Monday, March 5, 2012

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Cleopatra in Spaaaace! Cucumber Quest

It has come to my attention that my links/post titles on the main page of the site look a bit weird these days and are in hard to read colors but unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out why and fix that yet. I've checked my settings but no luck, apologies but I have no idea why blogger decided to make my links bright blue/purple instead of the lovely sea-foam green I selected which actually shows up against brown.

So, enough about how blogger is being weird, it's webcomic time! Bit of a smaller update again today but I still have last year's review of a favorite of mine for perusing as well.


Cleopatra in Spaaaace! by Mike Maihack
Before she ruled Egypt Cleopatra was a normal teenager, well until she was pulled far from Earth and faaaar into the future to fight alongside P.Y.R.A.M.I.D. against the evil Xaius Octavian. This would all be going much better if Cleo wasn't inclined to go off on missions on her own but what else do you expect from a 17 year old?

It's an odd mash-up of ideas but it's a fun comic so it doesn't take much time for the reader to go along with the idea of "what if Cleopatra was really a time-traveling, astronaut who fought crime?" I found it to be a really fun all ages comic with a neat art style (currently the comic is showing guest strips so check the archives to see what the regular art looks like) and I can easily see this in the youth comic section of any of the libraries I go to. I'm really excited for this one to start back up but for the moment I'll have to content myself with the cute Supergirl and Batgirl comics he's made*.




Cucumber Quest by Gigi
Cucumber just wanted to go to his school for the super rich and/or magically gifted not go off to save the world, his sister Almond is much better suited for that anyway. But life and everyone around him seems to be conspiring against him and he finds himself starting out on that journey anyway.


The comic isn't a full on parody of the "regular kid goes out to save the world" genre of storytelling but with all of it's self-aware jokes it comes close at times. I like seeing self-aware characters so I enjoy the parts where the characters point out how unlikely or suspicious something seems instead of being annoyed by it but it's certainly a kind of humor that won't appeal to everyone. I also enjoy the cutesy art style the comic uses, at times I suspect the art is being used to mock the genre even more, and it's a rather distinct style from the majority of other comics out there, at times it's hard to believe that it's done digitally. It's also hard to believe that the comic is still in it's early stages (it's just now started Chapter 1) since so much has already happened and I'm curious just how long the comic will be since it seems to be setting itself up for a long run.
 






*also, none of this praise has anything to do with the fact that I won an awesome commission from him on twitter, although it is super awesome especially considering he didn't know the show at all.