I’m going to make this easy for you.

I’m going to state up front that I have been a fan of Tom Siddell’s Gunnerkrigg Court for a long time.

It’s not just one of my favorite webcomics. It’s one of the few webcomics that holds an honored place in my personal Pantheon of Webcomics Par Excellence. The Pantheon — which includes Scary Go Round, Templar Arizona, The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, and Achewood — looms above the sad morass of its contemporaries, flashing their accusing yet gentle eyes as if to say, “You know what you are doing is a sin against storytelling. Why do you work against the power of Our Love?” With their terrible swift swords, hey reduce even the efforts of most print comics into quivering piles of sad, half-hearted doodles. Then afterwards, I imagine that they hang out with Peanuts, Calving & Hobbes, and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come, knocking back four-color brewskis. Ah, yes, that’s what you come to Comic Fencing for, isn’t it, my dear reader? The anthropomorphosis of sequential panel funnies.

What follows, then, will be less of a review and something more akin to a fan rant. If you aren’t rolling your eyes and screaming, “Well, if you love this comic so much, why don’t you marry it?” by the end of this review, I will be very disappointed.

Like a lapsed parishioner, I haven’t read Gunnerkrigg for about six months. This is partially because when you’re out there reviewing webcomics on a twice-weekly basis, you tend to forsake the ones that you enjoy. The biggest reason, though, is that, like Kobayashi at a competitive eating event, I like to digest long-form comics in big, meaty chunks. I find that it’s better to wait a while until several story arcs have built up a backlog. Then I dig in. I liken it to buying a trade paperback, or, of you’re more into TV shows, waiting until the entire season is released on a boxed set. Yet, I’ve been waiting for the right moment to return to Tom Siddell’s gothic world. When Comic Fencing announced that this week’s review would be Gunnerkrigg Court, I licked my lips greedily.

Gunnerkrigg Court stars Antimony Carver, a capable Titian-haired girl with a head shaped like a football. She starts school at the gothic Gunnerkrigg Court, am imposing walled city full of mazes and fantastic creatures. Her parents, who are absent or dead, were highly regarded sorcerers in a secret alliance. If this sounds an awful lot like Harry Potter… well, you’re not far off, and chances are that Tom Siddell is very aware of the parallels. (There’s even a guest strip that points this out.) Yet, if you’re writing the series off as cheap J.K. Rowling knock-off, you couldn’t be more wrong, buster. And you’re cheating yourself.

More than any other comic, Gunnerkrigg creates images so memorable and haunting that they’re likely to linger the recesses of my mind forever. A robot caught in the lights of a stone bridge. The owl-headed deities inhabiting the impenetrably dark Gilitie Woods. Zimmy’s eyes, mysteriously and frighteningly shrouded in shadow. The lithe, shadowy form of Coyote. Even the humorous moments, such as when stuffed animal companion Reynardine morphs into an aesthetically pleasing form, are filed away in bundles of cerebral neurons that would be better used for storing phone numbers or computer passwords.

When I resumed reading Gunnerkrigg, I finished up the chapter with a childhood ghost story. After that, we follow Antimony as she begins to train with an elite class of mediums. Then we folllow her and her bestest buddy, Kat, as they scrounge around in a cellar filled with robots. It’s incredible how Siddell manages to maintain the same energy from earlier in the series. New, intriguing ideas are introduced, never growing stale, and yet everything from the beginning feels so consistent, as if he’d planned for these twists and turns all along.

The world of Gunnerkrigg Court is a mix of science fiction, steampunk, and fantasy. Siddell opts for a dark but very cartoonish style. Some people are put off by the look, throwing around phrases that the main characters — mostly schoolgirls — all look like either Powerpuff Girls or Bratz dolls. “The comic looks like it’s for preteen girls,” I’ve heard some critics say.

I love the simple look. The story is, after all, reminiscent of young adult fantasy fiction, and it should be festooned appropriately. To me and my glittering fanboy eyes, the characters far more resemble Edward Gorey illustrations with some of the macabre edge filed off. Not all, mind … just enough. Yet the horror is still there, lurking in the shadows and waiting to pounce at the right moment. The story involving Antimony’s childhood threatens to plunge into darker territory, yet the story holds us right at the edge of oblivion and reassures us with the warm touch of a mother’s hand. The evolution of the designs, too, suit the story well. Antimony evolves from an awkward looking girl to a beautiful young woman before our eyes, which mirrors her own personal development towards maturity and adulthood.

If there is only one webcomic you will read in your entire life, read Gunnerkrigg Court. In a medium where sameness is the rule and adolescence is the state of mind, Gunnerkrigg Court stands heads and shoulders above the rest as a stellar milestone in webcomics. Like Harry Potter, Gunnerkrigg can be enjoyed by readers of all ages, blessed with refreshing originality, solid storytelling, fleshed out characters, and beautiful artwork. This is El Santo, from the rugged lands of the Shaolin, signing out.

Rating:

Gunnerkrigg Court
by Tom Siddell
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com

Reviewed by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(5 votes, average: 4.2 out of 5)

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Colorful.

Surreal.

Intentionally vague and symbolic, yet grounded in a gritty sense of reality.

When all is said and done, there’s something very serene and Zen about this series. Look at some of the dialogue. “He who conquers the left side conquers the world.” “Never knows best.” “Nothing can happen until you swing the bat.” “Swing the bat, Tak-kun.”

…

Wait, what?

We’re not reviewing Furi Kuri? My bad. I got completely thrown off by the Kanji-esque quadro-syllabic title and the presence of a yellow Vespa scooter. And the fiesty girl wearing the goggles. And, well, the fact that crazy bizarre things seem to happen for no reason.

Cripes, I can almost hear The Pillows providing the soundtrack.

So Ramón Pérez’s Kukuburi — that the name, isn’t it? — starts off with Nadia, a delivery girl making her way in the big city, suddenly finding herself in The Maxx’s Outback. OK, that’s not what Ramón call it. It does have giant floating whales, though. In fact, everything in this crowded world floats. Otters. Manta rays. Land masses. Giant ticks. It’s a Kukuburi dream thing! The place is crawling with large bugs that chomp on furniture and squids that pilot those big floaty whales. It’s almost as if the world itself was a living organism, and the inhabitants are unaware microbes.

Faced with a world of Technicolor glory, Nadia finds a helpful friend in the form of her pet Chameleon, the sensibly named Mr. Bojangles. It isn’t long, though, before she’s whisked away to meet a dapper gentlemen with a pair of snazzy rose-tinted glasses. He also happens to be a skeleton who may or may not be the Grim Reaper. He sits Nadia down and engages her in a high-stakes game. Instead of something classic like chess or dice, though, he gets all Milton Bradley in her grill and plops down a game of Battleship. Aw, man. I was jonesin’ for some Scrabble, at least.

The game is appropriate, though. Deadly appropriate. As Nightclubbin’ Action Ghost Rider plops down his pieces, bombs rain from the skies onto Nadia’s hapless friends. When Nadia does the same, beautiful things happen. Flowers appear. And, in one instance, she creates something not seen for eons: a bluebird of happiness.

Bluebird of friendliness, like guardian angels it’s always near! Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you? Make a little birdhouse in your soul…

Whoo, almost went on a They Might Be Giants fugue there! Back to the webcomic. It turns out that the world is strongly tied to Nadia, the “Kukuburi.” This place and its inhabitants are tied to her psyche, and it has something to do with her tragic childhood. Standard fantasy dream world stuff, since … well, since before American McGee decided that Alice went all Goth and created the imaginary world of Wonderland in a bloody fit of psychosis, that’s when!

Kukuburi is easily one of the most gorgeous webcomics I have ever had the pleasure of reading. If Pixar was ever to sign up one webcomic for their next movie, this is the one I want them to do. Like one of their recent offerings, Kukuburi gets away with long stretches with no dialogue. Yet Ramón Pérez’s art is so well done that it speaks for itself. It’s crisp and dynamic, implementing bold colors, clean lines, and perspective to great effect.

Pérez set out to create the physical manifestation of a dream that you never want to wake from. He succeeds at this better than anyone else in the business. Even The Maxx didn’t craft a world so enticing as the one in Kukuburi. But don’t take my word for it. Nothing can happen until you swing the bat.

Swing the bat, Tak-kun.

Rating:

Kukuburi
http://www.kukuburi.com
by Ramón Pérez

Reviewed by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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Ah, young adulthood. It’s a time of indecision. It’s a time of dreams. Your brain box is filled with all the facts, figures, and statistics accumulated from years of college education, and you’re ready to share your heartbreaking genius to the ignorant, unwashed masses. The world is your oyster, ready for you to pry it open with a rusty knife and feast on its meaty goodness. The young men of Applied Living are typical examples of these post-adolescents who are both rebelling and adjusting to the inherent conformity of a modern capitalist society.

The cast is anchored by Dave, the brown-haired one, and Shaun, the blonde-haired one with the goatee. The first page establishes them as friends since childhood… though I don’t know why, since it’s never brought up again. The first order of business is unpacking, or trying to get your roommate to unpack. Afterwards, they meet a guy with a glowstick, try to get jobs, and set things on fire.

I should warn you, I’m making this comic sound more interesting than it really is.

Remember when Seinfeld marketed itself as The Show About Nothing? Seinfeld has nothing on this comic, which really IS about nothing. And after reading this comic, I know why: actually writing something about doing nothing is an exercise in boredom. As an aside, the comic may actually be attempting to mimic Seinfeld’s trademark humor. One of the strips is entitled “Seinfeld-esque.” If this is so, then it’s in vain: Meyers cannot get the cadence and rhythm to construe anything the resembles a joke.

Take the dialogue, for example. Your Honor, Exhibit A:
“Well, if my theory is at all veracious (and I admit that it is a bit vicious), then you’re probably on the verge of a heart attack. I’m more prepared than a participant of the Cold War.”
“I wasn’t aware you were in contact with an arms-dealer.”
“End of the hall. The guy basically runs a reincarnation of Vulcan’s Forge.”

And for a more recent example, Exhibit B:
“So… your brother seems to be smiting Shaun with the Bible.”
“No, that’s just Mike’s personal manifesto. The Art of War, The Prince, and a Couple of Anti-Prohibition pamphlets ‘re-envisioned’ as a comic book.”

I’ve read this line several times. I have concluded that if I heard one of my friends say this to me in real life, I would 1.) roll my eyes, and 2.) decide to no longer be friends with this person ever again, especially after their back end has come into contact with my steel-toed boot. Because this isn’t humor. This is nerd blabbering. Yet this is the sort of humor that Applied Living apparently provides in spades. (The term “humor,” of course, being used in a purely theoretical sense, since I can say with total, utmost confidence that there was not a single panel in this comic that made me laugh.)

There’s also a recurring theme where Dave and Shaun create a comic strip that mimics Calvin & Hobbes. Only — GET THIS, GUYS — Calvin is an actual Calvinist (if not John Calvin himself), what with his belief in predestination and all. Clever, witty, and oh so random, am I right? Not necessarily. Hasn’t every Calvin & Hobbes reader — which I would like to imagine are more sophisticated than the average comic strip peruser — at some point made the Calvin/John Calvin connection? I mean, it’s not like Bill Watterson took great pains to hide the origins of their names or anything.

The above are only a few examples of the many bits that, to me, fell so flat that they disappear completely when turned sideways. However, humor is indeed subjective. There may have been a point in my life which I like to call “Freshman Year in College” where I might have laughed at Applied Living. Ah, yes … Freshman year: back when you thought Oasis really was the second coming of the Beatles and reading James Joyce was considered the pinnacle of human enlightenment. It’s that awkward time when you’re too old for knock-knock jokes, yet too young to grasp the subtle nuance of a good “Yo Momma” joke. Maybe I would have found the non-sequiturs — which include multiple clones and a talking flame that resides in Dave’s imagination — uproariously funny instead of just embarrassing and tedious. Hey, Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show has a fanatical following for some reason, so I’m not ruling out that there’s an actual audience for sub-par humor. Rating:

Applied Living
written by Shaun Meyers
art by Dave Olson
http://applied-living.com

review by Larry Cruz, a.k.a. El Santo

(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)

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Whenever a story starts with two friends basically sitting around and doing nothing more than gossiping and staring into space, I start to panic. This is how most terrible fan fictions start. This is how my sister’s unfinished eight page novella she wrote when she was 12 years old starts. And this is how Antics starts.

This is not the only resemblance Antics shares with poorly thought-out stories. For Pete’s sake, the main characters are named Ami and Lys. No, they’re not unicorns or elves. They are, however, school girls. School girls who are transformed into cat girls… after stepping into a magic portal in the most blasé way possible. (Summary: “This portal that just materialized in front of us is pretty! Let’s go in!”) There’s some needlessly convoluted mythology about elementals. And, hilariously, there’s a dreamy anti-hero who goes by the name of “Dannon.” (No word if he prefers his yogurt with fruit on the bottom.)

Antics looks like something lifted out of a pre-teen girl’s Trapper Keeper. Heck, I’m actually having a hard time criticizing this comic because, judging solely from the content of the comic, there’s a very, very good chance creators Katherine Taboda and Kristina Foster, are, indeed, under 18. Perhaps they’re just doing Antics for fun like a free-form NaNoWriMo novel — something not meant to have any rhyme or reason. It seems very unfair to judge their work on the same level as creators who have had training and practice to refine their skills. Yet, they asked for a review, so I assume they’re mature enough to handle scathing criticism.

The characters are as flat as dishwater. In fact, they’re impossible to tell apart in every respect, from personality to appearance. The art is generally unattractive. The pen strokes lack any confidence, and characters tend to blend into their surroundings. The attempts to pretty it up with sparse splotches of color only makes everything look more muddled. The manga “humor” is forced and embarrassing. The plot is an absolute head scratcher. I care very little if Ami or Lys ever make it home or succeed in becoming the right hand woman for Poison Ivy. And the little errors makes the entire comic feel sloppy, like when Chapter Six is incorrectly named “Chapter Five: Seeking Answers.”

Even if you’re a fan of manga, fantasy, and light comedy, I cannot recommend Antics. I encourage Ms. Taboda and Ms. Foster to keep trying. Enroll yourselves in writing workshops. Take art lessons on composition and perspective. Reverse engineer an actual manga to understand what works rather than throwing together collages of flat, uninteresting images. I sincerely hope that you don’t consider this comic to be a crowning achievement.

Rating:

Antics
by Katherine Taboda and Kristina Foster
http://antics.comicgenesis.com

reviewed by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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In this world where we are beset on all sides by the Shaolin shadowboxing and the Wu-Tang sword style, is there No Need For Bushido? I climbed up to the Thirty-Sixth Chamber to consult with my Master. He greeted me warmly and poured me a cup of green tea. “Your heart seems troubled,” he said calmly, his voice like the gentle wind caressing the leaves in summer.

“I am torn,” I said. “On the one hand, my soul tells me to hate this comic. The female character named Ina fills Three out of the Six Webcomic Cliches as defined by Master Croshaw: Female Characters Are Hot, Female Characters Are Violent, and Female Characters are ‘Straight.’ Not unlike her other sisters in Hammerspace (such as Akane Tendo and Naru Narusegawa), her constant mood swings began to wear on my soul. The other characters are also cliches: the clueless yet startlingly adept samurai; the not-quite-stoic blind Taoist priest; and the brooding guy with the big sword. If I tried hard enough, I should be able to find their exact duplicates in Inu-Yasha or Rurouni Kenshin.

“Then there is the humor. It is cornier than a KFC Famous Bowl. The jokes about being in Canada or the samurai mistaking everyone for a girl cause my eyes to roll in exasperation. And ‘Holy Shnkikies’? That pale attempt at a catchphrase incites within me nothing less than a boiling rage directed at the True North. This is humor I may have found funny in Grade 3 when Knock-Knock jokes were good for a laugh. However, judging from the copious bloodshed and slight instances of nudity, I gather the under 10 set are not Alex Kolesar and Joseph Kovell’s primary target audience.”

The Master cupped a small dash of sesame seeds in his palm. “Yet,” he said, “for every ying, there is a yang. You admit that the comic does have its moments. Tell me, my son, what do you like about No Need for Bushido?”

“Well,” I said, “I actually thought the relationship between Ina and Yori was pretty sweet. What can I say? I’m a big softie at heart. There is nothing quite like the relationship between the dorky samurai and his lady love. Despite being walking cliches, I actually found myself liking the characters quite a bit … which is probably why writers stick to these cliches in the first place. The guy with the big sword, Ken, may be my favorite, just for being an unrepentant jerk with a love for theater. I guess he reminds me of myself sometimes.

“Plus the comic does a good job if mixing comedy elements with serious elements. I found some of the more dramatically inclined moments difficult to read and grasp, what with the warring clans and the vows of vengeance. At the beginning, there’s walls of text explaining it all. Eventually, though, the art gets polished to the point it can carry the brunt of the story, and the dialogue gets easier to follow. I also appreciate that the different elements were present from the beginning. It felt natural when Bushido transitioned from comedy to drama to action sequences.”

“I see,” said the Master, as birds lighted onto his palm to feed. “I sense there is something else you are not telling me.”

“This review might not be totally fair,” I said. “For you see, No Need for Bushido is about 350 pages long. We were asked to review it over the busy Fourth of July weekend, which for the most part I spent under the stars and very far away from city lights. I read the first 150 pages straight, then skipped around until about the last 70 pages. The rest I tried to fill in from Wikipedia. Curiously, the ‘Plot Details’ section also omits the parts I hadn’t read. The art evolves drastically in six years. It changes from being a crudely drawn cartoony images to a highly polished imitation of anime. Both styles do have their strengths: the early stuff better serves the comedy, while the late period feels more suitable for kinetic action sequences. Since No Need For Bushido dabbles in both, either style feels appropriate in their own way, though the recent style is far easier on the eyes. Don’t you think so, Master?”

“How should I know?” the Master said. “You just made me up for this ridiculously gimmicky review.”

“Oh,” I said, enlightened. “Well, despite not having read every single page of the comic, I feel confident splitting the difference with Bushido Muyo.”

“Hmm?”

“Um, I mean No Need for Bushido.”

Rating:

No Need for Bushido
by Alex Kolesar and Joseph Kovell
http://www.noneedforbushido.com/

review by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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When I started reading this comic, I had some pretty major reservations. First off, there’s the title: Paradigm Shift. It’s ultra-generic. I could probably start a gaming comic or a furry sci-fi series with the same name and no one would bat an eye. A better title, for my money, would be CSI: Chicago Werewolf Division. (”A-wooooo, are you? Woo Woo, Woo Woo!” Yeah, yeah, I know. Kill me.)

Second, there was the weird decision to make the central character, Kate, look more manga than manga. Most of the character and background designs are fairly conservative (hewn close to “serious” manga like Akira and Appleseed). Kate, on the other hand, sports a pointy Masaki Kajishima hairdo and a serious case of dilated anime eyes. If I were to hazard a guess at series’ direct influence, by the way, I would guess Gunsmith Cats, which also featured (less mature) doe-eyed police girls operating in Chicagoland. (Hmmm… can a Kate/Rally crossover fan fiction be far behind?) Never having read the series, I assume that this style suited Gunsmith Cats, which was meant to be viewed with less gravitas than Paradigm Shift.

Third, the Chicago of Paradigm Shift feels, well, not like Chicago at all. I appreciate Dirk I. Tiede’s incredible attention to detail. He replicates the Chicago skyline and signature buildings with an architect’s precision. However, Paradigm’s Chicago feels very sterile and lacks the city’s unique vitality. It could be because Tiede is photo referencing pictures from postcards and coffee table compilations, squeaky clean images taken on perfect days and sifted from rejects where conditions were less than ideal. I might come off as nitpicky, but there’s a disconnect in mood between the intimacy of the character close-ups and the clean-as-a-whistle cityscapes, as if the former was shot in a studio and the latter was filmed by the Second Unit.

However, despite all these reservations, I really enjoyed Paradigm Shift. A lot.

There are many, many webcomic artists out there who attempt to mimic the manga look to varying degrees of success. Tiede totally nails it. Paradigm Shift feels so authentic, it could be printed in Shonen Jump and no one would be wise to its origin. He gets the fine balances between simplicity and detail and between photorealism and stylized cartooniness. But the authenticity doesn’t merely come from Tiede’s illustrations. He gets the timing. He knows how to space action sequences and how to hold a scene to give the reader a sense of urgency or dread. There were times that the build-up was so effective that I did feel like jumping out of seat.

I don’t know how experience Tiede has with law enforcement, but the scenes featuring cops interacting with each other feel authentic. At least, in that “I remember seeing something like this from NCIS!” sort of way. A common pitfall here would be to stick to well known caricatures, but Tiede is skilled enough to throw in some curveballs. The appearance of an FBI agent in a cop story, for example, usually means we’ll be treated to a one-dimensional character who sneers and keeps secrets from the local law enforcement. Here, The FBI agent is a more reasonable and pleasant fellow, and you start to wonder if Kate and Mike, the series’ other protagonist, are right to keep secrets from him.

“That’s all fine and well, El Santo,” you say, “but unless that police procedural is scored by The Who, I find them boring with a capital ‘B.’” Ah, my young friend, Tiede might have included an age old hook that might just change your mind. This particular police force is plagued by what seems to be vicious animal attacks. As Kate and Mike investigate further into the matter, possibilities involving any big cats seem to become more and more unlikely. Perhaps it’s a human killer covering his tracks by mutilating his subjects, or perhaps its something … supernatural. Meanwhile, Kate is plagued by strange dreams. Dreams about the victims, dreams about blood on her hands, dreams about a powerful half-man, half-wolf. And as these dreams become more vivid, her personality begins to change as she becomes more aggressive and feral.

In other words, we’re entering Dean Koontz Country.

You know what’s really surprising? I think Tiede does a better job.

Rating:

Paradigm Shift
by Dirk I. Tiede
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dirktiede/ps/series.php

review by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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