Kay and P

You are seriously missing out if you're not reading the wonderful webcomic Kay and P:

There are several things about this comic that would normally annoy me -- transparent balloons, a compendium of trendiness from Kay's hair and piercings to her art studies and seemingly stereotypical young adult's love of music. With almost any other writer's sensibilities, this would be a laundry list of ham-handedly stupid cliches to slog lazily through.

But not here. This is inspired stuff.

The bare-bones (ha!) of the premise is that college student Kay's best friend since childhood is an invisible skeleton that only she can see. His name is "P", short for Peaches (or Peach, it's been a while since I read it AND I'M TOO LAZY TO CHECK WOO GO AMERICA.

This is not an adventure piece; it's very slice-of-life in its scale. It's an engaging character drama, raising questions of loyalty and friendship.

Kay herself is a cool female character, strong and emotional and vulnerable independent and needy all at one -- exceptionally human. For all her ups and downs, she seems to have a solid handle on her odd life (unlike SOME female characters I've written); watching her struggle to maintain that handle is, like, all watch-y, but then also struggle-y. Sorry. Low on sleep. It's an interesting balance she has to maintain, and it's another-word-for-interesting to watch her do it.

The art is lovely as hell; I'm not the biggest fan of the digital paint revolution, but there is a very organic quality to the artist's approach. The world is animated enough to be engaging and real enough to feel, well, like it's really there -- impressive, for a book so glaringly a step outside our reality.

Unless, of course, Kay's just crazy -- but from her perspective, it is a supernatural story. From mine, it's... well, this is the point at which your average review blog stoops to bring you awful puns like "it's just super" or "it's super AND natural", and we don't tolerate awful crap around here.

How this marvelous comic has gone unnoticed and un-picked-up-by-Image, I have no idea. Whatever comic you just bought, it's probably better. Enjoy.

Frogs on a bog log,
-Caley Tibbittz

P.S. "Like" the Eternal Knights Facebook page and get just ONE friend to "like" it too -- I'll send you a free sketch of ANY CHARACTER EVER.