This issue, we set our sites on Flight, an upcoming print anthology presenting an array of new talents in a full-color format. Many of these artists are best known for their work as web cartoonists-- including editor Kazu Kibuishi (see Copper review this issue), Derek Kirk Kim, Drew Weing, Scott Kurtz, Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade, Amy Kim Ganter, Kean Soo (reviewed here last issue), Bill Mudron, and Vera Brosgol. So we decided to investigate some of the lesser-known webcomics of the Flight crew.

The Maiden and the River Spirit
Derek Kirk Kim
Free

The Maiden and the River Spirit is a preview from the Flight book itself. But since it appears first on the web, and remains on the web for the time being, then it's a webcomic, print aficionados be damned.

Derek Kirk Kim is one of the top artists in webcomics, and this elegant short is a good introduction for the uninitiated. Kim has a nicely-balanced set of skills. He's an excellent draftsman of the human form whose figures are convincing and well-proportioned. And he's an ingenious designer whose compositions always seem 'right.' The coffee-drinking maiden of this story is a sublime creation, her jet-black hair and black sandals contrasting smartly with her colorful sweater and tartan skirt. Kim maintains just the right level of detail so that she is at once both a cartoon and a real person. And her young, pretty face balances on the cusp between sweetness and hardness, straying just a bit towards the latter in the story's cynical climax.

The cynicism of this story bothers me, not because it's cynical, but because it seems unsatisfying. That is to say, unsatisfying after you get past the sheer excellence of its presentation-- Kim is an agile, intelligent writer who never wastes a word or a gesture. But, having paid the proper respect, allow me to lay out my case for why this piece bugs me.

The story is a variation on Aesop's fable 'Mercury and the Woodsman,' which it reproduces in text at the story's midpoint. In Aesop's fable, Mercury helps a woodsman who's ax has fallen in the water. But before retrieving the woodman's actual ax, Mercury presents him first with a golden ax, then with a silver one. In both cases, the honest woodsman declines to take them because they are not his. Impressed by his honesty, Mercury retrieves the woodsman's own ax and gives him the golden and silver ones as presents.

The modern-day maiden in Kim's story is familiar with the Aesop fable, so when she is confronted by a River Spirit who behaves the same way, she emulates the woodsman, declining golden and silver thermoses before the Spirit returns her own plastic one. At this point, she expects to be rewarded for her honesty, but the River Spirit compliments her ironically, saying she has 'insured her impenetrable integrity.' Then he submerges and departs. Left with nothing but her soggy thermos, the Maiden exclaims 'What a gyp!' The morale: 'Aesop is great on paper.'

The most straightforward interpretation is that the River Spirit is entirely innocent and sincere, and the maiden is simply undone by her own cunning. But this interpretation is at odds with the irony of the Spirit's words. They seem to be taunting her, and ridiculing the idea of being good and honest. It seems more likely that the River Spirit has seen through the maiden's supposed honesty.

But I can't help but wonder, is there any way to win with this Spirit? Would he have rewarded the maiden if she had greedily taken the golden or silver thermoses? Does the River Spirit want the maiden to demonstrate her greedy and cunning nature, to validate the Spirit's own cynicism?

There's an undeniable subtext to the incident as well-- the maiden is a young woman, and the River Spirit is male (young-looking, but presumably ancient.) As sexual politics, the fable takes on aspects of masculine wish-fulfillment, like something Simon the 29-year-old virgin would dream up. The River Spirit embodies a gratifying male self-image: virile, in touch with nature, and able to perform wonders. The maiden has qualities that provoke male anxiety-- she is as neat as a pin, materialistic, educated (she knows her Aesop), cunning and deceptive, and too attractive. It is a perverse twist on the male fantasy of coming to the rescue of a female. The River Spirit tantalizes the maiden, and at the moment of her greatest desire, he insults her and abandons her.

Thus, sadly, it is his own 'impenetrable integrity' that is preserved.

Read This Comic.

--Joe Zabel

Cascadia
Clio Chiang
Free

Comics' biggest strength lies in their pincer attack. The best comics have always come in from the story side and the art side. Their claws rip through you and meet in your spine, wedging their blades into your nervous system, sending little jolts of fear and delight, rage and angst right up into your cerebral cortex. There will always be comics we read strictly for the writing, and there will probably be just as many that we read for the visuals. But the best work in comics has always, without question, been strong on both fronts.

When a work is lacking in the writing or art department, that does not negate its positive values. It does, however, tend to make me wonder why I'm not reading something that can really exploit comics to their greatest benefit. Clio Chiang's art may be quite nice, but her writing is quite poor. Neither one negates the other, but still. It's hard not to focus on the writing.

The comic is kneecapped right from the start by the way Chiang chooses to frame it. Of all possible devices, a happy old man telling his niece and nephew the tale is the stalest I can imagine. The premise, involving four legendary warriors and the sealing away of a magical daemon, seems to have been directly ripped from every single role playing game released in the '90s. The dialogue is stilted and bewildering. In the first chapter, the protagonist shoots down a bird and offers to demonstrate the art of barbecue for his companions. One of them gets a mystified _expression and asks, "Bar...be...que?" This one misstep forced me to take serious pause and consider its ramifications. Is the mystified traveler ignorant? Is he unfamiliar with peasant cuisine? Was it just a lame, fourth-wall violating joke? I can't say.I can say that she repeats the barbecue joke again within a matter of minutes, and she really shouldn't have. To compound all these issues, the plot at large is entirely dependent on nonsensical deus ex machina devices.

But the art IS pretty. Produced in the same vernacular (if not quite the same detail) as Indigo Kelleigh's The Circle Weave, it features vibrant, animation-style characters against painted backgrounds. The simple style and bright characters bely a visual sophistication that periodically makes an appearance in the form of shiny special effects or interesting layout experiments. Her experiments would probably do better if the page were considerably bigger, though -- I find it mystifying that so many webcomic artists looking to break into print think it absolutely essential to make their pages fit onto a monitor without scrolling. This hurts readability, and that won't impress any publishers out there.

So is the art pretty? Sure. Does that change the fact that the writing is bad? No. Does the fact that the writing is bad change the fact that the art is pretty? Not really. But I can't help thinking it'd be really, really cool if Chiang were good at both.

Read This Comic.

--Mike Meginnis

Cascadia reconsidered

Agreed, the framing device of Cascadia is trite. Agreed, the dialog in the early chapters is stiff. But what the review about doesn't take into account is the steady improvement in the writing and the art in this series.

By the time we reach chapter 4, the art is fluid and expressive, and the dialog is trimmed back considerably and is much more natural. Particularly notable in that chapter is a graveside scene where Karah, who has just lost her father, tries to talk Aron into letting her join the quest. Their confrontation builds convincingly, her anger and frustration seems real, until finally she admits, 'I have nowhere else to go!' Sure, there's nothing in the dialog that stands out as a particularly clever turn of phrase; but the words and pictures combine to create palpable drama and emotion. And after all, isn't that what good writing is supposed to do?

Chapter 5, weighing in at 73 pages, is a real cracker-jack adventure story in its own right, in which a shipwreck lands the principles on a tropical island. A night around the campfire brings Karah and Jacob closer together. Alas, the story creaks to a halt when they meet a lion-shaped elf who relates a hefty dose of backstory, quite incomprehensible if you haven't been paying attention to what went before. But the tale picks up again with a spectacular confrontation of lion and tiger that climaxes in an explosion of white seagulls, and reveals the creepy notion that a psychotic villain could be inhabiting the consciousness of any of them.

Chiang herself jokingly describes the series as a product of a sugar-induced coma, and in her forum had this to say, 'Re Wanting to get the story over with: well, partly because this is a story developed during high school and I've gone beyond that in my taste of material now. My impatience lies with how long this is taking to get out into the open, even though the story has been mostly changed to suit my older and more bitter personality...'

We admire the artist's dedication to completing what she started, and look forward to the darker material yet to come. But in the meantime, don't write off Cascadia, a substantial early work filled with spark and imagination.

--Joe Zabel

Smoke
Richard Pose
Free

The first and last thing you'll notice about Smoke is Richard Pose's striking line work. His powerful, intimate, languid line is the sort of thing some artists spend a life time training -- and which others seem maddeningly to almost have been born with. Think Jeff Smith (but not, in all fairness, at all as good -- Jeff Smith is a genius). The second and second to last thing you'll notice is Pose's strong aesthetic sense and original take on musclebound anatomy. Think of a sort of cute, cuddly Bruce Timm (although, in all fairness, not at all as good -- Bruce Timm's work is impossibly pristine, brilliant stuff).

Frustratingly, the page is displayed too small for us to really appreciate Pose's art -- at least those of us using a reasonably modern display resolution on our monitors. I am sick and tired of people clinging to print dimensions to the detriment of their webcomics. If I am reading it online, I want it big enough that I can see each detail. Do NOT, I repeat, do not shrink it down just so I can see it all at once. That is quite possibly the least important consideration in your life as an artist!

Beyond that is a reasonably well told if simple story about an imminently likable man who believes himself a dragon killer. Writer Joshua Pruett briefly plays with the concept that he might not actually be one. Put the emphasis on the word "briefly" there, because this comic is only fifteen pages long. It turns out he is one. When all is said and done, we're left with a sweet, briefly harrowing story that doesn't really resolve itself. This is obviously intended to be the prologue for a larger story of some sort. If it ever materializes, it could be quite good -- assuming Pose is still at the artistic helm, we can at least be certain it's going to be gorgeous. Hopefully, they'll even commit to making it as web-compatible as it can be.

Read This Comic.

--Mike Meginnis

Things With Feathers
Hope Larson
Free

Hope Larson's carefully-crafted work combines adventurous formal experimentation with biographical obsessions and identity issues.

In 20 Years on a 12-hour Clock, she snatches moments from her life, arranged chronologically but without further explanation. "This is an experiment in proximity,' she writes. 'I turned my life inside out and put it back together according to new rules, hoping patterns would emerge.' Traumas like sitting on a rusty nail, disappointments like flunking her driving test, and delights like her first kiss are juxtaposed with more tragic events.

Somewhat less linear, her flash-animated Sex Rainbow transforms sexual lust into mesmerizing patterns of spirals and genitalia. In Edible God, the consumption of an apple sets off a surrealistic transformation that begins with a third eye and ends with matrimony to a corn deity. But in Put On a Brave Face, Larson briefly returns to personal commentary, suggesting the fears and uncertainties on the eve of her wedding.

We hope to see more work soon from this intriguing young talent.

Read This Comic.

--Joe Zabel

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