a review of Tom Siddell’s “Gunnerkrigg Court”
by Anthony R. Cardno

I have nothing bad to say.

No, really. I read through over 400 pages of archives, and I really can’t think of a negative about this strip.

Okay, if I had to find something, I suppose I could point out that Mr. Siddell, by his own admission, seems to have a problem drawing Mr. Eglamore, but perhaps that has more to do with the fact that you can’t really tell what Eglamore is up to – he seems like an upright guy, defender of maidens from dragons and all that, but also seems to have more secrets than the fruit flavoring for Powerade – and so the creator can’t get a strong handle on drawing the character. (Don’t you love it when reviewers psychoanalyze creators? I’ll stop now.)

What’s it about? It’s about Antimony Carver, a girl who is effectively orphaned (dead Mom, disappearing Dad), who is sent to live at the same boarding school her parents went to (a fact she doesn’t learn until late in the story). Gunnerkrigg Court is ostensibly a school of science that looks like an out-of-control industrial park but there’s a lot of unexplained happenings and supernatural phenomena both in the school and in the woods across the ravine. And, it seems, Antimony may have some sort of role to play in keeping the peace between technology and the ethereal world.

Siddell’s art is cartoony without being simplistic; he takes efforts to show a difference between the science world and the supernatural, and to put little touches into where the two combine. The main characters and most of the supporting characters are individualized enough that you can tell them apart without a scorecard. There’s Antimony’s new human best friend Kat , her one-dimensional friend Shadow 2, and the aptly-named Robot. There are more, but mentioning some of them might give away some of the nice twists the story has.

And there are twists, and mysteries, and questions. Like most really good series fiction, characters don’t get introduced in Gunnerkrigg without having a purpose. Almost every secondary or tertiary character introduced has something to add to the story, either by becoming a larger player later on or by sharing a piece of information that will become important later on.

You are also not subjected to 400-plus pages of intricate plot movement. While there is an overall story arc (what exactly was the relationship between Antimony’s parents and the other adults who are still at the school? Why are tensions building between the human and other-than-human worlds of Court and Wood? What is Antimony’s role in all of this, as well as that of her friends? And who really are her friends and not enemies?), there are also lighter chapters that focus on unusual classes (like Dr. Disaster’s) or small moments that build the main characters. Kat has several such character-building moments, for instance.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t take my word for it – go read a really fun adventure strip with strong plot and characters that grow and have real emotions. Five stars.Rating:

Gunnerkrigg Court
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/
by Tom Siddell
review by Anthony Cardno
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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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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Normally, I read a comic partway through, do something else and come back and read some more. Rinse and repeat and at some point in my browsing, I start writing my impressions. But not this time.

Kukuburi is different. I read the whole thing (about ninety six pages so far) in one sitting. As soon as I finished, I wanted to read it again. Why?

Part of it is the art. I love the sketchy, spontaneous feel of the linework. It even has a great deal of (what I call) shorthand detail. That’s where the artist draws just enough detail that your mind fills in the rest. Just a few lines give you the shape, texture and perceived weight of the subject of the drawing. For a specific example: just one little line tells you that the record player works, even if you’ve never used a record player in your life.

I really dig the character designs, special effects and colors too. I’m not talking about just the bright foregrounds and the muted backgrounds. You can see where the shadows and colors don’t always match the contours of the objects they are showing. That’s a style that lends itself to the medium but also strengthens the story of the comic, as well.

As usual, no spoilers from me on how the story is panning out. There is this young woman has a job that she can barely get to. She’s a pawn, sent here and there to accomplish menial tasks like package delivery. You don’t even know her name because her boss simply snarls at her. But all that changes. What she can do and what she chooses to do takes on more meaning. Even what she ignorantly causes to happen gets increasingly more important. Well, one thing doesn’t change - even in her wildest dreams she’s still a pawn.

As an aside, I can’t help thinking that this is where the Doctor or El Santo will have some smart comment about the story progress in Kukuburi. They’re better at embellishing than I am, but I can imagine them saying “Just when you think you’ve got one more chance to set things right, your last whiskey shot kicks in and you wake up suddenly, damp and disheveled on a city street corner outside a bar you don’t recognize.”

I’d say it another way. The story in Kukuburi lets you follow along but then you realize you aren’t going to the destination that you thought you were. At times, it drags just a little but there’s always another surprising turn waiting and so you keep reading. I found the story very engaging. It has some light fluff in the dialog and yet some fun, deeper things to ponder. It reminds me of the storytelling style that I recall seeing long ago in Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser.

It’s at this point where I can mention a few other things. I really, really liked how it was never obviously pointed out who was doing the narrating at the start of the comic. Also, the way those black and red mantas go after their victim is very cool and I want to know more about their commander. He’s got a great costume and look. His expressions are masterfully done, especially once you realize he has no eyes or face to emote to the reader with. That’s a nice trick, done consistently well. There’s more that I liked but to talk about it would require me to do more of my patented spoiler-avoid dance, which no one wants to see. Read Kukuburi for yourself and then we’ll talk. (I’d actually enjoy hearing what moments you enjoyed in the comments, so please share them there.

I don’t think it’ll surprise you that I gave Kukuburi five stars. Rating: It normally updates two pages a week on Tuesdays. I like it when there are three page update weeks, but that’s just me. I’m going to go back and read Kukuburi again, if you’ll excuse me.

Kukuburi
http://www.kukuburi.com/2007/08/09/one/
by Ramon Perez
review by Delos Woodruff
(4 votes, average: 4.25 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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Before I begin the review, I’d like you to understand my initial biases. One of my favorite comics of all time is the black and white masterwork entitled Lone Wolf. I am vaguely aware that oriental culture is regimented and more complex than it might first appear. With No Need For Bushido, I was not sure whether to expect a strict cultural sort of story, a parody, a satire or some mix. I was hoping that it would lean towards something other than a pseudo-documentary about a culture I barely understand. I was really in the mood for something lighthearted.

Sometimes, my knack for looking up side information on a comic pays off. The cast page is very informative and helpful in setting me straight. It offers this to say about Cho Teko, for instance…”Cho Teko is a blind Taoist priest who often spews absurd proverbs. He wields multiple bo staves in combat. Cho is part of a prophecy involving a blind Taoist Priest, a Hindu, and a Christian Priest walking into a Japanese bar, heralding the end of the world. He maintains a calm demeanor that seems to stem from his expectations that the events around him are determined entirely by fate.” I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it didn’t sound too serious.

I also found this interview on Scienteers with the creators. NNFB was originally going to be an “outright parody of fighting based anime.” Clearly, NNFB is leaned towards parody and humor. Thank goodness.

As of this review, there are 343 pages of NNFB. It would be hard to distill that down other than to say that the characters are always heading north. Take it easy. I’m kidding! If you really, really want the nitty gritty details, check the timeline or the wiki. You don’t have to do all that, though. You can get a very good idea of what NNFB is about by looking at the characters.

There are a bunch of very diverse characters. Ina, the girl in the story, runs away when she finds out that her parents want to marry her off for political reasons. Yori is the samurai who is avoiding his own problems at home. He tries to save her and succeeds almost unintentionally. It’s an understatement to tell you that his father is causing a lot of trouble for Ina’s family. Of course, let’s not forget Ken - the Ronin with his three-times-his-height-giant-sword, is out to kill Yori’s father and ninjas that are constantly attacking for purposes unknown. Cho is the blind monk involved in the end-of-the-world-prophecy but is not really all that concerned with the end of the world. He might be the only character that doesn’t have some personal stake in what is going on. (And these are just the main…uh…heroes. There are bad guys, too.)

All of that gives a bit of story to work with. As you can see, all the characters have some fairly dramatic things going on with big consequences hanging over them. This acts nicely as a backdrop for the humor. It’s also worth mentioning that the foreshadowing is handled very well in NNFB.

What is especially scary is that the nonsense spouting Taoist Monk actually makes sense sometimes. I had to read this comic several times to make sure, but he actually makes sense if you pay attention. That’s also about the point where the art gets a little crisper and more fun to look at. It continues to improve and looks pretty good by the time you read up to this point. The backgrounds get better and the coloring and shading get better at showing forms. The layouts get easier to follow and become more interesting due to the framing of the panels. There are some very good fight scenes and you even get some improv Kabuki theater.

I liked the action scenes quite a lot, particularly those using “Standard Horizontal Slice Attack” and the “Flight of the White Lotus Attack” sorts of anime state-your-action traditions. (That second attack would have worked better with a full length katana, I’m sure. Yori looked pretty convincing that time.) All during the ninja fight scenes, I was reminded of the Tick’s words of wisdom…”Ninjas are more afraid of you than you are of them.” The tone of NNFB slides seamlessly between drama and comedy - not an easy thing to accomplish.

The jokes in NNFB are fun. Most of them are character humor bits and some others are anime parody. There are a few visual gags like this one that amused me as well. NNFB is consistently worth a chuckle. The visual sound effects were novel, too. Some of them were what you’d expect - ‘boooom’ and ‘ploosh.’ Others were exotic sounds like ‘kick’ and ‘kneed’ and, my personal favorite, ‘girlslap.

NNFB is proceeding along a fairly well defined storyline but refuses to take itself too seriously. I liked this comic a lot. It’s got some story, some humor, good art and interesting characters. It’s fun and not too simple, not too deep - NNFB is light entertainment done right. Five stars. Rating:

No Need For Bushido
http://www.noneedforbushido.com/
art by Alex Kolesar
written by Joe Kovell
review by Delos Woodruff
(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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