(I’m not even going to try and justify this one.)
I’ll start with a few brief updates. OK? OK.
UPDATE #1: Cover art for The End is up! Check it out!
UPDATE #2: Last chance to enter Read Me Free! Still plenty of spots left! Deadline extended until December 6th! I’m using way too many exclamation points in consecutive sentences!
UPDATE #3: There is no update #3.(!)
In the last post I mentioned that I wanted to look at imaginative fiction in alternative media forms, including webcomics and video games. But as I started writing this post, I realized I had too much to talk about to cover both subjects, so I decided to split them up. This does, however, leave one point unresolved.
Why webcomics?
Good question, bold-faced font. I’m glad you asked. I think there are a few reasons why it’s worth taking a look at webcomics. First, I’m primarily interested in IF as a whole, not just IF books, so given the amount of time I’ve devoted to literary forms of IF, it’s only fair.
Second, although much has been written about showing vs. telling in writing, it’s worth noting that unless your book has illustrations, you aren’t really showing anything. There’s only telling, although admittedly of different kinds– but that’s a subject for another post. Anyway, the point is that try as we might, writers are never able to replicate what in the minds of their readers the images from their own heads with perfect fidelity. And while there is also ambiguity in images as well, at the very least everyone can have a pretty good agreement on what characters look like.
Third, the influence of comics on media and culture is present and growing. There’s a reason why we’ve seen a spate of comic-book movies in the past years (and good ones, too)– there’s a market for them. People have grown up shaped by the comics they’ve read, and webcomics are the latest incarnation.
I want to give a brief overview of what I think are some of the more interesting, influential, and involving IF stories in the webcomic format. These are not the best, nor is this an exhaustive list. If you have suggestions of your own, I’d be happy to hear them.
Steampunk’d
Title: Girl Genius
Status: Ongoing
Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio is a long-running webcomic that envisions a fantastic steampunk universe of mad scientists, dashing heroes, and, of course, lots of explosions. The illustrations are excellent– people familiar with Magic: The Gathering or the Myth series will recognize Phil Foglio’s distinctive artistic style, which manages to highlight the over-the-top nature of the story’s world while still being visually appealing. Tightly plotted and smartly written, each page of the webcomic pops with action, humor, and a huge cast of characters.
The plot follows Agatha Heterodyne, who quickly finds that she has inherited a surprising talent for mad science. She must go on a journey to uncover the mysteries of her past and take her rightful place as one of the Heterodynes, legendary figures in the story’s world. Although it has a steampunk feel, Kaja Foglio prefers that Girl Genius be classified as ‘gaslamp fantasy,’ to reflect that it generally more light-hearted in outlook than the ‘punk’ part of steampunk would reflect, and the presence of fantasy elements. It’s worth noting that the creators transitioned to a webcomic format from traditional comics, and the art, while beautiful is reflective of that origin.
Sword-chucks, yo
Title: 8-bit Theater
Status: Complete
Another long-running webcomic takes its inspiration directly from video game culture, so much so that it even directly borrows its artistic style. Brian Clevinger’s 8-bit Theater uses characters rendered in sprite form to recreate the look of the earliest incarnation(s) of the game Final Fantasy. Clevinger’s smart writing and use of dialogue allows him to create distinctive characters with their own quirks, eccentricities, and outright insanities.
The story focuses on the journey of four incredibly dysfunctional heroes who set out to save the world from Chaos, and instead manage to thwart themselves at every turn. The plot is mostly humorous, although there are a few serious moments. Clevinger makes use of a lot of genre play in that the story is itself a loose parody not only of the inspirational game, but the role-playing game genre as a whole.
. . . and carry a big stick
Title: Order of the Stick
Status: Ongoing
From sprites to stick figures, the art takes a turn for the (even more) minimalist in the next webcomic. Whereas 8-bit draws on video games, Order of the Stick is grounded in the oft-maligned Dungeons and Dragons. Rich Burlew manages to envision a world in which characters operate under the myriad rules of D&D (complete with rolling virtual dice to determine whether an attack is successful).
Order of the Stick follows (you guessed it) a band of intrepid adventurers, looking for loot, glory, and (of course) experience points. I was struck by the depth and variety of characters that Burlew managed to create in his webcomic, despite their stick-figure forms.
Erf You
Title: Erfworld
Status: Ongoing
A trend seems to be emerging when one considers that the next entry is also influenced by gamer culture, although this time it is the genre of strategy and wargames. Erfworld, written by Rob Balder and illustrated by Jamie Noguchi (Book One) and Xin Ye (Book Two), follows a geeky loser whose only skill is wargames as he is transported from his humdrum life to a different universe altogether (reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland) where he has been summoned to be “the perfect warlord.” Balder sprinkles liberal references to online cultures and subcultures throughout in addition to his commentary on the nature of wargames, but the story is compelling enough to stand on its own.
Positively Dreadful
Title: The Dreadful
Status: Ongoing
Cross Hellboy with the Eastwood Westerns, and you get The Dreadful, a blend of fantasy and cowboy shoot-’em-up replete with devil-girls, centaurs, elves, dwarves, and bird-women. Sound crazy? It is. It gets off to a wild, rollicking start and maintains it with engaging characters, good (although occasionally anachronistic) dialogue, and a sense of mystery that makes the reader wonder: what more is there to this world that I have not yet learned?
Enter Kit, a devil-girl with a mean streak a mile wide. She’s just been shot and left for dead by her former partner-in-crime, Jeanne. Hijinks ensue, punctuated by the occasional tongue-in-cheek parody of period advertisements, starring Kit.
Let me tell you about Homestuck
Title: Homestuck
Status: Ongoing
Homestuck is relatively recent (April 2009), but thanks to an incredibly prolific creator (Andrew Hussie) it is already over 4000 pages long. Homestuck is also the webcomic that pushes the envelope the most on this list in terms of blending different genres and media forms.
If Girl Genius is at the “most traditional” end of the spectrum in terms of its presentation, Homestuck is at the other. Often successful webcomics will be published in print format, but I cannot imagine Hussie’s work on anything but a computer. Sometimes entries are static images, sometimes they are GIFs, sometimes they are flash movies complete with musical accompaniment, and sometimes they are fully interactive flash games where they reader “plays” out the story’s progression.
In this massive webcomic, four young teens find that a computer game they’re playing has implications not only for their world, but that of all existence. Homestuck alternates between sweet and sad, light comedy and black humor, wordy chatlog exchanges between characters and pure visual storytelling.
My take
Like I said, this is not intended to be a list of the best webcomics (although some would argue they are). They merely represent what I believe are interesting storytelling choices made within the IF genre. However, thematically speaking, it is impossible to ignore the influence of gaming (video and otherwise) on webcomics. Of course, you can argue that’s a selection bias on my part– as a gamer myself, I readily consume related media. However, these webcomics are, in general, very successful. Brian Clevinger parlayed his popularity with 8-bit into commerical success. Phil and Kaja Foglio have won or been nominated for numerous awards, including the Hugo award. Homestuck’s parent website (also run by Hussie) receives upwards of 600,000 unique views a day.
This leaves me with a nice segue into the next post, which will tackle IF in video games. Until then, (insert cheesy sign-off phrase probably cribbed from Anchorman here).
