My initial read was a little confusing. There were odd names, people dressed in furs and mecha all in one big bucket. It evened out for me when I made the connection to Norse mythology. If you aren’t familiar with it, the basic story is that people fight giants but they all die in the end. It’s very tragic. Usually the people are good and the giants bad but this is switched in Edenworld and the story is told from the giant’s perspective.

The Norns are the people at war with the giants, otherwise known as the Jotun. They dress in furry viking style and are armed with hand weapons that have high tech built in. In the first chapter, there seems to be a knife that is able to easily cut into one of the Jotun’s armor and even burns a bit. Mostly, I saw spears but they had all kinds of tech tricks to draw upon.

The Jotun are long lived giant mechs complete with their own high tech gizmos. They look to be at least twenty feet tall and they seem to be mostly machine. In true Viking style, the Jotun raid the Norns for their supplies, including much needed fine metal ores not available anywhere else. The Jotun have tried to avoid injuring the Norn and they’ve tried to sneak around to (more or less) keep the fragile peace.

The story starts off with a Jotun raid and continues with a rescue operation. We see both sides trying to pick up the pieces. The Norns hatch a daring sort of raid of their own and it mostly succeeds, putting the Jotun in a bad place. Then a new sinister threat to both the Norns and Jotun emerges and there is great personal cost to pay by the time you read up to the present.

The art is top notch with great character (and creature) design. It looks like pencil with photoshop tones all used to good effect. In particular, the tones are used to direct your eye toward and highlight the most important part of each panel. The viewing angles and layouts have nice variety. An interesting choice was having very thin gutters.

I also dug the little details and well drawn bits even though some of the lines can be faint or carry a slight sketch look to them. The city downshots really have the sci-fi vibe and the pencils carry just the right amount of detail. Here’s an example of not too much detail. It took me a second to figure out what the object is and it adds something very meaningful to the story. You’ll need to read the story to fully grasp the significance, sorry.

While the action scenes during the spring 2008 run were hard to follow and some of the word balloon placements were a little distracting, I would still have given Edenworld five stars. However, it was difficult to understand what was going on in the comic (in general) without reading every scrap of information on the website and it had the occasional curse word. Aside from these nitpicks, I give Edenworld four stars.Rating:

Edenworld Saga
http://www.edenworldsaga.com
art and story by Chris Crontiris
edited by Jason Lanum
review by Delos
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Note: Being that this is my last review for Comic Fencing, I just wanted to say thanks for reading.

“The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster.” -Adam Smith

Rating:

This week’s review is Edenworld Saga by Chris Crontiris, and edited by Jason Lanum. What’s a webcomic doing with an editor? I dunno. I suspect that in this case he helps with grammar and such. That’s a guess - I looked around on the site and couldn’t find any bios on the creative team. I’m very interested to know more about these people. Why am I interested? Because this thing rocks.

I have to mention something up front; I love giant robots. A lot. But just because I like the robots doesn’t mean Edenworld gets a free pass. Quite the contrary. There’s nothing that bugs me quite the same way as a badly done mecha story, simply because I want them to be good, and if they fall short of the mark I am more disappointed than I would normally be.

But gladly, this is not the case with Edenworld Saga. I was not disappointed - I was thrilled. The designs are brilliant, and the artwork is outstanding. The story is rich and detailed. Is this in print? The quality is there. If it’s not in print yet, someone should give these guys a call. It would be right at home next to any manga book out there.

I don’t claim to be a manga expert or anything. I own a lot of stuff by Masamune Shirow, some Miyazaki and I have a few of the Battle Angel Alita books. I tend to avoid manga online because the stories are usually very slow-paced with long story arcs and involved characters and relationships - not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s a big investment of time. I don’t want to try and get my head around a bunch of convoluted backstory and whatnot only to find out that I don’t like where the story is going for whatever reason. So I was a bit hesitant when I took my first look at Edenworld. It looks a bit Voltron to me, a bit Transformers, a bit Gundam. So it could have gone either way. There’s lots of people out there that are inspired by these properties, and not all of them are up to the task. I was not overly happy with some of the Transformers comics that have come out over the years. But I digress.

The backstory of this epic (and it is an epic, in the manga tradition) is modeled on Norse mythology. People familiar with terms like Yggdrasil, Norns and Jotun will recognize the hierarchy Crontiris has set up in this world. The robots are sentient creatures, who live in a state of animosity with their human neighbors as well as terrible dragons who wreak havoc on their settlement of Jotunheim. This is a world that seems like a fantasy world, but the magic and miracles have an underlying logic of highly advanced science. I could go into detail about this world, but it would make for a very long review. Suffice it to say that it feels very well thought-out, and as far as I’ve read, it doesn’t break its own rules (which is the cardinal sin of fantasy writing).

The backstory and plot don’t dominate the script. It’s all about the characters. These robots have familial bonds. There is a love story between Lyron (one of the gigantic Jotun) and Panchun (a human) which is very interesting to watch play out, since they are so different from each other. Some of the Jotun are brothers, and the fierce scrapper Beowulf is very protective of his little brother Ennesix. These robots have very distinct personalities, which is the key that allows the reader to be drawn in to the drama.

The only reason I gave Edenworld 4.5 stars instead of 5 was the art. While it is beautifully designed, the linework and shading is often a bit vague, leaving many panels a bit indistinct and difficult to interpret. I got the sense that the artist would like to eventually colour the art, but the story is shortchanged in the meantime. Stronger linework to clarify characters from backgrounds and denser shading would really help make this work in black and white.

So to sum up, I know manga isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like Robotech or Gundam or Voltron or Appleseed or Nausicaa, then you won’t like Edenworld Saga either. It is definitely is in the same league.

‘Edenworld Saga’
by Chris Crontiris
reviewed by Crackwalker
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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There are a lot of comics with talking animals. This one takes the idea one step further. Picture today’s world, except that humans left the planet and the animals have taken advantage of our absence. One of the crucial things to know is that the natural predator and prey relationship still exists

Kevin is the six foot tall rabbit and Kell is his wife, a wolf. No, not everyone approves of this taboo marriage but they make it work. And there are a number of other immediate characters including a rabbit-wolf hybrid, a wolf boy and the hedgehog who was raised as a porcupine. You’ll be tickled to know that these are just Kevin and Kell’s children. There are also clones, wolves in sheep’s clothing and even some who have gone through “predator to prey reassignment surgery.” You’ll excuse me if I don’t go into specifics due to the sheer amount of history and interaction these characters have had. Invariably, I would have missed something that should have been metioned and I doubt I could condense the well written About page down to anything less. For those who might enjoy background information about the comic and how it is made, you can also read the unofficial faq.

What I will tell you is that there is a nice mix of topics including family strife, daily living and societal mores. I found all of it well done and interesting to follow. It’s all done in bite sized chunks so despite there being a large archive it was fun to read. I was pretty impatient waiting for each comic to load up, actually.

I am especially fond of comics that follow their own world-rules to their logical conclusions. If, for example, we were divided into predator and prey groups: we would have social rules about who is considered food and what they can do about it. You might expect this to have an obvious solution but it is not quite as simple as that. Interestingly, they all feel it’s cheating to use weapons like guns - that’s why they have fangs or camoflage ability, after all. But then that leads to how society defines crimes like murder? Is a wolf eating deer murder? Sometimes when we switch out the details of real life with other elements we find that our personal views on things need further examination. I find that sort of thing interesting.

But I digress from the overall lighthearted tone of Kevin & Kell. Most strips revolve around the different approaches that animals would take as opposed to humans. If everything in the garden is edible, then the weeds could be likened to snacks or special treats. Then there is also the (unofficially titled) Great Bird Conspiracy, Carnivore University, the Herd Thinning corporation and other animal-twists that I found very amusing as well.

The art has great lines with very dynamic qualities. You really get the sense of movement when a character jumps or drops something. Even the little carnivorous bunny always seems to be chewing on a bone, not just holding it in her mouth. The color adds a lot of visual and emotional depth to the comic as well.

Overall, Kevin & Kell is a well done and very entertaining.

Rating:

Kevin & Kell
http://www.kevinandkell.com
by Bill Holbrook
review by Delos
(No Ratings Yet)

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I’ve been presented with something of a unique opportunity here at Comic Fencing. After reviewing a long string of smaller, newer online comics, I’ve been asked to review one which is culturally significant to the online comic format. Oh-ho. I know I’m supposed to review the comic, but no one said I couldn’t include a commentary on webcomics as a medium, right? (Doesn’t ask Delos about it.)

8-Bit Theatre launched in March of 2001. I started reading in September of 2001. It was my first year of college, and those were the good old days when RPG World was at it’s peak; Inverloch was young, fresh, and exciting, and not yet bogged down with the stereotypical characters that later joined the cast; and TimeScapes actually existed. 8-bit’s popularity had suddenly and randomly taken off; I’m not sure how. Sprite comics were not exactly a new thing anymore, but to many, I suppose the idea still seemed fresh and original because thousands more would be added to the hundred that already existed at the time. (No, I will not try to get exact figures on any of that. This is completely from memory and I don’t need to feel any older.)

8-Bit Theatre, mostly by Brian Clevinger, started out as a side-project for funsies. He took the sprites from the original Final Fantasy and set out to make a comic spoofing old 8-bit games. Sure, the art would just be lame and copy paste and the whole thing would have to rely on his witty writing, but he was a witty writer and could make funny jokes, right? So no problem. At some point (about strip 20), he must have realized that this would make his comic absolutely no different from just about every other crappy sprite comic out there. So, fortunately for the known world, he changed his game-plan.

First of all, instead of spoofing 8-bit games, the comic shifted to be about the characters. Completely tongue-in-cheek characters at that. He stuck with the initial setting and story (the first Final Fantasy) but now the tone moved to mock not early video games, but pretty much anything Clevinger liked. Read that: 80s and 90s geek culture. Now, there are strengths and weaknesses to this gimmick. The strengths being that this is the 2000s and geeks from the 80s and 90s have moved on and would happily use a chuckle over their old obsessions. The weakness is that this is not only a highly specific core audience, but a dated one - the comic is unlikely to appeal to younger readers. Fortunately for Clevinger, almost every nerd who played video games, Dungeons & Dragons, and read the Amazing Spiderman in the 80s and 90s now has a computer and uses the internet. And has probably read his comic.

Even more fortunately for Clevinger, 8-Bit does have appeal beyond that. And that’s because, darnit, he is a witty writer. A dry sense of pacing, a high-style sense of wording, combined with a willingness to not only touch but cuddle with the lowest subjects make his voice pretty unique.

The premise is fairly clever. The world is that of Final Fantasy, and the characters are the player classes from Final Fantasy, and several supporting characters (Sara, Garland, Bikke, Sarda, Bahamut) are straight from the game, but with added personality. Final Fantasy is probably the oldest, driest, most washed-up unidimensional game in which you make a party of “heroes” and follow a series of quests in which you are destined to save the world from some form of doom. Notably, it was also the very first of such games to use the party format. The very first of the story RPGs. I guess we should cut it some slack. 8-bit adds a twist to the un-likely hero story. The four Light Warriors for this version of the classic game are the least qualified or inclined people on the planet to save the planet. They are the most pathetic, horrible, unidimensional characters you will ever come to love. And they are:

Fighter: Loves swords, whether hitting things with them or otherwise. Has the intellectual capacity and ideals of a kindergartener.

Black Mage: Loves wanton destruction, the more evil the better. Is fortunately not very good at it. Thinks he’s smarter than the other characters and therefore thinks they’re not on to his constant plots to betray and murder them in horrible ways.

Thief: The kleptomaniacal elvin prince who supposedly can collect royalties on the use of fine print. While his schemes to collect wealth are usually no less bizarre than the other characters’ plans for anything, they generally tend to work. He’s the only Light Warrior who has any semblance of intelligence, and he has an ego the size of the planet he’s so busy not saving. Naturally, to counter-balance this, his failures are by far the most embarrassing.

Red Mage: Thinks this is all a game, and he’s the best power-gamer out there. Usually manages to make no sense at all with an equal chance of this working out well for him or working out completely horribly. Also, wishes he was a girl.

These and the supporting characters are completely static, such to the point that they are most frustrating. This is, in fact, one of Clevinger’s favorite jokes. Hundreds of story-lines start to lead to the development or reform of these characters, only to anti-climatically have them revert right back to their old selves, often worse than ever. Recurring jokes, much? Yeah, all of them are. How else do you fill up over 1000 text-heavy comic strips? But the recurring element is part of the beauty of the gags. He spaces them out enough that you forget about them for a while, only to bring them back in such a way as you know you should have seen it coming. Ackbar, for example, is a recurring con-man who sells the characters…not what they need to proceed. Black Belt, for example, was also a recurring joke. The only competent warrior in the entire cast, he would randomly appear to defeat the current boss threat, and just as easily disappear. You see, he has the gift of getting lost in paranormal space, rather than the usual gift of appearing in the nick of time that heroes have. Some of the recurring jokes mature over time. For example, Fighter begins the story in a quest for the Armor of Invincibilty. About strip 200, he finds it. And it will return… Also, early plot holes in the comic were explained away by “a wizard did it.” Come episode 421, we are introduced to Sarda, the wizard that did it. And this is just a handful of jokes to give you an idea.

What I’d like to know is how he manages to pull off such a steady level of humor so consistantly… It’s just not fair that all people were not created equal.

Oh dear, I’ve yet to mention the art. Yes, oddly enough, in this sprite comic the art is good. Clevinger’s secret? He’s not actually using sprites from Final Fantasy. A lot of the sprites used in the comic are direct replicas of the ones in the original games, but many more have been created to give the characters extra poses and expressions. (Also, the four “real” Light Warriors are replicas of sprites created for the playstaton remake of the original game.) Furthermore, a lot of original sprites were also created - all of this reportedly created by Kevin Sigmund. Clevinger’s girlfriend Lydia Tyree occasionally produces fully original art for the comic. Clevinger puts it altogether with clipart or google found images for backgrounds and visual reinforcements. While not an amazing or refined piece of art, the 8-Bit comics are certainly functional and support the text-laden pages. I feel comfortable calling this “comic art.”

I imagine the end is near, for 8-bit. I mean, they finally have all four orbs and are at the final castle. All we need now is the final boss fight. And after seven years, I imagine Clevinger can’t wait. I expect he’s always resented this little hobby of his. It was all good fun until it completely overshadowed his beloved brainchild and reason for launching the site: Nuklear Age. When he finally did finish getting his tongue-in-cheek superhero novel together, it…really didn’t do so well, while 8-bit continued to shine. Many conventions will fly him in from Florida and put him up at a hotel just so he can reassure fans that Black Mage will always like to kill people. Poor guy. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel for you, Clevinger. It’s called Atomic Robo. Even if it didn’t get you an Eisner, it’s also doing pretty well.

In closing, 8-Bit Theatre is NOT for all audiences, but after over 1000 installations, it’s still fabulous at what it does. Everything Clevinger does in this comic is horrible and awful, but you love it, and you love him for it.

Rating:
“8-Bit Theatre”
http://www.nuklearpower.com/
By Brian Clevinger

review by Sly Eagle

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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8-bit has (at this time) over one thousand comics. That can be a bit intimidating to new readers but don’t let it worry you. You can jump in pretty much anywhere and run with it.

Here’s what you should probably know; don’t take this comic seriously. Secondly, the FAQ explains that the essence of the storyline is the standard video game plot: “the good guys go beat the bad guys.” 8-bit more or less follows this easy to grasp concept although I do have a bit of an issue with one little thing. I have a hard time telling exactly who all the good guys are in the cast. Sure, a couple of them are better than the others but I didn’t see any truly good guys.

The four main characters are the predestined Light Warriors, “who are the least-enabled (or inclined) to save the world.” I found that very amusing and it certainly adds a unique spin on the video game comic idea. Who are these four characters? I did not have time to read and digest every comic, so I relied on wikipedia to give me a basic idea about them.

Starting with Black Mage Evilwizardington, who hates everyone on the planet, wields destructive magic and has a split conscience of evil and is atrociously evil. His goals are to acquire more power and kill off his fellow Lightwarriors. Nice, huh? He is so evil and selfish that the description doesn’t really do him justice.

Fighter McWarrior (picture shows two costumes) heals quickly even from lethal injuries and is a very skilled swordsman. He is trained to use more than two swords at once but actually has sword-chucks which he uses to stunning effect. Naturally, he has a sword fixation and a heroic streak which allows him to ignore his “best friend in the world” Black Mage - who specifically likes to use Fighter as a “meat shield” out of pure contempt.

Thief is an kleptomaniac elf who serves as the leader, due to his penchant for trickery and legal contracts. He talked Fighter into signing over the leadership of the Light Warriors to him. He doesn’t usually fight unless it’s an ambush, though his ninja class gives him some martial skills. He tends to rely on his wits, cunning and his ability to steal anything not nailed down or on fire.

Red Mage is a delusional character who acts like he’s a powergaming roleplayer. Adding to that, he is unafraid to modify his character sheet and even ‘forgets to write down’ lethal damage - and thus surviving. He often creates overcomplicated plans which surprisingly do work out sometimes despite obvious flaws. No matter, Red Mage prides himself on being versatile and thinks his plans as always foolproof.

There are other characters and enemies - all of which have a variety of facets to them. The characters are what make this strip. 8-bit is full of wisecracking comments that are pretty hilarious; especially if you used to play eight-bit games with your smack talking friends. Here’s an example where Black Mage tries to get the Dark Warriors (dire enemies of the Light Warriors) to hire him.

Practically every comic was amusing on its own but I had a very hard time piecing an overall storyline together from them. There were short “mission” story arcs, of course, but the main story of “good guys go beat the bad guys” serves as a backdrop more than anything else. This can be a feature or a failure, depending on your preference for story.

Overall, this is a gag comic with a little 8-bit nostalgia, great dialog and a catchy sprite cast. Lack of time and the lack of overall story made it difficult for me to push through the archive, but your opinion may vary.

Rating:

8-bit Theater
http://www.nuklearpower.com/latest.php
by Brian Clevenger
review by Delos
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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What’s not to like about School Spirit? It has cricket, Australian history lessons and family friendly humor. The strip is centered on a blond, quiet kid named Casper. His friend Cody helps him get into trouble, but is otherwise a good kid. You’ll also meet Davey Jones and the glamorous sisters Liberty and Pandora. Then there is Grace the tomboy, Brylcreem the smart kid and the popular Chastity round out the child characters.

Mr. Kelly is the forgetful principal of the school (who really likes the cursive writing.) Miss Conway is the iron willed teacher who commands respect from each and every student. One of my favorite characters is Mavis the unstoppable bus driver. So far, this probably sounds a lot like a standard kid comic with a bunch of kids at school, right?

Well, it’s not. School has a bunch of ghosts spirits that reside in the graveyard next to the school. There’s a little girl named Wendy, Old Bill the grandfatherly groundskeeper, a soldier from World War I and the grump named Fos. Only certain kids can see them but that doesn’t stop them from getting into mishief.

School is written by a grade school teacher who gets much of his inspiration from them. As a result, the strip has a real sense of honesty about it. Even though it has fantastic elements in it, School is about those things we really like about people and our normal daily concerns. That might include finding friends, getting lost or even deep things like how to deal with death. We can all easily relate to the characters in the strip. There are also some recurring gags that regular readers will enjoy.

Another nice things is that while the storylines don’t drag, they aren’t pushed either. There’s no desperate rush to finish a story, so we get a little side trip once in a while. I’m a big fan of that. I liked the “meanwhile, here’s an aside” that happened here. The characters even take time to comment on a review. I found that amusing.

The art stays consistent and looks good. However, I liked the Olympic Special and this one with their added textures. It adds a little pizazz.

I liked checking out the extra content as well. Sometimes you’ll find a cast page that tells you so much that you don’t actually need to read the strip. School Spirit’s cast page gives you the best character descriptions I’ve seen in a long time. I also liked the wooden desktop background and the ruler engraved with the comic navigation. Props are deserved for including the co-creator’s name on the site, even though he’s no longer on the bus, so to speak.

Also, we drongos can really use the Strine dictionary so thoughtfully provided. It’s all easily explained - Strine is ’short’ for Australian, so to speak. Many of the terms I have seen before while others are new. I don’t believe anyone should have a problem following along.

Hooroo and avagooweegend! Rating:

School Spirit
by Daniel Vander Werff
http://www.schoolspiritcomic.com
review by Delos
(No Ratings Yet)

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