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Yes, there were Tangents for Saturday...
In case you came here yesterday and didn't see any Tangents, I apologize. I didn't get to a computer 'til late in the day due to doing yardwork at my folks place. Saturday's tangents were put up in the evening and consist of comments on Saturday Sluggy and on Dominic Deegan. Also, the Tagboard has been taken down to check for possible Code 404 errors associated with it. Enjoy!
Rob
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Well of course his reactions weren't up to snuff, you ambushed him.
 (From DMFA (Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures). Click on image to see full-sized image.)
DMFA (Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures) is a fun little romp through a techno-magical world Amber M. Panyko created, based loosely on the on-line program Furcadia. Amber actually based some of the early characters off of Player Characters that played with her (in fact, according to her site, she had joked about a comic about the misadventures of Daniel Ti'Fiona. The player kept bugging her about it and she finally decided to go ahead and actually started DMFA).
Side note: It's not often a good idea to create a comic based off of other people's characters, due to copyrights and the like. Amber admits that she was lucky that the people who gave her their characters never had any real issue with it, but you still risk people complaining about what you did with "their" characters or even demanding that you remove the character (or even pay them for the rights).
The story doesn't really start up until page 18, with the first six pages being basic introductions that, while amusing... well, I remember how College Roomies and Clan of the Cats started, just jumping into the comic. For some reason, that works better with me than "introduction comics" naming each character and the like. (Mind you, OotS did an introduction/cast page along those lines, and it worked, but primarily because it was an actual cast page set in a comic format. The comic itself started with a poke against the d20 System and D&D switching from 3.0 to 3.5.)
Despite the slow start, things get interesting fairly quickly. To be honest, the comic is more about Dan than Mab. I suspect it's because Dan is a former adventurer, and Mab is... well, Mab. She can be the mage when needed, or the girl-needing-rescuing, or even just a cute fae-girl who pounce-hugs anything cute and adorable (which includes Dan at times, though they're just friends).
What's truly interesting is the background world of DMFA. We have dynamics between the various species, such as the "Creatures" (including the Cubi (Incubi and Succubi) race, or the Demons, or the Mythos). Then there are "Beings" which are... well, mortals, really. But they can be cow or canine or cat-breed (or rat, or kangaroo, or whatever else you want), and they're often at ends with the Creatures, who have this philosophy based on power: if you have power and someone else doesn't, they're fair game, whether it's as a snack or destroying their home, or whatever. (Creatures look at it this way: Beings will eat cattle and sheep and other "lesser" animals, who aren't sentient but still alive. There's no difference between that and a Creature eating a Being.)
Also, we have an interesting mixture of technology and magic. We'll have people tossing off fireballs and others with laptop computers and the like. It's fun and doesn't make sense at times, but it's the insanity of the world that makes it so fun.
Oh, and there are no humans. Humans are considered such a force of evil that even rumors of a human can cause some people to form mobs, and others to go crazy looking for the "cute" humans because you know, those rumors of humans being evil are just rumors and they're hairless and adorable. Heh. I don't know why, but that's just amusing somehow.
Naturally what draws me into the comic is that Amber is a talented storyteller (and a gifted artist as well). The comic has been around since 1999 (though it took a year hiatus - in fact, Amber makes fun of that hiatus with the first comic coming off of the hiatus) and has over 500 strips. It's in black and white for the first 80 or so comics and then Amber jumps into color strips (and does a good job of coloring them - a job that she only gets better at as the years go by).
So we have a combination of insane storytelling, gifted artwork, talented coloring, and a sense of whimsy that help make this worth reading. But don't take my word for it. Go read it for yourself.
As for myself, I'm wondering if I should e-mail Amber and ask why so many of her comics are 666 pixels wide, or if I'm better off not knowing...
Robert A. Howard
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Eversummer Eve Archives available for free through May
 (From Eversummer Eve and Wirepop.com. Click on image to see full-sized image.)
(Special thanks to Freak for alerting me of this)
It seems that WirePop.com is allowing access to all of the archives to Eversummer Eve through the rest of May. So now is a perfect time to jump on board and start reading this fantastic comic from the start of the comic, or even just to catch up on any pages you've missed.
This is one of my favorite comics, and definitely worth reading, with superb storytelling, fantastic artwork, and a sense of adventure above and beyond many comics out there. Hell, it's got magic, faeries, dragons, true love! Okay, not true love, but it does have the others. *grin*
So go! Read! And come back afterward, I enjoy having these little chats with you....
Robert A. Howard
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