Our Little Adventure

Webcomics make a creator's growth (or lack thereof) clearer than most. The lack of gatekeepers combined with a lack of editing ensure an overwhelming preponderance of utterly untrained (and usually unskilled) artists and writers, and with no risk of getting cancelled most such serial works will simply run until their author wanders off. Also, the endlessly reiterative succession of punchlines and action sequences can make it clear when a particular gimmick has been improved.

Our Little Adventure starts out as a seeming copycat of the long-running and deservedly successful DnD comic The Order of the Stick, with an adventuring party setting out to capture an ultra-powerful macguffin. In fact, superficial aesthetics aside, it begins in a much more rational manner than most RPG-inspired comics, avoiding the usual aimless fumbling or the over-reliance on jokes about game mechanics. Supposedly based on an actual campaign, it manages to throw a fresh spin on party composition and villains and keeps its pacing reasonable, refraining from the overeager "wouldn't-it-be-cool-if" escalation of say... Goblins.

Unfortunately it also confirms that having good ideas does not a good writer make. Seemingly every page is horrendously over-exposited, with quite a few redundant characters plus combatants declaring their attacks in utterly bland commentary adding no insights into the action. Overly formal sentence structure doesn't help matters, and the few attempts at humor tend to peter out without punchlines or drown themselves out in repetition. Stilted barely begins to describe it.

That goes on for a good, long while. Not entirely unpalatable for fans of RPG inspired stories, but there's nothing to really sell such a mountain of mediocrity either. And then the author begins to improve. It starts with characters gesturing more naturally and displaying more nuanced emotion, then around pages 400-500, the dialogue gradually drops some of its redundancy, characters begin slipping humorous asides into conversations more smoothly, and most importantly they begin to cut down on verbally describing every single action even as they perform it. The result still doesn't measure up to its more famous competitors but deserves a clap on the back for its consistent (if minor) self-improvement. It's a pity that, like most webcomics, Our Little Adventure seems to be on unofficial "hiatus" (a.k.a. deader than a twice-baked zombie) since last year, as all the hard work that went into its eventual ~700 pages was finally showing results.

The growth in quality is so slight as to barely be noticeable, but nevertheless the author improved his storytelling skills... and I hate him for it. Because in eight years of blogging, despite smithing my wording into a more solid form, after over a thousand posts and several more short stories than those which appear here, I find myself still incapable of scribing a decent narrative. My attempts at fiction still fall flat. And I hate those who've put in the work and improved themselves past their original station or especially my own ability, hate being leapfrogged, hate trudging through a comic archive only to see them grow over the years in ways that are, apparently, beyond me.