Thunderstruck

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I was checking the webcomic subforum for the regular suspects (DD, GG, xkcd, D&D, CAD) and I realised that, really, none of those tell me anything I didn't already know. I've been following webcomics for ten years now, and I know the big players. Yes, there are still the occasional surprise in the recomendation threads, but if it is any good and updates regularly, chances are I've tried it out.

And then I remembered a webcomic I only recently discovered, Thuderstruck (http://talesfromthevault.com/thunderstruck/index.html). Solid Mon-Wed-Fri schedule, decent-good art, great storyline, I actually wondered why it had taken me so long to discover it in the first place. And maybe it was because it had not been discovered by others, which of course leads me to this topic.

So, what's the scope? The story is set in our time, and a girl with a degenerative condition is struck by lightning (see the webcomic name) and... is completely cured. From there, the storyline gets much more complex before it starts to make sense, and I am enjoying the conspiracies, hidden magical worlds and so on that slowly unfold.

It has few laughs, if any (it is not a humour comic), and its pace is fairly brisk for a 3-a-week. Right now it just ended a chapter, so it is alternatively a great place to read an catch up, or an infurating one since it'll take the author about a week of "outtakes" and "extra content" before the story resumes (likely with an intermission).*

Character wise, they start out looking walking cliches, until you get to know them better and discover that they are actually complex - and there are quite a few of main and almost-main characters that I quite like, even if some of them I'd strangle in real life.

To close, before my ramblings carry over into another page of text, give it a try. If you are reading this, it likely means we both enjoy OotS. Of course, past performance is no indicator of future success, but I feel there is a good chance that you enjoy this comic.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

*Yeah, this comment is going to get very dated, very fast...

Edit: Added link to the comic. Yeah, genius me managed to say everything about the comic except where to find it. By the way, let it be clear I have no relation to the comic whatsoever. I just enjoy it enough I want others to give it a try

[Midnight Lurker]

Before Thunderstruck, Towler first attracted my attention with his Ranma 1/2 fanfiction Relentless (http://www.talesfromthevault.com/relentless/). Check it out.

[Jerthanis]

Before Thunderstruck, Towler first attracted my attention with his Ranma 1/2 fanfiction Relentless (http://www.talesfromthevault.com/relentless/). Check it out.

That's how I discovered Thunderstruck as well... Relentless is what I'd call "The One Really Good Fanfic Ever Written". Relentless went on hiatus for something like three years while I was in high school, and I still checked it weekly for updates until it was finally finished.

Thunderstruck is a lot of fun, and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. However, I wouldn't call its pacing "brisk", and in fact, think that the slow pace is one of the biggest flaws of an otherwise amazingly good webcomic. Think about it this way, the concept of the comic is that two sisters discover the secret of their mysterious lineage, and find that Magic is alive in our modern day, and is all around us. They find enemies and allies is an underground magical world which hides from the attention of mundane people. That's the concept.

It takes from May 2004 to Febuary 2005 just to discover the mysterious lineage... They basically are kind of aware magic exists from the beginning, but don't see any kind of magically "aware" people until around August 2005, and then don't even begin to fall into their own places in the Magical Underworld until January of 2007! They finally began to learn how to consciously manipulate magic last October. That's three and a half years to get done working through the core concept. As a reader from the beginning, the end of this most recent story arc has finally gotten to the place I feel is the "home base" of the story, and until now it was plot events moving pieces around to set up the board.

To be fair, a certain thrust of the comic isn't about Sharon and Gail at all, and has introduced plots and morals and secondary characters who are indeed interesting in their own right. Saxony and Hayaka, Pervigilum with Gorgan and Warwick, Bella and Angir... all fully realized and interesting in their own ways, and learning about them took its own fair measure of time... but they also screwed with the pacing of what seems the core story of Sharon and Gail, making their journey to find the plot appear to take more than three years.

Still, I really like the comic. Great art, great characters, great plot so far... My only complaint is pacing. I wouldn't have recommended the comic two years ago, because not enough had happened yet... I also wouldn't have recommended it one year ago for the same reason. By now though, I can heartily recommend it as one of my favorite webcomics around.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

However, I wouldn't call its pacing "brisk", and in fact, think that the slow pace is one of the biggest flaws of an otherwise amazingly good webcomic.

Ummm... Going to disagree with you there. Don't get me wrong, I see perfectly what you mean, I think it is just a matter of perspective. And the fact I love a good discussion ;)

The first point I want to make is that this is a MWF webcomic, so a certain amount of slowdown is to be expected, but also that one should compare it to other webcomics instead of against other media. Let's take the Grey Wolf (tm) (c) scale of comic briskness that I just made up. In a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is Freefall and 10 is Schlock Mercenary, I would put Thunderstruck around 6.

Maybe part of the problem is indeed the sole existance of freefall, which after several years we're still waiting for the plot to start. Compared to it, anything would look brisk. But obviously that is not the point of the scale. Thunderstruck has an average episode length of 50-60 pages (they have been getting longer, with Dubious mentor crackin 100, but the starting ones are very short). 60 @ 3 pages a week is 20 weeks, i.e. 5 months. Call it two chapters a year. Consider the amount of backstory worked into each, character interaction, action and the fact that Thunderstruck actually has 4 major "villains" (more like oponents, so far) that we keep track of and also get character growth (sometimes more than the girls themselves, if you ask me. I love the old bat [Stella/grandma] these days. She prods buttock, as Pratchett would have Carrot say).

Yes, if you concentrate on the girl's trip to New Orleans, the story is dragging a bit. But we're also watching the convoluted game between Vigil and Brouchard, the old bat "taking over" Vigil and of course the antics of the Steel Angels, all of which are fairly crucial to the story and all of which have been entertaining.

I can appreciate that you have been reading for almost 4 years now, but lets compare what other comics were doing at the time:

Schlock (scale 10): CSI parody
Freefall (scale 1): Sam wakes up in space
OotS (I'd say 8): Just after the dungeon, I think (difficult to tell, they aren't dated anywhere I can find)
El Goonish Shive (Around 3): Painted Black was finishing

Hopefully you read at least two of those so you can compare (I'm going to assume you do read OotS). Thunderstruck has advanced quite a lot in this time, and remember that we are following far more groups of characters than any of those. Now, OotS has recently gone down the same path and the screams of anguish in the forums have been very loud, but I don't think that it is that bad - two parallel storylines take more time to get told, of course, but in the meantime you're getting *two stories* in a setting you like. Take irregular webcomic, which at the time was demoting and promoting deaths, the Jones were going through a jungle in search of dinosaurs, Paris was still alive and fantasy was in a tavern. This is a comic that gets 365 comics a year, and the stories are more or less where they were (fantasy doesn't count, I admit).

Anyway, I think I have made my point about the story going places at a good pace (not breakneck, but it does get character development which so many other creative pieces lack), so long as you don't concentrate exclusively in the main character's journey but that of the setting itself.

Your milleage will of course vary, and I do not pretend to change your opinion about this, so I suppose I could just resume my argument to the soundbite "Thunderstruck is fairly brisk, for a webcomic"

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

[Midnight Lurker]

...and today's outtakes strip reminds us that Towler came out of Ranma fandom. :)

[Khanderas]

Before Thunderstruck, Towler first attracted my attention with his Ranma 1/2 fanfiction Relentless (http://www.talesfromthevault.com/relentless/). Check it out.
He did relentless ? Heck I STILL remember that one from like 5 years (problebly closer to 8) back when I had my Ranma phase.

Anyways, I already read Thunderstruck and it is real good.
Love the summary videos he very recently made.