Questionable Content

Questionable Content
Jeph Jacques
Real Life, sorta
PG-13

I am not indie. Nor am I emo. As far as I can tell the whole indie/emo movement is about wearing un-ironed preppy-ish clothes picked up at a thrift store and finding the most obscure, unheard of band on the market to listen to, then saying the names of the bands during a party to establish your "indie cred."

This is not my scene.

But reading a comic about a bunch of indie kids in their mid-twenties surrounded by a cast of goths, college girls, punk rockers and general crazies is definitely my scene.

Questionable Content began as a comic about a few friends, the main cast being Faye, Marten and Dora, that go about their daily lives in Massachusetts without much fanfare or drama. Actually, this is what first attracted me to the comic. The main characters feel like people you hang with every day. There is little angst, and when "drama" does happen it is subtle. Characters may go through life changing events, but there is this air that life will go on. You wouldn't believe how rare it is to find such a down to earth attitude in webcomics.

As the years have gone by, many other characters have been thrown into the mix. (My favorite is Hennalore, the OCD girl). The plot has also added a few elements of light sci-fi. No aliens or the like. More technological advances that we haven't seen yet, like talking PCs and combat robots. But the story is still about people and their interactions with each other.

There is only one complaint that I have with the comic. It takes a long time for the plot to move because almost every action of the characters is described (including bathroom breaks). And there is one warning for folks who are as musically inept as I am: there are quite a few jokes about indie bands that went right over my head, especially in the earlier comics. Other than that, the comic is a mellow, nifty read.

F@nboy$

Fanboys

Scott Dewitt

Gamer

PG

Fanboys is a solid comic. It really is. The writing is fun, and the art is a cartoony-manga style. The story centers around three friends who each lust after a particular console; Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo.

I like this comic. But I think that Fanboys suffers from a fate that comes upon many writings that fit into a genre: sameness. It is a typical gamer comic. There are the two friends, Lemmy and Paul, who mock each other and their preferred console. There are the girls, Sylvia and Kirstin, who proudly proclaim their gaming cred while shooing away men who would dare ogle at the rare specimen of female gamer. There is continuity in the storyline, and of course it centers around the main characters and their obsession with gaming. Every now and then the continuity is interrupted by a comic commenting on a particular game.

This structure is not old yet, at least I don't think so. But so many gaming comics run through these bases that I wish I could simply mash A and get the essential pl0t outline over-with.

HOWEVER, Fanboys is not a poor comic. Though it suffers from the sameness, it is nifty and cute. The writer is focusing a lot of his time on developing the characters and the plot continuity. Since the comic is quite new, it certainly has time to grow. Also, it is one of the few gamer comics I know of that does its best to stay clean. No swearing, no sexual innuendo.

Finally, the fact that Lemmy becomes a bloodthirsty kungfu master whenever he is told that his consol of choice is for kids makes me giggle. I know people like that.

Inverloch

Hello, hello!

France was fantastic. I had a wonderful time, and I wish I was still there. My current home town isn't so thrilling anymore.

But enough about me, on to the comics.

Inverloch

Sarah Ellerton
Fantasy

PG

Inverloch is the first webcomic that I found in a bookstore before I found it online. While perusing the comic-book shelves of BAM, I ran across the first two books of the series. I finished them quickly, and was suprised to find a URL on the back of the books. Lo and behold, the URL was the comic's home. I have seen the big guys on bookshelves, (Scott Kurtz of PvP, Penny Arcade, Megatokyo...) but I have not seen a webcomic that is not incredibly well known published offline before. This is pretty neat stuff, a sign that webcomics are being taken seriously by publishers.

The comic itself is standard fantasy fare. Young Acheron falls for an elf maiden who, in turn, is in love with an elf that disappeared many years ago. Out of love for the maiden Acheron promises to find the missing elf. What is a little different is that Acheron is a da'kor, a race of half-wolf, half-goat beings. Da'kor are generally hated by everyone who isn't da'kor. So he finds distain wherever he goes.

At the same time, the elves are suffering from a loss of power and culture. They must find a way to remedy their problems or they will slowly disappear.

There are a few bugs in the comic. The story is strong, but it feels like reading an RPG. I expect messages like "The thief has joined your party" or "the mage has learned firefight" to pop up from time to time. However, the writer says on her site that one of her greatest wishes is that one of her stories will become a video game. So perhaps she is being formulaic on purpose.

In the beginning, especially in the first two books, the transitions from scene to scene are very choppy. One minute I'm seeing two children running through a forest, the next I'm in a village. This gets better as the comic progresses, but is is very noticable.

The art is pretty, almost Disneyish, and the coloring is fantastic. But the characters never seem to move. Even during an action scene it looks like the characters are freeze-framing. This feels strange to the eyes.

Other than these fairly minor complaints, I think the comic is well done. The story twists in all the right places, and like any good fantasy it leaves you wanting more after each new post. I like that the auther created a completely new species rather than sticking with the usual fantasy suspects (i.e. ogre, halfling, and so on). The characters are slowly leaving the realms of two dimentionalness and becoming their own people. Inverloch is worth a read.