Money and babies and Spyboy, oh my
9/16/2004 01:16:25 PM
"I've found that holding hands with a dear friend isn't just fun but a great way to prevent them from choking you into unconsciousness."
"... That sounds like you're challenging my creativity." - Ollie and Davan, Something Positive.

So a bunch of webcomics are having fund drives so they can keep their comics going/work on them full time. Clan of the Cats, The Norm, and Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire. Out of these, The Norm seems to be the one least likely to succeed from the way they're handling things, Clan of the Cats is the one with the most real need, and Dominic Deegan is the only one I read. A lot of people have been comparing this to Randy Millholand's challenge to Something Positive readers . . . which it wasn't. Randy's said repeatedly that what he did came about by pure lucky accident. No idea if any of them will succeed - as many people have asked "How long webcomic artists/writers keep doing this for?" since the webcomic audience is really just a collection of niche markets . . .

All I know is, at least Dominic Deegan won't be ending if Mook doesn't raise the money.

The only other real news in webcomics right now was the birth last week of Mike "Gabe" Krahluik's baby - aka. Baby Gabe. I meant to mention it in passing here, then . . . forgot. Man, I suck. Anyway. Yes, it's dorky and possibly confusing to name the kid Gabriel - and, as Tycho pointed out, worlds of messed up. But it's also cute. And man, that's one cute baby.

Hey, I'm evil, doesn't mean I can't like kids.

More comic-related stuff, although back into print and away from web comics - Meia pimped me the third and fourth Spyboy collections - Bet Your Life and Undercover, Underwear! - and I read them to break the unending tedium that is The Mysteries of Udolpho. They continue to be a sort of guilty-pleasure-popcorn kinda reading, and I don't really have any deep thoughts, or shallow thoughts, beyond a vague, relieved sensation when I found out Butch's first name wasn't actually Butch. What continues to really hold my interest, though, is the art.

The first two issues in Bet Your Life aren't illustrated by Pop Mhan like usual. The pencils are done by one Carlos Meglia, and the change was a bit of a shock, because the two styles are so drastically different.

Protagonist, Alex Flemming as drawn by Mhan, and Alex, again, this time by Meglia.

The differences are fairly obvious. Mhan's style is very strongly manga-influenced, while Meglia's style, as I read the two issues he did the pencils for, reminded me constantly of the French BDs (band desiné) that I spent a lot of my pre-university scholastic career reading. I mean, let's face it, if you're a lazy kid in elementary school/junior high, you're going to look for something to read that involves pictures. Meglia's style reminds me immensely of that, although I found out after I'd finished Bet Your Life that he's actually Argentinian.

It's weird, because a lot of what some might consider style manga-style traits are there. Certain proportions exagerated in size, in both directions. Notably the big eyes, smallish mouth, and the hair that defies the laws of physics. But Mhan's style is smoother, definitely focussed on making the characters as aesthetically pleasing as possible. When Mhan draws him, Alex is attractive, all the lines that define him are very smooth, kind of elegant, even Alex's hair is sort of nicely styled, even after he's fallen through a window.

By contrast, Meglia's Alex is composed of very bold lines, but they aren't anything like as smooth as Mhan's, and it's weird, but I can't really say what the result is. Obviously, Meglia's Alex has wilder hair. He even looks kind of younger, with a less angled shape to his face, and larger eyes. He's sort of composed of very definite shapes. There's visible sort of elongated and warped rectangles and triangles in his hair. His face is either a very squared off oval or a very rounded rectangle. His fingers are quite rectangle - the ends are blunt, the nails square. It's all very blocky. It's not pretty - Mhan's Alex is definitely pretty - but the more I look at it, the more I find it weirdly appealing. Because Meglia's Alex may not be aesthetically pleasing in the way manga fans are used to, and definitely not what American comic fans are used to see in the "good looking male" category, but it's hardly unattractive. I think he's actually kind of cute.

Actually, he reminds me a bit of Impulse.

I'm wondering if a lot of American comics lean towards Meglia's French/European/whatever style. It doesn't seem likely. In channel-surfing now, flipping past kids cartoons, faux-anime seems to be very in, and there's still a lot of the square-jawed, broad-shouldered, rippling bicep style going on, too. If I come across anything that's in the same vein as the French style that's usually because it -is- French.

I wish I'd had the sense to pay more attention to BDs when I was in high school and we were actually sort of casually talking about studying them. I was in the grip of CLAMP at the time, and shallowly rejected them because they weren't "pretty", but looking at it now, they have their own weird sort of attractiveness that I'm finding rather appealing, but I don't hear anyone talk about BDs very often. I'm wondering if they're just sort of jumbled in with some other stuff the way Korean manwha (I think?) is just tossed in with manga.

Of course, in my tentative exploration of the comic community, I'm mostly still staring at superhero stuff. Possibly if I poked into the more unusual titles I'd find other stuff of revealing style or interest . . .

I'm not sure this really had a point beyond "Huh, major stylistic differences" and a vague sort of thought that the anime and manga style is becoming increasingly mainstream (or as mainstream as something can become in a field where it's pretty much guaranteed to always be outside normal popular culture influence).

I'm rambling, and the power's going out shortly, so I think I'll just shut up before I start on another point that doesn't go anywhere.

Point in a haystack,
Almighty Ingrid, Signing Off

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