A Year! - KinkoFry, Moe, Abominable

First off I apologize for missing last week's update. Life got in the way and I needed to take a week off even though I really only do this in about an hour or two. To make up, I added in a third review for this week and for those cynics who say I need to review four comics, I reply "nert nert nert" (see Hockey Zombie).

As of Tuesday of this week, the blog will be officially one year old. Looking back at the original post I find it funny, originally I got into the blog industry because I expected my webcomic site to take off and I wanted to be some Internet phenomenon. Since then I've faced reality with a greater deal of cynicism, frugality and intelligence; or so I say. I would just like to say the past year that I have had the blog has been a great time for myself and 4th edition is still touchy for me.

Onto webcomics!

KinkoFry by Rebecca Clements

The comic has been making the Internet rounds on the few forums that I visit but for those unfamiliar or unexposed, KinkoFry is an absolute visual delight. In a Seussian illustration style the comic builds beautiful setting and landscapes creating background setting that is both engaging and enjoyable.

The humor itself varies from comic to comic but is mostly above the standard level. Based around a group mushroom people, the comic enjoys taking them on adventures in a strange and wondrous world. Adventure though may not be the best term to use. Something more like montages. The story if any is told in bits and pieces and doesn't add much as there is not much story to add but it works for the comic. Some of the best gags though are the ones that completely seem to not fit the genre or at least what one might see as the genre i.e. the masturbation genie.

The art though as I mentioned is the main selling point for the comic. So many comics completely ignore the background and this comic glorifies it. Even the backgrounds that could easily have been copied and pasted are carefully or not so carefully redrawn. The characters and simple. I just really love the art in the comic. I might as well stop here to fall into rambling about the art over and over.

TL;DR: If you want something that looks great, imaginative and doesn't bore you with story, KinkoFry is for you. A

Moe by Michael Firman

Moe is yet another comic with a very newspaper style setup that, due to the freedoms of the Internet, is allowed to breathe and be creative. Based around the eponymous Moe, a vagabond bean shaped character working to make a life for himself, the comic creates a psychotic odyssey involving museums, corrupt officers and a store that holds a special place in my heart known as Best Pie.

The art for Moe is simplistic but it fits the storytelling. On the other hand though divining the ages of characters can become difficult at times. On the bright side though, the colorful cast is almost constantly changing. Characters from the first 20 comics haven't been around for ages or even mentioned and you eventually begin to recognize that the only characters around are Moe and his brother. 

The story and writing are my main reason for keeping with the story. The humor ranges from the basic slapstick to the more complex visual puns and all mediums of humor in between. Also incorporated into the stories are a series of convoluted and confusing but none-the-less entertaining plots and subplots. A brief romance story in the comic turns to a creationist protest to a horrible date and then to a who knows what. I personally love that about the comic though.

TL;DR: Moe is enjoyable unless you happen to hate humor and have a dark spot in your heart where you are slowly devouring yourself. A

The Abominable Charles Christopher by Karl Kerschl

The Abominable is one of those comics in the medium that does drama well. Most Internet comics confuse the differences of drama and melodrama creating boring sob-fests that end with the writers writing soap operas in previous Soviet Block countries, if only.

The easiest thing to compare the Abominable to is Bambi. It is a beautiful and amazingly well-drawn comic that takes place in a forest full of colorful characters (though the world itself lacks hue). Varying between the humorous side stories and the main plotline, The Abominable shows you what an actual comic artist can do with the webcomic medium. The pacing can seem disrupted though as the main character is constantly introduced to new companions who seem to add little to the story i.e. the rabbit and such. For all I know though, they could all be Chekov's guns creating a massive arsenal to pull from to launch an attack of emotion on the reader. Honestly though, the writing and the art work together so well it is difficult to describe one without the other.

All in all, the comic is amazing (I really need some bad comics in here to seem less biased). I picked it up, read it in a few hours and now must wait for Wednesday and frankly when it comes to comics, I finally have something to look forward to for that day. A

Thanks to everyone who has linked, chatted or commented over the past year. I do this for you, the people wanting something new and nerdy, and maybe in a small way, for myself. 

Come back next week when I scrounge the bottom of the barrels and ruin the dreams of aspiring webcomic artists by ranting for several paragraphs about their DrunkDuck sprite comics.... or I can just find more entertaining comics the people should read un-ironically.