In Case You Missed It: ZUDA WEEK

And if you did miss it, the blame is all mine. I consistently posted these in the dead of the night, so that Tuesday's was most likely read on Wednesday, Wednesday's on Thursday, etc. Forgive my momentarily chaotic posting history.

Zuda Week: High Moon

Zuda Week: Dean Haspiel's STREET CODE

Zuda Week: Work Is Not In Progress

Zuda Week: NIGHT OWLS

Zuda Week: Baby Monsters

Zuda Week: Baby Monsters

OK, I'm cheating on the last one for the week, but only because I'm so sure that I'll be doing this again soon.

BABY MONSTERS (by Steve Broome) only has 8 pages, but it looks like it has potential.

Presumably set in the future, super powers can be given to people. Don't really know exactly how, yet, but it does seem to involve surgery of some sort. Seems to be an attempt to make a better soldier for some kind of use.

Yeah, that's all kind of sketchy, I admit. But the character designs are solid and the coloring really makes the art shine. It isn't that the art is bad on its own, but it is clear that the coloring and shading puts it over-the-top.

The 8th page gives a strong hint that I'm going to like the direction this webcomic is going in. It sets up potential conflict and goals, much the same way that the whole "save the cheerleader, save the world" thing did for HEROES Season One. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Broome has the sense of humor to include a "30 minute pig orgasm" as one of the apparent powers that can be given out (or side effect of one, at least).

No need to rush over to it right away, as I believe it will be a more satisfying read when the pages available double. But I guess Mr. Broome would probably prefer you run over there and vote for it early and often.

Zuda Week: NIGHT OWLS

NIGHT OWLS is another of the Zuda titles you see talked about in the blogosphere. As much as I'm loathe to give attention to something that is already getting plenty of it, Peter & Robert Timony's creation was one of the most attractive options that had a sizable sampling. Who knew it would be this good?

I'm going to start sounding like a broken record here, but the clean, crisp cartooning is what sucked me in and kept me around. It's just so very easy on the eyes and works so well for a supernatural comedy set in the 1920s. You're immediately put in the right frame of mind.

If you're going to have an old man astral projecting, an arch-nemesis without a face and an owl beast that is five stories tall, I'm pretty sure you've thrown out realism from your possible style choices (well, at least with a comedy). Not that there is anything wrong with that.

All things supernatural wind up popping up in this webcomic, but it's never treated as being weird and really isn't the focus of the tales being told. In truth, the supernatural is basically all set-up. Such a huge majority of the funny is rooted in playing upon the culture of 1920s America or other conventional humor.

Mindy Markus, for instance, is a flapper...and probably the most astute practitioner of fisticuffs. This, of course, is to set up all the jokes based around her flying in the face of 1920s standards for behavior by the fairer sex. There are a lot of jokes based around her being thought to need help or protection and her feeling insulted by such behavior. For Pete's sake, they have a small gargoyle on the team and it is much more important that he talks pretty much like the everlovin' Thing before times got so politically correct.

The Timony Bros have put together a highly entertaining, absurd comedy about a supernatural detective agency during the 1920s. In some ways, it feels a bit like ANGEL in the 1920s, minus most of the dramatic moments. That's meant as a compliment. Strongly recommend checking it out.

Zuda Week: Work Is Not In Progress

I feel like I'm cheating by picking a Zuda comic that only has 8 pages up at this point, but damn if the jokes don't remind me of so many tech jobs I've had in the last ten years.

If you've ever worked an IT job, you've probably seen plenty of "fake it 'til you make it" co-workers and people mastering the art of doing no work. Heck, probably any cubicle worker has experienced some level of what WORK IS NOT IN PROGRESS is demonstrating.

So, we've established that I'm pretty keen on the premise. But what about the execution?


Well, it tends to bring the funny (with varying levels of success) in each installment rather than taking several pages to get to the punchline, which is always a welcome approach. The exaggerated (to the point of being occasionally bizarre) cartoon style reminds of a classic newspaper comic strip whose name escapes me at the moment. Which kind of points out the strip's not exactly being a shining beacon of originality. The layout is fairly similar to the Sunday funnies.

As I've mentioned in previous reviews, I normally look for the webcomics I peruse to do something that doesn't fit the mold of the newspaper strips. I expect them to try to take advantage of being free and online. Misery Loves Sherman received a pass on that, because Chris Eliopoulos is looking to land his strip with a syndicate. But a strip that is entered at Zuda? Doesn't seem likely that it would be the case.


One of the weakest points of the art is the way that the protagonist is drawn. That face is about the most difficult of all the characters to look at. It just skews a little to far towards bizarre for my liking, made all the more difficult to ignore by how relatively normal all of the other characters look. Generally, most of the strips I've encountered in the past will pick one approach and stay in the same ballpark with all of the characters. Straying this far just distracts the reader, IMO.

The final verdict? It isn't a bad read. It can be funny. But it comes off like the creator isn't putting their all into it and it shows. WORK IS NOT IN PROGRESS would have to improve quite a bit for me to suggest it as something being worthy of adding to your regular webcomic reading schedule.

Zuda Week: Dean Haspiel's STREET CODE

Dean Haspiel is a pretty damn successful webcomic creator. He's the guy behind ACT-I-VATE, so you know he was webcomic before webcomic was cool. So even though he's probably one of the creators with the least need for attention over on Zuda, I couldn't help but gravitate towards STREET CODE to check it out.



Haspiel appears to be telling a semi-autobiographical tale, which makes it all the more interesting in many ways. For some reason, there being a strong degree of reality to the tales being told helps, both because it takes guts to tell the world about your life (warts and all) and adds a level of oomph to the seemingly absurd (like the broomsticks in the trees bit).

Haspiel acquits himself excellently in both phases of his creation here. I'm a sucker for his particular style of art. Clean, crisp and cartoony is just very asthetically pleasing and, to my mind, can effectively tell tales in any genre. It definitely allows Haspiel the Artist the chance to give some real personality to every character present. The style lends itself to exaggerated facial expressions that are very efficient at informing the reader.

Haspiel the Writer does a great job at pacing and knowing when to allow the art to tell the tale. There is so little use of exposition and so much reliance on the image to convey the story beats. There's a four page sequence where maybe three words are used, but a really strong feeling is conveyed to the reader. It's his ability to nail both the writing and art aspects of his property that makes Dean Haspiel's STREET CODE such a great humorous, dramatic, slice-of-life webcomic that everyone should really check out.

(Note: I'd really like to go into more detail (and may revisit at a later date), but it's been a rough day and more detailed commentary is escaping me at the moment)

Zuda Week: High Moon

(Note: It's still Tuesday somewhere. I underestimated the impact of this historic Election Night, so the Two-Fer will, instead, become a TGIF doubling)


Let me get one thing out in the open before I actually review HIGH MOON: I really dislike the interface that Zuda uses to display the webcomics for readers.

This doesn't change my opinion of HIGH MOON considerably. I do imagine that a less frustrating interface would have made me more comfortable and able to just absorb the work, but I tried to keep it from being held against the work.

HIGH MOON is one of the many Zuda offerings to have received high praise all over the internet in the past. After having read it from start to finish, I can see why and really regret letting the interface keep me away for this long.

David Gallaher and Steve Ellis put together two rarely fused genres: horror & westerns (or, as Zuda classifies it, a "historical period" piece). Think "The Good, The Bad & The Monsters". The first protagonist, MacGregor, definitely draws comparisons to "The Man With No Name", just mutton chops & supernatural ties.

MacGregor claims to be a former lawman, but it is made quite obvious from the start that very little going on in this story is as it seems or as the characters want us to think. We can be fairly certain, however, that MacGregor doesn't bother to track your average fugitive.

I'm struck by the artwork here, especially upon further review. As mentioned, I believe the interface has drawbacks. I was readying to speak of how moody much of the artwork was. When going back to check and zooming in more, whether the text required it or not, I noticed that the artwork is much more often sharply detailed. Sure, there are appropriately employed moments of harsh lines or sketchier images to get a feeling across, but when it isn't required to be so, the artist delivers really crisp and sometimes intricate panels and pages.


HIGH NOON has a decent size cast that it manages to familiarize the readers with naturally, not via clunky exposition. You get a sense of the personalities, motivations and histories for these characters more from their interaction with others and their body language than anything else. I think it really establishes the trust between writer and artist and is the mark of an excellent collaborative work.

The pacing helps to establish tension and suspense at the right moments in the story. The writer's execution sets up several very good twists in the first chapter alone. Without giving detail about the second chapter, there is definitely a sense of a connected story here. Each chapter can stand on its own, while it seems that they're building a much farther reaching story.

At this point, anything and everything is on the table for the creative team. I can honestly say I don't know what to expect next and I wouldn't be surprised if they wound up taking a turn that wasn't in the long list of possibilities that I could imagine.

Phew...Might Have To Modify This Zuda Thing

Oh, I'm still going to be putting up a Two-Fer-Tuesday and filling out the rest of the week, but I might not be able to commit to reading every single installment existing for all of the entries in the festivities.

Who knew 105 pages of a Zuda comic would read as so much more dense than your average webcomic found through the tubes that connect this interwebz?

And, in the name of Allah, I swear I picked the first comic for review before you posted a comment, David. ;)

Coming Soon: Zuda Week

Starting tomorrow (complete with a TWO-FER-TUESDAY offering), I'll be reviewing 5 different Zuda offerings. It would have began today, but life got in the way and I wouldn't want any of the comics to suffer from my rushing to get the review done.

In the meantime, if you haven't already checked them out, here's a list of the reviews from WEB COMICS WEEK:

Calamities of Nature
The Wang
Circle Vs. Square
Multiplex
Misery Loves Sherman

The review line-up for the week isn't set in stone, so feel free to post any suggestions of Zuda offerings you'd like to see on the blog.

You Know What Just Dawned On Me?

Earlier tonight, I wrote the following while covering the Eisner Awards by piecing together the events via Twitter comments:

Personally, I'm touched by Matt & Kelly. Like my friends Lucas and Janelle Siegel, I'm always wowed by couples that seem to be pursuing and living the dream together. That shit is just amazing. I want to be jealous of it, but I can't bring myself to be. It's just too damn life-affirming to see shit like that to wind up letting a negative emotion get involved. I guess you could say the same for two brothers pursuing and living the dream together, too.

After finishing for the night and re-reading this, I realized that Valerie D'Orazio and her man are an example of just such a "pursuing and living the dream together" couple. Upon that reflection, I think I'm going to put aside any bullshit animosity I harbored towards her based on months old crap and just be happy for another lucky, life-affirming couple.

Here's to couples and family pursuing their dreams together and being pretty damn successful at it!