Monday, March 21, 2011

Webcomic Revew: Today Nothing Happened, True Magic, Trying Human, Two Kinds,

After glancing over my list of webcomics I realized that I should be able to make one large post today and take care of all the "T"s that way, huzzah! So today we have one journal comic, another fantasy parody, a fantasy, and one of the few sci-fi titles I follow!


Today Nothing Happened
Unlike the other semi-journal comics I follow, this one isn't fictional at all, although some situations might be exaggerated, and it proves something my mom and I have been saying for years, reality is way stranger than fiction. The comic originally started as a school project, the creator liked it so much that she kept it going, so it covers college life and young adult life after college and I think it's a bit uplifting, that even now people can still live happy lives and sometimes I feel like the world needs that reminder. I might also be biased towards this comic since Shazzbaa and I seem to live in the same state (so whenever there's a post about crazy weather I'll go "YES, THAT'S EXACTLY IT!") and I was bemused to see Blitzkrieg from Conventional Wisdom cameo a couple of times (and vice-versa over in his comic). Plus, I like videos of cute kittens so it stands to reason that I'd love a bunch of comics about the strange things cats do and if the main page doesn't make me crack up the incentive voting piece normally does. So I'm recommending this to all fans of journal comics or of everyday humor, this is honestly one of my favorite webcomics and I really hope that it gets printed soon!


True Magic
Out of the several fantasy parody series I follow, True Magic is my favorite because I think it does the parody aspect of it the best (which isn't to say the others I've reviewed or bad, this just means I have opinions).  The basic plot of the story is that some peasants, fed up with how they have no rights against their ruling nobles, are journeying to the capital to try and change the laws but are having a hard time just getting to that point. The peasents are all genre-savy (which is played for laughs agaisnt the very not genre-savy nobles), things rarely go as planned, cliches/tropes are usually subverted as well, and each page usually makes me laugh about it at least once. This one also has a bit of an erratic update schedule but the plot is simple enough that I don't have trouble remembering what just happened. The art is a bit more basic than some other comics but it works just fine here, again I'm more amused by the writing than anything else.

Trying Human
I suspect the reason I read fewer science-fiction webcomics than fantasy ones is because there simply are fewer out there but this one seems reasonably well known. Not to be confused with the BBC show Being Human, Trying Human splits it's focus on Rose (recently an alien abductee), Hue (an alien who has fallen in love with Rose*) and Rose's boyfriend Rodger (who was just recruited to go work in Area 51). There is a central plotline to the story although I'm not exactly sure what it is (flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter suggest that something went wrong at Area 51 about 60 years ago) and, since the government is covering up the fact that aliens are real I'm sure there's a government conspiracy in there somewhere, but none of these plotlines have really connected yet and it feels like it'll be a while yet before they do. The plot feels well paced however, and does a good job balancing three or four different points of view, so I'm not worried about the plot, it just seems to be moving at it's own pace. So for now we have various high-jinks involving aliens and Rose, various alien related work involving Rodger, and ominous foreboding involving Philena, the woman in the flashbacks, it's a fun enough read in any case!

Two Kinds
Hmm, normally I just think of this as a fantasy comic with a lot of anthropomorphic characters but I suppose most people would call this a furry comic^. Oh well, the art is pretty and you see plenty of cat/fox girls in anime anyway, it's not that much of a stretch. The plot here involves three main groups of people, humans, Keidran (the afore mentioned anthropomorphic characters) and the Basitin (who looks more like anthros than humans) who all hate the other species and are engaged in a number of skirmishes, if not war, against each other. The amnesiac Trace (human, not a nice guy before the amnesia) wakes up to find the world in this state and eventually falls in with the Keidran Flora and the Basitin Keith and so far the three of them have been traveling around and keep running into trouble with the various governments. Now that one big arc just ended I'm not quite sure where the plot is going next but, as I said earlier, the art is pretty and the story is entertaining enough (even thought tvtropes brought up some fridge horror involving Keidran slaves kept by humans, squick).

For some reason I can't get Two Kinds to load today and it might be because they're switching website providers (or some such thing) so here's another web address in case anyone else is having the same problems. Not many comics left now, one U, four W, one X and one Z, anyone want to guess what each of them are?




*yes from meeting her during the abductions, the comic makes it seem way less creepy than I could ever hope to describe it but still.... 
^frankly I've never been quite sure what the anime/manga fandom in general has against furries but okay guys, you can go rant about it and I'll be over here reading my comics.....