Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum…

Ahoy, matey! In celebration of Talk Like A Pirate Day, I’ve come back to buckle me swash for one more time. Be there anything more noble than affecting a faux-Welsh accent for one day of the year? None, says I. Today, we be takin’ a look at Here There Be Robots, a webcomic hosted by Random Pirate Comics and created by two boys with the last name of Gregory. I suspect they be brothers, but ’tis a common name, so coincidence is not out of the question, savvy?

Right away, I smelled something fishy afoot, and for once it weren’t me stinky socks. Robots and pirates in the same comic? If me head weren’t spinning enough, it be twirling like a dervish when I learned that the main characters be two aliens named Oscar and Rob. Arrr, them Gregorys weren’t kiddin’ about being random, were they? But when ye stop to think about it, it isn’t so strange. No, matey, not strange at all. The last Pirates of the Caribbean featured an indecipherable fortune teller who turned out to be a Greek sea goddess made out of crabs. No, I not be lying to ye. And before that, thar be a man with a squid for a face whose heart be locked inside a treasure chest. Yarr. P’rhaps pirate stories just lend themselves natural-like to such oddities. Speaking for meself, matey, I’ve got a soft spot for quirky, off-beat tales… be it a comic about a doctor who is also a ninja or a 1940’s P.I. operating in a post-apocalyptic world filled with mutants.

Oscar’s a wide-eyed, idealistic diplomat who seems to have learned Earth culture from movies and trivia cards. Rob’s a large feller, built like an ox, and he’s more quiet and reserved … a finer first mate ye’ll never meet (though here there call him a security officer… whatever that be). The aliens be on a peaceful mission to Earth, but things change when they unwittingly crash land in a factory full of robots with murder in their hearts. After a series of startlin’ coincidences, they create something called a “wormhole” — though they be mighty large worms to form a hole of that size, says I. Earth be destroyed, and the aliens and robots be sucked in to the spacial anomaly. When they emerge on the other side, the lads find themselves sent back in time to the era where women were women and men wore frilly shirts and fancy hats.

The alien lads are quite keen on not disturbin’ anything in the past, lest they screw up the future. (Wouldn’t ya know it, it means that ye mustn’t step on butteflies … though displays of raw, property-destroying carnage are still fair game. Arrrr.) The robots, on the other hand, have quickly adapted to their surroundings — even creating their own crablike attack vehicle, wouldn’tcha know — and are running amok. Both sides soon don pirate finery to blend in with the locals. They’re all after the same thing: to find the flying saucer what brought them here.

The art be quite attractive, in that charming old-school way. The principal characters appear suitably harsh and angular, like they be spawned from the inkwells of Invader Zim’s Jhonen Vasquez and Dresden Codak’s Aaron Diaz. The pirate folk look rightfully grotesque. The overall grittiness reminds me of the old woodcuts ye’d see in Harper’s Weekly, with a touch of ye old 60’s-70’s underground comix design ethic thrown in for good measure. The action scenes are rendered with a strong use of perspective, somewhat of a rarity in webcomics these days. From time to time, however, this style be to the detriment. Some of the action scenes felt static, and other times it just be a chore to follow.

Here There Be Robots is not nearly as random as the Random Pirate Comics label seems to imply. Oh, don’t be mistaken, lads, there be plenty of moments that straddle the absurd. Sometimes they shiver me timbers in a good way, like the mighty Pandorca, a killer whale with big, beefy arms. Sometimes they deserve to be sent straight to Davy Jones’ locker, such as the breakdance fight that goes on for far too long. It did nothing to tickle me funnybone, and I spent most of me time thinkin’ the joke be more appropriate on Family Guy. And sometimes they be swimmin’ like bilge rats, like … well, to be honest with ye, I’m not quite sure what that aphorism means. Yarr! Overall, the string of nonsequiturs be not too distanced from the context of the story — certainly not random in the way I understand it, says I — and are not unnecessarily distracting at any point.

Also, truth be told, there hardly be any pirates in this comic! Oh, sure, yer dressing up aliens and robots in pirate garb. But the lads lack the unique personality that makes a buccaneer a buccaneer. If I dress up me couch pillow in an eye-patch and peg leg, does that make it a pirate? No, says I, though, admittedly, it be rather cute. The pirates in Here There Be Robots are background characters, and very few be important enough to factor into the story. Mostly, they be there for throwaway gags. However, I must say I was filled with glee to see that one of the key pirates was a bonny pirate lass. This alone puts Here There Be Robots heads above other pirate themed webcomics I’ve seen. YARR-HAR!

So here be the bottom line. I’m not willing to pay the four doubloons the Gregory boys ask for on the covers of Here There Be Robots. That be a tad pricey, says I. But after all’s said and done, I did enjoy their odd little story. The end of Book Three made me genuinely curious as to what seafaring adventures Oscar and Rob would get themselves into. Sometimes, that’s all this salty old seadog needs.

Now come along, lads and lasses! Join me in a pirate jig, for old time’s sake!

Legend grew about their daring, never did they walk the plank, they all shared one golden earring, and the truth is they all stank…

Rating:

Here There By Pirates
by Gregory & Gregory
http://randompiratecomics.net/webpages/robots.htm
Reviewed by Larry “The Pirate El Santo” Cruz

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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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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The alcohol-free era of the Eighteenth Amendment. Gangsters and speakeasies. Kitties. There is absolutely no way that the combination of the above could be anything but completely awesome. Heck, it may also be, in some respects, a cultural milestone, something that should be preserved behind Plexiglas at a museum for future generations to admire and imitate. Tracy J. Butler draws all these elements together with lush illustrations to boot in her critically beloved webcomic, Lackadaisy.

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Oh, Zuda, you poor misunderstood subsidiary of DC Comics, you. It seems like since Day One, you were on the receiving end of online haterade. But since the debut, I’ve sort of warmed up to you. I’m starting to like how the artwork seems far more polished and crisp in Flash. I like to expand the pages full-screen on my laptop, reveling in the glowing light of the full page spread like I’m reading a comic book … from the future! But let’s not pick out window curtains and matching shams just yet, Zuda Comics. I’m still not totally sold on your selection system, where a super-double-dog-secret process determines which creators get a year long contract based on their paltry first eight pages. It’s just so … gimmicky. My keen Shaolin blade will focus on two Zuda aspirants: Action, Ohio, written by Neil Kleid and illustrated by Paul Salvi, and Hannibal Goes To Rome, written by Brendan McGinley and illustrated by Mauro Vargas.

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Better late then never. The Moderator contacted me some time ago to try out this nifty “Comic Fencing” format, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t ready to contribute until now. But beware, webcomic creators! El Santo is coming with his Shaolin shadowboxing and his Wu-Tang sword style to engage in a little comic fencing brouhaha.

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