Author/artist Erik Lundy apparently did not get the memo that unicorns must always be portrayed as innocent, wondrous creatures. To the contrary, in the Eisner Award-nominated The Chuckwagon at the End of the World, he imagines a future where the space-traveling Killer Unicorns of the Apocalypse have wiped out most of the human race, and the only hope for remaining humans is a pair of food truck operators and their dog, who slaughter unicorns to serve up as unicorn beef sandwiches.
Lundy illustrates this polemic in a style that is unrestrained but nevertheless appealing. The bold, jet-black linework is rendered across a subtle, sepia background made to look like folded, slightly soiled newsprint. You could certainly get away with hanging some of his pages in a gallery and selling them for real money.
To this anarchic saga, Lundy applies a hefty dose of something called interactive layering; in other words, when you hit the right arrow button, the whole image may be replaced, or just part of the image. Say, for instance, the front of the food truck becomes a comics page as the windshield, the front grill and bumper are progressively replaced by comics panels. Lundy has a million variations on this theme, with spatulas, triangles, mustaches, you name it.
From the beginning, webcomics have had the power to produce animation, sound, and other special effects, but artists have struggled to integrate these into comics without the effects becoming annoying distractions. To Lundy’s credit, he has found a way of using special effects to enhance the hellacious mess he is intent on creating.
Solid review. I appreciate that it is straight and to the point.
However, your site desperately needs an index of archived posts and a search function. 🙁