Broken Frontier

Though it hasn’t updated much in the last couple of months, Gravity  is one webcomic undoubtedly worth a read. Few webcomics can match Bryan J. Ibeas’ artistic strides, quirky humor or over-the-top scenarios. But what makes Gravity interesting is, just like its namesake, the webcomic is so heavily rooted in reality that the situations and characters, ranging from demons to vigilantes, hardly seem far-fetched at all.

There’s a lot going on in Gravity. The first major character is Maggie, who is instructed by her dead best friend Jenn to keep an eye out on her teenaged brother Dex, who literally falls into Hell during the events of the first storyline. Recruiting the help of a potentially demonic pet store owner, Maggie ultimately rescues Dex, but the weirdness doesn’t stop there – instead it only intensifies.

The sometimes Byzantine plot aside, Gravity has a lot of things going for it. Ibeas’ grounded art style is compelling and only improves with time. But beyond this, there’s a very unique sensibility among the characters in the strip, who are both acutely self-aware of the clichés surrounding their often magical situations yet realistically reluctant participants in the weirdness as well.

There is a slight problem in the rotating cast of characters Ibeas sets up in the strip’s beginning. The starting pages are typically meant to introduce major characters to the audience, yet certain figures, such as the memorable Inferno tag team of Kretch and Twigglesrum, disappear from the strip entirely once their role is finished. There’s not a person Ibeas introduces that’s wasted in the execution of this wildly unpredictable tale, but a larger, more encompassing supporting cast could probably help.

I’m not sure what the update plans for Gravity are right now, but this one I’d really like to see kick back into gear. I don’t know if it’s original or quirky tone would be due for Top Webcomics  fame, but I do know the world of webcomics is a lot less colorful without Gravity bringing us back down to Earth.