Fernandez Talks Comics

Bobwhite

Creeeak. That's the sound of my bones as I stretch them out. It's been that long since I've done a new review. With the end of summer coming up, my mind has remained fixedly upon the new school year. Ah, a new year that will consist of listening to people talk about their art as pretentiously as they possibly can. What better way to head it off than by reviewing a comic that takes place in art school? This comic... is Bobwhite.



Bobwhite is written by Magnolia Porter, who recently graduated from RISD, so you get the feeling that a lot of these jokes are based on personal experience. Bobwhite focuses on three girls who attend this art focused school. Marlene, film, Ivy, art, and Cleo, industrial design. The comic starts out in the fall semester of their sophomore year. The jokes start out traditionally enough, ragging on the various art school related pet peeves that most sane people have, and then move on to longer story line based jokes.



I'll admit that for a long time, I didn't really like Bobwhite. I read it because like many webcomics readers, I didn't really have anything better to do. I'd been a fan of Magnolia's previous comic The Good Crook, but Bobwhite never managed to captivate me like TGC did. I tried to pinpoint why, and the closest I could come up with was that originally, I didn't really /like/ the main characters. I thought Ivy was lazy and unmotivated, Marlene was a bully
, and Cleo was a hopeless pushover. I didn't ever really think I'd feel attached to them.

But I didn't give Magnolia Porter enough credit-- after awhile, I started really feeling attached to these characters. They had their annoying quirks, but in the end, they felt like my friends. Sometimes they're kind of dumb, but they're still
lovable. And as soon as Bobwhite stopped focusing so much on the 'lolol art school' jokes, I started laughing a lot more. I can't say how many times I've thought this, for example.



SO.

Tl;dr? Bobwhite is good! It's quirky, and funny, the art style is cute.

Bobwhite updates 5 times a week (except when it doesn't). Not to say it's an irregular schedule, when it doesn't, Porter usually takes the time to upload the missed strips.

I give Bobwhite 4 stars for being the comic about college that ISN'T your typical comic about college!

PS: There's a suspicious lack of links in this one because Magnolia is reuploading all her archives. I'll edit it later with more links. :)

ARGH.

THERE WAS GOING TO BE A REVIEW

BUT THERE IS ONLY PAIN AND MISERY.


FFFFFFFFFFF.

Ed Piskor has an interesting new comic over at Wizzywig Comics.

Seven pages into his first story BOINGTHUMP!, and I already can't wait to see what happens next. Check it out while it's fresh, y'all.

All I can say... is...



>:C

Least I Could Do

I'm not much of a women's rights activist. It's always an awkward thing to admit to other women, especially those who consider themselves feminists. There's a precarious balance to maintain. I don't want to seem like I don't appreciate women's activists intentions, but when it comes down to it, I find it hard to care. Or at least, I think I do. It all changes when I see real life examples of blatant sexism, or even examples in literature. Least I Could Do written by Ryan Sohmer and illustrated by Lar Desouza is one of the few comics that makes my inner feminist come out.



The premise of the whole comic is this: Ryan Sohmer-- excuse me, I meant "Rain Summers" is a man who likes sex. The comic at least makes no pretense that it's about anything other than Rain Summers's sex life, it's beginning is the man celebrating that he's had sex with 50 women . It continues in that sort of fashion, following Rain's various sexual endeavors, along with his friends who, through hypnosis, put up with his dickery on a daily basis. What? It wasn't through hypnosis? They just put up with him being an ass time and time again? Huh. Maybe it helps that Rain is filthy rich, really smart, really hot, and has a way with the ladies. Gosh, are there any downsides to this character?

Well. No. And that is the downside to the entire comic. It's bad enough that Rain is a sexist asshole, he's one that wins all the time. He wants to bang an Indian chick? Okay, he'll go to a restaurant , pretend to be a stripper , and hook up with one . Because all of us are just ready to spread our legs open, at his simple command, right? ...Riiiight.



And to top it all off, when Rain-- I mean Ryan Sohmer can't think of anything else to write about, he uses his little wish fulfillment character as a mouthpiece for his political opinions. Awesome. Strangely enough, I've followed LICD for a long time. It was one of those 'it updates every day so why not look at it every day?'. Some of the jokes amused me. I'm not sure when the turnaround came, but at some point I started to loathe Rain Summers for the asshole that he was. His antics were not 'cute ', his conquests were not worthy of admiration.

All I can see now is a self important dick who is... well... overcompensating . The only good thing about Least I Could Do are the sunday strips which are thankfully women free, and involve Rain as a child. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes, except the main character is a bully .



Tl;dr? If you like misogyny this might be the comic for you!

Updates every day. Which, according to Sohmer, makes his webcomic the most legit, professional thing ever. Who needs good writing when you can update daily, right?

I give Least I Could Do 1 star, for consistently failing to amuse me.

Comics are ending everywhere!!!

A girl and her fed is on its last pages: http://www.agirlandherfed.com/

Yu & Me Dream is on the epilogue: http://rosalarian.com/yume/

Girly is finishing up this arc: http://girlyyy.com/

Order of Tales only has about 50 more pages to go: http://www.rice-boy.com/order/index.php?c=657



WTF is this?! I'm used to webcomics ending...well.. NEVER...

THIS IS A LOT TO TAKE IN.

Dovecote Crest

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a not so secret history buff, who is endlessly fascinated by all the minutiae that has brought us to where we are now. As a kid my mom bought me trashy mystery novels that had a fair amount of time travel, and historical fiction is  to this day one of my favorite genres. Whenever I come across a webcomic with a historical theme, I immediately dive in, hoping to get a good dose of nostalgia, and old costumes for my troubles. More often than not, I've been disappointed. Not so with Dovecote Crest , a webcomic written by Hailey Bachrach and drawn by Bridget Underwood.



I may have been slightly misleading with that introduction, because Dovecote Crest isn't exactly historical fiction. The first page is quite clear on that. It's a comic that takes place in modern day Arkansas, at a Civil War (squee!) historical reenactment sight. The coolest cast page ever (THEY LOOK LIKE THE OLD PICTURES OMG) lists the four main characters, and the way I understand it, each arc the creators take on will emphasize a different character. The first story focuses on Charlie Grant.



The arc is very slice of life, centering on Charlie's struggle to get out of her temporary employment at Dovecote Crest to go and be a real historian. All this while she deals with a certain attraction to the director of the reenactment, Jeremy Lee. The story might have easily taken a turn for the worse, and developed into a cute-but-unoriginal sappy love story, if not for how good Hailey Bachrach is at making these characters seem very real. Oh and the totally rad battle scenes.

Dovecote Crest is just finishing it's second arc, which dare I say it was better then the first. The art improved from the first pages immensely . Bridge Underwood isn't afraid of drawing backwards, and her loose painting style fits the rustic setting perfectly. Her characters are cute, and I don't know which of the two does the panel layout but they are genius .

Tl;dr? Dovecote Crest is a fun read for all ages (teen to adult most preferably), whose cast come to life under different circumstances than we might expect. Getting the behind the scenes of the reenactment society is enjoyable, and well. Battles Scenes fffffffff!!!




Dovecote Crest updates Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Now that I'm done geeking out, I truly hope Dovecote Crest continues to remain on this level of awesome, and for this very reason I give it 5 stars.

Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name

I first came across this webcomic because frankly, it's hard not to. For me, it was like from one day to the next the world had gone stark raving mad. On dA I found four fan art submissions for this comic in my inbox, and like eight million journal entries about it. (The number may be slightly exaggerated). It was picked up by 4D Entertainment, which includes other titles like Lackadaisy and The Meek, two personal favorites of mine. Still, it took me awhile to look at Hanna, because the first few pages are... well... graphic-y. Perhaps author Tessa stone was a graphic designer at some point? For me, this was a point of contention. Comics are comics, for fucks sake. Why are we putting all these distracting letters in the middle of my drawings dammit!  



Luckily, as the comic progresses these sorts of things start to lessen, and I was able to concentrate properly. BASICALLY the story in Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name is this: A young paranormal investigator (Hanna), and his zombie sidekick (noname) go on adventures full of mishaps, mystery, and sexual tension.

Of the gay variety.

This may seem a little immature, but as much as I love me a good bit of sexual tension, and I even like the gay kind (starfighter yes please!), after two storylines where nothing really gets solved I'm getting a little sick of all of this. Herein lies the problem with Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name. There doesn't seem to be an overarching plot. And if there is, it's going at such a snails pace that I've begun losing interest in it entirely. It's situation after situation with interesting character interactions, but none of them seem to have any real idea of where they're going, or what they're doing.

Except that they all potentially want to do it with each other. It's as if Stone has attempted to create a story in which ALL pairings are potentially possible, and especially the man on man ones.

Let me tell you this now, fanon: I predict that this is going to stay potential. Why ruin a good thing, right? The bond between Zombie and Hanna is going to remain perpetually platonic. If you can deal with that, this comic is right for you. If you're looking for something more than mildly shallow semi-sexual interactions between characters, look elsewhere.

Right so that's all the bad stuff. THERE'S SOME GOOD STUFF TOO.



Although I bitched about the art v word earlier, that's just me being a grump. The truth is, it makes the comic about 98% better than most of the webcomics out there. The art style is simplistic, and original. The characters are all handsome, from the psychotic doctor to the whiny (yet somehow endearing) chump. The colors are gorgeous and glowy. Tessa is amazing at creating mood, and at using panels to her advantage.

And well... her characters are really endearing.



SO.

Tl;dr: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name has a lot of unresolved sexual tension, cutesy characters, and a long winding plot with no end in sigh. I mean sight.

Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name updates irregularly.

I truly hope Hanna improves, because the art is so gorgeous, and I see enormous potential in the story line. Right now, though, I give this comic 3 stars.

BLIP


It IS a beautiful day in Lina Land! Today I woke up at 8 in the morning to go to a conference on the future of reading. Reading?, thought I, there's something I do a lot of! So I snuck into the conference and listened to several people babble about ebooks, publishing, retro graphics, and digitizing books (oh google, you scamp, you). Because I have a short attention span, my mind wandered elsewhere and landed upon the subject of this review. Sage Leaves' comic Blip



Blip is a comic that is, to this date, 584 pages strong, and counting. Don't be frightened by the number, though, it's a fast read and its subject will have you begging for more. It starts us off by introducing us to its main character, K. K is a young woman who is twenty something, has quirky friends, a love interest, a pet, and an atypical relationship with God. We know this because two angels are constantly attempting to suppress her attempts at being creative. K isn't aware of this, and as far as she's concerned, she has a normal life. It's incredibly easy for me to relate to K, even though she's constantly surrounded by (pardon my french) weird shit . She doesn't know her friend are flying around on magical brooms, or sucking other people's blood, or punching wholes in walls.



In fact, the magic factor is kept at a minimum. Sage alternates between K's daily life, and this other world. Both sides keep me interested. I want to know where K's relationships are going, I want to know why the hell God had such a giant bitchdetta against K. His leaps into the absurd make Blip a very worthwhile read.

Sage's characters are amusing, and his art style is well suited for this. It's light, and simplistic, with details when it needs to have them. Although his first pages are chalk full of panels, he's learned to slow down when he needs to.



tl;dr? I can't get enough of this shit, it's had me giggling at odd hours of the night.

Blip updates 5 days a week, with pages on MWF, and sketches every other day.

Fabulous! I give Blip 5 stars for excellent updating, art, and humor!

Party! This is my 100th journal entry!
 I'll take this moment of celebration to make an announcement!

Some of you (one of you? none of you?) maybe have noticed a few changes have taken place... It's just layout things, and the fact that I've changed my journal title to Fernandez Talks Comics. It's been a long time since I've wanted a place where I could talk about comics and only comics. I've had several journals where I've mentioned it, but never a place that is absolutely dedicated to sequential art.

I'm really excited about this, and if I've got any watchers left I hope you'll be excited too! This is the dawn of a new era. I've already got a list of comics that I want to review, but if you guys are itching to hear my opinion (yeah right) on a specific comic, link me and I'll add it to the list!

Fabulously yours
Angelina