Preview, Part 1: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Hello and welcome back “At The Bottom of The Pit: Where Webcomics Suffer”.

Well, today I have been roaming around the internet trying to see what to offer to you today and stumbled upon something curious; better say I remembered something I realized long ago that was quite unusual in a webcomic. The fact is that many comics on the internet are not comic strips but pages of a larger comic, in fact many wecomics that seems to be random strips really built up for a bigger story or a specific story arc in the strip. Comics like Ctrl+Alt+Del or Apple Geeks use this premise several times, but there is a group of webcomics who actually work like big comics itself, with standard heroes and villains, story arcs and a comprehensive idea behind the hero’s motivation in each new story. Is at this point where you could call a webcomic a comic book. Because of this I decided to introduce you to a webcomic that in my opinion is one of the greatest webcomics ever produced in a full comic book format: “The Adventures of Dr. McNinja”.

This will be a small overview so I can introduce you later on to the stories itself.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is a webcomic created by Chris Hastings in 2004 and has been published in its own website ever since. It tells us the story of the ninja/doctor McNinja, being McNinja his surname; he belongs to a ninja group of apparently Irish ascendance ninjas who lives ninja style with occidental tradition. He dresses up as a regular doctor (coat, pants, stethoscope) but always wearing a ninja mask. The Doctor lives and works in his private clinic usually open at random hours or close when the doctor is on a mission. He is obsessed with Batman and would do anything to emulate him.

Doctor McNinja

In his clinic/home he lives with her receptionist/secretary “Judy”; a 200 pound Gorilla that is highly trained in several feats and his very smart, but for her bad luck the doctor can’t understand any word of what she says but that doesn’t stop her to be incredibly capable and one heck of a fighter. There is also the Doctor’s sidekick and Robin-like boy wonder “Gordito Delgado”  a 12 year old Mexican kid left under the care of the Doctor by his uncle; Gordito uses guns as weapons and is an excellent shooter and marksman, he has a mustache grown through pure willpower and rides his pet raptor named “Yoshi”.

Judy and Gordito

His adventures are usually related to his family or his home town “Cumberland”, your average “Anywhere, USA”. The main point behind his adventures is sheer and pure awesomeness! There are clearly well done plots and arcs that extent through different stories, plus some really great clingers for stories yet to come; but no matter what is it, you know that in this webcomic will be done as awesome as possible. The silliness behind this will give you great laughter’s and if you just push a bit the old nugget you will also understand why you laugh about.

 Courtesy of "TheEverLoser"

Deviantart Site

 

Well, this will be the end of this week preview, turn in next week where I will introduce you to the remaining characters and maybe the Doctor’s fist story. In the meanwhile GO AND READ THIS!

To Doctor McNinja

PENNY ARCADE

Hello and welcome back to “At the Bottom of The Pit: Where Webcomics Suffer”.

To make my first critique, what better way than starting with the probably best known webcomic in the entire world, or at least the one that has become the biggest in the industry and has extended its tentacles outside of the world wide web.

Born as a humble videogame critique and situation comedy comic in 1998 at loonygames.com presenting the avatars of the creators Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins the comic strip known Penny Arcade quickly grew to become an industry giant, embracing other areas of videogame life, such as Expos with the “Penny Arcade Expo” (PAX) in Seattle and Boston, a videogame (Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness), a podcast, a charity event called Child’s Play and even a Reality Show that has been aired this year.

When you begin reading this comic strip in its first years you notice a really basic design, it has two main characters with a very basic design and the comedy factor is really low, too focused in very specific comedic factors that make feel the webcomic is too focused in the 24/7 gamer, but soon comes the change.

The drawing style improves and with it the evolution of the characters Johnathan “Gabe” Gabriel and Tycho Erasmus Brahe; they earn really full developed personalities marking Gabe as the naive, childish and care free gamer spirit while Tycho becomes the overrational, neurotic RPG, book and board game lover. With this the strip earns an easier way to make comedy thanks to the new found character personalities that they imprint in each joke and to their perceptions of reality. They extent their jokes to life and personal reactions to things. Jokes never seem to be forced, they are fluent and attached a lot to silly ways of thinking that are attached to illogical things on games or improbable reactions to certain features to the games, although some jokes can only be understand if the blog is read first.

Art evolves fluently in the strip, starting from a very stiff, childish style that evolves to a comic style that feels really fluent and where you could expect the characters to move. With art also comes new characters: Chuck the Apple loser geek that after a failed suicide attempt receives a new better face and a quick more aggressive personality, probably thanks to the trauma and Mackintosh reborn as a company; there also come Div a DIVX that is an alcoholic machine; the Fruit Fucker 2000 a little robot that obtain juice from fruits by raping them, this little gadget has become quite popular earning various arcs and special apparitions, even one as antagonist in the Penny Arcade game; Kara O'Donnal Gabriel and Brenna Brahe, Gabe and Tycho respective wives, they are minor characters in the strip, but each apparition of them is a major joke fest and Jesus who usually make Tycho suffer pointing his bad behavior and prizing Gabe naivety and child like spirit. These are the most important among the support characters and play major roles in arcs and jokes.

 
                                           Tycho (in blue) Gabe (in yellow) and Jesus

There are also several specials about non gaming related things, but personally the only two worthy to be mention are the Chuthulu Christmas special and the really incredibly drawn “Cardboard Tube Samurai Saga”.

Penny Arcade itself has demonstrated that time and popularity doesn’t mean lowering quality with time and fame, they manage to keep themselves improving and growing with 12 healthy years on their backs and a bright future forward. I give it a 4.5 OUT OF 5 points since comedy factor can sometimes still be too difficult to understand even for gamers. But I say that you must go and read this piece of modern gaming culture even if you don’t have any attraction to gaming, it can give you more than one good laugh or at least a good reading time.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18/ Here is a link now READ IT!

Have a good day!

Disclaimer: All images belong to Penny Arcade and their respective owners.

Greetings from "At The Bottom of The Pit"

Hello! I am the Fotohunter, and is my pleasure to greet you all to my brand new blog "At The Bottom of The Pit: Where webcomics suffer". I hope you can enjoy this place as much as I will.

In this blog I expect to promote the underground internet culture of webcomics. Webcomics are comics published in the web by several artist who fulfill their wishes of publishing their own comics or display their personal talents hoping to be discovered or just for fun sheer fun. Here I hope to promote those webcomics who deserve to be known worldwide and criticize those who need work to improve.

Must Know things about this blog:

1.- This blog is for webcomics originals only. No other type of webcomic will be reviewed or criticized here.

2.-  Here webcomics will be analyzed and criticized. Different opinions or perspectives will be shown about a single webcomic if it can be done.

3.-  In the future there may be a YouTube account where reviews will be done to complement some reviews.

With all this said, I hope my visitors enjoy this blog. Once again Welcome.