Omergideon
2010-12-11, 06:20 PM
Well the last few months for me have been hectic (starting teacher training and all that) but with the holidays coming up and this being my last week I have a bit more time on my hands. And so I have decided to do a sort of review series of the OoTS, starting at the beginning and exploring the characters, themes and issues of the web series. Probably nobody will care, but here's hoping I can offer somebody an ineteresting read, or a fresh insight into the series. I've got no training or real experience, just opinions and a real love of the comic. With that said here is my mini-review of issues 1-12 of the OoTS.:smallsmile:
The plot recap: We meet 6 adventurers in a DnD world. They fight monsters. Hilarity ensues.
Well up to strip 12 that is pretty much it for the OoTS in terms of plot. This was truly the epitome of a gag a day comic strip. The plot was barely even there. Whilst strips did follow on from one to the next and had continuity (for lack of a better term) it was limited in the extreme. We all know that the plot arrived in strip 13. However that is definately not a weakness. Sure we follow the characters as they simply faff around in the dungeon, but this gives us something the comic needed to survive: The characters. :smallcool:
The biggest strengths of the first 12 strips in OoTS are in my opinion the variety of jokes used (more on that later) and the clearly established characters. I'll start with the characters.
Try re-reading the first 10 strips of the comic. Intentionally or not these early strips seem to follow a pattern. The 2nd has jokes mostly based on the characters and their interactions with each other, and after that every other strip does so as well (4,6 etc). Strip 2 is about Roy (leader and snarky), 4 about Elan (Ditzy and useless), 6 about the party interactions (also Durkon's role is introduced), 8 is Haley all over (sneaky and clever) and 10 is V (His speech is everything we needed to know about him). They really set up the party dynamic that is crucial to an ensemble piece, as well as having spotlights for our major players. Durkon and Belkar get very little focus true, but then at this point they were simply foils for the rest of the cast so no great suprise. they do, however, get little moments sprinkled around such as 11 with Belkar.
These introductions to our cast were very funny and well paced, and set up clearly defined characters. Now I never read the cast page until I'd gotten to about strip 50 so from the comic alone here were my first impressions.
Roy: The leader. Gets annoyed easily and is dismissive of "silly" things and people. Obviously annoyed by Elan.
Elan: The ditz. Means well but is too stupid to realise how many problems he causes.
V: Talky wizard elf who reeaaaaally like magic. A lot. Also very serious.
Haley: The chick perhaps, but maybe not token. Seems to be the traditional thief type.
Durkon: The dwarven Cleric and............er not much else. Could be a stereotype.
Belkar: Incompetent in some ways and fight oriented. Probably non-good.
As you can see they were quite shallow characters at this point, but again that isn't a problem. The shallowness only comes from having so little time and a need to establish amusing traits in the characters, which is done quite well. they may seem shallow now, after 700 strips of growth, but then all we needed were amusing stereotypes that could play off each other well. But then sterotypes is the wrong word, perhaps archetypes is better and characters like that were definately the right choice. I mean in the original Star Wars the characters had little depth, but the clear archetypes in use made them resonate with audiences and made later growth all the more impressive.
The other major strength at this early stage was the variety of humour. Within 12 strips we have wordplay, situational comedy, character based comedy, DnD and universe jokes, 4th wall breaking and visual gags. We also got some nice callback jokes, for instance in strip 11 where V protests "I didn't CAST anything!" and Elan is yawning. Even the types of each class of joke are different (compare the last panel of 11 to 8). This great variety of humour was a good sign as it meant that you were likely to find something funny in everything. And Vitally, by not relying on a small set of gags or making it all DnD based humour there was universal appeal available. And even now on re-reading for the 20th time most are still very funny. It is amazing at times to see in these early strips the foundations for the future greatness of the comic.
But......It isn't perfect.:smalleek: (put down the pitchforks, you know I'm right)
I guess I need to explain myself here with specifics. Lets start with the art. At the time the artwork for OoTS was amazingly primitive. I don't mean that it was stick figures. I mean that the images were all simply drawn for stick figures and the backgrounds were so dull that it can be a little irritating to look at. So much grey wall and so little detail on the characters. I can't complain too much though. There were a number of instances with clever visual details added, like on the girdle of man/woman in 9. Also Heaven knows people need the aid of a translator to interpret my stick figures (I've been told before my flock of sheep was amazing. I had drawn dogs). And perhaps technical issues limited what could be done. However 1 real complaint can be made. Once again the backgrounds were often very dull, making the comic......not pleasent to look at. It does reduce my enjoyment of the early issues, as funny as they are. There was also relatively little variety of colour used in the strips. It may not have been necessary but still. And whilst, yes, the artistic quality is secondary in many ways to the content
of the strips as a visual medium it is still an issue.
Any other complaints about the art are only going to be relative. The most recent strips of the comic have all been so wonderfully drawn, with such interesting use of the medium and impressive visuals, that it's not fair on the early strips. They stand no chance.
If I had to offer a criticism of any one element in the first 12 strips as a whole it would be......well that the comic is merely OK. don't get me wrong at the time OoTS was an allright comic with decent characters and good jokes, but is was nothing beyond that. Gag a day has it's limits for a series and the comic really hit those. Compared to even later standalone strips such as the cinema one, the jokes are merely amusing. Even the areas I praised in characterisation still hit the limit of the strip trying to be gag a day. I like the variety of jokes myself, but whilst good the result can be somewhat scatterbrained. Without a central focus or premise to base the humour on none of the jokes can really excel or build off of each other. They are orphaned, like a stand up comic who tells lots of good 1 liner jokes. They may be individually funny but can't feed into each other very well. Don't mistake me the first 12 are funny, but just nothing special. The characters are archetypal.....but not memorable yet.
Luckily for the Giant he quickly moved beyond gag a day into something more ordered and thematic and it allowed his strengths to really shine through very soon.
So my review of the first 12. They did a good job of introdcuing the comic, the characters and the world and were even amusing to boot. But they were just examples of another halfway decent webcomic. After this point though things rapidly improve from the simply average to the good and great, but that is for another time.
N.B:
Except strip 12. Of the fisrt ones this is the only massive misfire. Simply put it isn't funny. As a rip off of the classic "who's on first" piece it is really substandard. That masterpiece works because the dialogue is crafted so that every sentence flows seamlessly into each other and you can see just why the confusion happens with flawless timing. In the strip the writing is such that it requires contrived stupidity on the part of the characters to misinterpret each others statements. They don't even make sense from the perspective of the other players. for this kind of joke to work it has to make sense from each characters perspective. But to Roy, Haley is simply speaking ungrammtical nonsense and aley doesn;y even respond properly to what Roy says. A serious mistep and still one of the weakest strips of the lot.
That's my review. I actually want to learn better how to do this sort of thing so any CONSTRUCTIVE advice on making things more interesting and entertaining would be appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I hopt the wall of text didn't scare you:smallwink:
The plot recap: We meet 6 adventurers in a DnD world. They fight monsters. Hilarity ensues.
Well up to strip 12 that is pretty much it for the OoTS in terms of plot. This was truly the epitome of a gag a day comic strip. The plot was barely even there. Whilst strips did follow on from one to the next and had continuity (for lack of a better term) it was limited in the extreme. We all know that the plot arrived in strip 13. However that is definately not a weakness. Sure we follow the characters as they simply faff around in the dungeon, but this gives us something the comic needed to survive: The characters. :smallcool:
The biggest strengths of the first 12 strips in OoTS are in my opinion the variety of jokes used (more on that later) and the clearly established characters. I'll start with the characters.
Try re-reading the first 10 strips of the comic. Intentionally or not these early strips seem to follow a pattern. The 2nd has jokes mostly based on the characters and their interactions with each other, and after that every other strip does so as well (4,6 etc). Strip 2 is about Roy (leader and snarky), 4 about Elan (Ditzy and useless), 6 about the party interactions (also Durkon's role is introduced), 8 is Haley all over (sneaky and clever) and 10 is V (His speech is everything we needed to know about him). They really set up the party dynamic that is crucial to an ensemble piece, as well as having spotlights for our major players. Durkon and Belkar get very little focus true, but then at this point they were simply foils for the rest of the cast so no great suprise. they do, however, get little moments sprinkled around such as 11 with Belkar.
These introductions to our cast were very funny and well paced, and set up clearly defined characters. Now I never read the cast page until I'd gotten to about strip 50 so from the comic alone here were my first impressions.
Roy: The leader. Gets annoyed easily and is dismissive of "silly" things and people. Obviously annoyed by Elan.
Elan: The ditz. Means well but is too stupid to realise how many problems he causes.
V: Talky wizard elf who reeaaaaally like magic. A lot. Also very serious.
Haley: The chick perhaps, but maybe not token. Seems to be the traditional thief type.
Durkon: The dwarven Cleric and............er not much else. Could be a stereotype.
Belkar: Incompetent in some ways and fight oriented. Probably non-good.
As you can see they were quite shallow characters at this point, but again that isn't a problem. The shallowness only comes from having so little time and a need to establish amusing traits in the characters, which is done quite well. they may seem shallow now, after 700 strips of growth, but then all we needed were amusing stereotypes that could play off each other well. But then sterotypes is the wrong word, perhaps archetypes is better and characters like that were definately the right choice. I mean in the original Star Wars the characters had little depth, but the clear archetypes in use made them resonate with audiences and made later growth all the more impressive.
The other major strength at this early stage was the variety of humour. Within 12 strips we have wordplay, situational comedy, character based comedy, DnD and universe jokes, 4th wall breaking and visual gags. We also got some nice callback jokes, for instance in strip 11 where V protests "I didn't CAST anything!" and Elan is yawning. Even the types of each class of joke are different (compare the last panel of 11 to 8). This great variety of humour was a good sign as it meant that you were likely to find something funny in everything. And Vitally, by not relying on a small set of gags or making it all DnD based humour there was universal appeal available. And even now on re-reading for the 20th time most are still very funny. It is amazing at times to see in these early strips the foundations for the future greatness of the comic.
But......It isn't perfect.:smalleek: (put down the pitchforks, you know I'm right)
I guess I need to explain myself here with specifics. Lets start with the art. At the time the artwork for OoTS was amazingly primitive. I don't mean that it was stick figures. I mean that the images were all simply drawn for stick figures and the backgrounds were so dull that it can be a little irritating to look at. So much grey wall and so little detail on the characters. I can't complain too much though. There were a number of instances with clever visual details added, like on the girdle of man/woman in 9. Also Heaven knows people need the aid of a translator to interpret my stick figures (I've been told before my flock of sheep was amazing. I had drawn dogs). And perhaps technical issues limited what could be done. However 1 real complaint can be made. Once again the backgrounds were often very dull, making the comic......not pleasent to look at. It does reduce my enjoyment of the early issues, as funny as they are. There was also relatively little variety of colour used in the strips. It may not have been necessary but still. And whilst, yes, the artistic quality is secondary in many ways to the content
of the strips as a visual medium it is still an issue.
Any other complaints about the art are only going to be relative. The most recent strips of the comic have all been so wonderfully drawn, with such interesting use of the medium and impressive visuals, that it's not fair on the early strips. They stand no chance.
If I had to offer a criticism of any one element in the first 12 strips as a whole it would be......well that the comic is merely OK. don't get me wrong at the time OoTS was an allright comic with decent characters and good jokes, but is was nothing beyond that. Gag a day has it's limits for a series and the comic really hit those. Compared to even later standalone strips such as the cinema one, the jokes are merely amusing. Even the areas I praised in characterisation still hit the limit of the strip trying to be gag a day. I like the variety of jokes myself, but whilst good the result can be somewhat scatterbrained. Without a central focus or premise to base the humour on none of the jokes can really excel or build off of each other. They are orphaned, like a stand up comic who tells lots of good 1 liner jokes. They may be individually funny but can't feed into each other very well. Don't mistake me the first 12 are funny, but just nothing special. The characters are archetypal.....but not memorable yet.
Luckily for the Giant he quickly moved beyond gag a day into something more ordered and thematic and it allowed his strengths to really shine through very soon.
So my review of the first 12. They did a good job of introdcuing the comic, the characters and the world and were even amusing to boot. But they were just examples of another halfway decent webcomic. After this point though things rapidly improve from the simply average to the good and great, but that is for another time.
N.B:
Except strip 12. Of the fisrt ones this is the only massive misfire. Simply put it isn't funny. As a rip off of the classic "who's on first" piece it is really substandard. That masterpiece works because the dialogue is crafted so that every sentence flows seamlessly into each other and you can see just why the confusion happens with flawless timing. In the strip the writing is such that it requires contrived stupidity on the part of the characters to misinterpret each others statements. They don't even make sense from the perspective of the other players. for this kind of joke to work it has to make sense from each characters perspective. But to Roy, Haley is simply speaking ungrammtical nonsense and aley doesn;y even respond properly to what Roy says. A serious mistep and still one of the weakest strips of the lot.
That's my review. I actually want to learn better how to do this sort of thing so any CONSTRUCTIVE advice on making things more interesting and entertaining would be appreciated. Thanks for reading, and I hopt the wall of text didn't scare you:smallwink: