pibb in celebration of Chronicles of Narnia. For today’s review of Aimee Chow and Matt Summers’ Tales of Pylea, you might want to go a little downscale: Sam’s Choice licorice and root beer, perhaps. Instead of a dreamworld of magic, Pylea brings us weak sissy fights, absurdly pointless scenes about eating eggs at a tavern, and the world’s least threatening demonic creatures.

You know it’s fantasy because of preponderance of pointy ears and the tongue-twister quality of the characters’ names: F’nor, Gobenhock, L’Shun, and a slew of others that sound like they were lifted wholesale from the Eye of Argon. (Coincidentally, not unlike Argon, this comic is best read in the company of two sassy robots.) Tales of Pylea is a little bit of a misnomer, since it only follows one tale, two at best. The B-story is a trite tale about a scantily clad female elf named Arianhod and her strict warrior training regimen, which — I kid you not — mostly consists of how long you can stay balanced on one hand.

In the main story, our hero, F’nor …

Crow: Isn’t that some sort of Hungarian dish that goes great with spatzle?
Tom: I’d really love to buy a vowel right now.

… is approached by a mystery woman who entrusts him with a relic. In a plot twist that in no way recalls The Lord of the Rings, the MacGuffin holds some sort of ancient power that the bad guys want to get a hold of. Then F’nor gets into a couple of gentle scrapes with aforementioned baddies. I admit I enjoyed these somewhat, but for my own reasons: I imagined the characters spitting out every line with the hyperkinetic inflection you’d find on Dragonball Z. Otherwise, the fight sequences are confusingly paced. I was genuinely caught off guard when one fight came to an abrupt end.

F’nor finds his contact, goes to sleep at the inn, eats tavern food, and finds out that his relic is a sword with a butt-ugly handle. And… that’s about it. Whew! How were Chow and Summers able to cram so much story in only four years? By the way, for a guy who’s supposed to be the story’s leading man, F’nor is as bland as a box of saltines. I’d say he was one-dimensional, but that may be giving him too much credit. There’s nothing much to define him beyond his pretty face, hair to die for, and a skin-tight outfit stolen from the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. His companions fare worse, and from time to time, I had a hard time telling them apart. (It’s hard to distinguish characters who have boring, lifeless hair.)

And then there’s the antagonist, the vampiric villain Uthnar, who, for some reason, looks like a mulleted Aquaman. I wager that he’s supposed to come off as frightening and menacing. Instead, he comes off as a huge tool. The guy yells every other word he speaks, even when he’s ordering drinks, of all things. He talks in hilariously clunky syntax, making empty threats straight out of a 1980’s Saturday morning cartoon. (Example: “We shall meet again, and next time, the relic, as well as your head, will be mine!”) In what may be the goofiest mannerism of all, he walks around without a shirt. Why? Perhaps his vampiric state requires a greater degree of heat transfer than normal humans, but personally I think he just wants to totally show off his fabulous rock-hard six pack.

It seems strange, though, that Uthnar spends most of the story trying to find out people’s names. (Again, I kid you not.) I guess villainy isn’t all about fun things like looting and pillaging; there a less thrilling, bureaucratic side that the movies never show. Bonus dialogue: “Take the name to the Witchkin, I want ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about this name DIVINED, I want to know WHO he is, WHERE he’s from, EVERYTHING.” Naturally, I enjoyed reading about “The Adventures of Uthnar” more than anything else in Pylea. He’s so campy, pro wrestlers would take this guy aside and ask him to tone it down a notch. But, you know, that’s also like saying I enjoy acne more than I enjoy cholera.

The art is fine, but nothing spectacular. It’s a manga house style that’s indistinguishable from other wannabe manga artists. (Compare that to anything done by webcomic contemporary Remy Mokhtar.) I think Chow and Summers were aiming to tell an action packed fantasy story that’s easily accessible. A sort of Lord of the Rings with all of the trappings but none of the encyclopedic backstory, if you will. But you know, there’s fun and light-hearted, and then there’s cheesy and empty — the webcomic version of a Sci-fi Network Original Series. I’ll let you guess which category Pylea falls in.

Rating:

Tales of Pylea
by Aimee Chow and Matt Summers
http://talesofpylea.com/
review by Larry Cruz

(4 votes, average: 1 out of 5)

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