Websnark

« May 1, 2005 - May 7, 2005 | Main | May 15, 2005 - May 21, 2005 »

-->

May 14, 2005

Eric Burns-White: A snark where Eric abuses dancing bear metaphors.

(From On the Playground. Click on the thumbnail for full sized matters of perspective!)

There is an old saying. It's one I got from Heinlein, but it predates him of course. "It doesn't matter if the bear dances well or not, it's that he dances at all." And there's a degree to which it's true. If you have a bear and he's dancing, that's pretty impressive any way you look at it.

But what if the bear actually dances well? Can you set aside the fact that he's a dancing bear, and judge the dance on its own merits? Does the fact that he's a bear make it all the more remarkable and cool? Or does the opposite happen -- does his bearish nature prevent the bear's dance from being recognized as a dance.

That runs through my head as I read through On the Playground. On the Playground is a strip about third graders, that is surprisingly (and refreshingly) uncluttered by either vulgarity or schmaltz. All too often, when we see comic strips set in the third grade, these days, the kids are either twee and sweet and present a bucolic view of childhood born entirely of our own adult yearnings for a childhood like we see in Hallmark Cards, forgetting that the childhood itself was often none too fun... or it's an exercise in scatological humor.

Sometimes, both of the above can be funny, mind, but there's something refreshing about a comic strip that depicts children as self centered without being sociopathic. On the Playground pulls this off. The humor is sophisticated, the kids aren't even slightly twee, but the strip is also... well, about children. This is a hard set to pull off. Also, the execution is excellent in the individual strips, and it brings the funny. There is an element of surrealistic humor, some of the cruelty you need to have to be really funny, a sense of characterization that has no real bad guys (you feel truly badly for the teachers in this strip -- they really are trying), and a dash of pure anarchy for good measure. All good things for a comic strip.

Which is evident by the fact that the strip actually gets the front page of the Sunday comics section of the Lowell Sun. There's a lot of Keenspace comic strips out there, but this is one of the few that can boast a newspaper gig that puts it on the front page of a sunday comics section that goes into fifty thousand homes. Heck, this is one of the few webcomics that can boast that.

So, by any definition Alan Anderson's strip is worth your time. It's a good, solid gag-a-day strip. It brings the Funny without being sentimental or scatological. It's smart and well executed.

The thing is... Alan Anderson is a dancing bear. He's thirteen. In fact, he just turned thirteen on Thursday. (And happy birthday, Alan.)

David Letterman, when talking to prodigies of any kind, loves to say "when I was your age, I had a paper route," and that's coming to mind right now. I was a writer at thirteen, but I wasn't a very good one. I know. I still have stories from back then. I sure as heck didn't have a newspaper circulation.

The question is... does the fact that Anderson is thirteen -- and got his newspaper gig and a 60+ strip archive when he was twelve -- distract from the fact that On the Playground is an honest to goodness good comic strip, and would be if Anderson was twenty four and hanging out in coffee shops while wearing berets?

I'll tell you this much -- when Anderson is twenty-four, assuming he sticks with cartooning (and there's no reason he shouldn't), he'll have the potential to be one of that generation's best cartoonists. And that's a hopeful thing any way you slice it. But today, with him at thirteen, he's a good cartoonist who knows how to tell a good joke in four panels, writing a comic that's worth your time.

Bear or not, this is some good dancing. Check it out.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:01 PM | Comments (27)

-->

May 13, 2005

Eric Burns-White: A Websnarkian Holiday

As all good subjects of the Neighborhood of Make Believe know, any time the thirteenth of the month rolls around on a Friday, it is King Friday XIII's birthday, by royal proclamation. It is, by decree, a most excellent and good day, and one of enjoyable things.

As both Wednesday and I were sick on the good King's birthday, Websnark actually took the day off. Between illness and royally mandated frivolity, the doors to Snark Mansion remained shuttered.

I trust the Good King's birthday reflected well on everyone else, however.

(Note -- this is being plugged into 5/13's space, but it was writ on the 14th. Just to be, y'know, honest.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 6:00 AM | Comments (1)

-->

May 12, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Besides, it's not like he's Aylee.

From Sluggy Freelance.

I don't usually respond to comments on another snark over here in the main body of the page. I just don't. I usually respond right there in the comments, because that's how conversations happen. It's the difference between having a chat after giving a speech and climbing up on stage and using an amplified sound system to respond to someone. Seems unfair, somehow.

But this isn't really a response to a comment so much as it is a comment has inspired a snark. So I hope this doesn't come across as megaphoning an answer so much as forking the conversation into a new one. If not... um... well... dude. Hope you win the lottery!

The comment in question came from Alexis Christoforides, who may have the coolest name I've typed all month (with the possible exception of Darrin Bleuel. It's just fun to type Bleuel. But I digress). Alexis was responding to my Sluggy snark this morning -- not just to the central point of the snark (which is that Sluggy seems to be on an upswing again, or else I've adapted to it and either way it's all good), but to the subject line. I quote:

I still can't understand the hatred for Bun-bun, though, Eric :-) Sure, he's a slightly formulaic 'badass' + 'cute animal' character, but it's not like he hasn't been owned a few times. And I loved 'Holiday Wars'.

I read that, and realized it was a legitimate comment, that deserved a legitimate response. Especially because the following facts are also true:

1. I have been a Bun Bun fan in the past.
2. I also enjoyed Holiday Wars a great deal.
3. Any sign of Bun Bun in current Sluggy fills my soul with a kind of dread one is supposed to reserve for Communism in the late 1950's.

Bun Bun was, for a long time, a fantastic character. Yes, he was essentially a one-joke character ("ooo, look at the cute fuzzy widdle mini-lop, isn't he the cutest widdle bunny in the OH CHRIST MY HAND! THE BASTARD CUT OFF MY HAND! OH JESUS PLEASE NO! NOOOOOOO!!!!!"), but he was used effectively most of the time. He was the deus ex machina, but he was also unreliable (the times he fought on behalf of Torg until it became clear that his self interest wasn't directly involved, so he wandered away -- for example). He was the unreasonable menace that put our heroes on the road. And so on and so forth.

And sometimes, there were actual, effective uses of him in plots and in characterization. His involvement in the Hereticorp/Kiki stuff. The amnesia story. (The amnesia story is among my favorite Sluggy stories, actually.) The yearly jousts with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Becoming the Easter Bunny. And of course, the Holiday Wars.

And the Holiday Wars was special in part because it was a culmination. We didn't just see Bun Bun hold steady -- he grew, he added power, he added menace. He gained an organization. He gained resources. He gained powers. He gained ambition. And in so doing he lost his way -- he wanted to free himself of his Holiday status, originally, but the sheer power involved corrupted in its own way. And he gained certain disadvantages hand in hand with certain advantages -- for example, the dual edged blade that was his Groundhog Shadow. And when he lost and was finally defeated, it was epic.

And, it was final. And Sluggy went on. The other characters developed and grew -- and exceeded themselves. We even got a fresh take on the Bun Bun character when Torg went to the Dimension of Lame -- we had gone so far into the characterization of the cute widdle bunny who's really a psychotic murder machine that having a Bun Bun who really was just a cute minilop actually became cliche-breaking.

And then... we had Oceans Unmoving.

The problems with Bun Bun in Oceans Unmoving are threefold, really. First off, there is Bun Bun's status when he came into view. We didn't see Bun Bun build up his crew and power base. We walked in and Bun Bun -- last seen broken down as far as he had ever gone, bereft of all his new power, and actually, fully and completely defeated -- is back in a position of power and authority. He's back to being essentially unstoppable -- the captain of a pirate ship, more competent than all others around him, essentially perfect at everything. It's like he was right back to having the Black Ops Elves around him. More to the point, we didn't get to see any of the buildup -- it was literally Bun Bun was defeated, and now he's king of the heap again.

Secondly, Bun Bun was back in the position of being the background conflict. Oceans Unmoving wasn't really a Bun Bun story, it was a story about the people around him, and largely dealt with them coping with Bun Bun's entry into their lives (and his essential inability to be stopped). The problem there was that there were a mass of new, unfamiliar characters to get to know... and little reason to do so. We had just come off of a significant, main cast heavy storyline, we had ended on a cliffhanger (Torg leaving, Zo‘ being pushed away, the cast losing their house), and now here we are dealing with... these... things instead.

(Note that a large amount of my earlier dissatisfaction with Something Puny This Way Comes was that the cliffhanger fizzled. Torg's lost his depression and angst offpanel. The major Zo‘ stuff seemed to just be... blah and served to make her seem like a jerk, which is unfair because I don't think she is. And so forth. So there was a sense of being cheated lumped on top of everything else.)

Finally... Bun Bun, as he's appearing now, completely relies on the original joke. He's back to being the cute widdle bunny who's psychotic and mind-bogglingly dangerous. Only... we've done that. We've overdone that. It's nowhere near enough. Even though he largely defined the clich» (Monty Python aside), it is in fact clich» now. It's stagnant. And as a result it feels more like Abrams was bowing to pressure to bring back Bun Bun than it was a natural reemergence of the character into the storyline.

Can Abrams reverse this? Can Abrams make Bun Bun exciting and fun and funny and all that again? Well, yeah. Of course he can. Abrams has made more dramatic turnarounds in the past. And I can think of one scenario off the top of my head that could add a tremendous amount of spice to the inevitable, dreaded Oceans Unmoving sequel.

See, at the very end of the Holiday Wars, we learned that Santa had thrown Bun Bun into the Void of Out-Time before. That raises the possibility that the Bun Bun who's the captain of the Bloody Bun is actually an incarnation of Bun Bun from before he was introduced into Sluggy Freelance -- that this is in fact a prequel. That would forgive the clich» elements, and add a tremendous amount of potential. After all, out-time by definition is timeless... who's to say the "tired and weakened rabbit" from the end of the Holiday Wars won't suddenly land on the deck... who's to say the post-Sluggy Bun Bun doesn't actually lead to the pre-Sluggy Bun Bun escaping from Out-Time and entering continuity. And then, given that he is weakened from the Holiday Wars, who's to say he won't have a fight on his hands to keep the various crewmembers from taking him out?

For that matter, who's to say he isn't working with the Noble Sir John Jacobs. Or might even be a prisoner of his?

Now that? That could be interesting. But I'm scared that things are exactly as they seem, that this is the post-Holiday Wars Bun Bun, and that he's just going to continue to be exactly what he's been forever.

And in either case, I do indeed dread Bun Bun right now, and hope that the good Bunless times continue in Sluggy for a long, long time to come.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 AM | Comments (12)

-->

Eric Burns-White: Despair! DESPAIR! Well, sorta....

The Great Modern Tales Family Meltdown seems to be largely resolved. There's still issues of storyline titles and archive orders and the like, but given the whole recreation of MT's brains that the restoration entailed, you have to expect some aphasia here and there for a while.

And yet... No Stereotypes remains tragically bereft of archives or new strips alike. Whence hast thou gone, Glych? Thy faithful followers stand to, awaiting thy mythological decompression whilst indulging in nudity most tasteful.

Seriously -- the story was getting to the nitty gritty. Is it moved elsewhere and I've missed the memo? Is it waiting for Glych's life to calm down? Is the duck actually drunk? Does anyone know? Is anybody there? Does anybody caaaaaaaaare....

(Ways to tell Eric's gone through fatigue and into Altered States -- he starts quoting 1776 randomly.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:29 AM | Comments (10)

-->

Eric Burns-White: Stupid Trivia Warning.

So. I posted a Casey and Andy snark last night. One thing I didn't mention was how much I enjoy the character of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. Suffice it to say, the answer to that is "a lot."

Well, being a happy (somewhat) Tiger user now, I have Dashboard, which has widgets on it. And they're a thousand times cooler than I thought they would be. And one of those widgets is a "this day in history" widget. And the top thing on today's is the fact that today is the birthday of Gustav Vasa, a sixteenth century Swedish monarch who among other things introduced Protestantism to Sweden. Gustav Vasa wasn't a forebear of Carl XVI Gustaf's, though -- Carl XVI is a descendent of General Bernadotte, who took the throne after Charles XIII. Which means it's all Napoleon's fault. And Charles XIII was already multiple steps away from the House of Vasa, thanks to the (apparently lesbian, often thought intergendered and certainly cross-dressing ) Christina of Sweden, last of the Vasas, abdicating her throne in 1654 to practice Catholicism in Rome, after receiving assurances that the Catholics would have no problem with her lifestyle. After her death, she was entombed in Vatican City, in St. Peter's Basilica itself.

All of which means two things. 1) Sweden's royal history is cool. 2) I have no idea why I thought any of you would care.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:59 AM | Comments (8)

-->

Eric Burns-White: Can we get transforming jet powered motorcycles? No. But GOKU HAIR we can do...

Of all the technology posited by the vast and varied genres within manga and anime... we get hair care?

I guess this works differently from all the other hair styling products that make your hair all spiky and clumpy through... um... being... more expensive....

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:29 AM | Comments (4)

-->

Eric Burns-White: Weirdly, I know people who prefer shots to cuisine.

(From Freefall. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Francophilia!)

I'm totally cheating at the moment. Having gone home from work last night and falling asleep almost immediately, I woke up for a brief period of time and did a couple of snarks, but I queued them up to appear first thing in the morning. That way, Websnark gets some love and I get to enjoy the rotating grinders of death that is currently my job without worrying about it.

Why do I worry about it? Dude, I live in New Hampshire. I need something.

Anyway, so even though this is going up at 9 am or so, it's really one in the morning. It's like I'm having an extended conversation... with the future!

Anyway -- this Freefall made me laugh. I've had conversations like this about the French. It's a natural enough reaction -- no matter how much science, philosophy, literature or history the French give us, we're going to always remember them for food, kissing and attitude. And the joke was funny. I like funny.

Um... that's all I've got on this.

Look, I said this was a conversation with the future. I didn't say it was going to be a good one.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (1)

-->

Eric Burns-White: Also? No Bun Bun. And that's just for the best.

(From Sluggy Freelance! Click on the thumbnail for full sized Speed references!)

I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but let me make it more explicit -- I'm getting back into a groove with Sluggy Freelance. I don't know if Abrams has been finding his Funny or if my brain has adjusted, but I'm enjoying it. There's still bits I wish hadn't happened the way they did -- most centrally, Torg's depression and guilt melting into nothing -- but I have to admit that steam set irons as cooking tools and high speed babysitting are funny, and that's enough, Pig. That's enough.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:31 AM | Comments (5)

-->

May 11, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I had just assumed Andina would rez her, anyway....

(From Casey and Andy. Click on the thumbnail for full sized M. Night Shyamalan's What a TWIST!)

I have to admit, I got caught by surprise by this one. Not so much that someone killed Kasor (my money had been on a still-injured Quantum Cop shooting Kasor in the throat again, what since he was in an anti-magic shell and all but gunpowder will still work), but that Milligawain turned out to be morality-reversed from his counterpart -- and that his plots and plans were designed to get the queen to marry him.

Which is pretty cool, all told.

This whole plotline was good -- and not just because it was yet more evidence that Jenn is the protagonist of the story (though in this particular story, she was more the plot than the resolution). It's probably for the best that Weir alternates between the plotlines and long stretch of gag-a-day; he does both really well, and I'm sure the alternating sides keep everything fresh for him.

Now, the only remaining question is whether Kasor has Casey and Andy's capacity to be regularly and horribly killed and then just show up afterward. (If so, I'd say he's going to have his job changed to Evil Grand Vizier.) In either case, I've enjoyed the fantasy trip (now how's that for an obscure RPG reference?) and look forward to whatever's next.

Apropos of nothing, we've had a major shakeup at work on the heels of my illness over the weekend. I'm worn so thin you can see light through my forearms, and I'm going to need severe patching with outing flannel to remain soft and untattered. I'm sorry it's been such a nonexistent week here at Websnark -- I promise it's not you. I still like you.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:42 PM | Comments (8)

-->

Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Lois, incidentally? Is so on my List.

Here's how it works: the virus comes out in North America, and then, a few days later, because of licensing restrictions, it comes out in the UK. (This is apparently a huge improvement from the situation a couple of years ago, where you had to wait at least six months from the virus release date before they'd consider special preview colds in and around central London.) If things are out of whack, you should blame the fact that British cold preparations have been known to contain mild opoids.

Anyhow.

(From DTWOF #457: Sun Goddess.)

Dykes to Watch Out For occupies a nebulous, transitional place in my head these days. I followed the strip off and on in various alternative print weeklies over the years, and you'd think that'd be the place for it. Much of the humour and characterization, up to and including the state of Mo's sex life at any given time, hangs off of current events. But DTWOF always worked best for me in collected format, especially when the newspaper strips could play off of the print-only longform stories. Biweekly installments, grateful as I always was to have them, always felt a little too spurty and isolated. All in one place, however, the collections felt like solid overviews of a 12-18 month period, like a sheaf of snapshots meant to be gone through all at once.

In recent years, the strip's been carried by PlanetOut. I don't know what circulation looks like for DTWOF in print these days (I see it's just been dropped by a larger weekly in Ithaca, of all places); I know it's always been more than a bit spotty outside North America, and the sorts of publications it'd appear in have been somewhat on the decline (do I even need to get into why?). And don't get me wrong; much as PO might screw around with the layout and frame it with the most irritating layouts imaginable, I am grateful to have it online, in the same way I'm grateful to have online any number of American comic strips which don't appear in British newspapers. And people are obviously reading it there.

That said, I'm not convinced that I'm the kind of person who gets much out of an online DTWOF, either. This got brought into sharp relief for me late last month, when PO were behind in posting something fairly topical. The creator, Alison Bechdel, apologized for/vented about this in her weblog, saying, "It's hard enough keeping the strip timely when it only comes out every two weeks, and Jon Stewart has already made every possible joke there is to make before I even sit down to write. But to have it run a week or more late is maddening."

I think that's only part of the problem. First of all, the topicality thing: the impact might not be quite so sharp if we were still back in the land of Just Print, true (it'd still be aggravating to have Jon Stewart make all the good jokes first, true), but I find my expectations have been utterly subverted by reading so many comics intended chiefly for online consumption. There's a fuzzy buffer in my head for weekly newspapers, magazines, and the like; I'm expecting snapshots, not feeds. And I realize, even with the above caveat that I've always preferred DTWOF in those Garfield-sized collections, always liked it better in larger chunks, that it's patently absurd for me to let my expectations shift like that.

(And I don't want a more frequently updated DTWOF, either. Alison Bechdel's not doing the kind of art you can knock out in a few hours, for which I'm glad. Ecstatic.)

The other thing, unfortunately, is that my attachment is less to the politics of DTWOF (which seem a little forced in the past couple of years; this might well be more to do with my infrequent direct exposure to America and its news/entertainment media, though) and more to the characters. I know I'm going to pick up Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For in October and I'm going to really get into, say, Cynthia (so far, my favourite of Bechdel's takes on teenaged/university-aged lesbians; the Madwimmin interns were frustratingly shrill and glossy) or Samia (who I think I like, but keep thinking "Toni and Clarice merged completely?" about for some reason -- she's hard for me to pick out). I'm going to totally enjoy the Ginger/Samia thing, I'm going to root for Bechdel to pick up the pace on Clarice and Toni's little agreement-that-died, and I'm going to get completely wrapped up in Sydney's chemo.

But, at the moment, all I'm catching are riffs on current events (especially when Clarice gets upset... she's worse than Mo) which The Current had hashed out completely by the time I remember to check in. I know the things I love are still there; they just don't make as much of an impact as they might, and even less still against the lack of the fuzzy buffer bumper.

Which is not a little frustrating when you're talking about something you've loved and loved and loved for about ... god, twelve years now? I feel like I should be better at managing my context here.

On the other hand, that's not going to stop me keeping up.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 8:40 PM | Comments (4)

-->

May 10, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I want a Mell coffee mug.

From Narbonic.

A few days back (I know, it seems longer), I posted a snark about how Count Your Sheep had managed near perfect Execution. Often, I've also drawn a distinction between a strip's individual execution, and the pacing between multiple strips. I made mention of it then, too.

Which brings us to Narbonic -- the reigning monarch of pacing.

Shaenon Garrity is honestly remarkable. Not just because her art rocks and her attitude rocks... not just because she's funny and talented and committed, and not just because her command of the minutia of Comic Book History vastly outstrips my own -- and I'm a geek! Garrity is remarkable because her strips work simultaneously on at least three different levels: the execution of the daily strip, the pacing of the individual plotline, and the pacing of Narbonic as a whole, and readers can enjoy the work on all of those levels or on any one, almost all the time.

First, let's look at a given day's strip. In fact, it's the strip that came out today:

On the one level, if someone had no idea who Mell, "Nick" or Helen were, they would still find this funny. It's a well executed strip -- good setup, elaboration and punchline. Who needs uranium when you have blackmail material? At the same time, this step moves the plotline along. Mell is there to kill Doctor Narbon in cold blood, on behalf of a shadow agency. Artie, transmogrified into human form, is there to stop her. Narbon is the most deadly of nemeses imaginable, and she has been locked out of her own lair. And not only is Mell actively seeking out videotapes of her employer as a child, but Artie is equally distracted by it. And then having a solid understanding of Narbonic as a whole makes it funnier. If you know Helen B. Narbon (and her mother, for that matter), the very concept of childhood videotapes are hysterical. There's a wonderful blending of the absurdly twistedly scientific (in the name of evil) and the mundane here.

The exact same could be said about Mell's discovery of Yak-face. It's surreal, and Artie's reaction leads to the joke, but it also serves both plotline and overplot. The same for the Friday before. (And for the record, "shouting won't make pants appear, buddy" may be the funniest line I've ever read in my entire life.)

If this makes it sound like Garrity is consistent, you're exactly right. She does this day after day after day. And the cumulative effect brings the Story without ever braining you over the head with it. And yet, she always -- always brings the Funny as she does it. I can only think of two 'event' strips she's ever done that weren't accompanied by a joke. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred the jokes just plain work. That's a track record pretty much all cartoonists should envy.

The other side benefit of consistency is both a sense of tremendous release when something extremely long pending resolves, and a sense of faith that resolution doesn't bring Shark-Jumping alongside it. Which brings us to the panel up at the top of this snark -- the specific panel that blew apart all expectations: Helen and Dave have kissed.

Some background. Dave has wanted to kiss Helen for a very long time. He really, really likes her. He almost always has. And at one point, when he had a forfeit from the powers of Hell, Helen was changed just slightly so that she liked Dave too. And when he found out about it, he had them change her back, because he really did love her.

Only as it works out, Helen liked him too.

Boom. We have classic tension. Moonlighting tension. The sort that a strip becomes defined by. Heck, have a look at Questionable Content -- Jeph Jacques does a damn good strip, but the core of it is Marten and Faye's sexual and romantic tension. If said tension were released, one expects the explosion would be monumental.

And one also expects the strip will end within a week, after it happened. It's almost a truism. If your strip/television show/book/movie hinges on "will they or won't they," when they actually do generally the only thing left to do is mop up, wave to the audience, and wait for the E True Hollywood Story to get made.

Well. Dave and Helen kissed. And several days later, Dave begged whoever called him to NOT CALL BACK FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR!!!! which makes us suspect -- very possibly falsely -- that he and Helen are working on breath control exercises, with or without cardiovascular work to go with it. And how's that for a euphamism that sucks all the fun out of sex?

And the thing is? I'm not worried about it. If in fact Helen and Dave have had sex and are a couple now, I have faith that it's just the next step in the overall story. I have faith that rather than being over, it's just what happens next, and it doesn't mean for one second that Helen's brain won't end up in a tank while Mell becomes the President.

That level of sheer, unadulterated faith in what Shaenon Garrity does with her work is hard earned. The fact that I went through a crisis over Sluggy Freelance (and I have to admit, apropos of nothing, that Sluggy's winning me back) but accept every new event in Narbonic in stride is a testament to the sublime pacing of this strip. I don't know as I've ever read a clunker storyline (and few if any clunker individual strips, with the possible exception of some of the Sundays -- and the Sundays are generally perfect 'day off' fare). At the same time, Garrity misses essentially no days -- she works way way in advance. And if anything, her quality has only improved over time.

I gave Narbonic the top Funny Shortbread for last year. There's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the largest is the simple core fact that she does everything right. But the foundation of all of that rightness -- her solid characterization, her solid humor, her solid writing, her solid evocation of emotion -- derives wholly from her expert sense of pacing. Each thing happens when you feel it should happen, everything feels solidly connected to the events preceding and following, and the individual strips remain solid examples of single-strip execution. You can call Narbonic a Long Form comic, a Short Form comic, or a Gag-a-Day comic, and be right every time. Not one strip in fifty pulls off even two of those. Almost no strip gets all three and almost always does all three well.

But Narbonic does. It's worth the Modern Tales subscription all by itself.

That said, I'm now going to go collapse and die in a ditch. It's been a collapse-and-die-in-a-ditch week.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:25 PM | Comments (20)

-->

May 9, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Hopefully asleep...

...still pretty sick. Night.

(Narbonic tomorrow. Unless still sick, in which case Narbonic Wednesday.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:05 PM | Comments (6)

-->

Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Takeover: Page Ten - Preparation for Takeoff

And so, with Eric ill again (or, in the case of the current story, still), the scribbled girl prepares for her rescue mission. (popup) (same window)

(Actually, I drew this a month ago, but got stage fright.)

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 2:02 PM | Comments (3)

-->

May 8, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Still ill...

...with lots of eternal half-awake/half-asleep moments. The fun that is my life.

I did go out and see Hitchhikers. I was still sick, but it was worth it. For one thing, the theater was locally owned in Gilford, New Hampshire. We were the only ones in the theater. The owner came down and chatted with us, and talked about the preview of Episode III he saw with other projectionists. He started the film a couple of minutes later -- no Twenty, no advertisements, only two previews, and right into it. I will definitely be going back there.

Then home, and more fading in and out in sleep. And now I'm going to get some more.

Back to the office tomorrow. I'll try to get some serious snarking done.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:13 PM | Comments (19)