08-07-07

The Drunken Redhead syndrome
You may have noticed the comics reviewed since my return to a semi-regular review schedule have all been story comics.  This has nothing to do with any real preference for story comics over gag-a-days.  More than half of my prodigious crawl is gag-a-days.  I love Penny Arcade, to the point where I devour Holkins's (or Krahulik's, I can never keep them straight) comments, despite the fact that I am not a power gamer, and have (apparently) relatively few games in my collection.

The problem with reviewing gag-a-day comics is that they are (mostly) daily, and that means they can amass a huge archive fairly quickly.  To do any review, even one that's been on my trawl for years, I have to read the entire archive from beginning to end.  There are a variety of reasons for this, mostly having to do with a need to gauge the growth of the comic and its artist, but the effect, when dealing with comics that update daily, is the same:  a whole lot of reading in a short amount of time.  Even a fairly recent comic, like Out There, by R.C. Monroe, becomes almost a chore, despite its obvious charms.

Out There has its charms, and its idiosyncrasies.  Monroe's art would easily find a home on a newspaper page, except that he often eschews the four-panel limit, and he tends to wordiness (neither of which is conducive to reduction).  It's a gag-a-day with a deeply philosophical story-line, or it's a story comic that does a fair job of delivering at least a smile every day.  It's an ensemble comic whose most engaging character is oddly reminiscent of Kwai Chang Caine (without the weekly ass-kickings), but manages to be extremely thought-provoking without being particularly heavy-handed about it.

The comic begins with lead character Miriam, who is on her way to see if she wants to start a new life on the East Coast, making sucks-to-be-you noises about an off-panel hiker whose car (she assumes) has broken down.  The first comic ends with her driving back to pick him up with a "damn my better nature" look on her face.  The hiker in question, whose name is John (the aforementioned David Carradine fellow-traveller), turns out not to be hiking away from a defunct car, but just hiking in general.  After the sort of wackiness that can be expected when a free-wheeling party girl meets up with a meditative wanderer, the story settles into a fairly even road comic with John becoming Miriam's erstwhile traveling companion.  Unlike Road Waffles or other road comics, however, Out There has a definite destination in mind.  John may be a wanderer, but Miriam is on her way east to work with (and for) her best friend, Shelly, and to try out the possibilities of commitment with online-beau Chuck.  Monroe never forgets this, and even though it takes six months for John and Miriam to complete the five-day drive across country, there are frequent reminders of Miriam's destination, including scenes from the town of Portstown, where Miriam will be making her new life.

It's in Portstown that Monroe hits his stride.  Monroe knows his bars, if not the pounding dance clubs that Paris Hilton and friends frequent, then at least he knows neighborhood bars and the lost souls that haunt them.  Barfly character Clayton could be any one of a million barflies anywhere in the country, cadging what drinks he can, and befriending the staff in a deeply superficial way.  Unfortunately, we also meet James in Portstown.  If you're black, or you're from the South, be prepared to hate James, or at least to dislike Monroe for the way James's dialogue is written.  He uses a watered-down semi-urban dialect that comes off as forced, especially his use of "Ya'll".  (Note to Northern and West Coast authors:  "Ya'll" is always a subject, never an object.)  It causes one to believe that Monroe has never actually visited the South, or met anyone southern, and is jarringly out of place, like suburbanites trying to talk "street".

Be that as it may, James is just a minor character, and one that's easy to ignore (which is what his roommate, Chuck, seems to do), and Portstown is where Monroe begins to weave the odd interpersonal relationships that make Out There, (any ensemble comic, really) successful.  Miriam loves and is happy with Chuck, but she has unexpressed (beyond a bit of dare-ya flirting) for John, Chuck likes Miriam, but may be having minor second thoughts as she proves to require more maintenance than he may have been prepare to take on, Shelly has a crush on Chuck, but is afraid to talk about it to anyone because it might get back to Miriam and Shelly doesn't want to hurt her in any way.  James thinks Miriam is going to hurt Chuck or (worse) really get along with him to the point where Chuck and Miriam move in together, leaving him without a meal-ticket.    John really likes food.  Monroe manages all of this with a minimum of angst and a lot of funny, but sooner or later, he will need to develop those plots with some sense of finality.  Otherwise, the characters and the plots will soon begin to lose dimension, and that quickly gets boring both for the author and the reader.

The art is comicky, but that supports the humor and the off-handed philosophy of the comic.  It has a sort of Foxtrot meets Luann feeling to it.  It's done in newspaper-style black-and-white line art, which is a shame, because Monroe's character page shows he has a deft hand with color and shading.  The site can be a little hard on the eyes:  pumpkin orange boxes coated in gaussian noise to downplay the luridness against a flat black background (and the usual Keenspot banners, boxes and ads).  During my trawl, I had to stop a few times to keep from going blind.  Of course, that's not really an issue if you're not reading 400-odd comics all at a go.

It's not the funniest comic out there, but it delivers.  It doesn't have the depth of plot and character that some do, but it engages.  The art and the site aren't Da Vinci, but they aren't bad.  It's better than most comics you'll find, and Monroe managed to get Spotted without immediately going on an indefinite hiatus, which is apparently quite the accomplishment.  Out There has a few laughs, more smiles, and it's definitely worth a look.

Out There by R.C. Monroe
Updates:  Daily
Caveats:  Bar humor, bad southern accents, poker
Rating: