It's A Crime

I'm not a big fan of crime comics, normally.

Broadly, the crime and law enforcement supergenre tends to focus more on the workings of plot than character (like all the CSIs), and when character does make it to the fore, more often than not it feels contrived or soap operatic (again CSI for the former, and the insanely overrated Sopranos -- after the brilliant first season, anyway).

I liked the new Italian Job, I love NCIS (which packs an enormous amount of character work around its procedural workings), I loved Ed Brubaker's Criminal before it immediately went off the rails as of issue #2... and I adore Casket.

Casket, written and drawn by Fangdangler, is one of the best webcomics I've encountered -- cinematic visuals, fluid art, engaging characters, realistic-esque dialogue, and just more plain energy and verve than most other comics can begin to muster, without ever feeling self-consciously frenetic (like some terrible webcomics do).

The introduction is a great wordless scene, drawing the reader in immediately with a gorgeously realizes sense of space. The action kicks in almost immediately, and puzzle pieces keep getting revealed and assembled. Waiting for the answers is always rewarding and never frustrating here.

One nit: the lettering is kinda terrible, from the choice of typeface to the inconsistent to annoyingly art overlapping balloons. They sometimes feel crowded and are not always well-placed. And there are typos. More than a few.

I can easily get past this sort of thing, but more professional lettering would help open this comic up to the wider audience it very richly deserves.

One other nit: the real paper money looks jarringly photo-realistic compared to EVERYTHING else.

Other than those nits, I love literally everything about this comic. The art looks far more effortless then it surely is, and the characters hook immediately. I give this comic eleventy stars. I promise it's better than many comics you're paying for, especially if DC is currently publishing them.

Frog pancakes galore, -Caley Tibbittz

P.S. Casket has been on hiatus since Sept.; please leave comments bugging the author to make more.

P.P.S. My own webcomic Eternal Knights has been on an extended hiatus; I was very sick all of November, and now am catching up on commissions, which I'm posting as placeholders. There may be one new page this month, and then the normal bi-weekly updates should resume in early January. Sorry about the delay. "Like" for commission updates and update updates:

Blame The Typos

Here at No One Is Reading This, we review and recommend the best undiscovered webcomics shameless Eternal Knights plug that, well, no one is reading -- kinda the opposite of this well-produced yet hollow and terrible crap.

WARNING: Webcomics recommended may contain typos or other human errors. Please immediately stop reading any webcomic I recommend if you spot even the slightest mistake. Even the most microscopically irrelevant mistakes automatically render a work of art a compleat waste of your time.

See what I did there? I used my smartness. If you missed it, Facebook your English teacher, meet them at a bar, and slap them SO HARD.

I recently recommended THE GREATEST WEBCOMIC IN THE HISTORY OF EVER, a staggeringly brilliant life-reassessing work of blinding, exciting genius. And a friend tried it, but then flat-out refused to read further than a couple pages because "ZOMG TYPOES OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!"

...because, of course, the video games, comics, and movies he currently enjoys have no mistakes in them. Nope, they're all inspected by God and that chess robot before being safely released in absolutely perfect form to the general publick.

DO YOU SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE?!?

I love Star Trek. Like, I fucking LOVE it. I trick-or-treated as Geordi LaForge. I have a First Contact poster in my art studio -- along with a model of the Enterprise NX-01 (it lights up and makes noises!). LOVE.

You know what else I love? My Nitpickers Guides. To Star Trek. You know what my beloved professionally produced TV serieses (plural) are full of? Wait for it wait just wait a little longer are you still waiting wait okay here goes MISTAKES! ZOMG!

Everything is wonky, people. Human perfection is not really perfection; it's just better than human sloppy. Everything you love, everything that is made by so called amatuers (I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPELL THAT -- MISTAKE!!!), everything Hollywood spends hundreds of millions of dollars on, every car, bridge and skyscraper, and certainly this pathetic rambling blog post... everything is riddle* with errors.

MY FACE IS LOPSIDED. SO IS YOURS. SO IS SCARLETT JOHANSSON'S.

You can call those God's mistakes or Nature's, I don't care. What I do care about (weakest segue ever) is story. Art. Expression. I hope you care about it to -- and if you do, I hope you care more about those things than picking pointless nits.

Ideally, we would all know how to spell everything and never crash buses or date crazy chicks. In a perfect world, no one would ever spell it "athleat".

And if you consider yourself a true enthusiast, fan, or student of art and storytelling... then, ideally, a dinky-ass typo won't be all it takes to get you to pass on something that might be worlds better than the sum of it's little errors.

Fishcakes for all,
-Caley Tibbittz

P.S. As always, "like" the Eternal Knights Facebook page and get ONE TINY FRIEND to do the same, and I will send you a free sketch of any character you like.

*Seriously left the "d" off.

It's All Spider-Man's Fault

Why aren't you reading this? Or this? Or especially THIS?

Well, it's not really your fault. It's Spider-Man's. Batman's too, he's such a spotlight-hogging prima donna. And then Buffy's all "I need a terrible audience-sucking comic too!"

Don't get me wrong: I love a lot of the big trademarked characters. I like following their adventures here and there. But then again, it's often disappointing, with the demand for stories leading to a lot of barely passable make-work stories. I'm not judging any creators here; under the deadlines they face, I'd be hard pressed to come up with engaging originality and true verve.

Speaking of engaging originality and true verve, it's out here in Webcomicland, which is like Radioland, but without the -- okay, you probably got it, I'll shut up. Anyway, there are a LOT of great stories and characters waiting to be discovered via my stupid blog so I can pimp my webcomic as much as humanly possible (sometimes I do it twice or even THRICE* in a single post!). And the best part?

THEY'RE FREE. THEY'RE ALL FREE, YOU STUPID IDIOTS.

Free comics. Hundreds and hundreds of cool stories full of the characters you don't even know you love yet. So I ask you: does it need to be Spider-Man? Like, all the time? Does every bloody story need a Witchblade or a Superman or a Willow or always something you've already heard of to be worth reading?

We live in a digital age, but popular, heavily trafficked webcomics are the exception, and not the rule. The simplest and therefore scientifically likeliest explanation is that there's a vanity press vibe (which would be a cool name for a vibrator with a mirror on it) to webcomics: thanks to Comicfury which I adore and rules all and other much crappier free hosts, anyone and their relatively talented monkey butler can make and post a webcomic. How can anyone sift through 10,000 webcomics, or even a hundred, just to find a couple good ones?

Well, I can, but I get very bored at work. And you can, 'cause I'm doing the heavy sifting (har) for you.

And really, are you satisfied with the endless rehashes and "events" the big two use to flog the mortally syphilitic horses of their creaky aging trademarks? AVX? Interest v. yawning, I declare. 'Cause I declare things. It's not a story that needed to be told for any reason other than they have to tell SOMETHING to fill all those pages.

Again, I love a lot of these characters -- mostly just when Warren Ellis writes them, and I think he hates at least half of them. I prefer the stuff he cares about -- Ignition City, Planetary, Doktor Sleepless...

That kind of love is for the material is everywhere in Webcomicland. Why not take a Spider-Break and read some stories about characters the authors don't just love because they once wore (or are still wearing) the officially-licensed Underoos? Characters who are a true part of them? Characters that inspire them so much that they toil like pros on comics YOU GET TO READ FOR FREE?

Webcomics aren't all just masturbation; some of us are trying hard to create professional quality comics... and more of us are succeeding than webcomics as a whole are given credit for. And we're doing it for us, sure, it's what we love... but we're doing it for you, too. Our audience.

And like Enzyte's Bob, we just want it to be bigger and satisfy our wife. Is that too much to ask? The answer is no, no it's not. So goddamn read some fucking free comics and like it, you lameass corporate whore dicks.

...sorry, I'm all tired and cranky from working around my day job to give you two issues of my comic for free.

Cheese sampler from way back,
-Caley Tibbittz

P.S. Like Eternal Knights on Facebook, get a friend to do the same, and I will send you a sketch of any character, shipped free.

*Just for Conan O'Brien.

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.

No One Is Reading The Best Webcomic EVER

No, I don't mean my bitchin' webcomic Eternal Knights (yes, I'm gonna pimp it out in every entry, sue me) --

-- I'm talking about The Adventures of Jonas.

No, this is not a fan tribute to the terrible brother band; it's a diary webcomic by the titular and very talented Jonas.

It starts out a little aimless and episodic, and even the author doesn't seem to much love the start -- but he's wrong. Even in its infancy, the strip is fantastic. His world view is unique, artistic, vibrant, smart, blunt, and alive in a way most of us have forgotten how to be. Even simple situations come across as inspired in the telling.

And the art -- my God man, woman, child, and teenager, the art is FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. It's like Bill Watterson fell in a blender with Charles Schulz and a big dash of non-douchey alt-comics. From character to expression to rough-hewn natural linework to inventive and just plain delightful color work... it's all here. It's not somewhere else. This is the place that you get this. All the this that you need.

And once we get past the high school years... holy SHIRT. Son of a HORSE. It gets kinda... mind-blowing and life-reassessing? Soul-touching? MORE DEEPLY HUMAN THAN ANY OTHER WEBCOMIC YOU WILL EVER READ EVER?

Yes.

Don't trust the Eisners; there really isn't anything better than Adventures of Jonas:

It blew me away; if it doesn't reach you, you may have died years ago. I'd see a doctor.

Medium toast on a cracker,
-Caley Tibbittz

P.S. If you "like" the Eternal Knights on Facebook and get ONE(!) friend to do so as well, then I will send you a free sketch of any character, shipped free. Start now:

No One Is Reading Eternal Knights - Blood, Sweat, and Tears Wasted?

Hey, Blogger... how's it goin'?

Me and Blogger used to be buddies, but I went and started my own website, launched my comic book Eternal Knights™ online, got married, wasted time posting wedding pics on Facebook, gained doughnut fat, turned 30, took up fencing -- no wait, it was DANCING (I get my "cings" confused).

But my comic. Dear God/Bhudda/Ghudda...

This thing is my entire life now. I even (shhh) work on it during my day job shifts. I'm always drawing, lettering, designing, Photoshopping, editing, writing, beating my head against anything hard, sobbing, bleeding, collapsing in a not-showered-in-up-to-three-days-heap.

...I'm pretty dedicated, is my point. But I did expect to set the world on fire already. I haven't.

See, you get all excited, you know the world and people, and where it's going, and you think GLEE EVERYONE WILL INSTANTLY GET IT TOO YAY FAME AND FORTUNE AND GOODBYE DAY JOB!

...and then reality hits: no one cares. No one is reading this:

Now, by "no one", I mean so few people that it's mathematically irrelevant. I deeply appreciate my handful of loyal readers, but a ticket outta the call center they are not. Yet. But I can get there.

So, I toil. I'm hiring a colorist (will have to work more day job to pay for yay woo). I've made the last 10 posts in a row in my pimping thread on the Bendis Board.

I will keep going. I will make this the next big thing. So why am I sitting here blogging?

Well, to whore the comic a little, sure -- but there are a lot of other talented writers and artists out there struggling to find an audience for their webcomics. I love webcomics (not the abysmally pandering Battle Pug -- other webcomics). I want to shine my tiny spotlight on the best ones.

So. WEBCOMIC REVIEWS ARE COMING! I will bring you comics you would have never found on your own. And you will love them. Or your no money back.

Wombats in my soup,
-Caley Tibbittz

P.S. If you "like" Eternal Knights and get just ONE friend to like it and say you sent 'em (or you can tell me), I will send you a free small sketch of ANY CHARACTER YOU WANT. Free shipping, too.

We Don't Own The People We Love

We don't. It's as simple as that.

We have no right to decide what they feel, or how they express themselves. It is not our place to make them feel bad about that expression... there is so much inside every person, a universe we will never experience directly. We should feel blessed if we can find someone who is willing to share their universe with us.

We are at the whim of a complex reality that doesn't always go the way we'd like it to... the wrong people can love us, the right people can hate us, and we can be gone in an instant. We never expect people to die... until they do, we're all immortal.

We take each other for granted most of the time. Close calls remind us how fragile all of our existence is... if we're lucky, or maybe smart, a close call also helps us see what really matters, if only for a little while... but some of us can't. We are ruled by petty jealousies and temporary emotions, all of which hurt the very people we care so much about.

Personal expression is holy... more than any god or religion. It is the universe inside us spilling out into the world. If you really love someone, try to respect the sanctity of who they are inside, because that is all they can share with you.

There is a childlike earnesty to creative expression... even after years of study, my arts spill out of me sometimes, full of joy and life. They are a fragment of my soul, filtered through my mortal mind. I have felt the pain of the rejection of those very pieces of me... it is a cruel, deep pain. One of the worst ways the universe without can touch the universe within. I am saddened when I see this happen to others.

It teaches them that what is inside them is wrong somehow... that their honest expressions of feelings and ideas are not theirs to make. That they must seek the approval of others to be good enough.

That they need the people who hurt them.