Erratica Reduex

Hugo or tiptree Awards Nomination Recommendation: Always Human, by Walkingnorth

Always Human is a completed slice of life science fiction lesbian romance, where body modification technology may increase human capability, but doesn't make relationships any easier.

In Australia of the 24th century, body modification mods are easy and ubiquitous, used for everything from preventing cancer to radically altering one's appearance. Sunati is fascinated by the woman she sees at the train station, who apparently uses no mods at all, but her offer of an anti-allergy mod just makes the woman upset and leave. A later meeting gives the woman- Austen- a chance to explain over a cup of coffee. Austen has Egan’s syndrome; an overactive immune system means she can't use mods at all. Things that are simple for everyone else, like immunity to allergies or changing hair color are difficult or impossible for her. On impulse, Sunati asks her out, and despite her reservations about Sunati’s motives, Austen agrees.

So begins a charming and surprisingly deep romance where one of the main characters has all the abilities of a healthy, intelligent 21st century person, yet is handicapped in dealing with 24th century society. The nature of such a handicap is explored, but not overdramatized or sentimentalized. Austen herself is justifiably angry at the suspicion of being patronized.

"Sunscreen. Makeup. Treadmills. Overlays.

There's so many things that Austen does because she can't use mods.

So much effort just to have a normal life."

The characters are relatable, their flaws realistic; Sunati overthinks things and keeps secrets, while Austen has a temper and suspects Sunati is infatuated with a brave fantasy Austen, not the real her. When Austen asks Sunati if she would have asked out if she hadn't had mods, Sumati is honest enough to say she isn't sure- but she still loves Austen. Sunati is used to changing herself at whim- wouldn't it be easier to change her life to stay with Austen? That tension informs much of the story.

This is a hard science fiction story on a small, intimate scale. No galactic empires will be toppled, or dystopic regimes overcome. We don't even learn much about Earth of the 24th century, except that it's prosperous, pastel colored, and advanced technology has been used to make people’s lives better, rather than create the sort of meathook future transhumanist writers like Varley would.

It is also cheerfully, matter of factly, diverse. Neither of the main characters are American or white, and even outside of body modifications, the larger cast is obviously from a variety of ethnicities. Pride interestingly still exists, but there is no sign of prejudice based on gender or sexual orientation. Even Austen faces not discrimination at the university, but the offer of accommodation, and a comfortable life on basic income and disability- and her pointing out how that may not be desirable is a major element of the series.

The issues and decisions the characters make are gripping without a huge dramatic background. And the final decision Sunati faces, which may gives the choice of giving up a dream or separating her from Austen, doesn't need a dramatic setting to be vitally important to both the couple, and the reader.

The first episode of Always Human is HERE.

...is not the sincerest form of flattery.

Ever Tomorrow
By: JL Jones: Writer/Colorist/Cover Artist/Inker; Marlon de Rivera: Penciler/Concepts/Letterer/Webmaster


Let's consider those webcomics where despite whatever other merits they have, one singular flaw overshadows any other merits the comic may have. Let us consider comics that are following in the footsteps of other, more popular comics, a little too closely, shall we say.

For example, if one has a neo-historical (Or well, neo-18th century) steampunk (OK, granted: clockpunk) comic featuring a heroine who is a blond, long-haired, glasses-wearing girl mechanic with an affinity for music and her name ISN'T Agatha Clay, then well...maybe you need to rethink some details because somebody else got there firstest with the mostest.


See what I mean?

Yes, yes, I know the objections the creators may raise, and they don't really matter. You may point out that this comic has magic, a mage's guild, and flying sailing ships, and I will concede that the dour mage and the idealistic noble's sun while themselves rather cliched, are entertaining. In fact I will also note that yes you do indeed seem to be concentrating both more on real-world style politics, and also the difficulties a woman might face in becoming a mechanist in a very sexist world. I will even concede that the dialogue is nicely written, and the artwork is clean and mostly well drawn, though I notice some anatomic peculiarities here and there (why do people always have trouble with arms?). Hell I even admit that the story could be quite interesting to me, as I'm a fan of stories set in that era far more so than Victorian ones.



See, I WANT to like this webcomic. But still, still, still...it doesn't matter.

Look, the bottom line is that in the webcomics biz the 10,000 pound steam-gorilla is Girl Genius. So even if the resemblance is accidental, even if the reaction of the artist and writer is "What? She looks like who again?" The reaction of most readers is going to be that this webcomic is deliberately imitating Girl Genius when it comes to first look, well before they realize it's set in an alternative 1700s, has magic, or well, anything.

So the moral of this story is that indeed, "Look and feel" is important, and one has to be careful to distinguish one's comic from the competition.

Now to be absolutely clear, by the best new webcomics of 20009, I mean webcomics that I discovered in 2009, and that haven't become generally popular (though the Meek seems to be breaking out in popularity).   More importantly, these are comics that for various reasons I really think are worth reading, that I liked well enough to share. This review is a little rushed, so please forgive any mistakes or lapses.  

And so, without further preamble, here they are:

( The Meek, Everblue, Para-Ten, Beauty and the Beast, What Birds Know, The Next Adventure, Astray3 )

That's it for now. Though honestly, there's a number more good webcomics that I should do shout-outs about.  So expect a part 2 soon. And now, all of you have fun reading!

Today, Momo is my favorite character in Questionable Content; she's simply adorably helpful.  But then again, next week another character will be the one I absolutely adore, because well, QC is like that- it can introduce characters that one would think are dodgy, but that rapidly develop a character that makes you want to watch them.  One reason for that is the characters actually change.  I have to love a webcomic that avoids the "Sluggy Freelance" trap, by having characters and relationships that change over time.

I'm seriously sad that Scary Go Round is ending, because I adore its whimsical, understated and very British humor.  On the other hand, I can appreciate that the author is determined not to do a "Wizard of Id" with the webcomic. And the ending itself is wonderfully bittersweet, with various characters moving on, and their future being hopeful, if uncertain.

Misfile continually exceeds expectations. Admittedly, my expectations were pretty slight, since I assumed that it was going to merely be a "boy n girl's body" sex comedy, mixed with Initial D fandom. But Ash's body switch is a minor element; the comic is actually far more about Emily's development from a neurotic overachiever to a more well rounded person who's figuring out what she wants to do with her life. In fact, regressing two years may be the best thing that's ever happened to her. And now the comic is getting involved in heavenly politics; there's what seems like a very serious subplot that's been developing behind the shenanigans. I'm seriously wondering where this comic is going to go.

The question arose recently on one of the lists I read, as what people think of the depiction of women in comics.  These two images say it all, I think:

Here's our boy, NAMOR!




And here's Marvel's brand new all girl  Superteam!  The...umm...err...vixens.  *sigh*




I think, all things being equal, that art depictions of men and women aren't equal in comics. The artwork tends to depict men as power objects, and women as sex objects. I also think things have actually gotten worse on the artwork front over the last couple of decades; when I showed my wife George Perez's Teen Titans, she was blown away by the effort of an artist that could actually hand draw women, albeit ones that had a strong element of cheesecake. Contrast that to the artists these days who are essentially tracing over porn images, or at the least are being heavily helped by image manipulation programs.  this is not merely a matter of simply bad and lazy artwork; it's artwork created specifically to portray women as sex objects, using quite frankly, rediculous poses.

Don't think the poses are ridiculous?  Heres an experiment: go stand before the mirror (or even better, your friends) and try on one of the poses of say, Photon, or Black Cat, orFirestar up there.  How do you feel?  Do you feel powerful, and confident?  Or does your back hurt too much from thrusting out your ass and hips?

There are exceptions of course- if a comic is stylized to a sufficient degree, the exaggerated forms can give a deliberately cartoonish impression (say, Powers or the Timmverse) . But most "realistic" artwork is being done by artists who not only never seem to have never seen a living woman naked, but have a vested interest in focusing attention on them as sex objects.


On the other hand, if the writing is unrealistic for women in mainstream comics, that's probably because the writing on all characters is generally, bad, compounded by the fact that writers can get shuffled around on a whim.  The violence melodrama and wish-fulfillment soap opera aspect of mainstream comics makes it hard to write realistic personalities, though at least the writers can look in the mirror and try to extrapolate from themselves when writing men.  Women and GLBT characters tend to be written as either pseudo-macho men (pointing out the absurdity of dialogue that somehow gets a pass when men say it), or really horrible pastiches of what the writer THINKS non-men are like.

There are some exceptions of course; I liked Runaways (at least the five volumes I've read of it), and Freakangels has interesting, well rounded depictins in both art and personality.  Finally, the web has some interesting examples of what can be done with female characters, such as:

Sidekick Girl: a comedy about a very competent and tough sidekick, assigned to babysit a popular and highly incompetent heroine, who pretty much has the stereotypical superheroine figure, and that's it.

Magellen: in a world with an abundance of supers, training facilities have been set up to make sure superbeings use their powers for good. The main character is an unpowered woman who is determined to pass the training, but there is a wide diversity of women- and an equally wide variety of body types. The dialogue is stiff, but it is an interesting comic.

Special School: an ensemble comedy about a school for supers, with a diversity of character types and sexual orientations.

Thunderstruck: while not called a supers comic, one sister can absorb and cast electricity, and the other is a super-athlete with a katana. If Elementals could be considered a supers comic, so can this one.

And well, those are just the superhero oriented webcomics.  If I wanted to draw on the wider range of webcomics for good portrayals of women, I'd have tons to choose from: Questionable Content, Gunnerkrigg Court, Alpha Shade, Angel Moxie, Dead Winter, Nahast: Land of Strife, Juathurr, Digger, The Zombie Hunters, A Girl and Her Fed, Under Lock and Key, Girls with Slingshots, Templar Arizona, Girl Genius, Undertow,  Fey Winds, Venus Envy, and the list goes on and on and on.

Honestly, if one wants to see good portrayals of female characters, the place to look isn't in mainstream comics, it's in webcomics.

Oddly enough, for all that the Lovecraft mythos have infiltrated geek culture, there aren't that many comics or webcomics that reference the Mythos directly. There certainly aren't very many comics that feature Lovecraft and other Mythos writers in a Mythos-based adventure.

First to get you started: A Cthulhu Chick Tract!

And another Cthulhu Chick Tract!


And finally, Lovecraft is Missing, the Webcomic.

And so to get things started, we have a story that starts off slowly, but with a charming absence of normality. A woman with a gun is let off in a very horrible slum neighborhood, and searches out a bookstore and its odd inhabitants, in order to purchase a  complete edition of...something. She also appears at the home of a vanished artist, the notorious Pickman, to buy a map, and later we see her working a special collections room, dealing with the fact that a book is missing an important section...and was last borrowed by one HP Lovecraft. Interspersed with her bibliophilic adventures, we also meet a two-fisted pulp author who is travelling to the east to meet his pen pal, Lovecraft, as well as some pulp magazine editors and writers.  We watch some creepy people who seem to know too much about what's going on. We even meet Lovecraft who well, disappears.

And that's about it for action, as this webcomic is new.   It's hard to tell where it's going at this point, other than we've already had glimpses of the mythos and hints of multiple conspiracies. But at this point I don't mind, because this comic does a good job of giving the feeling of menace lurking both in the shadows and behind the facade of ordinary life.  Beyond that the art is of a quality that's far higher than most webcomics, resembling a hardcopy comic done in a European style. Some of the backgrounds are wonderfully detailed, and no wonder- the artist took plenty of reference pictures in Boston.  Characterization so far is slim, the story jumps around a lot, and I'm hoping that soon we'll actually find out who our mysterious flapper book buyer is.  But since this seems to be more of a graphic novel than a standard webcomic, I'm willing to give the story a while to make its revelations known.  And frankly, at least for now the artwork makes the ride to whatever horrifying conclusion there will be a worthwhile

At this point,

Is Warren Ellis capable of writing any character that's NOT an asshole?

I mean seriously, as far as I can tell, the standard Warrren Ellis character is a massive jerk (add breasts for female, penis for male), who's attitude is supposedly tolerable solely because they are always right. I mean, constantly, totally, utterly right. Even when they admit that they have no idea what they are doing, they are completely right.

Tell me people- has he ever done a character that doesn't sound like a gamer pundit on usenet, circa 1995? Inquiring minds want to know.

Gilrec, the hapless protagonist of The Far Reaches is a SciFi "hero" in a decidedly Woosterian vien. He'd really rather live out his life on his country estate playing video games, but he can't say no to anythng his remarkably stupid friends or terrifying uncle proposes. Fortunately, he has just acquired an amazingly competant robot butler named Bentley.

At first I was inclined to dislike this comic. The web-anime art style is rather old now, and a lot of the related graphic tropes just annoy me at this point. Likewise, Far Reaches lacks the brilliant dialog and writing that make the actual Jeeves and Wooster books such a pleasure. But I think I was a little hasty, because while it's taken it's time to find its pace, when Far Reaches does hit the right humor buttons, it's damn good.

Take the following scenes, for example:


( Where we see the artist does a damn good Peter Falk )


I was impressed. It's rare to find someone starting off with one joke, and finishing off with a completely different one. So, while The Far Reaches is still definitely light entertainment, it is good fun, and I'll keep reading it.

It's been ages since I did a proper webcomics review, which is a pity, since I read tons of 'em, and there's more cool webcomics coming out every second.  So here's a couple that are worth looking at.


Skin Horse From the same person who gave us "Narbonic" we have another tale of weird science, neurotic relationships, and talking animals. In this case, it's a government agency devoted to dealing with the 2,000 intelligent animals and other creations that assorted mads have left behind.  Fans of Narbonic will find the characters look somewhat familiar, and well, some of the character behaviors are familier.  However, I'm actually enjoying this one more than Narbonic, as I have less of a desire to pistol-whip some sense into the characters.  well, most of them anyway.





Dawn of Time this is a cute comic about a cute barbarian in a fur bikini, her pet dinosaur, and a couple of neo-victorian time travelers, who want to settle some questions about Iguanodons (one that actually puzzled scientists in the real world for decades).  It's well drawn for its cartoony style, and the writer isn't afraid to have entire comics without dialogue.  In fact, the wordless barbarian girl is easily worth the price of admission.






Ballad this is a seriously weird and creepy comic with exquisite artwork and a gothic sensibility. The story is hard to detail: it involves a reanimated servant, a terrifying girl "child", and a town where oddities are almost accepted as commonplace.  It swings between beautiful scenery, moody interiors, and grotesque scenes that made me flinch.  Normally it's difficult for a webcomic to actually give me a sense of horror; they usually at most gross me out.  But Ballad is so atmospheric and well drawn, that it accomplishes what it set out to do.

Featured Comics:

First of all, we have Francesco Marciuliano's "Medium Large" showing us how "For Better or for Worse" should have ended. I can't help liking this; then again, I was disappointed when the Norman Bates style ending for FBOFW didn't materialize. Given the happy fantasy family the author was making, I was sure there was going to be a murderous psychotic break at asome point.

( Read the comic! )

I'm honestly amazed that this is the same guy who draws the wholesome comic "Sally Forth, even if that comic has hidden geek content.
Not when he can produce comics like this:

( Read the comic! )

I think I remember my mother forcing me to sit through educational films from other countries. I've mostly recovered from the trauma.


HOW THE DEATH STAR WAS BUILT

This comic reprinted in Scans Daily is from the same smartass who did "Troops" and a bunch of no-name Star Wars projects like "Clone Wars", Kevin Rubio. It's utterly brilliant in it's ownn special, sarcastic way. Of course the scary thing is it actually heightens the realism of the Star Wars saga, by placing the Death Star in the firm tradition of governmental works projects. I can seriously believe the Death Star features occured this way.