Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in lately, but my first reaction to “Cottonfluff Hollow” was … how cute! Adorable little (and not so little) purple dragons, floppy-eared rabbits, and a teddy bear with a Snake Plissken complex. Done up in bright colors, in easy-to-follow panel breakdowns, with clear dialogue and captions. A nice way for me to return to the fold of Comic Fencing.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that. These aren’t discarded stuffed animals (like those poor denizens of the Island of Forgotten Toys in the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoon), nor are they outgrown imaginary friends (like the insanely antic denizens of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). As forgotten dreams, they fall somewhere in the middle: they have the cuddliness of old beloved toys, but the rough edges of well-worn recurring dream characters.

The chapter one storyline progresses nicely. Cuddles (the bear with the Plissken eyepatch) is the newest arrival in Cottonfluff Hollow, but he cannot accept that he is forgotten. He is determined to “go away” (but not “far away,” which we’re told is very difficult to get to at this time of year) and some of the other lead characters try various things to delay his departure. The individuality of the characters comes out in the second half of the chapter.

Chapter two takes a complete turn. None of the established main characters appear; the new characters (mostly unnamed) seem to be more nightmarish (authors notes bear this out). Where the art of chapter one was airy and open, the art for chapter two feels to me claustrophobic. Of course, it probably helps that the focal point of chapter two seems to be a mime that the worst of the nightmares implies is much worse a thing to fear than the worst nightmare himself.

I personally think mimes are freakier than just about anything out there. And I’m the guy who had recurring nightmares as a kid about having to escape from the clutches of KISS by trying to fly. (Yes, I was afraid of KISS. And yet I owned all of their action figures. Gene Simmons should be proud on both counts.) So this chapter, with it’s long dark spaces, Lovecraftian mega-nightmares, and mimes … it feels completely discordant with what chapter one established. Will that be a benefit or a detriment in the long run? I can’t tell yet. It could swing either way.

Still, I’m open to the possibility that these two wildly different feels can be incorporated into one overall arc, and I’ll be checking back to see how things go.

Three point five stars for this one; intriguing enough that I’ll add it to the bookmarks and give it more of a trial run.Rating:

Phillipe St. Gerard’s “Cottonfluff Hollow”
reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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That’s Cuddles - the bear with the eyepatch. What’s more, he knows he isn’t real and he has been through some tough times. He used to guard a little girl from all the monsters under her bed, in her closet…everywhere. They were absolutely everywhere. I love the concept of a cuddly teddy bear bodyguard.

But now he’s been forgotten. And he needs to get way from Cottonfluff Hollow. That’s right. He wants to go away, not far away. I love that map - so many interesting places for the comic to take us. Cuddles is a very conflicted bear. He gave his all to protect that little girl so being forgotten is quite a blow to take. Months of rest have not allowed him to heal. Perhaps that is what going away will help him do.

I’ve already mentioned the basic storyline so far, so forgive me for not going into great depth about it. There are a few surprises in there that you should discover for yourself as a reader. I won’t spoil them for you. The story, for me, dragged somewhat during the get-going-away phase. There’s probably a good reason for that as I can see some foreshadowing and hints placed during that span. I just haven’t seen the payoff that makes it all worth the wait yet. It’ll come, I’m sure.

The art is full of large shapes and is fun to look at with some unexpected details. So much so that when something not like the rest appears, it is very unnerving. It’s a great style for this kind of comic. I would probably rank Cottonfluff Hollow higher if the story was further along, but for now it’s three stars.

Rating:
The World of Cottonfluff Hollow
http://www.sapoentertainment.com/comics/cottonfluff/
by Phillipe St. Gerard
review by Delos
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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Rating:

“There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.” - Elizabeth Lawrence

I still have my teddy bear. I don’t sleep with it anymore - it’s just around the house. I used to try and hide behind the excuse that my kids played with it, but they don’t. It’s old and kinda mangey. They have their own stuffies. No, the truth is that every time I try and imagine throwing it out, I just can’t do it. That’s okay. He can stay.

There’s something very primal about these childhood objects - things we fixate on in our infancy, to help cope with the initial separation from our mothers. They are our only companions as we venture forth from the safety of constant attention and attachment, and into the world of individuality. These guys are the only allies we have during the formation of our id. It’s a big job. Our subconscious world is formed from the stuff of dreams and nightmares.

That’s the terrain of Cottonfluff Hollow.

It’s the area explored by Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. We had a look at this world in the Pixar film, “Monsters Inc”. Mike Kunkel took us there in his comic “Hero Bear and the Kid”. Is it kid stuff? Yes, but does that mean it’s light reading? Hardly.

Childhood is the time when everything is new - and the things we find to be mundane later in life can be exciting, or scary when we first encounter them. It could be that we never feel as happy or as sad or as angry or as scared as we do when we are young children. These impressions are visceral, and stay with us, sometimes buried deep inside our psyche. The subconscious mind is the place where it all gets stored and sorted out. It’s a world of symbols and narratives and archetypes. And it’s here that all the affected irony and protective layers of sarcasm be have built up over the years are stripped away, and our true core self is laid bare.

So - this is the sandbox that Phillip St. Gerard is playing in with his webcomic “The World of Cottonfluff Hollow“. He’s in good company, standing on the shoulders of giants like Lewis Carroll, A.A. Milne and Maurice Sendak, but how does he measure up? Well, it’s not quite a masterpiece of fiction. It is a fun read though, even if the pacing is slow in parts.

To sum it up I’d say it’s a very promising start. Like many webcomics, this one shows a growth curve as the creator finds their voice and experiments with style. To me, this is one of the joys of webcomics - witnessing the growth of an author as their ideas evolve week after week, month after month. For most of the archive he frolicks in the shallow end, as though St. Gerard is hesitant to plunge into the depths that are lurking in the distance. He’s given us hints and glimpses of the central dramatic dilemma, a plot thread to do with horrible monsters that terrorize the tender soul, but he doesn’t quite engage it until the last few pages. I am eager to see where he’s going with this. To St. Gerard I say this: we’ve had a lot of fluff, let’s get to the stuff.

Another thing webcomics readers will be familiar with is the changes in art style as the author finds their way. The start of the comic has the characters rendered in a shakey thin line, which later on gives way to a very thick-lined rendering, similar to Pokemon illustrations, or Paper Mario. Mostly.

I say ‘mostly’ because St. Gerard uses drawing technique as an additional story element in ‘Cottonfluff’, and to great effect. The world of this comic is an imaginary no-where land, where the characters spend their time when they are not actively involved in mortal humans’ dreams. The different ‘genres’ of dreams are rendered in different styles. The ninjas of the martial arts house are drawn with a loose brush style, for example. As the dream-creatures become more mature, so do their visual styles. Some may find this to be visually cluttered, but I found it quite an enjoyable aspect of the storytelling. There is a very clear logic behind it that I found easy to understand.

One thing about the overall layout is was not happy with was the repetitive titles on every page. This is a convention that comes from weekly print comics, such as Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes - where the comic art will be appearing alongside other comic strips. Perhaps that was what St Gerard envisioned when he started ‘Cottonfluff’. I found it to be visually distracting to have the redundant reminder of the name of the comic I was reading at the top of every frame, especially since the comic is of the ‘epic narrative’ variety, rather than the ‘weekly installment’ variety. In his latest update, the author says that he’s rethinking the layout, and I would encourage him to leave the title in the dustbin and move on.

One more question about this webcomic puzzles me. Am I demented, or is Cuddles the Bear romatically involved with Amaranth the Younger Dragon Sister? Seriously, I thought there was a vibe there. Maybe I’m just a sick sick sick man. If I am, you can blame it on my twisted childhood.

‘The World of Cottonfluff Hollow’
by Phillippe ‘Sketch’ St. Gerard
reviewed by Crackwalker
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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