Webcomic Review Month 2013: Ignition Zero, In The Air

Skipping a few more letters and weirdly enough this is the first year I've had comics that start with I and none of them started within the past year. I guess it just goes to show just how much is out there and how long it can take to track down really awesome comics. 

Ignition Zero by Noel Arthur Heimpel

Robbie and Orson met online years ago and really clicked but due a rather large different in location they never met until Robbie moved up to Maryland to go to school near Orson and hang out. At which point he discovers that a lot of the stories he had heard from Orson over the years are not only crazy but true, it's going to take Robbie a bit longer to adjust to living in Glory than he expected it seems.

Plenty of the webcomics I read I can't remember where exactly I got the recommendation from but this one I remember clearly, it was from tumblr with a person posting that holy crap, they found a story with asexual main characters in that. Not only that but it's an urban fantasy story, with cool watercolor art, where the fact that Robbie and Orson are aces isn't the main point, it's just part of their lives. Considering how few stories I've found out there with asexual characters (and the fact that I take, issue with half of them) this was pretty amazing and I'm thrilled that Heimpel decided to make that issue only part of the story and instead focus on the more exciting part, the fey and a secret part of the city that few people know about. The comic has been on hiatus for a bit lately but it's scheduled to return sometime between the end of March and early June, can't wait for it to come back!

Ignition Zero can be read online on its website and should be out in print rather soon asa well.

In The Air by Brenda Hickey

Sandra is a bit spacey for a high school student, it seems like half of the time she has her head in the clouds and the other half of the time she's being picked on by some of her classmates. Neither of these things changes when a cute guy named Fred moves in next door, instead this seems to create new problems in her life, ones that are slightly more magical than romantic ones.

Not sure if I'm cheating with this series or not since I did read everything that was available of it last summer but then back in November Hickey changed sites (because originally she hosted her comic on wirepop which no longer exists) and she's re-uploading the comic with three pages a week. As the comic currently stands there is nowhere enough information for me to be happy doing a review on it and it looks like it's going to be almost a year before she starts posting new material (there was a way for returning readers to see the next chapter before it was posted but I wasn't able to get it to work/realized that would mean it would be even longer until there were new updates for me). But I have read the first three chapters and did like them, like Fragile from the other day it felt like a comic that took a lot of the elements of shojo manga to use in it's own work but not slavishly follow them at the expense of it's own creativity. The first few chapters also seemed to be paced well, revealed some backstory involving Sandra and Fred, started the main conflict of the story, it was a strong enough story that I want to recommend to others. It's just, like Ignition Zero above, don't feel bad if you can't try out the story right now and that it might be a few months until you can, that's probably for the best anyway.

In the Air can be read on its own site and you can purchase the print version with the first five chapters as well if you like what's already been put up.



2012 "G" comics
2011 "G" comics

2012 "H" comics
2011 "H" comics