No takers for October? Hope nobody minds if I go ahead and volunteer, then:
Okay, SSSSports fans, if there's one thing you need to know about me it's
not that I don't know or care that much about athletic endeavors, but that is still a true statement about me. I have nothing against sports (though
much against sports
culture that I shan't get into right now) but it just isn't my thing. Unless you stretch your definition of sports enough to include video game speedrunning, which... I guess technically you have to move your hands?
Anyway I'm recommending a basketball comic.
Ventura City Drifters is written and drawn by Sonokido. Page 1 on
Tumblr,
Webtoon, and
Tapas if you're into that sort of thing. Not sure why, but Webtoons is quite a few pages ahead of Tumblr when last I checked.
If you know and love the sport as much as I do, don't worry, you won't be lost.
In the auteur's own words:
I’ve heard a lot of readers say they weren’t particularly interested in basketball but still read all the way through it!
I think I try my best not to bore everyone with basketball jargon, but still explain just enough so that you know what’s going on on the court. The sport being a vehicle for moving the plot along is how I like to think of it! Character development & interactions first, and the action scenes are just a bonus.
For my money, it works.
Our protagonist is Alina Scratch, a cat (I
told you I had more furry comics![/i]) who makes up for her short stature with an incredible jump. We meet her when she's shooting hoops by herself for fun and gets accosted by bullies, makes fools of their leader in a 1-on-1 "loser leaves the court forever" game only to get her butt kicked in a game of "we're just going to beat you up now," and finally gets rescued by Marie, a very tall bird with a very commanding presence. After running the bullies off, Marie invites Alina to join their university's basketball club, and gives her the option of trying out for the team. Of which, oh, hey, forgot to mention, Marie is the captain. Any notion of focusing on the club and
not the team is quickly dispensed with, but you probably gathered that from the comic being called "Ventura City Drifters" and not "Ventura City Basketball Club."
The first major character conflict that's set up is between Alina and Emily, the team's very tall (though not
quite as tall as Marie) ace (is that a basketball term?) who's pretty much the star of the team right up until everyone is wowed by Alina's incredible jump. It's never fully clear just how much of her digs at Alena are friendly teasing and how much are born of resentment from Alina stealing the attention not just of fans but also of her teammates. Personality-wise, she reminds me a lot of Sigrun Eide, if Sigrun were insecure about her reputation and position, and also a rabbit.
What's shaping up to be the biggest confrontation, though, is between Alina and a character who's only appeared a couple times so far: Her former friend and mentor, whose disapproval is one of the reasons Alina gave up basketball in high school. She fully expected that she and Alina would both attend the same university known for its hugely successful basketball team with a brutal training regimen, and took it as a betrayal when Alina didn't want to move away from all her other friends.
Well, maybe the second biggest. There's also Clover Haynes, who hasn't actually shown up in the story but casts a long shadow over it, despite being pretty short—exactly the same height as Alina, actually. Surely that's a coincidence, as is the fact that the last time Clover was on the team, back in the 90s, is also the last time they made it to nationals. Does Alina have some connection to Clover? I'm not being coy; the comic hasn't told us yet, but the strong possibility is there.
But there are plenty more conflicts where that came from. Every team the Drifters face has its own sort of team personality, and each member is treated as a three-dimensional person. Now, there's not enough page time for every single person to be as fleshed out as the Drifters. (Heck, even a few of
them get so little focus that I legit don't remember if they're actually team members or just club members, and as of this writing that's just days after reading the whole thing.) But you never get the feeling that even these minor characters just exist to perform a role, speak their lines, move the plot, and then go away. They might be people you don't know, but they're people.
And the comic gives equal weight to understanding the opposing players as people and to understanding how they play the game. Often, these tie into each other. For instance, the player (a borzoi, I think) who's
over seven feet tall looks down on others both literally and figuratively, not just underestimating them because they don't have her particular super-power but also
literally not being able to see past her own nose sometimes.
One thing to note about the art: In the first few chapters, characters tended to be stark white, whereas later on they're shaded in grayscale that more or less matches their actual fur (or skin/feather/scale/etc.) color. Threw me for a loop for a bit; I was left wondering "Who are all these new characters that look like darker versions of... wait a second." (Of course it takes me a while to get used to who's who in comics overall anyway, so this might be a me problem.)
The art in general is pretty good. It may not be among the
best-looking comics, to rival Phantomarine or Lackadaisy or SSSS, but just because we're spoiled doesn't mean this doesn't look amazing.
Honestly, the early chapters aren't bad if you ask me, but the visuals improve by
miles as the story goes on. Panel layouts become more readable. Character modeling improves, and faces and body language grow more expressive. Actions, especially on the court, become clearer. Composition and framing become integral parts of how the games are brought to life on the page. But if you
should have trouble (especially early on) telling what's happening in a game, don't worry, the comic provides plenty of additional context. If the art is unclear or you're even more basketball-impaired than I am (which would be a feat), the comic always makes sure there are other ways for you to know what's going on. Most major games have color commentators narrating, for instance.
That said, what may be make-or-break for some readers (other than the furry thing) is the manga style. It's still read left-to-right like a normal English-language comic, but it makes no apologies for taking its stylistic cues from manga, right down to onomatopoeia for non-diegetic stinger soud effects (DUNN!). Apart from full-color chapter covers, the characters are grayscale and the backgrounds are either that or shaded with a single color. Sometimes the color changes on-page to signal a scene change, though that doesn't seem to be happening as often in later chapters.
Content warnings? Very little to speak of. The banner at the top says "This series is rated Young Adult" but that's probably in the bookstore sense of the term; I'd say it mostly tops out at TV-Y7. There are some minor injuries, little or no blood. The most actual peril I remember is at the beginning when one of the bullies pulls a knife on Alina...to cut off her ponytail. Otherwise, most of the violence occurs on the court, where there are fouls (sometimes intentional). There's no sexual content to speak of, unless you count the preponderance of conventionally attractive women in form-fitting athletic wear and the very occasional conventionally attractive shirtless dude.
Honestly, the only thing you'd want to watch out for is the bullying. In addition to the bullies at the beginning, some players of the opposing teams also come off as bullies. One team in particular (the one they're playing as I write this, in Chapter 20) plays dirty, employing trash talk, mind games, intentional fouls, and even (possible spoiler?) to win at any cost. If you've been a bullying victim, this might hit close to home for you. But I was bullied as a kid—even pulled out of school because of it—and I have no trouble reading it. Just makes me love to hate the villains even more. But trauma being trauma, actual mileage
will vary.
If you can read SSSS (which I'm assuming most of you can)—heck, if you can read the scenes with the miniature Vasterstroms—then most likely nothing in this comic will faze you. (Though there's probably a character or two you'll
wish would get eaten by a Troll.)
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