#Webcomic review

[crowdsourced-webcomic-reviews]

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[ritabuuk]

For Webcomic Day Week, I want to make several posts sharing some of my favorite webcomics! Today I want to share The Devil's Trill by Sarah Nelson (@vermillionworks).

Set in Scotland in the Victorian Era, the story follows Miriam Pierce, a woman who is going through a really rough time right now. Her fiancé fell to his death off a cliff, and the next guy who showed any interest in her fell down the stairs and died. Has she been murdering these men and getting away with it? Or is she under some sort of curse? Either way, the rest of the town wants nothing more to do with her, and her father has disowned her.

Yet despite — or perhaps because of? — these rumors, Florian Doré has taken a great interest in Miriam. Florian is a mysterious bachelor who has recently moved from France to a nearby manor that is now completely covered in roses.

Florian is handsome, and suave, and charming... yet he seems to have a barely-hidden nasty streak, and he is obvious about his disdain for religion and morals.

What does Florian want with Miriam? Is she really cursed? Has he actually saved her in her moment of crisis, or will Miriam regret accepting the invitation to his manor?

I don't know any of these things yet, but I definitely am intrigued! I hope I've gotten you intrigued too. And if you'd like to have a soundtrack, it seems appropriate to have The Devil's Trill Sonata playing while reading along.

[shibaren]

Rereading Pia and the Tiny Little Things by Clover! I was first enamored by the art style and gives me inspiration to attempt making comics traditionally. There are also a lot of tidbits on different insects in every chapter that are wonderfully drawn. I also read Go Get a Roomie by Clover as well a few months ago and it was a wild ride. A great read thats just as thoughtful as it is sex positive lmao, and it's really cool seeing how the art style eventually evolves into what we see now with Pia and the Tiny Little things.

Go Get a Roomie is finished, and Pia is Clover's most recent comic and updating.

[ataliaf]

mixed myth reread liveblog #1

mixed myth is a 2001 webcomic by Robin, a fairly prolific webcomic author, hosted on comicgenesis in monotone pencil (except for rarer digital color pages). the site is a graveyard of links, but the strips are still fully hosted.

i'm very familiar with mixed myth- i've read it around six times. however i have a bad memory, and a lot of those were before age 15 so it's not totally engrained. i might be occasionally critical of some of the decisions, but those are probably going to be surface level: i think mixed myth is an awesome dip into slightly more involved webcomics, especially as one you can read in an afternoon.

i'd recommend you read it at the link below before reading this liveblog, as i am not going to be very good at avoiding spoilers for a 23 year old webcomic. It's a fun and fairly short read without information.

goals for this liveblog:

• talk about the art and panel composition

• provide alt text for the words if not the art

•try to deduce plot information being given by the art and story

•generally get more comfortable with writing for a potential audience

without further ado, the first page of mixed myth:

you get a sense that the author read a few clamp manga and got very inspired. the panel layout draws you from right to left through a slightly confusing chase sequence; cheetah griffins chase a green elf riding a horse off a cliff, where the elf and horse fall into the sea. this sets up that our protagonist is green, that something fantastical pursues her, and that she has a close bond with her horsie.

page 2 is a more typical example of a comic, and seems to set the tone quite nicely. bedraggled and wet, the horsie and elf climb out of the water onto shore, sniping about their circumstance. information: horsie talks.

3 has some incredible hair on horsie's part, and introduces a new character! so far, she seems like a fairly generic sphinx seeking answers to riddles rhymed.

4 shows us that horsie is not just belligerent to elf, he's also uncouth to sphinxes who ask for riddles. and the sphinx is willing to be rude right back! also sphinxy genre awareness.

5 has the elf answering the classic riddle with a long and convoluted answer, showing that she's a little quirky. it also suggests that the sphinx has some issues with her memory, perhaps?

9 drops some plot info on us: the person hunting our protagonist, Keeva, with griffins is her father!! she's half elf lord and half regular goblin, and elves are a rather silly bunch.

10 gives us the most important plot information of all: Puck, the horsie, is an alcoholic.

[radijaad]

To A Crisp has updated!

Read From the Beginning

Newest Page

[imkardelen]

3000 Sapphires

Year of manufacture: 2023 - ...

Where to read? Webtoon, Tapas

Have you ever been so immersed in your dreams that you forgot about the real world? So it happened to little Betty, who got into the Wonderland world of her favorite book "3000 Sapphires". From that moment on, she was no longer interested in her own life, the people in her life, her own family - just a world of illusions, where her real friends were: Christopher and Tristan… But maybe that world is not so unreal?

What if it's is much more real than the real world?

The main genres are fantasy, romance, polyamory, drama.

Rating: 18+

[xxtrixster]

Right don't read this webcomic if you have any triggers with abuse, murder, abelsim, curse words. The comic also says it on every chapter, but just my non spoiler thoughts. It's a pastel hard boiled noir set in the early 00s.

God reading the webcomjc what happens next by maxium gra es is amazing slow moving train wreck with extremely believable character and the heaviest topic of teen murder and also the comments are arguing about prison abolition and Tumblr culture. Anyways it's here:

It reminds me of like hard hitting noise gerne in pastel colors. There is no understanding the victim or motivations but the people left in the midst. Like so many hard boiled noir never let the victim speak cause their dead, but also its about circumstances and to see that here is really sucked in read.

Anyways lots of trigger warnings, murder, abelsim, abuse, mental health. Do not read if you have an aversion to any of that. It does not get lighter. It is just one continuous sprial. No heros.

[byelacey]

THE PYR REVIEW episode 01  Please enjoy a short history of the Great Pyrenees breed... a PYR-story, if you will :) 

[shibaren]

First thread I'm posting here! Starting with a re-read of Barbarous by Aidosaur and Ananthhirsh. It's a pretty cool fantasy I found about a year ago iirc, but started with reading the authors' diary comics and their first comic, Lucky Penny.

[marsoid]

favorite pieces from 2022 x

[superectojazzmage]

Watched the Nimona movie last night. Review I guess. It was pretty damn good. Definitely would’ve probably been regarded as Blue Sky’s magnum opus if they’d gotten to release it instead of being fucked over by Disney. Very cute, very funny, very powerful in the right moments. A thing that stuck out to me is that it’s really only an adaptation in the loosest sense of the word. It takes the core premise and beats of the comic but is functionally an entirely different kind of story that does its own thing. And given that ND Stevenson was heavily involved in production, I suspect that was intentional.

The comic was much darker and more downbeat in a lot of ways, plus it was significantly longer and thus could afford to be slower paced. But more than that, it was a lot more meaty in terms of themes and scope. The whole “LGBT allegory” element was there, but it wasn’t the sole focus, the comic was a story about a lot of different things; not just an LGBT experience, but also discussion of fantasy genre tropes and clichés, criticism of other fantasy deconstructions, character study, exploring what it means to be a hero or villain, critique of the glorification of crime and cruelty in underprivileged communities, corruption in governments, peer pressure, the senseless and self-perpetuating nature of violence, the worthlessness of revenge, etc.. And above all that, it was a story about trauma and people’s responses to it, with Ballister representing people who actually deal with their problems and move on while Nimona represented people who let their mistakes and suffering and grief consume their identity, or worse, use it as an excuse to indulge their worst qualities and take out their feelings on everyone around them.

The movie, by contrast, has a much more narrow focus. The LGBT allegory is front and center and basically the entire focal point of the movie, aside from a spattering of themes about the danger of zealotry and rigid fundamentalist thinking. This gives the movie a much tighter narrative and pacing that suits its inherently shorter runtime, but also leads to a ton of changes to the story either to convey a different kind of message or just work better in a different medium. Most obviously in how Nimona is vastly more sympathetic in the movie and essentially really is the silly gremlin the comic fakes you out into thinking she is, scrapping the comic’s twist that she was a genuinely bad person who was completely serious about wanting to be a villain, caring nothing for the lives she destroyed with her behavior and idolizing Ballister because she thought he was the same as her and would thus tell her what she wanted to hear (i.e., that she was justified in killing and destroying everything around her in the name of getting even). And in the changes to the Institution’s history and nature. And all sorts of other things.

All in all, I feel if you go in comparing and contrasting the movie and the comic, arguing which changes are for the better or worse, you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment in either direction because they’re two different beasts and it’s like comparing apples and oranges. So keep that in mind if you’re a fan of the comic watching the movie or a fan of the movie wanting to look into the comic. I think ultimately I still like the comic better, but that’s purely my personal opinion and there’s plenty that I think the movie did better.

Some other observations:

Riz Ahmed my beloved, thank you Mr. Stevenson for this perfect casting. Literally perfect for Ballister.

Acting in general was very good. You can tell this was a passion project for a lot of people, not just Stevenson.

Only two changes that are objectively bad are Ambrosius losing his awesome Van Halen hairdo and changing Ballister’s last name — Blackheart is a way cooler name than Boldheart and it’s a pointless change, one that I’d argue even hurts the narrative since it makes it too obvious that Ballister isn’t actually a bad guy.

The animation is really great with fantastic expressions, stylish movement, and wonderful aesthetics that perfectly suit the story, but there’s times where it feels a little off. But there are parts where it looks less “movie” and more “cheap mid-2000s CGI-and-Flash cartoon show from France”.

The humor can be a hit and miss, in a “going through the motions of a Hollywood animated comedy for kids” way. The movie excels when it’s either imitating the comic’s Old Internet sense of humor or going hard on the drama, but there’s bits where it seemingly slams on the brakes to do Illumination-esque Twitter humor and those bits definitely throw off the vibe.

Having an actual straight up attempted suicide in the climax was shockingly ballsy. I genuinely can’t believe they went there, but I’m glad they did because the film wouldn’t have felt nearly as raw without it.

I don’t know how they managed to make the Director even more of an asshole than in the comics, but they did.

[catscafecomics]

Penguin reviews coffee cups...

[jasontoddiefor]

webcomic rec of the day:

Kill the Villainess

Plot: I reincarnated in a novel inside the body of a villainess named Elise who poisoned herself when her fiancé, the prince, married her childhood friend, the maid Helena. From the moment I realized this, I had only one goal. Escape from the world in this novel. To succeed, however, I must play the part of "Elise" and die her foretold death, even as the events of the novel start to change.

Comment: Oh, man. I've heard many good things of this webcomic to the point where I was annoyed and refused to read it out of spite. However, one day spite was not enough to keep me away and I gave it a try and now I have to admit, yes, it more than deserves its praise.

In a genre full of villainesses turning out to be good guys, getting the man and the happy ending in their new world, this story breaks convention. It doesn't just linger on the passing trauma of transmigrating into a new world, it makes it the core theme. On top of that, without spoiling too much, this story never loses sight of its start. Too often these stories get caught up in adding yet another villain and conspiracy, shifting the goals ever so slightly, but Kill the Villainess says this is a story about death and holds to its promise. This, of course, doesn't mean there isn't a happy ending.

Also, I'd die for Anakin and not just because he's called Anakin. In a world of golden haired red eyes Male Leads, he's a knight in shining armor.

[oleadergrove]

Long Exposure by Marsoid

Alright. As always we're starting with trigger warnings. Child abuse, child pornography (referenced), underage drinking and drug use, homophobia, bullying, and some violence.

When Jonas' childhood bully comes back to his school after (rumor has it) he'd gone to jail for stabbing his stepfather, they're forced to work together on a group project. They stumble across a strange research facility in the middle of the woods and gain superpowers, but with that comes an organization following them. (And maybe some romance too?)

I love this comic so much. I've read it all the way through like three times. Jonas and Mitch have a really adorable relationship (though I guess not really in the beginning, although it is kinda cute with how Mitch is very lovey-dovey) and Mitch's shirts are pretty great. The art is amazing and I loved how it's in all black and white except for Jonas' powers. Would for sure recommend to so many people it's amazing and I love it.

Since this is a webcomic, the link from the cover photo will take you to the Tapas page, but you can also read it on Webtoons and at https://www.longexposurecomic.com. You can also buy it as a print book on the author's shop if you prefer, but I don't think the entire comic is available that way. You can find the author's tumblr page @marsoid.

[m1xieup]

spoilers for 108

So I think it so funny that Will arrived to Prospero/Montresor’s room when he did because that means he either

a) woke up before Mrs Poppet’s alarm or just straight up hadn’t gone to sleep (which aligns with my belief he had trouble sleeping based on how tired he can be shown to be/the fact there is often more line weight/a slight shadow under his eyes [though that could just be showing his eye shape]) and he probably knew of it before the alarm

b) his room is really close to their room

c) he ran as fast as his legs could take him to get there. He SPRINTED down those hallways and stairs to get there. Monty and Prospero had barely gotten up when he got there. He was running so, so, fast

[byelacey]

bark