Hooray For Welcome Returns
Oh, it hurt to cut down something so pretty, so well constructed to its purpose as that recap image. Then again, it was nearly in a 1 x 10 aspect ratio (width x height), so there’s no way I could have put it at the top of the post.
I speak, obvs, of the teaser for Barbarous Season Two, scheduled to start in two weeks. On the one hand, yay, after the better part of a year since the end of Season One, two weeks is blessedly soon. On the other, fourteen days is practically an eternity from now, I may die of the anticipation, etc.
For those that perhaps need a recap to go with the recap, Barbarous is the current longform webcomic from Yuko Ota and Ananth Hirsh; it follows a magic university dropout and an impossible familiar in the best exploration of being unsure of yourself at a certain age in New York since Octopus Pie. It’s run approximately one chapter per year since 2016 (with side stories in between) the first five of which made up a reasonably complete story, and now it’s coming back.
And because there’s a lot of meat on the story, there’s a recap, although it’s not a straight linear precis of the story. The scenes jump back and forth along the storyline, which means it’s really there to prod the memory of those who’ve been reading, not provide a cheat sheet to jump in fresh. The really clever bit is that the arrangement of scenes in the recap gives a new reading on Percy (said dropout) and Leeds (said familiar) and their motivations. Bits of personal development that were separated by a year or more have new resonance when put side by side. Even moreso that the return of a beloved story, I wanted to bring this story technique up, because I can think of a lot of plot-driven [web]comics that could get a lot of benefit from it.
Oh, and since we’re here and all, Hirsh and Ota are teaming up on words — with art by JR Doyle — on a new original graphic novel out from Abrams in November. A couple weeks ago they talked about their inspirations for Pixels Of You¹ in a promo video and it’s a neat look at where story ideas can come from, and how characters reveal themselves to creators. Give ‘er a watch or two while you’re waiting for Barbarous to start back up.
Spam of the day:
No spam, but I do want to point it that there’s less than a day to get a hardcopy of The Abominable Charles Christopher Book 3 via Kickstarter add-on. It is gonna be so pretty.
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¹ Now I have The Cure going through my brain. This is not a bad thing.
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