Mookie's back, baby!
Well, technically the famed alliterative cartoonist never went away, but as I noted about his collaborative, kid-friendly space-superhero comic Star Power, fantasy-style superheroics don't translate as well to science fiction, even to low fidelity science fantasy. Now he's apparently dusted off his original project Dominic Deegan, Oracle for Hire once again for a new story set centuries after the original events.
A chapter and a half into things there's relatively little to conclude about the new installment, except to note that it is apparently possible to create a "special" webcomic character without immediately descending to cloying, self-righteous politically correct posturing. The new protagonist, Snout the mongrel-man, happens to be deaf-mute. Instead of merely restating the point ad nauseam for cheap sympathy, the comic makes use of Snout's soundless viewpoint to indulge in a solid helping of the classic visual humor by which cartooning (animated or not) sets itself apart from other media. This is not to say it's downplayed, but the hero's divergence from the norm is acknowledged where it would logically crop up and not shoehorned into every single panel as a manifestation of moral entitlement. Snout is not his disability, or his physical deformities. He's a provincial but both determined and practical sort who weighs his options and makes deliberate informed choices wherever possible. He does not set out on his quest because the world has wronged him as a deaf man with scaly arms... but for the sake of intellectual curiousity.
Internal motivation. There, was that so hard?
______________________________________
edit 2024/07/15: As this post gets the occasional hit, I should amend it. Sadly, The Legacy's strong start petered out, gradually degenerating into precisely the sort of codependent, politically correct posturing garbage I'd hoped the author had outgrown, especially after Snout's story. Still the first portion before the cast grows past three-ish characters was damn fine work.
No comments:
Post a Comment