The third book I received for Christmas is Brian Anderson’s Enter the Baby (2016), the fourth compilation of Dog Eat Doug strips. Great art, imaginative story arcs (parodies of the Devil went down to Georgia, and Indiana Jones), and occasionally howl-out-loud funny set-ups.

On the whole, Dog Eat Doug is a simple daily strip (newspaper and online) about 3-month-old lab puppy Sophie, and her sidekick human baby Dougie, and the games they play with each other. Sometimes, the games are for who gets to eat Dougie’s dinner, other times they’re about who can get into trouble the most creatively. The house is also occupied by two alien cats (Chewie and Equinox), Mom, and Dad (presumably Brian himself). But, there are a lot of pop culture references, and Dougie sometimes gets toys that include Hellboy, a Dalek, and whatever else is popular at the moment.

There was one customer reviewer on Amazon who complained that the strips in this particular book did not contain any Kung Fu jokes. That’s the problem of parodying pop culture – some people take it too literally. Sorry, no Kung Fu here. Just off-the-wall silliness and a funny joke cover. Recommended in paperback form, because it’s more fun to hold the paper strips in your hands.

The second webcomic-related book I got for Christmas is the Hubris Great Stanky Creek Outdoorfest, by Greg Cravens (2016). Greg runs Hubris both on his site, and GoComics, as well as The Buckets. If you follow Hubris, then you know the story and the quality of the artwork (which is great of course) (Greg did add some new filler material specifically for this book to help entice the regular online readers).

The Great Stanky follows Hubris as he and his Outdoor Galore store host the first annual Stanky Creek Fest, an outdoor competition that includes BMX biking, skateboarding, flaming hacky sack, and duct tape kayaking. Guest one-off judges include Jamie Hyneman, Steven Tyler and Tonya Harding. Characters include Hubris’ half-brother Paste, his friend Kelly, Bob, and Durnell Hawk (Tony Hawk’s drunk cousin). We also get an early appearance of young punk Nikki, who later becomes a regular at the store.

One key element in the fest is that Team US is made up of readers at the regular site, including Allen, Crazy Al, and me. I show up in two strips as the guy who fails to make it into the rock climbing event. (But, I get my revenge in the second annual fest, where I ride people through the swamp to avoid getting leeches inbetween my toes. I don’t believe in leeches.)

In short, The Great Stanky is a great read. It’s funny, it’s got great art, and it’s got copyright-free (because of parody) images of people you may have even seen on TV! Recommended.

While I’ve kind of stopped posting anything new here, I am still looking for webcomics that I like to read. It’s getting a little harder, but once in a while it does happen. Case in point, Minna Sundberg’s Stand Still, Stay Silent. It started in November, 2013, and won the 2015 Reuben for Best Online Comic – Long Form. Set partly in Iceland, and largely in the Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark), SSSS tells the story of an unlikely group of explorers enlisted to delve deep into the “Silent world” of northern Europe 90 years after the fall of the (at the time) “modern world.” The prologue starts out a bit slow, with a number of couples, friends and families escaping the cities to find refuge from “the rash illness.” Victims of the rash eventually die, and a cure is never found. But, over the following decades, certain individuals are born with an immunity to the disease. These people can freely leave the safe enclaves and explore the ruins of the rest of the world; those without this immunity must wear breathers and undergo a strict washdown procedure when they return indoors. After the prologue, the story jumps to the “present,” where four greedy cowards, Taru, husband and wife Torbjorn and Siv, and retired General Torbun, have presented a proposal to the Icelandic government to send a group of explorers deep into the Silent World to see what they can recover. The initial concept is to use the money to pay 8 or so people to do the actual dirty work. The government agency supplying the money only ok’d the project with the expectation that Taru and company were going to be in the party themselves, and only signed off on a fraction of the cash needed. The result is that the four end up having to trick relatives into going on a suicide mission in a malfunctioning ATV tread van, with little preparation and no training.

The party consists of Tuuri (a naive non-immune girl that wants to see the world, Finnish) and her cousin, Lalli (a scout and mage, taking the place of Tuuri’s brother, Onni). Onni is a strong mage, but also a coward. All three are related to Taru. Emil (an insufferably arrogant former student and cleanser (uses fire to kill trolls and monsters), Swedish. Torbjorn’s nephew.) Sigrun (a female hunter and military Captain, Danish) and Mikkel (cook, farmer and healer, Danish), both suckered in by retired general Torbun. The goal is to go deeper into the forbidden lands than anyone else has in order to find libraries that have books, which can be sold on the black market by Torbjorn for massive profits. None of the suckers (I mean, heroes) know that at the outset. Over time, they’re joined by Reynir (20), an Icelander non-immune sheepherder who ran away from his family of adventurers to have an adventure of his own and accidentally stowed away in a crate of food redirected to our heroes. And, by a kitten that gets rescued from a beast, and becomes the team’s mascot (which is good, because cats can detect trolls).

(One of the many information pages that help fill out the ends of the chapters.)

The world has changed in 90 years, with the rash turning humans into trolls, and animals into beasts. A few of the clean humans have magical abilities, either as summoners or capable of blessing others from the dangers of the Silent World. Onni and Lalli are mages and can contact each other in the dream world. Reynir is a latent mage who can enter other mages’ dream worlds. In general, though, most combat is against rash-created monster, with rifles, explosives, and a lot of other old-world tech. The story unfolds in a slow-but-steady pace, that is comedic, horrific and sad by turns. The artwork starts out good, and gets much, much better as Minna improves.

(A train equipped with anti-troll features.)

The characters are all unique, and pretty much speak languages that the others can’t understand well, or at all. This is played for laughs, but can also be used to cause confusion and conflict between the team members. The combat sequences are exciting and well-drawn. Overall, I like SSSS a lot, although it could have used some editing. Volume 1 ran 973 pages (not counting the double-page spreads). Volume 2 started in October, 2018, and is only up to 34 or so pages. Minna is going on a 2-3 week break, and the next chapter won’t start until some time in January, so if you plan on binge-reading the series, be prepared for delays when you finally catch up with everyone else.

(Lalli can have bad dreams.)

Yeah, I like Stand Still, Stay Silent. The adults are frustratingly self-absorbed and obtuse, but the main heroes are pretty plucky and determined. Be warned, though, there are no real feel-good endings here, and not everyone survives the first adventure unscathed. I do highly recommend SSSS to anyone that likes tech-based fantasy adventure.

(Mikkel, Sigrun, Emil, Lalli and Tuuri.)

It took me a while to get to it, but I finally colored in Wiley’s Summer Kick-Off Sunday Coloring Page. I love Wiley’s bears, and I enjoy coloring in these pages. I think this one came out pretty well, and now I’m finally ready for Summer to officially start.

Dora Mitchell, of The Curse of Crooked Mile, is very nice to her patreon supporters.

The fox and the boat.

(Good Heavens and Steak intercept Helvetica.)

I’ve checked out Helvetica a few times over the last couple years, and I finally decided to read through the full archives to find out what the story is. It’s written and drawn by j.n.wiedle, who is also currently working as the colorist on Barbarous (reviewed here a couple months ago). The comic is very much off-and-on, having started in 2011, and only reaching 96 pages. The last update was in Dec., 2017, and there’s little evidence of a new page coming out in the near future. But, if you like Barbarous, Helvetica is worth at least a visit.

(Buck trashes Heaven’s apartment.)

The story is simple – when you die, you go to the land of the dead, minus your memories, and the first word(s) you utter becomes your name. Helvetica is a recent arrival, and he’s obsessed with finding out what he’d been like when he was alive. Along the way, he befriends Autumn, a female dead that works at an ice cream parlor and fancies herself to be a detective writer. Additional characters include Good Heavens and Steak, the greeters that help Helvetica get his footing in this new environment; Lucy, a detective and Autumn’s inspiration as a writer; and a pair of thugs that want Steak to return to their gang under the leadership of the insane “Buck.”

(Autumn and Lucy.)

Helvetica as a character is a whiny little brat, but the rest of the cast is more interesting, and the story concept still has a lot of promise, while the character designs and background artwork are good. This webcomic is worth putting on your radar. And, who knows, if wiedle gets enough patreons, she may afford to take it up again. Recommended if pink doesn’t bother you too much.

Every so often, I’ll click on different art links from whatever webcomic I’m reading to see what else I can find. I’m pretty sensitive to the artwork at these times, and the character designs turn out to be the most important part for me. After I’ve clicked on the link, I focus on dialog and story. Raruurien caught my eye in this way, and the first few pages I clicked through were absolutely gorgeous.

The artwork and story are by Ann Maulina, an Indonesian artist who also works as a freelance game and concept artist. The character designs are arguably influenced by certain hyper-realist shojo manga, such as Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story. Ann won bronze in the 10th Japan International Manga Awards in 2017 for this comic.

Raruurien is set in a fantasy world where humans and a kind of turtle-like non-human race coexist. The primary character so far is Riensha (Rien), a 34-year-old widow who works as an herbalist. Her husband, Raed, died at some point before the comic starts, and all we know about him is that he was good on horseback and a skilled archer. Rien has two sons, Rashad (Ra) (age 6), and Ruu (age 5). Ra has a fairly decent level of control over fire magic, and is a bit jealous of Rien’s doting over Ruu. The problem is that after Raed died, Ruu lost his ability to speak and walk, as well as any magic he’d used to have (he’s getting better, though). Ruu’s pale skin and hair are indicative of a master-level magic potential, so whatever happened to him must have been very traumatic. At the moment, the story is just about Rien’s interactions with the villagers and her children, with explorations into clothing styles and society as a whole. Very laid-back and slow-moving.

The Raruurien website started on June 20, 2017, and the comic is only up to page 91. It’s supposed to update Mondays and Thursdays, but it’s currently on hiatus while Ann concentrates on paying work. It’s definitely worth checking out, and I recommend this webcomic to anyone that likes Kaoru Mori, and is very patient.

While reading Prague Race, I found a mention of Namesake, by Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melancon. I wanted to see what the artwork was like for it, so I went to the Namesake archives, and didn’t surface until I was fully up to date 2 days later. The character designs are very uneven, and occasionally I have no idea which one I’m looking at. But, the monsters and some of the backgrounds are really good, and I like the story (usually, when I can follow it.)

The universe of Namesake revolves around the idea that stories record what happens in the magical worlds of other realities around us. Writers document the adventures of the people visiting these worlds, and the Namesakes are people who fit the roles of the lead characters in these adventures. Often, there are entire generations of Dorothies (OZ), Alices (Looking Glass) and Jacks (The Giant Killers) that find themselves teleported into these stories and are not allowed to leave until the tale has been told for the latest revision.

Enter Emma Crewe, originally believed to be a young woman working in a coffee shop, that gets cast as the next Dorothy namesake. Her younger sister is a Writer, and their friend, Ben, turns out to be a “magic world diplomat.” In Oz, Emma befriends Warrick Chopper, the Wicked Warlock of the West, and his sister Selva, the Wicked Witch of the East. When things get sorted out, Emma, Selva and Warrick come to our Earth to join the Calliope organization, where Alice and Jack work to fight against their enemy, the Rippers. The Rippers steal the names of Namesakes on behalf of their leader, One. One of the other members is Emma’s and Emily’s father, #37 (Daniel Crewe). Eventually, we learn that One has the real Emma, and the Emma that we know is a little more complex than she’d been led to believe, and is now identified as a Skeleton Key.

The webcomic updates Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It first started in 2010, and often includes filler artwork, and announcements of con appearances. As of July 13, we’re just getting into a bit of One’s backstory, finally.

The pages here provide a lot of narrative backdrop, and some examples of my favorite splash pages. The characters are well-developed, but do include some LGBT interactions, if that’s something that you’re not comfortable with. As for me, Namesake was a fast, if confusing read, and I rank it up there with Atomic Robo and Gunnerkrieg Court for imagination and adventure sequences. Recommended if you like retellings of famous story retellings, meta-stories, and historical references to writers like Baum and Carroll.

(Prague Race)

I found Prague Race (Prace), by Petra Erika Nordlund, through a link on Atomic Robo. It originally started in 2014, then went on hiatus around 2016-17, and has only returned recently. It’s currently on a Wednesday-only update schedule, but hasn’t updated since April. The artwork has kind of a traditional northern European (I guess) gothic feel, and is billed as a horror-comedy.

(Colin wandering in the black market goods shop)

The story essentially revolves around Leona, an impetuous young woman that discovers a black market shop, from which she buys a poster that turns out to contain a “harvester,” a magical parasite that digs itself into Leona’s back. The harvester provides her with extra hands that she can use to fight or defend herself with, but the trade off is that the parasite lives off her life energy and will probably kill her in one year. Leona’s closest friends are the finicky rich boy Colin, martial arts doormat Miko, and her evil cat Gabrielle. The reason I say the story “essentially” revolves around Leona is that the other key protagonist is Sela, an amoral human woman that somehow made it to the magic world, joined the Brigade force that prevents crossovers between our world and the magic one, and is the black market smuggler that accidentally sold the magic poster to Leona. Sela helped raise two trolls – Toska and Tahvo – and her main pet is the four-legged shark thing, Fishsticks. When Mika is nearly killed in a bar brawl, Leona asks the werewolf, Pam, to save her friend by turning him into a werewolf as well. Pam is the leader of a werewolf pack, and becomes Mika’s spiritual leader, of sorts.

(The harvester emerges from Leona’s back.)

While Leona is actually thrilled to be the host of the harvester, and thus being given a sense of freedom from society’s restrictions in exchange for a 1-year death sentence, she is extremely unhappy that Sela has fed Colin to Fishsticks (Sele orders Toska to kill Leona and Mika to clean up loose ends, and he fails spectacularly), who takes Colin to the magic world to be sold for parts. Leona and Mika go to the magic world to rescue Colin, but he’s been sold to Pikokai, an enchanted chicken that runs a floating gambling ship. Leona challenges the chicken to give her three tasks to complete so she can free her friend from his terrible contract (Colin is forced to wash dishes in the city’s kitchens), hopefully before her life runs out.

(The floating gambling ship. Leona enjoys her tea.)

The artwork is erratic, with the appearances of the characters changing from page to page, but the big splash pages are pretty spectacular. Petra’s not a native English speaker, so there are occasional typos and spelling mistakes. But these are not all that distracting and can be ignored if you’re not anal about it. Colin’s insecurities do get annoying after a while, and neither Leona nor Sela are all that likable, but Toska is a fun character and I really want to see more of Pam. The magic world is spooky-creepy at times, and that’s where Petra’s imagination shines. Overall, yes, I like Prague Race, and I am hoping that the pages will start coming out again eventually. Recommended if you like she-wolves that can’t be bothered to shave their legs.