An Introduction to Webcomic Review Month 2013 and Ava's Demon

And now for my third year running I will change my schedule from it's usual 4-reviews-a-week rotation and will spend all of March talking about webcomics. Partially to help me build up a buffer to survive April/exam week in May and partially because I really love webcomics, there won't be as many titles as last year, which didn't have as many titles as the year before, for the same reason as last year, I simply find fewer comics each year that I both like and that are far enough along that I can feel confident about reviewing them. That's a new thing this year, there are at least half a dozen titles I found this past year which I do enjoy but are still so early on in their story that I want to give them some time to mature, time to see if the creator(s) really do that have the time/drive to tell the story all the way through, especially after posting about a few titles last year and having them simply stop updating with no news less than six months later. Also it appears that there were no webcomics that I followed that finished this year so there obviously won't be a post on those either. All in all I should be updating every other day so at the very least this month shouldn't lack for updates!


Ava's Demon by Michelle Czajkowski

Ever since she was born Ava has had attached to her what other's called a mere figment of her imagination but what she knew was really a demon. This demon seemed determined to torment her, isolate her, and eventually try and make her kill herself and Ava has fought back her entire life. But after a strange turn of events Ava finds herself listening to her demon and making a pact to get rid of her once and for all.

One trend I'm noticing in webcomics is how more and more comics each year are starting to take advantage of how the web is a multi-media platform and adding in sounds, music, unusual formats, and even animation. Ava's Demon is both an unusual format (each page is one square panel) and has a few, simply animated movies at the most dramatic points*. The setting for the story really caught me off guard, it seems to start in a bland, modern day setting (although there are some large hints upon re-reading that we're actually in a science fiction setting) and then has a rather dramatic setting change and Ava's relationship with her demon also changes rather rapidly, to the point where it's hard to not spoil important plot points when just trying to give a synopsis. So the best way to put it is this, the story is a science-fiction story of revenge with great attention to color with pretty good pacing and rather creepy at points as well.

Ava's Demon can be read (obviously) on it's website and you can subscribe to the tumblr for updates (or use that as a way to subscribe to it's RSS feed). It's not in print form yet but Czajkowski said recently that they plan to try and get the book printed once it hits 500 panels. As of writing we've just passed 350 panels so I suspect the story will hit that number later in the year, curious to see how the movies will be printed. The story updates every Thursday with multiple pages.


2012 "A" webcomics

2011 "A" webcomics




*a just as interesting bit about the videos is that they are hosted on Vimeo so anyone can see the stats, the first two videos are over 40k watches, with a drop-off of less than 5k between them, and then the latest one only has 16.5k views as of writing this. That may seem like a huge drop off but that video was posted this last Thursday, I don't know much about American superhero comics but only the top selling manga in the US could even dream of reaching 16k purchases from what I understand, much less in only three days!