Review #47: POW! NUTSHOT! FANSERVICE!

A Fist Laser powerful enough to break
the Sound (FX) barrier!

Title: Oranime
Artist: Aaron "Adyon" Foster (w/ "Ninya" doing some coloring)
Genre: Action!
Updates: M-W-F (usually)
Link: http://www.oranime.com

私は急を要する医学的な注意が必要！

"Dammit, I don't have Google Translate open!" The receptionist boy shouted at the mysterious ninja, "Gimme a second will ya?"

どうぞ、お時間がかかります。 The ninja responded in a calmer voice.

"Thank you." The receptionist boy did his best to read the subtitles, ran them through Google Translate, and then looked back at the ninja, "Yeah, you're going to have to wait until Dr. Haus gets back from his Japan trip."

私は医者にカ月間待って！

"Hey, not my fault that the Doc has mysteriously disappeared and the nurses all left the clinic in the wake of the new Great Depression. Take a seat with the rest of the sick kids over there."

鶏痘の場合はどうすればでしょうか？

"Well, I guess it's God's will then. Now sit down." The ninja sputtered, and then simply took a seat in the already full waiting room. If Dr. Haus wasn't going to make it, then the Receptionist Boy would have to do some...ugh...some webcomic watching in his place.
_____________________

Two self-inserted characters on a mission to rid the world of evil, because they can! Toss in a Guardian Angel, a bunch of rejected bad guys from an episode of Yu Yu Hakusho, superpowered fisticuffs and artistry that treads the line somewhere between manga and manhwa, and that's pretty much the entirety of Oranime so far.

Oh, that's not enough for you people, is it?

Okay, fine. Let's go to the tape, as John Madden would say before he just signed his paychecks directly over to the local buffalo wing place. Oranime is the story of two average folks named Adyon and Ninya (buy two vowels, get a "y" for free!) who have a guardian angel named Krione watching over them. Fast forward after some brief storytelling from said angel, a very obvious "cryptic dream" and some hilarious misandry, our heroes find themselves in a pickle, one that not even John Madden would eat.

Suddenly our heroes are faced with a spiky-headed guy they can't defeat, until they can through the power of positive thinking. Now the Demonic Black Forces of Evil Darkness are invading the world and only Adyon, Ninya, Krione and a Corgi puppy can stop them before they penetrate the last barrier of the sky

[Oh God, Heaven is in the Troposphere! Or was it the Exosphere? Depends on the order, I guess. Maybe they have receptionist desk on the outside? Or perhaps the last barrier is the median, like the Mesosphere? Ugh, I'm wasting too much time on this hypothetical.]

So a few shots of half-hearted fanservice and more comedic misandry later, everyone wants to get their hands on Adyon and Ninya, because they contain the power to magically weld Heaven shut or let the demons invade Earth or something. I'm sure that will be revealed in due time.

Now, despite my misgivings about the story so far, I will admit the artwork is quite flashy and stylized. Sure, the anatomy isn't always perfect, like the guardian angel who has a simultaneous hourglass figure with well-defined abs. But the action scenes are pretty damn cool, tip-toeing on the slash seperating the anime/manga distinction.

Yeah, there's a lot of action, but you can actually follow most of it without having to reread previous scenes to make sure that the combatants didn't just teleport around. Plus, the fighters don't just scream and fire energy balls at each other, at least not yet. They actually kick and punch and grab and make contact where most artists would've just stuck with the *pew-pew-pew* of the energy balls and/or gunfire.

Yes, the action scenes definitely have their wondrous flair, as long as the occasional anatomical errors don't throw you off. As for the writing...well, Adyon wrote in his info section that he was shooting for something like modern fantasy, post-Tolkien if you will. After reading through this stuff, I gotta say that the story sounds more like a cross between Power Rangers and Yu Yu Hakusho: The kind of story that was enough to excite and sell toys when I was a kid. But then I grew older and now look at these series usually as an object of either youthful nostalgia, MST3k-ish mockery or both on the odd chance that someone brings them up.

Okay, so for those of you who are still unsure of whether or not to click through and view this thing (my buddy Ed reports that he could barely make it through the first chapter) I guess I should wrap it up. If you took a look at Ninja Spirit and thought that it could be good if only the story contained more nutshots and the mythology references were more ambiguous, then "...you'll love Oranime!"
--Dr. Haus

[postscript: I know how to write in a few languages, but Japanese is not one of them. So if I got something wrong during the intro, blame Google Translate.]

[post-postscript: I am not updating regularly again. You're just imagining things.]

CT Review #7: Mistakes of Youth

I told you I had a review coming up for Comixtalk. Linky linky what I got here for you.

It's interesting what you can come up with once you have enough caffeine in your system and some Jimi Hendrix jamming through your earbuds.

I could say more about the comic itself, but I think the review is pretty straightforward, or the part of it that actually became "review" material and not just "a crazy narrative that entered my brain at the time" material. Peace out.

Filler Post, or "The Disappearing Doctor"

Well, now that my site numbers have hit rock bottom once again, I guess that gives me carte blanche to say something mostly unrelated to webcomicry:

I mocked Aarin for quitting awhile back, but now I see why he decided to take an extended vacation from this stuff. There's only so much you can say about the world of webcomicry before getting tired and walking away. This goes double to the folks doing it in their spare time for little or no change on the side.

At first, webcomics were a world full of wonder and amazement, and I decided to do a little review site in a corner of the internet that no one but myself and a few folks from the Megatokyo forums would care about. But then something happened...people recognized the existence of my blog, and they would come rushing to me in hopes of getting some more exposure for their own comic no matter if I praised their comic to the heavens or burned it down around them. Hell, when the webcomics boogeyman called John Solomon slammed the now-ended Hookie Dookie Panic (it has since been transformed into a more story-driven affair called Geist Panik!), the artist of that comic linked to myself and Aarin to portray us (I guess) as a sort of foil to his mean-spiritedness.

Suddenly, I had attention, and I felt it was my duty not to just review comics, but to run through them with a scalpel and bring the bad shit to light. Doctor Haus the character became more of an asshole than Doctor Haus the writer. The Internet Haet Machine had to be fed. Granted, there were a couple of comics that needed it, but sometimes my need for cynical snark outweighed the need to simply review the subject. I started hating webcomics in general.

Now I find that I don't have enough time on my hands to dish out the hate anymore on such petty things. With all these important responsibilities the real world has decided to throw my way, it just seems so unimportant now to hate on some poor shmuck making Fantasy Comic #4,632 starring Marty Sue and his Dragon Pal.

If you really want webcomic review sites that update regularly, there's Comic Fencing (of which I almost joined, but just didn't have the time), there's ComixTalk with the always awesome Xaviar Xerexes keeping things running smoothly, and there's the Gigcast, which involves this newfangled "podcasting" technology to talk about the drama of the webcomic world.

As for me, I would like to reiterate that while I'm not quitting this blog or that small spot at ComixTalk, don't expect me to update regularly. I've been involved in things including politics and comedy, sometimes both, and next to my class schedule at the ol' university I've got very little time for the drama of the webcomic-o-sphere. But every so often, I feel that itch to just voice my opinion, and there's the occasional artist who still asks me to review their comic. So chances are there will be new written content coming up in the near future.

One last note: I did manage to find a spot of free time a couple days ago to do a brief review in the classic Dr. Haus style for Comixtalk, which should be getting posted soon. I'll post the link when it comes out. I also wrote about half an article about comedy in webcomicry. Maybe you'll just spit flames into my inbox if I ever get around to finishing that piece, but I hope you'll at least enjoy some of it. Just remember...my opinions are serious business

Brain has exploded, ergo, no post yet.

Taking bets on whether Dr. Haus has come back too soon.

[Insert "that's what SHE said!" comment here]

Sorta-review #46: I sing the body politic

"What have you done to my boss?" The receptionist boy shouted, "I know you've moonlighted as his archnemesis in the past!"

"Oh jeez, you again," Doctor Dix rubbed his own forehead, "How did you get past my receptionist?"

"The promise of marijuana and a night on the town, but that's not important. What did you do with Doctor Haus?"

"Hey, it wasn't my idea, but he insisted..."

"What did you do to him?"

"He began an experiment, to see if he could withstand looking through political cartoons on the internet."

"You liar! He would never assent to that during an election season!" The receptionist boy shouted, "Do you have any idea how insane he'll become from that exposure?"

"Hey, I'm alternating the images around..."

"What are the comics he's seeing? Show me, dammit!"

"Alright, fine, I'll show you a sample."


THIS...IS...SUBTLETY!

Title: Fighting Words Comics
Artist: Abell Smith
Genre: Politics
Updates: Weekly
Link: http://www.fightingwordscomics.com

The receptionist boy peered at a sample of the comic and then reeled back, "Holy shit! That has all the satire of dropping an anvil on someone's head! Do you know what this is going to do to the Doctor's writing?"

"Make it crappier. What do you expect? I'm his freakin' arch-nemesis here."

"I mean, it's like your standard angry blog post, but the actual cartoon part almost seems like an afterthought. You can easily tell who the artist here hates: all the Republican caricatures are wild-eyed and angry while all the liberals are calm and have relatively normal-sized heads. "

"Oh, and don't forget that he's just added flash animations to his cartoons."

"Do they do anything special?"

"No. They just kinda print the same stuff that you see in the cartoon itself, but with annoying sound clips included."

"Fuck! Next thing you'll tell me is that someone animated a Ted Rall cartoon."

Doctor Dix immediately queued up that same cartoon on the playlist, and listened for Dr. Haus to start screaming again. Strangely enough, he seemed to remain silent. Maybe the effects were wearing off?

"What are you going to show him next?"


HAV U 4GOTTN, LIBTARD?

Title: Electronic Tigers/RightLeftCenter
Artist: "Hapajap"
Genre: Politics/gaming
Updates: Frequently
Link: http://comicstripclub.com/

The receptionist boy flipped through the pages before dropping it on the floor, "Uh, this isn't really bad, it's just kinda sad. I mean, even the gaming jokes are kinda an afterthought."

"How so?" Dr. Dix started listening for the sound of crying from the torture chamber, but nothing came.

"Well, it's kinda got humor on par with Mallard Filmore, where the only punchline seems to be 'LIBERALS!' and the first two panels seem to be recycled on the RLC strips. That's assuming you can even find the joke. The art's not bad though."

"Really? That's all you have to say about it?"

The receptionist boy thought about it for a moment, and then replied, "Yeah. Pretty much, unless you feel like expounding on the part where he's begging for money at the end of each strip now, or that the artist uses a bucktoothed-Japanese caricature as his avatar."

"So, you're telling me that this machine isn't torturing Dr. Haus at all?"

"No, it's just making him annoyed right now."

"What? Dammit, that defeats the whole purpose!" Dix shut off the projector and opened the door to the torture room, only to find an empty chair. "Wait, where did my arch-nemesis go?"

"Probably decided to stop wasting his time on this shit."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"I dunno, flip through Eric Allie's archives?"

"Oh yeah, that guy's hilarious!"

The receptionist boy rolled his eyes as he quickly left the evil doctor's office. Apparently, Dix never did have the good Doctor Haus in his torture chamber, so where could he have gone?

The Return(?) of Doctor Haus

It's difficult running a clinic where all sorts of webcomic personas ask for a diagnosis.

It's even more difficult when you occasionally have to go fight your arch-nemesis who thinks he can do it better, only to vanish after scratching you across your lower-right eyelid with a surprisingly sterile scalpel. Plenty of people have requested my help, like that one guy who posted a link to me after the webcomic boogeyman John Solomon beat him with a 2x4 so long ago.

Thank God for non-biodegradeable stitches, I thought as I slowly cut the thread one-by-one. The receptionist boy said I should totally see an ophthamologist about it, in case the eye itself was actually damaged, but I told him that I was a doctor, and with the amount of drugs in my system, I wouldn't feel a thing.

Of course, then I felt myself practically crying blood as I took my own stitches out, like in one of those crazy animus, or maybe more like that one scene in the crappy-except-for-Sammy J's-voice Afro Samurai. In any case, the receptionist boy was busy taking down insurance information as I ran to get a shitload of gauze and some rubbing alcohol.

It was gonna be a long month, but those webcomics needed to be saved. They needed the healing that only Doctor Haus could provide! So I swore that I would once again return...just as soon as the space under my eyelid stopped bleeding.

[Ed. Note: The preceding story was partly inspired by true events. Actual humor coming soon...after this message]

CT Review #6: Happiness is a Warm Gun

Bang Bang Shoot Shoot.

In completely unrelated news, Dr. Haus is now really fucking busy with life. Sporadic updates will now include 90% less self-loathing and whiny filler, leaving this blog with about the same amount of content as the amount of edible lettuce in a McDonalds salad until further notice.

Then again, that's the awesome thing about most webcomics and webcomic review sites: If you have a broadband connection, all it takes to check for updates is a few seconds of your life (even faster if you have one of those newfangled "Live Bookmarks"). So I am not closing down this blog and moving all operations to Comixtalk, but for the moment, I'm rarely going to update this thing unless the mood just happens to smack me when I'm not working.