Reviews

Narbonic, by Shaenon K. Garrity, hosted both at its own site and as part of the Modern Tales family is a tale of the fine art of mad science. The aspiring mad scientist Helen B. Narbon has collected around her loyal – if reluctant – followers in her never-ending quest to dominate the Earth (or at least destroy it), and in doing so hopefully gain the approval of her evil mad scientist mother.

'The strip opens with the college graduation of Dave Davenport. Almost immediately, after the Computer Science graduates (of which Dave is one) have been admonished about applying their skills for evil, Dave is approached by Mell Kelly, Helen’s secretary and gunsmith, who offers him an interview with Narbonics Research. For Dave, it goes downhill from there.

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The Shadowlark Symphony, part of Poisonwind, a collection of comics created by Icymasamune and Mutant Penguin, is arguably one of the more enjoyable manga-style comics on the web right now.

Running on a roughly tri-weekly basis, it tells the story of Psyte Haden and friends as they journey on a pilgrimage to the Temple of O'Ryu in order to learn more about the powers Psyte can command. He is one of the Five Dragon Circle, reincarnated fragments of a long-dead hero, and requires control over his powers to deal with those wishing him and the other members of the Circle harm.

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Checkerboard Nightmare (available at nightlightpress.com) is a mildly surreal humor comic written and drawn by Kristofer Straub and consistently presented three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays).

Straub plays with meta-humor, poking fun at his main character's attempts at trying to create and popularize a web comic. But he also regularly nails other webcomics (and their own attempts at success), webcomic styles and clichés, webcomic readers, and the occasional faddish webcomic trend. Other issues like ethics, the law, and end user agreements manage to slide in o­n occasion as well.

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The overdone vampire genre has been explored so many times it's almost getting to the point where 'Blood Latte' might show up on the Starbucks menu to promote the new Anne Rice book. In order to stand out among bland competition, a vampire work must be created with its own… biting originality? (no more bad puns, promise.) Bite Me, by Dylan Meconis, is an online comic book that dares to break new ground by adding modern wit, toothy sarcasm (sorry), and a little gore to a genre that often takes itself way to seriously.

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Movie Comics is about movies. More specifically, Movie Comics is about the rage you feel when a movie is disappointing or just plain sucks, when an actor turns in a lousy performance, when television is feeding the public particularly awful crap, or when a movie creator sells out his vision (this last is more generally known as "making a sequel").

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