Thankfully this is like a week off work for me. I really don’t have to struggle to find the words to describe the talented twins Peter and Bobby Timony and their breakout Zuda smash The Night Owls. I say smash because, well, not only is it a great strip in it’s own right with an ever growing fan base, the twins seem to be building on that success and making themselves somewhat irreplaceable over at Zuda HQ. If ever Zuda needed a flagship strip then it need look no further than this one. It just seems like a great fit for both the format and the delivery schedule which was twice a week as season one came to close. Don’t worry about waiting, season two has just begun. Here though we can look back at the sixty screens of season one and despite some early concerns I might have had that the plots were a bit hit and miss with single screen gags that weren’t terribly sophisticated by middle of those sixty screens the boys were fairly cranking out the good stuff. Short arcs with humorous characterisation replacing the obvious sight gags becomes the norm and now all the gags seem to naturally appear out of the characters themselves without any recourse to puns, pratfalls or belches.

The comedy revolves around a small cast investigating bizarre supernatural crimes in and around New York City during the roaring Twenties. Ernest Baxter is the bespectacled and emotionally reticent professor who explains what’s going on. Mindy Markus is the scrappy flapper who gets ahead of the plot and makes what’s going on interesting. Roscoe the … whatever he is … acts as the comedy relief making sure we all know we are permanently in the territory of the weird. The three of them constitute The Night Owls Detective Agency and are joined by several supporting characters, normal and bizarre, good guys and villains, who are carefully woven into the fictional fabric of the story. Even though it’s only sixty screens old those characters have become pretty essential to our understanding of the whole history on offer. Nothing and no-one is thrown in or out for no good reason. Each short arc tends to build on what has gone before – slowly but surely.

Although each of the main characters could be described as an archetype but all of them are sufficiently well written to transcend those archetypes. There is a subtlety at work here demonstrated by the fact that when even the obvious happens as a reader I easily accept it’s naturalness and inevitability with good humour. It’s that fuzzy warm feeling of a safe yet entertaining environment that is not that easy to create. What supports these characters further is an understanding and an appreciation of the silent era of comedy which the Timony twins are well versed in. They not only know about the slapstick comedy of Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, but they know how to use that knowledge to colour their character’s adventures, without resorting to the obvious homage. That understanding of that history never gets in the way of the plot or the humour. It’s left as a layer behind the story that you can investigate, appreciate or ignore without breaking the magic of what is going on in the foreground.

If you are not convinced by the strip itself then take a look here at The Night Owls in action! Seeing is believing my friends.

This is my favourite comic of the instant winners on Zuda so far. I wasn’t completely sure about this or any of the others for that matter, but picking this up for an instant win was one of the best decisions ever made at Zuda HQ and both Peter and Bobby have brought all their energy and creativity to bear on this – and it shows.

I showed this picture to Zuda regulars before and I think it warrants a second look here - Clara Bow in her boxing gloves – inspiration or synchronicity?

I have a rating system on my own site which does not describe how much I like a comic so much as it shows how ‘good’ I think a comic is across a broad range of specific elements. At the top of that pile rests this strip and for good reason. The simple story that you understand straight away, the Sunday Paper format that looks like black and white, but isn’t, the gentle layered humour and subtle characterisations, the sympathetic artwork that always services the story or the gag, the regular update schedule that compliments rather than hampers the flow of the story - all go to make this a compelling and winning formula.

Zuda is a peculiar beast since it lives or dies at the moment on the interest generated by the monthly competition. Slowly there is being added a selection of instant winners who bypass the competition and go straight to generating the sixty screens of the contract without the rigours of trying to market and win by themselves. The Timony Twins and The Night Owls are definitely one of the finds of the year and important enough for Zuda to keep it and them close to it’s ample cash-stuffed bosom. Other notable Zuda successes High Moon, Bayou and Supertron lend themselves perhaps to a more print minded audience, but The Night Owls is just a great webcomic.

Rating:

The Night Owls
http://www.zudacomics.com/node/152
by Peter and Bobby Timony
review by Mike Perridge
(5 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Oh, Zuda, you poor misunderstood subsidiary of DC Comics, you. It seems like since Day One, you were on the receiving end of online haterade. But since the debut, I’ve sort of warmed up to you. I’m starting to like how the artwork seems far more polished and crisp in Flash. I like to expand the pages full-screen on my laptop, reveling in the glowing light of the full page spread like I’m reading a comic book … from the future! But let’s not pick out window curtains and matching shams just yet, Zuda Comics. I’m still not totally sold on your selection system, where a super-double-dog-secret process determines which creators get a year long contract based on their paltry first eight pages. It’s just so … gimmicky. My keen Shaolin blade will focus on two Zuda aspirants: Action, Ohio, written by Neil Kleid and illustrated by Paul Salvi, and Hannibal Goes To Rome, written by Brendan McGinley and illustrated by Mauro Vargas.

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It’s hard to be called upon to review webcomics; at least it’s hard for me. I’m an artist of words, not pen and paper. My thinking tends to be linear and straightforward, with simple likes and dislikes. Despite this, I’ll keep chugging along (at least until the people with the pitchforks and torches come back, anyway), giving you my slightly off the center reviews on the comics we’re called upon to fence with. Just remember what I’ve said, ok? After all, pitchfork marks are hard to get out of walls, and torches cost money!

For my comics, I chose 4: Action Ohio, Hannibal goes to Rome, The Mean Model, and Children of Bighand. It was strange, too, because two of them were ok and two of them made me cringe. Ahh, which ones are which? Therein lies the tale.

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I thought that the readers of ComicFencing might want a quick rundown on all the comics in this month’s competition. Given the few pages we have to look at, all I have to offer you are my initial thoughts. These are my impressions and if any of these comics sound like something you want to see then you want to get to Zuda and vote for your favorite. Time is running out.

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The next review is actually a few reviews. We’re covering some of the comics from the Zuda competition for May. If you haven’t seen them lately, you can check out the list of comics right here at the Zuda Competition page.

You’ll see what our reviewers think on Friday.