Webcomic of note: Jordan Crane's The Doctor Will See You

Disquieting is a pretty apt description of this ongoing webcomic from master of the form Jordan Crane. The plot of this comic is similar to one of those arty multiple narrative films (think Babel) where it all comes crashing to a head with the seemingly disparate lives of its characters becoming violently intertwined with often tragic results. In fact the cinematic comparison here is appropriate too as the whole thing engrosses you and pulls you in like a very powerful film, all the time you are waiting for the powerful moment that you know is going to happen but you aren't quite sure about how it is going to manifest itself. It also dips in and out of fantasy and reality to the point that you feel intoxicated and are never quite sure which is which. Is the protagonist paranoid and imagining all the worst possible case scenarios of what could have happened to his girlfriend, or did it actually happen and his absence from the scene leaves him to fill in the horrific details...I'll leave you to find out. Brilliantly nuanced, overlapping the breaking down of relationships with happier memories, guilt, and an abundance of medical themes (still birth, ectopic pregnancy, death), The Doctor Will See You Now is a webcomic that will literally take your breath away with its inventive brilliance (which Jordan Crane manages to make look so easy, damn gifted bastard).

Read it here.

(On another note Jordan Crane's comic/children's book Keep Our Secrets looks pretty amazing too, as it uses heat sensitive ink to hide details within the picture).

Webcomic of note #1

Jin and Jam No 1-Hellen Jo

Comic artist Jordan Crane's website What Things Do is a haven for reading good comics online. He's made available early Yeast Hoist stuff by Ron Rege Jr, a bunch of Sammy Harkham strips, the entirety of his own graphic novel The Clouds Above, and much more besides. He also has a news/blog roll that runs alongside it.
The latest edition to the site is a fantastic hybridisation of manga and American comics and Calafornia culture, Jin and Jam by Hellen Jo. It straddles that line between East and West precisely because Jo was born in America and considers America her home, but is also Asian. Artistically it sits somewhere between Jillian Tamaki's artwork for the graphic novel Skim (especially with the large chins of her characters) and the grotesque surrealism of Taiyo Matsumoto (she quotes Black and White at the beginning of the comic). The addition of a cat fight with con-joined twins is certainly very reminiscent of Matsumoto (as well as Charles Burns and the kind of off the wall characters you'd find in Jim Rugg's Afrodisiac). Traces of oriental folk art and art nouveau burst through in some of the details, such as the twins hair during the fight scene. This comic is violent and stupid, but also warms your heart ever so slightly. It makes us remember that the people worth talking to, the people worth hanging out with, aren't really the popular ones, but the outsiders, the ones who don't really fit in anywhere, and thus bind together, and generally have more fun. Whereas Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki also deals with outsiders, and the superficiality and shallowness of school life, it is a great deal more angst ridden whereas Jin and Jan seems carefree and optimistic, ready to face the new adventure of adult life, but in no rush to leave the current adventure just yet. I liked Jim and Jan so much I bought it, reckoning it would be a nice thing to own in print/hard copy (the cover and end pages are finished with great watercolours).
View Hellen's site here.

Find of the week: Oh, Brother!

Oh, Brother! is a daily webcomic created by cartoonists Bob Weber Jr and Jay Stephens. It is drawn in a format reminiscent of the classic newspaper strips (Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts etc) but the action is usually confined to a minimum number of panels leading up to a punchline rather than a full story followed by a punchline. Oh, Brother! draws from plenty of current pop culture phenomena such as reality TV, blogging, and eBay but at the root of this comic lies the classic brother sister love-hate relationship which I'm sure anyone with an older or younger sibling can relate to. There are brief moments where the characters of Bud and Lily act as ventriloquists for distinctly adult thoughts and actions (think Richard Thompson's Cul De Sac), but mostly the humour resolves a kind of 'Kids say the funniest things' vein which gives the the humour a two sided aspect, one that both the parents and the children can enjoy.


Visually the block colouring and the simple yet iconic character design give this strip a distinctly Cartoon Network feel (Dexter's Laboratory, My Fairy Godparents etc). There is also a very subtle use of movement and expression in the strip which changes only slightly with each image therefore adding extra weight to the punchline.

Click here to go to the site.