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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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Webcomic Whimsy: Hell(P)

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Hell(P)

Author: Jey Levang & C. Vinter (art by Levang) • Patreon • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • Tumblr

Site: hellpcomic.com • Tapas

Genres: (Black) Comedy, Adventure, Surreal, Horror, Hell is the Three Stooges

Rating: R (From their Tapas mirror: WARNING: Contains violence, blood and bad language.)

Updates: Fridays

My Starting Point (requested by author): Chapter 2

Synopsis (from Tapas): In this comic from Hell, you see the characters competing for a very special prize: A ticket to Heaven! Who will win? Who will lose? And do they really know what they've signed up for?

Hell(P) is a surreal action-comedy set in Hell. You'll recognize elements similar to Beetlejuice, but also lots of slapstick like the Three Stooges. If you enjoyed Beetlejuice or other Tim Burton films, I think you'll enjoy Hell(P).

Chapter 2 starts with several pages of the main character committing suicide via the traditional bathtub electrocution with a hair dryer. (It's not really important to the plot, but that's rather hard to do in modern homes where the law requires GFCI protected outlets in every bathroom.) I'm skipping over all those pages because, while some of them are rather beautifully illustrated, frankly I think it's needlessly slow with a lot of splash pages with only one or two panels. All I think it really needed was the bloody hands (which area already shown in the bathroom scene), holding the dryer in the tub, the electrocution, and you could have the floating dead body and the gasping awake on one page, followed by the elevator, which didn't need a whole page to open, plus a whole splash page. To be honest, I'm not sure it needed this somewhat confusing page about the interior of the elevator either. This character building shot showing the main character is a murderous wretch is probably a good idea, though it's confusing that all this stuff is in the elevator, I think it might muddy things a bit for the reader. I think this page is where the story starts getting interesting. This is after the elevator comes to a stop and the main character steps out in front of an amusement park, and again, I don't know that it required two whole pages to convey the location.

I don't know, if movies have taught me anything there's at least one serial killer at a given amusement park. :P

I know he's all shocked about the appearance of the ticket, but personally I think the bigger question is what gives with the pocket protectors. Why do serial killers always wear them? Did they have a meeting or something?

Come on, man! Hurry up so I can get some aspirin! Sorry, Tylenol... this is Hell, they're not going to give you the good stuff.

We found the mosh pit!

I always try to ask directions from someone who's obviously as lost as I am... that way I don't look like the only idiot. :P

Aw, man! We skipped straight past the amusement part of amusement park! No murder-clowns, no severed-head ring-toss, nothin...

Okay, now we're seeing something abut the contest mentioned in the synopsis... that's good.

So in this part of Hell, the damned are just recreating the worst parts of being alive, like being stuck in traffic and shit. Gotta have the Read Your Past psychic though, for all the dudes with amnesia... gotta be rampant around here... if movies have taught me anything.

I feel like joining something... dunno why... just this weird sudden urge...

Speaking of recreating all the worst parts of being alive, "Hell Yeah cola" has to be pretty high on that list. "Hell Yeah, it's not hella awful enough, that's why we market it this way!"

Part of me has to think that if all dogs to to heaven, then all alpha males must go to hell.

Oh "Flicker City"... the earlier sign wasn't quite as clear, I was really hoping it was Fucker City. :D

That and licking it off your friend's shirt is definitely the only way to drink Hell Yeah if you have any self-respect.

If they're already in Hell is it still called "foreshadowing"?

Yes, it's running around behind him, but they also just walked right past it a second ago.

I need a hero! I'm holding on for a hero 'till the morning liiiight!... No? Just me?

No kidding that's wrong! The word "you're" is a contraction, meaning "you are", and "sign you are team up" doesn't make any sense...

THATS MY JOB!

Is that an actual see-saw? It's usually a stray board laid over a short wall or something...

This is pretty good in terms of stock comedy gags and a unique world and presentation for them... it's pretty weird for this to be an all-out slapstick though... generally, the opening of a story sets its tone, and if I were juding by the first 24 pages (which is a standard comic issue), I would think this was going the direction of Hellraiser, not Beetlejuice. I think if you plan to print these, you're likely to have a lot of unhappy customers reading issue 2, expecting screaming and torture and instead getting Laurel and Hardy.

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So they found the plant and they sign up for the contest to get into Heaven. (It turns out they need a demon to enter.) I'm realizing suddenly that the serial killer we followed for the first over 24 pages had nothing to do with the story, he was just there to show the entrance to Hell and these five are the characters.

Nobody reads... that's why beauracracy is hell.

It turns out they need six people plus the demon to enter, and after a bit of fighting with the clerk and the people they were cutting in front of in the line, they manage to get two extra people.

It's always nice when a random stranger you know is a douche (because he's in Hell) offers to join your team for no apparent reason. Or when some random group of strangers tries to draft you.

Once they're signed up they intrduce themselves to the new team members and that ends chapter 2, so that's where I'll end this review.

Overall I liked Hell(P). The art is endearingly sloppy and I think it works for a comedy set in Hell. The writing is good overall and most of the time the pacing was good (which is an unusual complement from me -- don't make me regret it ;P). I think the first half of Chapter 2 should really be pared down a LOT, and there are a couple spots where I think the pacing could be tightened up in other spots to get it down to a standard single-issue size if they're planning to print. So if you like Three Stooges style slapstick and surreal black comedy, you should definitely give Hell(P) a look! :D

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

If you enjoyed this and want to help me make more reviews, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help by checking out and sharing my own comedy and laughtivist webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

#review #Comedy #Horror #Adventure #Surreal #Black Comedy

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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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Webcomic Whimsy: Dogstar!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Dogstar

Author: Brandon V. Williams

Site: ComicFury • Tapas (Brandon recommends this site.)

Genres: Comedy, Superheroes, Action, Adventure, SciFi, Anthropomorphic, DuckTales Justice League

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Every other Saturday (for now -- previous schedule was weekly?)

My Starting Point (requested by author): Page 0

Synopsis (from Tapas): A mild mannered pilot/magician's life changes dramatically when he crosses paths with the world's most famous crime fighter. This sets him on a journey of many adventures, in which he grows into something far beyond his imagination.

For a sci-fi comic with a title like Dogstar, the opening seems a bit small scale. Here the five villains meet to discuss taking over... the galaxy? The world? The pacific northwest seafood restaurant market? Nope... one town called Beacon City.

After reading a bit further, it turns out that impression from the title was off-base and the story as a whole isn't a space opera, it's really a superhero story done in the style of DuckTales.

The jokes on the first page do a good job of setting the tone, with the pirate's hook-fingers, talk of brain stealing, and the mysterious evil overlord's mysterious silhouette cleavage.

The lettering on this first page needs work. The text isn't large enough to read comfortably and doesn't flow within the word balloons, leaving that incongruous feeling when a round balloon meets text with a straight left edge. It's like putting a sexy dress on the Iron Giant. Lettering on the latest pages shows marked improvement.

Writing does a good job of establishing the tone as not being Warner Brothers like I expected and instead being more Fritz the Cat. I doubt there will be displayed nudity or uncensored swearing, but dick jokes are definitely implied in what's obviously a champagne room.

Page two also commits some lettering sins that weren't on the first page. Dialogue balloons covering character art with plenty of empty "white space" left untouched is the big one. Panels 3-5 should have been close-up shots.

Ha! So the heroes' solution for a slow response from an agent is electroshock. That sort of thing is usually reserved for villains like Darth Vader's force choke. I guess if he's really insubbordinate he gets the hose.

Bullock Towers looks surprised! |8

Is it just me or is "Junk Jaws" a more intimidating name? Metal Mouth is literally how we used to insult kids in high-school if they had braces on their teeth. Spyke's trying to insult the guy, but he just makes him seem cooler. "Time's up, Ball Breaker! ... Actually, my name is Testicle Trasher, but now that you mention it I think yours is better, I'm gonna go with that..."

Wait... there are robots and cyborgs like Metal Mouth and he and his goons are still using tommy guns? "We could have had M-16s, but we're going for a prohibition era gangster look, you know, it's vintage!" I guess these villains are hipsters.

Nice visuals on that first panel... are the cop cars a photograph with a posterise filter?

Spyke McGruff apparently has the Judge Dredd gun... although glue-mode is new.

Panel 3 should have been close-up.

The extra space before the exclamation point drives me nuts... the font is too small, so every time it looks like an I in the middle of the sentence. "What a moron I he's using..."

Plus I sprang extra for the wax... but not the undercarriage, that's a rip-off.

He splits after one hit? Where'd all the confidence from the new jaw go? He never even tried to bite Spyke.

Just like a hipster... they can cloak a blimp, but they're still using tommy guns.

Oh, finally on page 11, the actual hero of the story! :P Oh, you thought it was Spyke? Psyche! Remember the synopsis said he's a mild mannered pilot, not a bombastic "secret" agent.

I guess you're just not extreme enough man... that's what real adrenaline junkies do, scope out the only two giant vertical poles in a hundred acres of open field just to perform a stunt that could get us killed. Barell rolls are for pussies!

Artistically, I feel like the presentation of the poles could have been better. I don't think anyone's going to be confused by the art here, but I think a shot from behind the characters' heads on approach, followed by a side-shot of the plane passing between the poles, (preferably with an exhaust trail), would have been a little clearer and more dramatic.

Is that other thing that's coming a beer? I don't always drive my business into the ground, but when I do, I prefer a Dos Equis hang-over.

You know what kids really love? Nearly dying in an airplane trick! ;D

What the hell was that? Pointy teeth and glowing red eyes?... It looks like some kind of Shit-Spider-Demon... It looks evil enough, maybe you should ask it for some help with the magic tricks.

The door was open, but property damage is how I get everything I need... I'm a hero!

That's SECRET Agent Spyke! You've never heard of me... psst... don't blow my cover while I demonstrate my SUPER-misogyny shutting up this broad witha face-full of glue... mmm, yes, "glue"...

Dialogue balloons in panel 2 are in reverse order... Daniel's dialogue needs to be at the top to read first, before Spyke's reply.

The best pilot but man he's the worst at everything else -- business, social skills, knowing when he's likely to be shot at.

What?! That last page looked like a direct hit... Gotta work on that perspective.

Pretty sure that's supposed to be light filtering in the corridor from the hatch, but it sure looks like the kind of glowing purple ooze that gives people superpowers... or mutates turtles.

Page 19 and here's that turning point where Daniel becomes the hero of the story... I have to say, of the comics I've reviewed so far, this is one of the few that's well paced. 20-24 pages is the length of a typical printed comic issue, and he's right on time to make Daniel the hero as the cliff-hanger for the end of the first issue. Nice work!

The name of the mad scientist who's obsessed with collecting brains is "Nobrainer". That's like if you invented the Richie Rich character, and named him "Deadbroke Deadbeat". :P

Okay, but can we talk about tha name? Because I'm pretty font of "axis"... you know, as a tribute. Why not? I mean... it couldn't be any worse than Confederate Monuments. :P

Yeah, man, like... you gotta be chill for High Leader... High Leader is chill, so just, y'know, get your bud on and chillax... Woah! Dude my hands are HUUUGE! Who's got the snacks?

Dialogue in the 5th panel is in the wrong order. Yes, left-to-right, however, top-down supercedes left-to-right. Think of the panel like it's a page of a book. So, put your thumbs over the art, you just have text on the panel wherever it is. Which do you read first? As a rule, people will read the first line at the top first, even if it's shifted over to the right, rather than starting on say line 4 or 5. So Dr Nobrainer and Captain Blackjack should swap Triforces.

The fair agent's condition is good.

Great!

No, good.

Wait, his condition is bad?

No, good.

What's the fair agent's condition?

Good, sir.

Yes, what is it?

What's what?

The condition.

I don't know...

NEAR MINT!

...

The words "Successful" and "Initiated" shouldn't be capitalized.

We control the vertical. We control the horizontal... so just chillax while commander mysterious-boobs pumps some of the good shit in the air for you, we're talking primo chronic, man...

Psst... High Leader... I think you might be a little too high, you forgot to issue any actual demands for people to comply with... like... bring me the mayor, hand over the key to the city, or call 555-2-surrender?

I think Daniel just discovered his battle cry... like the thing's "It's clobberin' time!"... Daniel rushes into the fight, "I CAN BEND THEM ALL!" Mostly it confuses the enemy and gets them off-guard.

Yeah, what were you thinking? Catching this guy is no job for a squad of cyborg-super-ninjas!

This is a job for a midget senior citizen!

You'd be amazed what drinking Ensure does for your reflexes.

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Of course he doesn't have a choice... what's he gonna do? Punch out some old grandpa? That's not what heroes do... heroes cause PROPERTY damage... didn't we cover this already?

Best way to get a magician to tell you his secrets? Brutally murder him... by sawing him in half. They have to respect the classics.

Not sure why the robot suit looks like MODOK... He was building an evil Voltron and could only afford the head?

I guess the pink cockpit dome is supposed to make him look like MODOK's brain.

White motion lines in panel 5 would have been better contrast, easier to see.

I can't believe he used up all his brain-hostages... anything that's precious to the villain is leverage.

Oooh... Dogstar is like Skywalker... so... I'm guessing no space-opera elements like I expected from the title...

Doesn't Double-R still think Double-M stole a super-W? Doesn't destroying the blimp without securing the weapon leave it open to salvage by "the wrong hands"?

Caaaapers... <drool>

Doooouble entendres... <drool>

The juxtaposition of the angry MODOK face with Daniel's shit-eating grin in the first panel! Well done, Brandon!

Actually I'm fairly certain that dirigibles don't just careen into the ground when an engine goes out, because the gas in the envelope provides lift while engines are purely for maneuvering... even if an aerostat does require forward motion to stay up, the descent after an engine failure is likely to be a fairly sedate affair, not nearly as dangerous as an airplane crash (which has an over 95% survival rate).

But, y'know... Hollywood.

Plane should be in the lower-right corner of panel 5 (leave Daniel where he is), and in panel 6 the perspective is nice, but there should be ground below the plane, and the clouds should be perpendicular to the perspective, not parallel to it. And from that angle, there should be little to no gray on them, because you're seeing the water vapor from above, where the sun is hitting it.

I think it's fair that Bullock Towers looks surprised again. :P

Nice shot of the crash -- good job on the smoke and flames.

I think the plane in that last panel should be angled up and to the right -- or at least rolled so the wings angle the other direction. The position of the plane makes the wings line-up with the carriage under the blimp and creates a visual tangent. This one is called a "stolen edge" or "parallel". It makes the plane visually blend into the blimp, which is obviously undesirable for clarity unless you have a very specific reason to want something to blend in a particular shot.

I saw the job offer coming, although Spyke being a vindictive dick about someone else saving his life and completing the mission was a little unexpected... it doesn't seem entirely out of character, but I tend to expect government agents to be team players (Fox Mulder notwithstanding). It's not a bad twist, given that a lot of the first chapter was fairly predictable... and I think it's a good wrap for this first chapter overall, including the job offer -- tropes aren't always bad.

Overall I liked Dogstar. Decent art improves over time (though the six panel layout seems pretty rigid and I think you should experiment with some alternative layouts -- an occasional wide shot, etc). I think if you enjoyed DuckTales or DarkWing Duck, you should definitely give Dogstar a look! :D

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

#review #scifi #superheroes #action #adventure #anthropomorphic #comedy

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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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A Personal Racism Issue. Can I Get Your Advice?

I'm at a bit of a loss... so I'm hoping some of you hooligans might be able to help me out. This weekend I'm tabling a gaming convention with a friend of mine (and I'll leave his name out here for reasons that will be apparent -- I'll call him X). Admittedly, I'm a comedian and a cartoonist, so a gaming convention is slightly off-brand, but I'm hoping there will be a good cross-section of people who also enjoy comedy, and at the end of Friday I've already collected 5 new subscribers to our newsletter, the Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate.

This came about when I got an unexpected call from X about a month before the event and he mentioned in passing that he'd already booked a table for this event. I offered to share the booth with him, because I want to attend more cons and I thought I could handle the 5hr drive. I've tabled about a half-dozen cons so far, this would be his first. And although he's a relatively new friend (a year?), I didn't have the impression he was racist -- at least not overtly or knowingly so... I wouldn't associate myself with anyone who identified as "Alt-Right", I think that should be apparent from my work, of which X is aware. Dunking on these racists was part of all three of my most recent YouTube videos, and a comic I published in 2016 which appears in my recent Woohooligan Vol 2 (page 29) that I now have on the table at the event thanks to our recent Kickstarter.

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What I didn't realize until I arrived at the event, is that X is selling t-shirts labelled "Fantasy Lives Matter". There are about a dozen of them, roughly half of his t-shirt designs, so for example a picture of an orc with the text "Orc Lives Matter", another for Elf, Dwarf, etc. I hoped at first that it would go unnoticed as people often don't read the text and just check out the artwork. I've already noticed one girl at the table this morning was put off. She asked me, "are you a Black Lives Matter person or an all lives matter person"? To which I responded "black lives matter... I haven't had that specific conversation with X, though I suspect he's the same"...

Apparently I was wrong, which, I realize in retrospect is what I should have expected, because I think the majority of people would have picked up on the poor taste of trivializing serious problems faced by real people. I want to say I think most people would have picked up on that faster than I did actually, since I think I'd seen these graphics before (I mean, months ago), and it just hadn't clicked in my mind, despite all the work I've done.

I tried to have a brief conversation with X about it, which went nowhere good...

Me: Hey, X. This girl just left, put off by the FLM designs... she asked if I was BLM or ALM.

X: [rolls eyes] Yeah that was my dad's big problem too, thinking people would be offended, and if they are, fuck 'em. I'm saying "all lives matter", even fictional ones.

(That last sentence is a huge problem for me, for reasons I think should be obvious.)

Me: "All lives matter" is intended to shut down people trying to address serious problems.

X: People don't know how to address problems... and to be honest, some of those people running in with the police deserve what they're getting.

(We're way into not-okay territory here and I've invested a huge amount of time and a notable amount of money in this event, and knowing now that X apparently has difficulty staying awake while driving on the freeway, I'm also concerned about his safety if I decided to just leave suddenly... but at this moment I'm not ready to get into what seems like is likely to devolve into a screaming match in front of everyone at the con.)

Me: the BLM movement only exists because there's a huge amount of injustice built into the system. When everything else is held equal, a black person on average receives 2-3 times more jail time than a white person, and that should never happen.

(I don't have reference for that specific figure on-hand -- please check my work and leave a link if you have one, whether I remembered it correctly or not. Thank you.)

X: [basically murmurred agreement]

I don't want to make any excuses for his diminishing of real-world problems, I think it's bad... I'm conflicted about how to address this problem for myself... I plan to publish photos of myself at the con, and the signs for those designs will be in the background... do I black them out? If I do that, am I enabling him?

I don't *think* he realizes what the problem is... I don't *think* he's deliberately racist. On the way back to the house from the convention he offered to buy me dinner at a shawarma place (I'd never had it -- it was good -- it actually reminded me of some southern cafeterias, although the seasoning and the decoration were a little different.)

The waitresses wore hijabs and he was familiar them (had been there many times), and treated them nice enough... though I will say that some of the things he says seem fairly insensitive in a general sense. For example, he makes a lot of objectifying comments about women, including for example, one of the shawarma waitresses, "[damn she's hot]... and great tits". (Of course, he's only seen her breasts 100% covered -- not even cleavage -- so it's a little odd to me to hear someone be so overtly objectifying of someone who's entire outward image is one of "I am not here for you to ogle".) And the whole day at the con was similar -- frequent mentions of "she's smokin' hot" or "that red head" or "I've never wanted to give wood to an elf so bad", which I tried not to encourage. (I like porn too, but my interest in potential partners isn't based on their looks.)

These are things I hadn't noticed in previous phone or online conversations. So I'm a bit conflicted... He's open enough to be friendly with the shawarma waitresses... but he's also interested in them to the point of sexual interest in women who're being very careful to be NOT sexy. So how confrontational should I be about "fantasy lives matter"?

I don't plan to share a table with him again if he's going to continue promoting them... I would hope he would eventually figure out that the phrase is likely to reduce his sales, even when a person might agree with his sentiment, because they don't want to buy a shirt that's going to get them into verbal fisticuffs with people. But this being his first event, and saying that he's already plunked down $1400 into it, it seems to me unlikely that he'll learn that soon. Though in honesty, it always feels like cold comfort to me when someone is doing the right thing only because they realize some kind of financial reward for it.

So should just not sharing tables in the future be where I leave it? Is it okay to accept that, "he's not a deliberate racist, just kind of an insensitive jerk" and just limit my involvement? As an autistic person who knows what it's like to be ostracized for being unintentionally insensitive, am I being too harsh if I say I feel like this is too much? Does that make me a hypocrite? And what about the fact that there are now photos of me in the act of affiliating myself with the creator who promoted "fantasy lives matter"?

Regardless of how it may impact my image, I'm trying to figure out what course of action will produce the best results for everyone -- that hopefully anyone who can become a better person will, regardless of how it impacts my image. Obviously I always have to think about my image, we all do, but that's a secondary concern. I feel like I should be willing to sacrifice my image if the alternative is being hypocritical, cruel, or even just unwilling to evolve or better myself.

Thanks for reading and helping me with this. I appreciate any advice you have.

- Sam

(Now I need to get about 6 hours sleep, because I spent too long composing this blog and have to be up early for the event tomorrow. Thank god my diabetes didn't trash my energy today, and fingers crossed I have the same luck tomorrow.)

UPDATE 9/17/2018

Maybe I should have waited until the end of the event before writing this blog, but the subject distresses me and I wanted to talk about it sooner than later. At the end of Friday, neither X or I had sold anything at the event. Saturday morning, X printed off about 4 shirts as samples to lay on the front of the table (good marketing), to show people that, "hey these pictures on the poster in the back go on t-shirts". It worked and over Saturday and Sunday, he sold at least a half-dozen shirts, most of them "Fantasy Lives Matter" shirts. So while there are some people who are offended by them, there are apparently also a large number of people excited by them (I think exclusively white people that I saw, although most of the attendees looked pretty white to me as well). ::sigh::

Over the course of the event, 27 new people signed up for our Woohooligan Weekly Dick Joke Advocate mailing list. I know many of those people were either indifferent to the FLM shirts or some may have even been excited by them... but I have no idea how many people may have simply avoided conversation with me all-together because of them.

I still have no plans to share another table with X. It's weird to me, because he's really sensitive about other things, like he kept profusely apologizing for falling asleep in the car because he apparently suffers from pretty bad road hypnosis. He's made the hour drive before, but I was concerned about him making the drive after a full day manning the table at the con. Meanwhile I also discovered he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about (of all things) shaking hands.

X: I hate it. I don't like people touching me.

Me: You know people are about 30% more likely to buy from you right?

X: You may be right, but I don't care. It was originally a symbol of distrust. Do you know where it came from?

Me: Yeah, it was originally a way of showing that you weren't armed, but it's evolved into a symbol of trust.

X: It's evolbed into a bullshit thing we do for no goddamn reason!

So to recap: shaking hands is tragic evidence of the decline of civilization, while Black Lives Matter is deluded and don't know how to address problems, and "many of them deserve what they're getting anyway".

I just can't fathom how a person can have that set of priorities when they go out of their way to eat shawarma and so forth and don't appear to be outwardly racist in any other way that I can tell.

His FLM shirts outsold mine by a wide margin, and frankly I don't care... or rather, I find it disheartening... and I'm not about to deliberately associate my work with it in the future. All people need justice, and if you think it through, you should realize that "all lives matter" is the actual meaning of "black lives matter". Saying "all lives matter" as a response is like saying of the condition of slaves, "slave owners have problems, too!" It takes air away from the importance of addressing a great deal of injustice in our country and I don't want to contribute to trivializing that in any way. Even if I stood to gain financially from it, I wouldn't do it.

I'm still not sure what else to do, beyond just not sharing con tables with him again, and would still appreciate hearing any thoughts you have on it. Thanks.

- Sam

#racism #public relations

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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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Webcomic Whimsy: Power Pills!

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Power Pills

Author: Natalie Sullivan (BookFanGeek) Patreon • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • YouTube • Tumblr

Site: Tumblr • Tapas (Natalie recommends this site.)

Genres: Comedy, Superheroes, Slice of Life, Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Mon / Wed / Sat

My Starting Point (requested by author): Page 0

Synopsis (from Tumblr): Power Pills is a superhero webcomic written by Bookfangeek that kicks off when a dorky college student named Caleb Budde receives a pill from a stranger at a party his roommate forced him to go to. The pill gives Caleb powers and turns him into a superhero.

Power Pills features typical if awkward college friends, who find themselves unexpectedly involved in an odd superhero conspiracy. I read three chapters and to be honest, there was a lot more slice-of-life comedy than there was super-heroing in those chapters (and while the first two chapters were about 20-ish pages, the third chapter was over 60 pages, where I stopped reading somewhere after page 111). It opens with the classic noir, shadow-government trope: a clandestine meeting between agents of a shadowy organization... vague discussions of plots and packages that are only slightly less obscured than the faces of the people in the meeting.

The meeting is brief as I expected, and then we meet our hero. It took me a moment to figure out that the sound-effects were supposed to be a heartbeat. Personally I think the sounds should have been on the 2nd panel. Placing them in front of the house implies that they're coming from the house, particularly when you don't yet know that you're seeing from a character's viewpoint. And I think either hand-drawn or at least a different font (preferably distressed in some way) would have been good for that particular sound. Also, the sounds should have been the same color. A heartbeat that swings from cyan to magenta doesn't say "scared" to me as much as it says either "party" or "the shrooms are kicking in!"

Our hero, Caleb is apparently having a heart attack because there are lights on in the old Miller house that no one dares go near... baaaad things happened there, years ago before it was abandoned. Terrible things. Things good people don't speak about.

Or he's just an agoraphobe with crippling social anxiety. I guess that works too. (A few silhouettes of people in the window dancing and chugging beer bongs would have easily switched the first impression from "haunted house" to "frat party".)

The lettering here feels a bit cramped, but Natalie shows definite improvement in that area with a quick glance at more recent pages.

That doesn't help Caleb deal with being judo-thrown through the door.

It was all a ruse! The house is full of aliens, come to take Caleb home!

Okay, I definitely don't understand the "woah" now... that looks like a typical college party, which is what Caleb was terrified of in the first place. I can relate though... I didn't know I was autistic until my early 30s and my social anxiety used to be damned crippling. I remember some time before my teens hyperventilating and having a near heart-attack at the thought of interacting with a clerk at the 7-11 to buy a candy bar. I was super-terrified of anyone I didn't know... and a lot of people I knew. :P

"M'lady! I hath brought the finest cola in all the land... Royal Crown! Only the best for the queen." Oh, that's going to go over great. :P

So... for all the extroverts who might be reading this, I know you mean well, but "you can do it" is not helpful to those of us with social anxiety. To us it feels like you've just told us "there's a live bomb in this tuna sandwich, here's a pair of clippers to disarm it, git-er-done!" Your confidence is... confounding.

We're ten pages in and we're still just establishing that Caleb is socially inept and Guy is determined to help him make friends now that they're college roommates... It seems a little long for that much character development -- if this were a normal sized comic book, we'd be half-way through the book on just those one or two ideas, which I don't suspect are central to the whole superhero plot. Granted, I think Caleb's being set up as the nerdy, Peter Parker archetype before his transformation into Spider-Man, but it feels like that could be done in fewer pages.

This is where I think judicious use of panels could help. I seriously think all the dialogue on this page could have been three panels, and then we'd have gotten to the plot device on this following page in one page instead of two.

There it is! The plot device we knew was coming from the page-zero prologue. So he takes the pill and wakes up with some kind of superpower. But first, you need to know that Caleb isn't stupid, he was MESMERIZED!

What? You thought the guy from the prologue wasn't going to use his powers to deliver "the package"? Anyway, I'm skipping ahead to chapter 2.

I know this is something I've said in most of my reviews, but it seems to me like pacing is something most webcomic authors really struggle to get right. Power Pills is a superhero story and the entire first chapter of 18 pages (almost a normal printed comic length) doesn't even get to the introduction of the main character's power. That happens here on the first page of the 2nd chapter. And it certainly could have been revealed before the end of the first chapter -- there were plenty of pages where some panels could have been smaller or removed, so that Caleb could learn that he can hear people's thoughts as the cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter instead of him passing out at the party.

Caleb fell back to sleep at the end of the previous page, which is why Guy is now sitting in the beanbag chair instead of on his bunk, but the transition was a little rough.

He hasn't figured out yet that he's hearing people's thoughts. To be honest, it took me a minute when I first read it.

It takes four pages for Caleb to realize he's hearing everyone's thoughts. Ooof! I can't really complain about any specific part of this sequence, but four pages seems like a lot of time to just get through the realization that he's hearing people's thoughts. I think he could have gone straight from "they're all talking right now" and "I assure you they're not" to "I have to go", and wrap this whole sequence up in 2 pages. That would be particularly useful, given that we move from this realization to a fairly lengthy explanation to and early training sequence with his roommate, Guy.

Guy's tongue is a heart-shaped tube! We should really get a doctor in here to catalogue this medical oddity!

The running panel at the top really should have been skipped. We know he left the class, we can see he went back to his dorm, and it's already established that he's hearing people's thoughts, which leaves that panel providing no additional information to the story.

This bottom panel shows another of my minor issues with the presentation of this story. The close-up of Caleb making this statement makes sense, but it could just as easily have been half the width of the page. There's no especially strong reason for that close-up to take up so much space, or for caleb's head to break out fo the frame there. (Breaking out of the frame is okay from time to time, but it ought to be avoided if you can unless there's some compelling metaphorical or otherwise artistic reason for it, which I don't really see here.)

On the whole it just seems that super-large panels to hold just one character in closeup is a common visual aesthetic here and I think it adds to the bulking up of huge numbers of pages with very little story delivered. It cocntinues on the following page where we've got two panels of Guy's reaction that certainly could have been half the size, one on top of the other, allowing the third panel to slide up to the upper-right corner.

Guy's laughing makes sense, but again, his reaction takes a lot of room (at least 2 pages) before we settle into acceptance of Caleb's unexpected power. It may be more realistic, but often in fiction the reader's experience is more important than pure realism. When I talk without a script, I do a lot of hemming and hawing -- I'm not real good at speaking off the cuff, and when I was in high-school I wrote a sci-fi short story that actually won a state-wide prize. But before I submitted it to the contest, I got editing advice from my dad (a journalist at the time), who pointed out that it's hard on the reader to see a lot of "uh... umm... " in the dialogue, except very sparingly and in specific places to show where a character is behaving unsually, like extreme nerves or stalling for time... and even then, don't let the character keep doing it. I think this is one of those cases where "less is more" applies.

But it's nice to see that aside from wanting his roommate to make friends, Guy is a Good Guy(tm) and he's not going to let Caleb struggle through this on his own.

Here Natalie uses a well-known trick to compress a week's worth of time. We see the calendar and the characters tell us it's been a week since the previous page. This same kind of mechanism could have been used to eliminate a lot of the previous pages in this story as well, e.g. "minutes later..."

Last panel wasn't necessary. We could have just seen Caleb freak out like he does on this next page.

A week to turn it off and another week to turn it back on, but the good news is that only took us a couple pages. :D

Man, Guy, you're lucky Caleb just wants to be lazy... god forbid Caleb were a practical joker.

I'd have just shown him at the sink with the dishes and Caleb telling him to snap out of it... again, it would have saved a whole page or maybe even two.

Chapter 3 is titled "The Robbery". Finally! It looks like we'll see some superhero activity. Caleb's still struggling to control his powers though.

These three have SUPER-POKER-FACE! :P

Speaking of super-poker-face... it might be a good time to think about who knows your secret identity.

That at least is super-helpful... but damn is it going to make Guy paranoid!

Wait! What the hell happened to Caleb's crippling social anxiety? I mean... I know having powers is likely to give him some extra confidence, but let it sink in a little! I will say though that giving the socially inept guy the mind-reading and mind-control powers is a cool bit of irony in the story, and I'm glad that (as far as I know), Natalie doesn't fall back on the old trope of having powers turning him into a colossal dick, like the villain in MegaMind.

Wait... is the problem that the robbery is happening this week, or that you now have to throw a party?

Called it! Guy is paranoid.

Well, cops don't give out that kind of information on an anonymous tip, but okay... I guess Natalie wanted to give Caleb and Guy a reason to do something else... and I'm guessing the other three anonymous tips were made by the robbers, on the assumption it would distract the police, sending them off to another location across town.

Bullet dodging must be a black-belt level technique in Taekwondo. :P

A car would be a giveaway? ... You couldn't park the car down the block?

Should the plan be "wait 'till they illegally enter the bank then call in the license plate number of their getaway car?"

If they can let up on the Three Stooges routine, they might actually foil a bank robbery. :P

Okay, so... after all that prep, the robbers finally arrive... I dunno, I think we could have skipped straight from hanging up the phone with the police to "here we are in the dark waiting for the robbers". We would have missed the explanation of Caleb's gi from Taekwondo, but to be honest, I think explaining that he took lessons could happen after he kicked somebody, and likely would be more impactful.

It also occurs to me that Caleb and Guy could easily have simply used an air-horn to scare them off at this point, without even revealing their position... or they could have deliberately tripped the bank's silent alarm just before the robbers arrived, so the police would show up while they were in the bank. There's a bunch of ways to handle this situation without confronting them.

The sledgehammer is a standard part of the Acme bank-robbing kit.

I ... don't think it's that easy...

What could go wrong? :P

They heard their partner yelling from the other room and everybody suddenly took their ski masks off? Is that like burglar 101? When there's a hitch, immediately expose yourself!

The gun is really invisible in that first panel... Should put a little shine on the edges of the metal so the reader can see it -- or maybe just don't make the room quite so dark. That's usually what I see in comics night scenes or dark room scenes are cast in blue shades and dark enough to know there's not much light, but light enough to make out details.

Last panel definitely didn't need to be that big... That's a ton of page realestate for very little story.

Okay, that's a good ending for the page. Kudos, Natalie!

I guess the bank robber is a black belt.

I dunno... wondering about his identity seems like a pretty essoteric thing for him to be thinking while he's curled up in the fetal position from a gut-kick... but I guess that's not so unusual in the superhero genre... but that really makes me wonder, where the hell is the guy who gave him the pill in the first place? In the prologue he said he was putting together a team of heroes (villains?) and it's been over two weeks since he delivered the pill, shouldn't he have been keeping tabs on Caleb? Maybe showing up to explain why he gave him the pill?

That must be him now...

It's different, I'll give it that... but I'm not sure how I feel about heroes with an art style that makes them look like Mr Stay-Puft. After all, he could never ever possibly destroy us.

Acme sledge-hammer-o-matic coming back again... I thought for sure that last page was going to end the chapter... but since that's not Reggie, that must mean Guy is in serious trouble... but we haven't heard anything from him, we don't know where he is or why we're not hearing anything from him.

In retrospect, I guess this series is meant to be read like a superhero parody, like the Tick or Megaton Man.

Yep... definitely meant to be read like the Tick. :P

Ugh the splash pages!

Man, even this fight scene draaaags! Too many giant panels.

Okay, now I'm thoroughly confused... we saw Stay Puft teleport before, sure... and his suit seems to turn a particular color when a given power is used, so blue for teleport... but why is he suddenly green and growling on the floor?

... so, aside from the awkward transition... why? They didn't seem to be having any trouble beating up Reggie before, being two guys with mind-control and teleportation powers... why isn't that enough? Now he's just showing off like, "I know it's just a fly, but look at the size of my warheads!"

Showing off or possibly playing with his food...

Hey, somebody noticed he's gone after like ten pages... actually I take that back, he was shot in the arm a little while back (and didn't even yell or anything that I recall), but they never explained where he was, what he was doing, why he wasn't fighting anyone, why he wasn't talking, why if he wasn't fighting someone he hadn't moved to a safer, less shootable location, etc. He seems to have just been standing around in the bank waiting to be shot and then checked-up on after.

Oh, he's supposed to be still squaring off against the girl in their group... I guess they were in some kind of suspended animation for a minute while Caleb and Stay Puft were tag-teaming Reggie and the guy they put to sleep.

Dude, maybe I shouldn't tell you how to do your job, but just put her to sleep and then you can tie the three of them up and leave them for the cops.

Batman in the daaark, exchanging punches. Isn't it a laaark, we can't make out a damn thing....

Stop playing with your food!

He's STAR STRUCK! Ba-dump-bump!

Come on! ... Giant panels, almost no dialogue...

STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD!

So Mr Stay Puft who gave you your powers and claims to be a "hero" is a bona-fide psychopath... I'm guessing red is super-strength. He must have taken all the pills.

Yes it would, but daaamn... the fight alone was like 20 pages! How long is this chapter?

That's convenient... you you could've, I dunno... worn masks?

Aha! An un-silent alarm... there are several more pages in this chapter. Mr Stay Puft has to spell-out the whole "I gave you the pill, that's what gave you the powers" thing, they leave the bank and have an awkward conversation with a friend from the first chapter on their way home. I actually read significantly longer than I had planned to, because I wanted to get to what's supposed to be the heart of this story, the "superhero" stuff... I feel like it has real potential, but man Natalie, tighten up those pages. It takes such a loooong time to read.

Otherwise the art's decent and it gets better over time and it's got some interesting concepts and character development. So if you like superhero fiction with a lot of slice-of-life, give Power Pills a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

#review #superheroes #slice of life #comedy #action #adventure

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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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Webcomic Whimsy: Return of Wonderland

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Return of Wonderland

Author: Emily McKenna

Site: ComicFury

Genres: Comedy, Fantasy, Adventure, Slice of Life, Blood-Bath Mystery, Acid-Trip War Story

Rating: PG (?)

Updates: Unknown

My Starting Point: Page 502 begins what appears to be the 16th chapter. Emily suggested starting on page 1, but there's a marked improvement in the art over nearly 600 pages and I want to give her the best chance of finding new readers. I read the prologue for background, but won't be including those pages here.

Synopsis (from ComicFury): Allie Leland has grown up in a small town where everyone has a missing family member. No one knows why they are disappearing, and the few that do turn up have lost their mind. Allie wanted to help find the truth while still sticking to her normal high school routine, but when she is suddenly attack by a two head monster things start to unravel around her. Now she must become the Alyss for the White Kingdom of Wonderland if she ever hope to find the truth behind the disappearances.

Several things are obvious at the start. First, the story is a treatment of the world from Lewis Caroll's Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Secondly the art is hand-drawn, although I'm not sure if the colors are crayon or pencil, and the lettering is digital even though the dialogue balloons are part of the hand-drawn panels. It's a little jarring to see the obviously digital letters placed into hand-drawn balloons, and I suspect it's caused problems for Emily on occasion when a balloon isn't large enough for the dialogue she planned.

What's not as obvious is that the spelling and grammar for the series are pretty rough. I presume that "hello there, non-cat animus" is supposed to sound a little odd, coming from a Wonderland native, but it's often hard to know whether phrases like "in work" (instead of "at work") or "it will be easy to communicate better" are deliberate or if they're written that way because Emily is young(?) or speaks English as a 2nd language?

With or without reading the prologue, "we have a rabbit hole to inspect" should ring bells for anyone who's ever heard of Lewis Caroll's work.

The following page shows two other dudes who appear to be nearby but not actively engaged with the heroine, Ally, and the Hatter.

Why is he saying "both of you"? Does the blond guy have multiple personalities? Anyway, both of them seem to be Wonderland natives in disguise... and although the one is a rabbit, he appears to be a tan color, so I don't think he's the White Rabbit from the book. The faces in the middle panels here are a good example of why I didn't want to start on page 1. While the art as a whole is rather rough, moments like this show that Emily has real potential. :)

As a bit of an aside, everyone who treats Caroll's work fixates on the Hatter, who was kind of a footnote in the books... once I'd like to see a treatment where he's not a main character and they focus on someone else instead like the Mock Turtle or the March Hare. I'm not picking on Emily, it's just something I've noticed about writers who piggyback on Caroll.

Oh, the dormouse is in Allie's purse... I didn't get that on the page where I started -- looking back now I see it.

I can't make heads or tails of anything else on that page... This may be like the TV series Lost where you can't miss any episodes or you won't be able to follow the story.

That's an interesting interpretation of the Cheshire Cat... Maybe it's just the illustration, but he looks like Danny Trejo. To be fair, "we're all mad here" is totally a Trejo line. :P

The story switches back to the rabbit and the red knight, who're investigating something that I can't quite follow... and then.

Oh, it's a Five Nights At Freddies parody, too...

And then we're back to Allie, Hatter, Cheshire and the Dormouse.

You have to be careful with size-changing cakes... they're addictive. I hear the same thing about Viagra.

You know, Allie is supposed to be bringing peace after the 100 years war... (according to the prologue)... she seems to be doing a pretty shit job, even her friends are fucking bloodthirsty.

We're a representative democracy!

We're not a representative democracy!

You have to respect an informed murderer...

Hatter's dialogue is spearing Cheshire in the head? ... Isn't he beat up enough? Now he gets death by Scrabble?

Oh, the Red Knight is the other "Alyss"... it's in the Prologue -- "Alyss" is a title given to prophesied peace-bringers. But I guess the Red Alyss is hacking into people with a sword, so maybe Allie's doing a better job anyway.

Oh, the other peacekeeper is a bloodthirsty dick... there's a twist I didn't see coming. "Extra! Extra! Peacekeeper begins peace talks with brutal massacre!" ... That's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for him.

Okay, I'm sorry to Emily if I haven't really been able to piece the plot together here... if you're a fan of Lewis Caroll fan fiction and ultra-violent mysteries, give Return of Wonderland a look!

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review-request rules here.

Thank you for sharing yourself with us! Sam

#webcomic #review #fantasy #adventure

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woohooligancomics · 6 years

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Zen and the Cult of Personality: a ComicsGate Story

You can't be a comedian and be afraid of people insulting you. And if stand-up or really any live performance is part of your act, hecklers are a fact of life. Performing live comedy and not expecting occasional hecklers is like working for the Fish and Wildlife department and not expecting bears, or not expecting drunks at a bar, or being a storm trooper and not expecting to get force-choked by Darth Vader.

I've talked about heckling before, but I haven't talked much about the hecklers themselves. Hecklers are a bit like internet trolls, although they're actually a bit worse, even cult-like. You see, internet trolls aren't bundles of narcissism, sadism and sociopathy like hecklers. ;)

As a comedian, if you ignore a heckler it ruins the enjoyment for the rest of the audience, so you have to do something. Most comedians fight snark with snark. Unlike internet trolls, hecklers often just won't give up, so it becomes a kind of roast-battle where the comedian and the heckler fire back and forth, competing for the most creative and entertaining insults. "Yo mamma so dead, you attended her funeral!" This is the most challenging part of performing live comedy because you have to be really creative on the spot, and while they're not quite the same, internet trolls can offer a substitute for us to practice against.