by Shaenon K. Garrity

It’s all in the approach. Peel away the style and the structure, and the story of Flick is, well, Crisis on Infinite Earths: an epic battle between universes in collision, with assurance that worlds will live and worlds will die. In the hands of any number of other creators, this premise could be presented as a straightforward heroic-fantasy slugfest tricked out in one of the standard sets of genre trappings. Mikael Oskarsson opens his epic by dropping the reader slapdash into the adventures of the Keystone Cops, Kelly and Taft, tough-talking flatfeet who strongly and inexplicably resemble Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle. It’s all in the approach.

No other webcomic looks like Flick. Most chapters appear in either black and white or a muted, earthy limited palette. The linework is typically fussy and detailed. The art style changes with each chapter, sometimes merely in the application of a new inking style or color scheme, sometimes dramatically. Oskarsson has an obvious love for vintage comic and illustration styles; he’s drawn chapters after the style of artists ranging from Arthur Rakham to H.R. Gieger to Jack Kirby to Hieronymous Bosch. In recent chapters, his artistic homages have developed into elaborate, impressively faithful pastiches. The chapter currently being serialized on Graphic Smash, “Dominant Damsels,” is a superhero sex farce presented as a forgotten 1940s comic book, complete with yellowed paper, cheap four-color tints, and the name of the publisher (“Irving Klaw Bondage Comics”) printed on the first page. The previous chapter, “The Shuddering Widdershins,” is a Lovecraftian horror story drawn in a pitch-perfect reproduction of the style of “Krazy Kat” creator George Herriman.

The chapters are linked by a shared setting: a “multiverse” comprising dozens of different universes (199, according to one character), each powered by a “reality generator.” As Flick opens, demonic creatures are trying to steal the reality generators and use them to collapse the universes into “the mythical, original universe.” Kelly, the Charlie Chaplin lookalike from Keystone, takes on the job of defending the multiverse from this threat after being recruited by the mysterious Louisa Strongbow (played by silent star Louise Brooks). Kelly is one of the recurring characters in Flick. Others include superheroines Tesa and Harleycat and their male counterparts Kane and Raboy, all of whom live in a comic-book universe with kinky undertones; and Manchuck, a naive young Chaos Prince, who starts hopping universes after hooking up with the sexy, vengeful Yabla.

Thus far, over 150 pages in, the plot hasn’t progressed much further than this. Much of Flick consists of self-contained short stories depicting life in the multiverse, which, consisting as it does of 199 universes, each constructed from a different set of themes and artistic influences, is a vast and varied place. Certain elements recur, particularly the idea that the multiverse operates on the power of symbols and belief, which may explain why so many of the locals resemble movie stars or comic-strip characters, and why there are entire universes apparently based on, say, 1930s horror movies. The beings fighting for the fate of the multiverse fight with magic words and “plague-memes,” and symbols wield immense power.

As might be imagined, some chapters are more effective than others. I’m underwhelmed by some of the stories involving power struggles between the multiverse’s sundry gods and demons, but enthralled by “Kokonino,” a gleefully goofy story about a magician and aspiring mad scientist who tries to prove his madness by summoning unformed archetypes from the heavens with his Icon Extractor. Unfortunately, he summons a powerful Kirby Archetype, a shambling hulk who lurches around bellowing, “I am power! I am reborn!” and can only be stopped by the brute strength of Zombass and his Half-Assed Cosmic Baseball Bat. In general, Oskarsson seems most at home playing with pulp conventions; “Kokonino” teases out the humor inherent in the crazed intensity of Silver Age sci-fi, while “Dominant Damsels” cheerfully outs the sadomasochism bubbling under the surface of the superhero mythos. He doesn’t so much parody these genres as celebrate them, weaving both the obvious and the subliminal elements of pulp into his own massive narrative.

Flick is now nearing the length of a comfortably-sized graphic novel, but it seems to be just getting underway. In the backgrounds of the various self-contained stories, a larger plot is building. We’ve seen glimpses of the new corps of reality police organized by Kelly; we’ve met Yabla and the Chaos Prince, who may have important parts to play; we’ve run into Harleycat and Tesa a couple of times. In recent chapters, Oskarsson’s writing has grown more sure and his art more experimental and ambitious. Slowly and steadily, enjoying itself along the way, Flick is developing into an apocalyptic epic with style.