Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Fuck it, Let's Tear the Shit out of Lightbringer

Lewis Lovhaug, better known as Linkara, is known for his video reviews of bad comic books at the unfortunately named "Channel Awesome." He also writes bad webcomics. (Sidenote: He apparently also writes young adult fantasy, on Barnesandnoble.com there are six reviews of his first book. The first equates it to Lord of the Rings, the second seems oddly entranced with the fact that the protagonist is a 14-year old boy. The other four think it's shit.)

Anyway, the central conceit of the series is that Lightbringer is his world's first superhero, not a particularly original concept, but fine, by the standards of this blog, it's not the worst idea I've encountered. It may be the least facially interesting, but well, good writing can alleviate that problem.

So, can Lovhaug's wordsmithing save the day? The second arc features a super-villain who plans to distort reality somehow. That sounds like it would be difficult, but it turns out that all he needs is the power source of a breast expansion device in order to make it work, and Lightbringer's assistant happens to have one because, well, there's really no explanation that's going to be satisfying to that, is there? The other arcs are in the same vein as only Lightbringer can accomplish the superheroic feats of preventing mass slavery in America and making sure witnesses don't get murdered.

As for the art, well, the man simply cannot draw. Not that such a limitation stops him from putting out pinups of his female characters. Lovhaug eventually got a ringer to do the art for him, which I suppose I'd appreciate more if the comic weren't otherwise terrible.

Now, I suppose the time has come to discuss Mr. Lovhaug's moral and political beliefs. Oh, I'd prefer to avoid the subject entirely, if only because fighting objectivists is a sucker's game, but well, he leaves me little choice. Walter Kovacs, of course, is the real identity of Rorschach, a deconstruction of the objectivist hero who would rather see the world burn than conceal the truth. Alan Moore is rather clear on that point. You'd think that given some time, Lovhaug would realize this but....no.

But, hey, Lovhaug doesn't need to listen to some God-damned limey pinko! No, he understands that the only way to fight crime is to violate any civil liberties you need to. (This scene is actually worse than it looks, as the FBI essentially sent Lightbringer into the bad guy's base with the explicit purpose of violating the hell out of the 4th amendment.) Also, he's apparently not a fan of moral relativism.

Let's look at his villains, shall we?

-General Werres: A totally evil moral relativist who feels that it's not really that bad to operate a slave auction so long as he donates some of the money to charity, a spot on criticism.
-The Smiling Man: A dude whose scheme partially relies on stealing a breast expansion ray.
-The Gentleman: A centuries-old prude who was really Jack the Ripper....and the Black Dahlia killer....and the Zodiac killer. He figures that the best way to bring back civility is through brutal murders. He is defeated in a manner not seen since the days of Scooby-Doo.
-A Dude who apparently blackmailed an acquaitance of Lightbringer's into having sex with him in lieu of filing an auto insurance claim against her: Lightbringer's deadliest foe, to be sure.
-The Darkbringer: Lightbringer's archnemesis. He loves giving his speeches.
-The Power Glove: He's so....bad.
-The American Legal System: Plea Bargains in exchange for cooperation? Not on Lightbringer's watch!
-Catwoman knockoff #713: Hey, originality is hard!
-The democratically-elected mayor of the town: This issue: Lightbringer fights the mayor and her dastardly plan to reserve the ability to police the citizenry to professionally trained officers of the peace who are legally accountable for their actions!

That is not an inspiring rogues' gallery.

In summary, if you've ever wondered why Alan Moore has disowned Watchmen, this comic should make clear to you his concerns over misinterpretations of his work.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Das Unheimliche Tal: The Challenges of Zona

First off, let me congratulate the author of "Bardsworth" for being the first person to leave a comment on this blog. Although, let me point out that, a) Bardsworth is probably the best of the webcomics I've reviewed, and b) He's doing way too well to worry about what I think about anything. Actually, I kind of feel bad about my review, to be honest. Also, paranoid.

Anyway, the comic for today is called "The Challenges of Zona," this is the fourth page, stupid pop-culture reference in a fantasy milleu, fan-service character, and, of course, the art, and I can call it a day, and yet, for the sake of thoroughness, let's plough on.

Okay, first of all, the pop-culture reference happens because the main character was an unfortunate everyman named Mentl who was mysteriously transported to a fantasy land. So, uh, we're not exactly swimming in originality, here. Having been transported to middle-Narnia, he uses his musical skills to become a bard. This somehow gets him laid. This somehow, in ways that defy all logic and reason, leads to a towering blond barbarian woman repeatedly begging him to sleep with her, and even suggesting that they have threesomes....and that is not an idle suggestion. Oh, wait, and he's the fucking chosen one! And he's super-endowed!

The other main characters are scantily-clad women who throw themselves at Mentl whenever he plays his mighty mandolin and various things who try and fail to kill Mentl. Anyone who says that these characters exists for any other reason than to provide fanservice and glorify Mentl are fucking liars.

Now, I suppose that this webcomic could be a very sophisticated deconstruction of fantasy tropes. Then I saw this page, and well, that ended that line of thought rather abruptly. Yeah, apparently Mentl accesses his deus-ex-machina powers by singing pop-rock. Now, you can do that if you want, but if you're going to go down that road, you can't turn it around and pretend that the plot is anything other than absurdist comedy. So, "heartwarming" scenes like this, beyond being somewhat hacky in general, cannot coexist with Mentl killing his enemies with "Wild Thing."

Okay, then there's the art. Someday, maybe not so far in the future, we'll have perfected 3-d rendering, and the uncanny valley will be breached, or crossed, or whatever the proper idiom is. However, as of yet, the technology isn't quite there. So, while I suppose this art shows a high level of technical proficiency, the characters still kind of look dead. But, then again, the artist is doing about the best he can with the available technology, and I can't come down too hard on that. This, on the other hand, is pretty damning, and also not safe-for-work.

So, in summary. Shitty plot, stars a Marty Stu, and features soulless fanservice. On the plus side, it isn't very long, so it's got that going for it.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Japan Ruins Everything: Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden

Like most other males in my cohort, I grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and by that I mean the late-80s, early-90s version that realized that there was a pretty severe limit to how much emotional torque you were going to be able to get out of a show where the main characters were...well....teenage mutant ninja turtles. But I suppose you could make an emotionally charged version of the show, if that's what you really wanted to...

You know what, fuck it, anyone who tries to turn the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into some sort of weird emo fanfic is the enemy of all right-thinking men, and that's simply all there is to it. Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden is shit. Period.

Okay, I suppose I should show a little evidence to buttress my claim. Let's start with the plot. You see, the story here is that one day as the TMNT were chilling out in the sewer, an evil sword came in the mail and the only way to get rid of it was the stab Splinter through the heart, this causes the team to break up and that's where the main story begins some years later when the Turtles find some kid who got turned in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and oh God, why does this exist?

Sorry, I can't do this review normally, because I just don't want to. Suffice to say, if you've ever wondered: Man, what if they took the Ninja Turtles, dumped in as many anime cliches as they could (schoolgirls in uniforms, speed lines, and evil samurai curses) and then add in some good old-fashioned teenage angst (a girl named 'shadow', and the ninja turtles all becoming brooding people making 'deep' comments about life) then you should be on some heavy-duty medication to prevent yourself from thinking such awful, awful thoughts. Oh, also this comic can show you exactly what that's like.

Listen, at least 90% of fan fiction is terrible, and at least 90% of webcomics are terrible, so, at best, there's a 1% chance that a fan fiction webcomic isn't going to totally suck, which aren't exactly terrific odds. And, in a sense, can I really blame Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden for failing to achieve the near-impossible?

Yes, yes I can, and if I had a time machine, I would go back in time and prevent it from being created by any means necessary, even though that would inevitably lead to me having to escape from a dystopic timeline where the Nazis won World War II with the aid of a ragtag bunch of rebels, who I assume would be lead by an alternate version of Barack Obama with an eyepatch. Eventually I'd make it back to our timeline and be forced to destroy my time machine, only belatedly learning the folly of trying to rewrite history.

Uh....which is to say I don't care much for this particular comic.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Zap!: You Won't Believe it's Not a JRPG!

I've never actually played Final Fantasy VII, you see, I assumed that Nintendo would continue its dominance in the console wars, and it took me a few years to realize that the N64 wasn't going to make it. Which is a long way of explaining that I don't have the necessary background to think of Final Fantasy VII as anything other than the game that inserted a whole new set of painful cliches into the minds of impressionable youths that occasionally lead to disasters like Zap!

The eponymous Zap is amnesiac psychic with spiky blond hair. I believe these traits may make him one of the least original characters of all time. And his mysterious past? Yeah, he was working with the bad guys. The other characters include the initially distant love interest, the warrior alien (aka anime Worf), the robot with attitude (aka Bender-lite), the tech-girl, the androgynous evil guy who is clearly evil, and yet must be revealed as being evil, and the cat girl, for if the otaku of Japan have one dream for the future, it is that they will meld the features of the cat onto that of the schoolgirl, and that is why medical licenses must never be given to fans of anime.

But hey, a good story can make up for good characters, right? Okay, well, Zap! is the story of a ragtag band of rebels fighting an evil empire controlled by a cabal of evil psychics. So, you've got a bunch of derivative characters in a derivative plot. I'd talk more about the plot, but well, you've seen it before, trust me.

The art is competent. Actually, that may be underselling it, because, unlike most webcomics, there is clear improvement. Compare this to this and it's clear that the art is better now than it used to be (although the writing is still shit). It's not great, but there are many, many webcomics with worse art.

Zap! is actually kind of impressive, because I think that this webcomic is actually the ur-JRPG comic, a webcomic whose utter fidelity to the tropes of the genre is such that it somehow transcends its mediocre nature in order to become something grander. Shorn of any distracting outside influences or creative aspects, looking at Zap! is like looking into the base nature of this type of webcomic. Personally, I find such a view unpleasant and banal, but if you're looking for a sci-fi/fantasy comic with anime-influences, well, Zap! is certainly the exemplar, for good or ill.