Broken Frontier

Okay, so Friday’s Jungle Fire took fantasy webcomics to one end of the spectrum, creating a comprehensive world which (mostly) ignored pre-existing fantasy franchises. Today’s reviewed webcomic does the complete opposite – embracing such seminal works to the point of self-parody.

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic certainly is the Bizarro version of Jungle Fire. While the latter is realistically and colorfully rendered, YAFGC is produced in light pencils, showing off a less detailed and loosely cartoony look. But even so, YAFGC seems to exert a charming originality all its own. There’s an almost old-school Disney/Warner Bros. quality to the simple yet stylized drawings of this webcomic.

And that’s really why I ultimately don’t care for the webcomic’s title. While a little bit of honesty goes a long way, creator Rich Morris doesn’t give the strip near enough credit. This might just be the most common genre in all of webcomicdom (rivaled only by video game webcomics), but YAFGC is far from derivative. There are characters in this work from whom we care just as there are in other works, and just because there isn’t a deeper purpose attached to the webcomic doesn’t preclude it from originality altogether.

But this does bring one grievance – there are far, far too many characters in YAFGC’s cast and many of them seem too little connected to one another. On one hand, you’ll never get bored in YAFGC, but on other hand, you may have trouble keeping everyone straight.

Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is a good read in need of a title change. While the title was good for a humbling life pointed within, this webcomic seems to have flourished in humor far past the self-parody. A webcomic this good needs a better title . . . and something maybe a little bit shorter.

In other news, while many webcomics go on their winter breaks, Last Blood continues to make waves even from hiatus. On the news side, the first graphic novel has ended, and there will be definitely be a sequel. On the review side, Last Blood really, really needs to work on its clarity. It seems, come every update, the creators have to explain something to the audience. I know from experience that what the readers will and will not catch onto is a mixed bag of trial and error but there comes a leap-of-faith point where you just have to run with something and hope the readers catch on. Even if they don’t, faithful readers will stay on, especially with a story this engaging. But explaining and re-explaining really dampens the ending’s cryptic vibe.