Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Review

In prep for the Small Press Expo next month I will attempt 2 webcomic reviews every week! Hoo ah.
After that hopefully a review and an interview/other article every week.

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly Turnbull
El Santo, the comrade in arms, reviewed Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, a comic about video games and the characters involved therein, outside of the gaming world. Sort of like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit world (which I have no doubt will be included in the most likely horrible upcoming sequel). I love the idea of characters not really being actors though and being exactly as they are in the games in the "real world" because our modern characters are for the most part so poorly thought out. Mind you, I gave up a majority of gaming upon the theft of my Wii and have only in the last week resorted to Gamecube gaming but I have a wide enough breadth of knowledge.
A lot of the older gaming comics focused as one shots about "what if so and so had to do a menial task" like what if Mario went to the grocery store and stomped on all the mushrooms. A sophomoric idea but it might lead to some more thoughts like how far does ones gaming related paranoia go. Is this a full trauma or a quirk.
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things takes this to the next logical step and does it with quality art and some mostly well thought out ideas.
Based around what is essentially a veteran's clinic for old game characters (helping them adjust to being out of war instead of the helping them poop type) run by the machismo powered Commander Badass. The early comics follow a mostly one shot gag but the ideas are fresh and generally unseen. The Big Daddy Daycare comic was originally what sold me.
When the ideas are further developed though like the following Poke'Mon story the comic truly shines.
El Santo sees the humor being hit or miss but I hardly see that as a negative, and I hardly see misses, though I guess I may be easily entertained. For me a rare gamer even if I miss the reference or didn't play the game (though missing references is now mostly impossible) the jokes still commonly fly for me.
Overall I have some hardcore love for Manly Guys Doing Manly Things and I look forward to the comic continuing to grow and add more characters since it is still relatively young. It has a bright future and if it keeps going with the same quality it has now it could easily be one of the big gaming webcomics.
Great art, above average gamer humor A.

2 comments:

Talekyn said...

It's not a new concept, this "taking characters out of their milieu and having them interact as if they were real people" thing, but it sounds like this comic does it just slightly better than most who try.

Coelasquid said...

Hey man, I really appreciate it! (Sorry I didn't get a chance to respond sooner, it has been a craaaazy week at the studio) Knowing that people are enjoying it makes it justifiaeble killing myself like this to balance it on top of a full time job :P

Thanks again!