I seriously considered recusing myself from this week’s review, on the grounds that I’ve developed a bit of a friendship (or what passes for on on the internet) with Shaun and Dave and felt that I might be a bit biased.  Then I remembered that my livejournal reviews of ApL, Allen and a couple of other comics were the reason I was invited to this shindig in the first place.

So:  Applied Living started out as the story of two childhood friends who decide to share a college apartment.  They are something of an odd couple: Dave is forceful, forthright, egotistical to a fault.  Shaun is introspective, verbose, insecure.  They’ve got a couple of regular friends who hang around:  unpredictable Bill, and Dave’s brother Mike.  The early strips show a bit of sitcom-style writing with snarky dialogue and workplace humor, but things quickly take a left turn from reality and head into oddness.  Bill is apparently an agent of Entropy with a magic glow-stick .  A bid for more readers garners a visit from the Green Knight of legend.

Shaun’s scripting and dialogue are apparently an acquired taste.  I enjoy it.  He goes out of his way to have his characters speak in heightened dialogue that very quickly divorces itself from everyday speech.  It lends the characters a tone that sets them apart from the run of the mill roommate comedy.  And thankfully, while both guys love comics neither is a stereotypical comic/scifi/fantasy geek.  In fact, Shaun is more likely to pepper his script with puns and references to famous philosophers than he is to feature a joke about Star Wars.  Unfortunately, since the guys seem to work on a week-to-week basis, some of the scripting can be a bit clunky.  Story arcs occasionally end with a quick “yeah, we got stuck, so we’re just going to stop this here and move on to something else.”

Dave’s art has strong simple lines and bold colors most of the time, and it’s nice that he’s working in a cartoonish style that is not directly derivative of manga or whatever’s popular on CN and Nicktoons these days.  He does give all of his characters “Little Orphan Annie eyes,” which is funny considering there’s not a single female character in the history of the comic.

Dave’s art and Shaun’s purple prose are the positives about ApL.  The negative is that these guys don’t seem to be able to maintain any kind of update schedule.  As of this writing, they haven’t published a new page since the beginning of July, and even that new page was a rework of the previous week’s page because Dave had misinterpreted the script.  It’s hard to work up enthusiasm for a series that stops dead in the water mid-storyline pretty much every time a continuing storyline starts.  Still, they are talented guys and they have lots of potential.  I’d just suggest perhaps working up a full month’s work of weekly pages (that’s only 4 pages, guys!) before resuming updates, and then staying that month ahead.  It seems to work for comics like “The Gods of Arr-Kellaan.”

Final verdict: 2.5 stars.  I love Dave and Shaun, but I hate the long wait between installments. Rating:

Applied Living
by Shaun Meyer & Dave Olson
www.applied-living.com
Review by Anthony R. Cardno
(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Applied Living is about a couple of roommates. The two main characters are named Dave and Shaun and have wildly different personalities, as you expect. Dave is the calm, responsible one and Shaun is the one who is not afraid to speak using his voluminous intellectual capacity for big words. The cast page tells us that they offer the voice of reason and philosophy or intellect. There are other characters which were to serve as the voice of instinct, of boozing and some creatures. Before actually reading much of the strip, I read that cast page and I was wondering if the APL storylines were going to be as formulaic as the main characters’ biographies suggest. Let’s examine APL to see how much the formula determines the strip.

First, the art. The characters are drawn and shaded pretty well, but the backgrounds have no consistency. Sometimes they are made entirely of blotchy colors and sketched lines. Other times they are blank and yet other times they are straight ribbons or just smears of color. You could say that it fits the tone of the strip, but it doesn’t especially add to the tone either. This is one of those artist hangups. Don’t mind me.

In the initial twenty comics, it looks as if the comic is meant to have a theme of reason versus selfishness with an intellectual spin. That kind of recedes as the comic progress because new characters show up and soon there are two sets of clones, a fascination with glowsticks and Dave becomes a pyromaniac. That last part throws me. It’s amusing but seems out of place.

Dave, if you recall, is the voice of reason. He’s supposed to be calm and reliable. Let me quote part of the cast page for you about Dave: “He’s ‘normal’ and responsible; he pays the bills, holds down a job, and maintains certain knowledge about life and the application of genuine living…” I didn’t see anything in the character qualities that explains why he would refuse to unpack his belongings or be vulnerable to developing pyromania. Again, it was all worth a chuckle but something doesn’t add up.

So does APL follow formulaic character themes, as I first suspected? There is some of that which I’ll get to in a minute, but the characters do not behave as the cast page depicts them. It more closely appears that Shaun is responsible, overly intellectual and a bit OCD. Dave is not really all that responsible and allows the World of Warcraft to dominate their lives.

You can depend on the characters, aside from Dave, to be consistent. There is a certain amount of formula as one reacts to the other. APL is actually entertaining to a degree, so the formula works for the comic instead of against it. Rating:

Applied Living

http://applied-living.com

written by Shaun Meyers
art by Dave Olson
review by Delos Woodruff
(2 votes, average: 4 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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When I became a reviewer for this page I had visions of providing insightful commentary on well drawn, well scripted and well thought out comics. With the notable exception of Lackadaisy, however, most of them seem to fall into one of three categories:

1. Terrible

2. No imagination

3. Rehash of the same tired formulas that have existed since Grogg the caveman said “Ug! What up with thaaaaaaaaat?” way back in 50000 BC. And yes - that’s a direct dig on Seinfeld, who to me is about as funny as having my teeth forcibly extracted with a hammer and chisel.

Reality, when it set it, was a harsh mistress who insisted on laughing at me as I groaned and slogged my way through our latest review - Applied Living. I couldn’t really say it fell into category 1, and only partially into 2, but 3 seemed a pretty good choice. Unlike my eternally neutral and yet well respected colleague, Delos, who talked about the cast page and described the characters in detail as part of his peerless prose on art, I can sum it up pretty well in about…oh…3 points. (1) Voice of reason is one character. Voice of emotion and/or “fun loving spirit” is the other (read that as ‘the straight man and the VERY obnoxious wannabe cool character’ and you’re pretty well on the beam), (2) standard sitcom formulas and situations, altered only slightly enough to not be sued for copyright infringement by just about any show out there, and (3) WAYYYY too many attempts at depth and symbolism.

My main complaint? It tries too hard. It strikes me as yet another comic trying to be very intellectual and speak to all the different levels of consciousness, our struggles in life and all the other psychobabble bull…patties that you get in any standard philosophy course, instead of just being ENTERTAINMENT. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but when I sit there either scratching my head or saying “oh, come ON….” as I read the comic and wonder if the artist is getting paid more for using big words or phrases, it’s not something I’m going to be coming back to. I kept picturing people sitting around a coffee shop snapping their fingers while someone read bad poetry. Don’t ask me why.

The gags, I guess you’d call them, were generally not amusing, at least not to me. Too many of them seemed to revolve around one person being obnoxious to another and it somehow supposing to be funny. Some of them, such as the one entitled “Necktie Remedy,” simply made me want to reach into the comic and choke the “fun loving spirit” character on his own glasses, the insolent whelp! Having worked in the retail industry, and being a person who respects the dignity of others, few “jokes” make me smoke worse than the “I’ll be an obnoxious moron because I’m a customer and you can’t do anything about it” ones. I’m also not the kind of passive-aggressive “I won’t confront you but I’ll get my revenge another way” characters you see in this comic, either. Were I the “voice of reason” character, I’d have put the “fun loving spirit” guy out the window some time ago and never missed him.

The art? Well, overall that I will definitely say that it wasn’t bad. It was clean, the detail on a lot of the strips was pretty well done, and at least the artist looked like they were putting some thought into it when they drew it. That’s more than I can say for most of the anime….I mean manga….I MEAN….other webcomics out there. The pupil-less eyes, a’ la Little Orphan Annie kind of threw me, but hey - at least it didn’t look like they copied and pasted images from South Park in their comic! That has to count for something!

Overall, not a comic I’d recommend to someone looking for a light comic to simply enjoy, and also some language issues on occasions so I couldn’t really call it family friendly.

And that’s my review. Rating:

The Doctor

Applied Living

http://applied-living.com
written by Shaun Meyers
art by Dave Olson
review by The Doctor - the genuine article you might say
(3 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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