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For a genius, Arty can sure be dense at times...
 (From Narbonic. Click on image to see full-sized image (so long as it's Monday, else it'll be the latest comic. Subscription to Modern Tales required to view archives).)
My sister (well, close friend, but we adopted each other as siblings) once told me that one kiss always leads to more. I don't quite remember what this was in context to, but that phrase has stuck with me. When Dave and Helen kissed a couple weeks ago, I suspected it would lead to more. Naturally we've been watching Arty and Mel all this time (giving Dave and Helen the privacy they deserve), so we had no real proof as to what was going on.
Until today. (Well, technically night, it's 1:50 a.m. when I'm starting this...)
The first thought to pop into my head was that Helen looks cute in Dave's shirt. (It's especially nice now as his clothes don't stink of cigarette smoke anymore now that he retroactively quit smoking by going back into the past and inadvertently keeping himself from having even started to smoke in the first place. So it's a nice clean and comfy shirt.) She also looks adorable without glasses, as anyone who has bought the first Narbonic print collection would know. (What, you haven't purchased it? What are you waiting for? Go! Now! Buy it! *grin*)
The second thought was "boy, Artie sure can be dense at times." Hey, we've all seen it. Some truly intelligent and gifted people just don't think sometimes. They may lack street smarts or not have a sense of social awareness (I'm certainly guilty of that one) or even just not be very observant. And while in the earlier strips Arty often showed a talent for seeing things that his friends in the lab didn't perceive, even at the beginning he often failed to notice the obvious.
Like the intelligence drug and the cage of gerbils. Or the fact that the Tinasky Project (detailing a pre-mad genius and the observations of him) was about Dave and written by Helen. Or even the fact that Dave loves Helen... and Helen loves Dave.
It'll be interesting to see if, when Arty returns back to the lab, if he'll realize that Helen has a hicky on her neck. Naturally Mel will, first thing... or at the very least will know what caused it if Arty points it out to her.
In the meantime... I wonder if Helen's going to become... preoccupied with Dave again after sending Arty some more supplies. (For that matter, where is Dave? But I suppose we fans enjoyed seeing Helen clad in just Dave's shirt rather than Dave wearing Helen's lab coat and naught else to answer the phones again...)
Robert A. Howard
------------------------- Damn but they make garbage can lids tough!
 (From Those Destined. Click on image to see full-sized image.)
It's a sad truth that the cover of a book will sell it more than the content. Likewise, a well-drawn banner will draw in readers as well. However, I remember clicking one banner that had nothing to do with the comic... and soon left the comic. I went there because the banner showed beautiful art and the like. I hadn't noticed the addendum claiming the banner had nothing to do with the content of the comic.
The best way to lure in an audience is with a snippet of what your story is about. Those Destined combines a nice drawing of the main heroine of the comic with a cute little blurb which summed things up nicely: A daring group of heroes on a quest to discover their destiny... and smack it upside the head. As soon as I saw the snippet, I knew I had to read the comic. And it was well-worth the read.
One of the interesting things about this comic is that Hayley Price doesn't ink her work. Everything is penciling, with shading done with the penciling as well. In this age of high-tech photo shopping of comics, with fancy coloring and shading and greyscaling... Hayley works with pencil and colored pencil. No doubt she uses computerized tools to clean up her art a bit, but the penciled work still gives the comic a certain freshness that I rather enjoyed.
(To be honest, I have experimented with this as well. Inking is difficult for me. But by using darker and darker shades of penciling when I've a picture that works, and then scanning the penciled work in, I can preserve a modicum of what little skill I have. Ability that tends to vanish when I ink things. It's nice to see it done, and successfully so, in this comic.)
Another thing I've been enjoying about this comic is how it pokes fun at fantasy "traditions" which slowly have become clichéd. I mean, how many novels do we have about prophesized heroes? How often do villains act a certain way over and over and over again? When have we ever actually seen a hero (or villain) think things through and act intelligently?
Well, it happens, true. But it's these exceptions that are now the trademark of "good" fantasy, even if they're not necessarily well-written.
The comic's definitely worth a read. And don't worry about these characters being cat-people, it's just part of their charm.
Robert A. Howard
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