web-comic recommendation...
Oct. 25th, 2007 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eregyrnHere's a newish web-comic that I wanted to recommend to folks. It's called "Thorn", by Amy Mebberson.
http://www.mimisgrotto.com/thorn/
(At its home page, you can select the archives and jump back to the first strip. It's currently on #59.)
"Thorn" is a spin-off of a comic that Mebberson did a while back called "As If". In it, Rosie showed up as the little sister of one of the two main characters, and her schtick was being the bratty, power-hungry, evil Child Beauty Pageant type. ("As If" was kind of a soap-opera comic with a big cast of high-school characters.) She was popular in that comic as a love-to-hate-'em character, so Mebberson has picked her up and retooled her as the lead in "Thorn", with a new family and a new setting -- the 50s (rather than the 80s), with a satirically-perfect nuclear family. Her older sister, Edie, is still her long-suffering nemesis. However, I can't tell yet if Rosie is still supposed to be a beauty-pageant competitor, or if she's just an obnoxiously cute kid bent on world-domination who cynically uses her cuteness to get her way.
I like it. I like the art style a lot -- it's sort of... hmm... it shows the influence of strips like Peanuts, filtered through Disney with a touch of anime. (Mebberson in fact worked for Disney for a time, but doesn't any longer.) I like the way the style is also a fond homage to a recognizably 50s type of stylization, but I also like how she uses the style and the setting to poke at the conventions of that era.
And, I have to admit, I like it because it's a webcomic with an old-fashioned sensibility to it, by which I mean, it's not about the internet or gaming or computers or conventional geekery at all. I love a lot of that stuff, obviously -- but I also like a taste of something different. I just like comics in general. I've been rereading a lot of Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes recently, and, well, variety is the spice of life, and all.
By the way, Mebberson's deviantArt account is work checking out for her eclectic artwork:
http://mimi-na.deviantart.com/
Some of you may be familiar with her already as the artist who did the "Doctor's Girls" cartoon.
http://www.mimisgrotto.com/thorn/
(At its home page, you can select the archives and jump back to the first strip. It's currently on #59.)
"Thorn" is a spin-off of a comic that Mebberson did a while back called "As If". In it, Rosie showed up as the little sister of one of the two main characters, and her schtick was being the bratty, power-hungry, evil Child Beauty Pageant type. ("As If" was kind of a soap-opera comic with a big cast of high-school characters.) She was popular in that comic as a love-to-hate-'em character, so Mebberson has picked her up and retooled her as the lead in "Thorn", with a new family and a new setting -- the 50s (rather than the 80s), with a satirically-perfect nuclear family. Her older sister, Edie, is still her long-suffering nemesis. However, I can't tell yet if Rosie is still supposed to be a beauty-pageant competitor, or if she's just an obnoxiously cute kid bent on world-domination who cynically uses her cuteness to get her way.
I like it. I like the art style a lot -- it's sort of... hmm... it shows the influence of strips like Peanuts, filtered through Disney with a touch of anime. (Mebberson in fact worked for Disney for a time, but doesn't any longer.) I like the way the style is also a fond homage to a recognizably 50s type of stylization, but I also like how she uses the style and the setting to poke at the conventions of that era.
And, I have to admit, I like it because it's a webcomic with an old-fashioned sensibility to it, by which I mean, it's not about the internet or gaming or computers or conventional geekery at all. I love a lot of that stuff, obviously -- but I also like a taste of something different. I just like comics in general. I've been rereading a lot of Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes recently, and, well, variety is the spice of life, and all.
By the way, Mebberson's deviantArt account is work checking out for her eclectic artwork:
http://mimi-na.deviantart.com/
Some of you may be familiar with her already as the artist who did the "Doctor's Girls" cartoon.
