Thursday, October 25, 2007

web comic review

So I need to be more active in my blog, and I think one way I'll do that is through reviews of things like web-comics, movies, and books. Really just anything that I feel like talking about I guess. So I decided to start off by reviewing the comics in a comic community I found out about called Koala Wallop.

Koala wallop is a small community that consists of 6 main comics that update on a semi-regular basis. They're a lot more artistic then what you normally find, and most of them are of just a much higher quality then what you'll find just fallowing links from one comic to another.

The first one I want to review is called Dresden Codack. I've decided to start with this one because its probably Koala wallops' most popular comic and the one I found the community through. If you go and read through the archive of it, you'll find several things to be true about Dresden Codack.

1) The art is continually growing and changing styles. This is one of its major strong points if you ask me. While plenty of web comics and print comics evolve over time, you can tell that Aaron, the writer and artist, is constantly refining his work and experimenting with new styles and themes.

2) This comic is smart. Now, this is kind of a win-loss for DC if you ask me. While I can certainly appreciate striving to go beyond the typical gag comic you might find anywhere, sometimes it goes a little too far into obscurity.

Exhibit A: A good example of its anything but typical humor.

Exhibit B: A comic that unless you're aware of these semi obscure references, you'll spend a lot of time on Wikipedia.

so you can see where the problems may be.

3) Dresden Codack has updated about 30 times in the last two years. So to say that you'll be waiting quite some time before the next installment is an understatement. Now while this does bring in negative points, I really don't have much room to complain. Each comic has a lot of time and thought put into it, and it shows. Its much more gratifying to have a comic that updates infrequently and is 95% Gold then one that updates regularly and like clockwork, but has large areas of mediocrity or even just plain bad updates.

While Dresden Codack may not update regularly, it does always tend to provide you with something. Aaron often gives his readers what he calls "stall comics" which consist of his stick figured alter ego. They're simple, but still good and funny in the same type of humor you can expect from Dresden Codack. Its a refreshing substitute to the typical filler art you'll get at other sites.

Although, in recent news Aaron has declared that he will be quitting his current job to focus on the comic full time. This should be interesting, as he has promised continuous weekly updates. Hopefully this will work out for him, as I could see this going in either extremes for DC.

Should the increased updates bring in enough revenue for Aaron, we can expect a great deal more comics. Currently DC relies on simple donations, along with sales of prints and T-shirts which are a new addition. Its a solid way of making money that I have no problems with. I can tell you right now that if I had the money to spend, I would probably help myself to one or two of the T-shirt designs and possibly a print.

All around I have to say that this is one of the highest quality comics online. Its continuously expanding and evolving, and each update is something to look forward to. I would certainly recommend this to anyone.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Short Story so far

Dream Machine (Or the Girl of his Dreams, haven’t decided)

A short story by Phil Rigney

Chapter 1

“So how did you like you first surprise party?”

“I still can’t believe how many people showed up”

“Well all I had to do was drop your name and everyone showed right up”

“I’m sure the free drinks had nothing to do with it,”

“Free my ass! All of that set me back 50 bucks, plus what I got you on top of that,”

“Which one did you get me? I don’t remember,”

“That’s because I haven’t given it to you yet! I hid it in my car, let me go get it”

John sat down on his couch and wiped the sweat from his palms. His stomach was giving him the same feeling as it does on a roller coaster. He took a deep breath, counted to three and waited for her to return. Once she came back he would do it. It was the perfect time, wasn’t it?

Autumn entered through the front holding a package in both of her hands. It was a medium sized box covered in wrapping paper.

“Geeze, what’d you get me?”

“If I wanted you to know right off the bat, I wouldn’t have wrapped it up, now would I?”

John couldn’t argue with irrefutable logic like that. He gently accepted the gift and set it on his coffee table. He began to tear at the paper ever so slightly.

“Oh come on, rip it open, I’m dying here! I want you to know what it is!”

“Oh fine, take all the suspense out of your own gift why don’t ya?”

John bent to her will and ripped open the paper as quickly as he could. He opened the box and dug through the packaging material to find an old typewriter. He carefully lifted it out of the box and set it down on the table. The keys were small and round and gave the most delightful TAK when pressed. It was old, purely mechanical and perfect in every way conceivable.

“Where did you find this? The only other typewriter I’ve ever seen is my grandma’s old electric one. This is so awesome.”

“It was at an old antique store just outside town. Do you really like it? I thought that if you were serious about this writing stuff you should have a proper means of showing the world your work,”

John was so overjoyed with is new gift he sprang up to hug his good friend and gave her a slight kiss on the cheek. John looked her in the eyes and whispered a soft

“Thank you”

The response to this however, was a forced smile as Autumn sat down on his couch and picked up her half empty beer. She leaned away from John on the couch with her legs crossed while looking at nothing in particular on the ground.

“We should probably think about cleaning up a bit, I’ve got work tomorrow so I need to get to bed at some kind of reasonable hour,”

“Oh, yeah sure, sure. Uh, I can clean up; it’s no biggie for me. I don’t have anything going on tomorrow so I might just do it then anyway,” He looked around as if searching for the cue card with his next line one it. “Do you need a ride? I don’t know how much you had to drink, it’d be no trouble for me,” He said.

“Oh…no I couldn’t impose, besides I’ve hardly had a thing. Trust me I’ll be fine. Um…uh…Happy Birthday John, really, I hope you had a blast,”

“Yeah I did, thanks again for the party,”

With a wave and a smile she was out the door and out of the rest of John’s night. There was nothing left to do but clean a little and get some sleep before the next day snuck up on him. He surveyed his apartment and found himself dismayed at the mess left behind. He should have accepted her help regardless of the situation. No, cleaning was out of the question, there was only one sure fire remedy for how John was feeling at the moment. He would need a sad song and a strong drink and the sooner he had the both of them the better.

On his way to get the scotch from on top of his refrigerator, John remembered the typewriter. He came back the long way after stopping in his bedroom for some printer paper. The blues were playing, the scotch was delicious and John sat down to write out the misery that was surrounding him. He wrote about how he would be alone and he wrote about the futility of trying to fix that. All of this came through the actions of a character that ends up killing himself over some girl. While complementing his current mood, this did nothing to remedy it, so John decided to go in another direction.

A new page was stated about a great space explorer. He was tall and handsome and did everything right. He was a hero among men and a legend among the stars and he was everything John wished himself to be. Again John found himself in the same mood he had been in for the last few hours. There was nothing to do but roll with it and hope that tomorrow brought a better day.

Chapter 2

John awoke the next day not wholly convinced that he was no longer dreaming. He needed to find the pages from last night. He needed to be sure of what had happened.

“All of it,” he said as he skimmed the pages on his coffee table. “It’s all right here. No way,”

It really was all right there, every vivid detail, every small occurrences, even all the sounds and smells that came to him in the night were staring at him on the paper.

“It’s just a coincidence, I was just thinking about it when I went to bed and this is what I dreamed about,”

And yet it still pressed him. He read over the pages again and again he found his first assumption to be true. John leaned back with his mouth open in a half smile. This was the single truly uncanny event in his life. He wasn’t even sure how he really felt about it, or even how he should feel about it.

He put it from his mind as it was too early and he was too hung over to dwell on such events. A shower helped one of his problems yet the other remained in the back of his mind. All throughout the day it dwelled on him. While he cleaned up after last night’s party he found himself taking breaks to re-read what he had written the day before.

“I just need to get my thoughts together about it” he said to himself. “I’ll write it all down and sort it all out.”

He readied a new page in the typewriter that Autumn gave him and began to recount the day’s events. When he was done he was able to sit back and stretch his arms out as a long sigh escaped from inside of him. His hands fell to his sides and one landed on his remote control. This would prove a useful step in forgetting the day.

John slammed his hands against the couch cushion and supported himself up in a half push up. It was dark and yet he just remembered it being light outside. No, that was a dream; it was light in his dream that had ended with him watching television.

“No, this is ridiculous,” he thought “a bad case of Déjà vu or whatever,”

He reached out his hand and groped for the page still in the typewriter. He held it so the blue of the screen showed him the words.

“It is though, it happened again,”

He dropped the paper and looked to the side at nothing in particular. He slowly turned his gaze to the typewriter on his table.

“That,” he said to it. “That’s the only thing different; it’s the only new element and the only real difference.”

He thought about what he was saying.

“No, no, no. It’s just me, after what happened with Autumn I’m just trying to make myself feel special. I can prove it too.”

He went to his computer and quickly searched the internet for someone who keeps a dream blog. He found several and decided to prove to himself that he was merely too stressed and to put this crazy idea to rest. He set up his type writer work station and began to type through the night. For each person he wrote about he crafted a story of great detail from the furthest depths of his imagination. They rode wild animals that no one had ever seen before and went to lands with customs stranger then anything you might see even in bad episodes of Star Trek. It wasn’t good, but it didn’t need to be good, it only had to be easily remembered.

It was late when he finished and he simply let himself fall asleep with the satisfaction that his questions would be answered tomorrow. It was good to know he could put this oddity behind him and get back to his normal actions.

Chapter 3

When John awoke he felt nervous . Not a single dream had haunted him during the night and today would bring an end to his questions. He began to walk to his computer.

“What if it’s real? What do I do? Can I make money off of this? What if I’m going crazy? I bet it didn’t work, but what if it did? What if I am going crazy? If I know I’m going crazy am I really going crazy then?”

The walk to the computer couldn’t be longer. He sat down and checked the online dream journals of people who he had written for last night. Five minutes had passed before John could even begin to think.

“Its true then,” he thought “it’s all there, all the important parts anyway. I’ve composed their dreams and mine.”

The only question was what to do with it. What could be done? A list that was what he was looking for. He wrote out all the possibilities that he could think of for a man who could write dreams.

“Write them for me, write them for friends, sell them to others, influence officials, and communicate with others. What else?” He looked at the type writer for answers, and it gave him one that he didn’t expect.

“Autumn” he said “I can write dreams for her. I could write her the dreams she needs to see and realize that we’re perfect for each other.”

No, he would need more then that. Simple dreams can be explained away, he needed a truly uncanny event like the one he had to really make this work.

“Halloween! A costume party, I’ll be the hero from her dreams. She’ll walk into the room and see the man who saves her in her dreams, the man who protects her and gives her the life she deserves and it’ll be me.”

He would need to refine it of course, but it was the best he could do at the moment. Surely a coincidence such as this could not be mistaken or written off as anything less then fate. By the end of the year, Autumn would see John for the man that he is. He sat down, with a notebook this time, and began to write out an outline of what he would do to win over the girl who he loved.