Okay.

So there are still a few comics left in the Black History Month roundup, it actually turns out to be a total of more comics than there would have been weeks in February.

It’s a pretty mixed bag; from style to content. This week’s installment, Assassin: Angeli Nascosti, by Trenton Thompson, is another work in progress. (It’s also a work in progress that seems to be on a bit of a hiatus, but the entire prologue is available at the site.)

Nevertheless, I’ve read it, and I will tell you what I think.

As you might have noticed if you clicked the link above, Assassin is a manga-style comic. Personally, I’m not a big fan of people doing manga-style comics. Mostly, I find myself wondering what the artist’s style would be like (or was like,) before they started drawing manga. Trenton has been paid for his artworks, and is pursuing his undergrad degree in Animation (a man after my own heart). I’d like to see what else he can do. And we probably will, after the hiatus is over.

I might not like the art style of the comic, but I will say that the site is put together very well, and even has some musical elements (some of the links in the interactive site don’t quite work, but you can turn off the music with the button in the upper left.)

At any rate, I’m still wondering what ‘Angeli Nascosti’ means; I’m sure that it will come up at some point, as the actual story unfolds. I have a theory, it might have to do with one of the villains, but I’m not telling you which one.
Assassin chronicles the adventures of Isamu Noriyega, an assassin savant who learned the trade at the hands of the syndicate who killed his family, and is haunted by secrets about his father’s enigmatic past, which will likely rear its head in an epic confrontation, possibly with his enigmatic benefactor from Page 28.

There isn’t too much else to talk about without totally giving it away; the concept of reviewing a manga comic drawn by a black man in observation of Black History Month is a kettle of fish that I don’t really want to touch (mostly because I’m having enough trouble getting through the required writing, without chasing tangents, however related to the subject at hand). Even though the style was once adopted by Some Comic Publisher, it is a distinctly Japanese style.

In short, it raises questions (in my mind, and only because it’s in observation, like I mentioned,) about racial identity that I don’t particularly want to deal with at this point*, and aren’t really related to Assassin. I don’t know if I will pursue the comic when it returns from hiatus, but it is a potentially interesting story that is hopefully going through its ‘first X pages,’ where the artwork is almost making up its mind about how to look (Trenton promises better artwork, among a host of other things) CottonFluff went through it; it mostly made up its mind around page 12. Go back and see for yourself.

And that’s about it. There’s still four comics to look at; but I was planning on looking at two of them at the same time, so they only count as one post. I’ll see you next week.

*Devil’s advocate says: does it matter? I don’t know; on the whole, it’s a mildly interesting fact to consider, but I will have to leave it to more sociologically-minded types than I.

I am now a week behind with just about everything.

Well, not everything, but a lot of things. I had planned this week’s entry for the week of Xmas, and I had planned a lovely little bit of holiday artwork, but then the holidays and their own obligations stepped in.

Anyway, now I am wiser and better prepared for next year, where everything will be on time. On with the entry.

Perhaps as long as humanity has been able to ponder, we have considered the Powers That Be. And, in our quest to understand them, we are often led to attribute features to them that bring them into perspectives that we can more readily understand.

In other words, we anthromophize them, but without the social stigma.

In my last comic review (which seems like such a long time ago), we looked at how Casual Notice further humanized an already very down-to-earth pantheon. Namely, the Greco-Roman deities, a diverse group of divinely-powered individuals exhaustively documented as being possessed of what can only be politely referred to as very human failings, right alongside the very accessible (if not always commonplace) world of faerie.

This time, the portrayal of the powers of a slightly more ‘modern’ collection of beings gets a little scrutiny.

The Christian faith has long been providing writers and cartoonists with fuel for creativity, whether it shows the doctrine in a positive light, lampoons it, or simply means well, but doesn’t know any better. (I’m sure that there’s an actually religious webcomic out there somewhere, but I haven’t got a clue as to where.*)

While many look to expose flaws in the guidelines for life written some hundreds of years ago, others look to the major players in this heavenly game for material, Like J. Patrick Payne’s Bub’s World: A Tale of Damnation, or Chris VanGompel’s (and the name was soooo hard to find; I almost didn’t bother listing it,) Hockey Zombie.

Before you click through to Bub’s World, I will warn those of you out there in Readerland that the comic has some violent and maturish themes. Hockey Zombie’s not exactly ‘Rated E’ either, as it contains suggestive themes, and features substance abuse. I’ve read all of Bub’s to date, but only the first third (or maybe fifth) of Hockey Zombie.

I like them both, but I feel obliged to warn you that the two of these are definitely the most ‘grown-up’ of all the comics that I’ve talked about yet, but not the worst out there by a long shot. Just letting you know before you head off.

At any rate, Bub’s World isn’t exactly what you might think. I had originally assumed from the look of it (well, from the look of Patrick’s avatar on The Webcomic List’s forum, anyway) that it was something lighthearted and/or silly, possibly a gag strip. This is a far cry from the actuality of it.

The style is somewhat cartoonish, (bordering on the more realistic at times) and it does have its moments of levity. But, on the whole, the comic deals with things of a weighty matter mixed with a liberal dose of ‘what the hell is going on?’, seasoned liberally with the bodily effluvia of your choice.

The story follows a hapless minor(ish) devil named Bub Zeezle who has been cast out of Hell for reasons that happen to be ‘Classified.’ Stripped of much, if not all of his infernal powers (and even his demonic appearance), Bub’s World is actually our world, and boy does it take some getting used to.

Perhaps it is because that Bub is such a minor player in the scheme of things, but his intrepid meanderings through the Real World are more or less what one might expect from someone who has just made his way into our reality, until recently unbound by such mundane needs as eating’ and the aftermath.

The Divine does not play much of a role- yet, but there’s more than enough otherworldly characters from the Other End of the religious kiddie pool on stage at the present to satisfy just about anyone, and the storyline hints at the inclusion of much more as it is really only just starting to unfurl.

Without giving away much, there is a disturbance in the cosmos (to put it simply), and a fair number of supernatural and would-be supernatural beings are mixed up in it, our red-skinned protagonist among them, whether he likes it or not.

That’ and the natives are none too friendly.

Hockey Zombie on the other hand, is, in a word, irreverent, as the art style of the comic almost immediately suggests. Few things are sacred (Well, it’s sacred to me,) in a world where Hell is actually much like Earth, and even the offspring of seemingly powerful creatures of the Underworld are reduced to menial, if not downright humiliating, tasks.

Our ‘hero,’ Chris, the Hockey Zombie wrangles a deal with the Powers of Darkness (more or less) where he gets to return to (un)life in exchange for killing a SportCenter personality, one Chris Berman. The unholy contract is fulfilled, and a celebration of epic proportions ensues, where God, the Devil, and Charon all appear at Chris and his roommate Kurt’s apartment and throw down.

Well, in any other comic it might be epic, but in the strangely jaded world of Hockey Zombie, it could really be any other night where a bunch of guys get together to drink, and play Dance Dance Revolution…

Uhm, moving on.

The Powers that Be are as powerful as they have ever been, but they are driven by the same needs and desires that make us all work. They’re just able to act on them at will.

In closing, these two comics are as different in their presentation as they are in their subject matter, and with obvious reason. I don’t know if any other major theological figures take the stage in Hockey Zombie, but if they do, they will probably show up and challenge one of the characters to foozball or something. On the other hand, if Archangel So-and-So shows up in a new page of Bub’s World, then it should be pretty obvious that the proverbial scat has impacted with the ventilation device.

Assuming that it hasn’t been dumped over someone already.

Have a Happy New Year.

*About 10 minutes after completing this entry, I came across a link to Holy Bibble, but I’m not exactly sure what category it beloned in out of the three, or if it merited one entirely all its own, which is very possible. It’s an interesting comic, but I didn’t want to hastily add it in.

Magic.

What is it really? Is it a series of effects generated by force of will? Is it the result of ritualistic entreaties made to a divine (or infernal) Other, answered eventually, or for a price? Is it something strange and wondrous, bound up in unpronounceable words and complicated gestures, or even the wave of a wand?

Does it even exist, or is it the comforting blanket that our feeble minds swaddle ourselves in when confronted with the boogeyman of the Unknown as it leers over our fragile bunk bed of Reality, undeterred by the nightlight of Science?

For the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about a topic (but not comics) that were, for all intents and purposes, fairly mundane, if not just plain boring: Work, the effect that it has on fictional characters, and how they respond to it.

In this hectic, work-a-day world, it’s easy to forget the fact that magical things (or miracles, or whatever you might prefer to call them) happen every day. You woke up at some point this day, and the sun still shines.

A power plant umpteen miles away from the computer that you’re using to view this somehow provides you with electricity (once upon a time, that might have been called magic) to run your computer. Nevermind the fact that these very words are hidden in a piece of plastic on a computer that neither of us have ever seen (and might not even exist), unless you work for the company that hosts this site.

Perhaps there is so much magic around us that we demand bigger, flashier, more ostentatious things, things that we cannot immediately take for granted, as magic. And even when those things happen, many of us cannot accept them as reality, instead painting over them with softer colors of what we term ‘Normal,’ or dismissing it as a ‘freak occurrence,’ or another comforting, mind-soothing misnomer.

Just ask the cast of Brett Hainley’s Casual Notice. In this comic, the lives of a handful of humans are’

Invaded?

No, that’s not it’

Blessed?

Hmm, getting closer’

Drastically, and sometimes whimsically altered!

Yes, that’s the one.

*Ahem.*

In this comic, the lives of a handful of humans are drastically, and sometimes whimsically altered by the addition of a liberal dose of Fae, and other mystical creatures, some iconic, some merely magical, or magicked.

This comic’s not the prettiest, nor the best laid-out one that I’ll ever talk about, nor does it make the greatest use (or selection) of fonts.

HOWEVER, it is a rather entertaining read, there are even breaks to elaborate on what might not have been fully explained during the course of the comic from time to time.*

The story (or the first year and a half of it, anyway, I haven’t read through the whole thing yet) follows a hapless public high school teacher named Scot Davis, and his newly (and somewhat swiftly-acquired) half-fae girlfriend, Penny, and the growing realization that the supernatural moves among us, even if we aren’t always willing to accept it.

Even though Scot is swept up in this maelstrom of magical beings, Casual Notice maintains a surprising level of verisimilitude. It’s not Kidd Video, it’s not Spirited Away. Even though one of Penny’s best friends is an ancient Greek goddess, and she even used to date another, there is no ‘quick fix,’ even a magical one, for the everyday events of life in Nebraska City, Texas.

Scot still has to deal with school board bureaucracies, and the paradoxes of standardized tests, and even Diana has a day job. But the magic is there, and when it rears its head, it does so in spades, before being swiftly covered up with the blanket.

In fact, sometimes it seems as though the cast is learning the whole ‘Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures’ thing as they make their way through the comic, right along with the reader, which makes it a little easier to accept the sometimes disjointed storytelling- you’re supposed to be confused.

If the characters don’t get the luxury of understanding what exactly is going on, why should you?

In closing, the lesson (if there is one) of Casual Notice is what I refer to as ‘the Spawn Animated Series Factor.’

(I would just call it the Spawn Factor, but I’m not familiar enough with the comic to make that statement.)

Anyhow, the premise is that the show takes place in New York City. For those of you unfamiliar with the character and unwilling to Google search it (I couldn’t find a link to something that wasn’t someone’s personal site, I’m tired), Spawn wears a red cape that’s about 20 feet long and twists and writhes in winds that usually aren’t actually blowing, and has the strange habit of sitting on second-story ledges.

In New York City.

Did I mention that no one ever notices him? Or his 20-foot long red cape? Maybe they are, but they’re all deciding not to notice him, the same way that the ‘Old Crowd’ in Casual Notice continually manages to escape’ casual notice.

*This turns out to be useful when one is looking for proper links to refer to; as things aren’t always exposited in the sequence that one’s mind remembers them in. Once I came to understand the chains of events, I mentally filed it in sequence, not in the order of presentation, thus vexing my ability to track down examples.

**I had originally wanted to compare Casual Notice to The Many Moons of Astra, by Glen Goldentree, and look at how the two comics dealt with magic in our midst in very different ways. But I decided that I didn’t know enough about Paganism and/or Wicca to do so, and I also hadn’t read quite enough of Astra to do it justice.

That, and Brett had actually reviewed The Many Moons of Astra last month.