Comic of the Month

[thorny]

I'd rather take a winter month.

On Johnny Wander:

Spoiler: show

I've tried to read that, but didn't get very far. I feel like the artwork is yelling at me, if that makes any sense. Maybe I'll try again at some point.

[Jitter]

First come first served, you are on for October Keep!

Thorny, which one of the winter months? You can have any after October!

[thorny]

Thorny, which one of the winter months? You can have any after October!

Can I tentatively take December? If it turns out I can't I'll let you know; but I expect that I can.

[Jitter]

Thorny, I put you in for December! If it doesn’t work, let me know and we’ll postpone.

[thorny]

Great! I've put it on my Lists.

(You don't want to see my Lists. I've got this on my fridge:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/todo-2  ]

[Jitter]

@Sc0ut helloo, where are you??

I can "pinch hit" over the weekend if Sc0ut doesn't show up, but let's give them a bit more time.

[Jitter]

Ok so no Sc0ut. Luckily I have something up my sleeve, although I must say I’m a bit disappointed I have to use it already. But never mind.

So, the Comic of the Month for September 2021 is Alice Grove by Jeph Jaques. Jeph also makes the massive Questionable Content, but Alice Grove is a one story standalone that was published in 2014-2017. Alice Grove is a special thing for me personally, because it is the first long form webcomic I followed, which in turn probably was a big influence for the fact that I took up SSSS when I did.

It’s available either on its own site: https://www.alicegrove.com/ page by page, or in 50-page chunks in https://www.questionablecontent.net/alice1.html

Alice Grove is a post-apocalyptic mystery science fiction story that takes place a long time after a cataclysm. The apocalypse events are distant background rather than actively present, but there’s something left behind… And when a blue-skinned kid appears, Alice has to work out why and how to get him back. There’s some action, but overall I would call it a mystery rather than an action comic.

The art is fairly cartoon-y, clear and colorful but not particularly beautiful. It serves the story, no more no less.

There is some violence and a little female nudity (which, due to the nature of the art, isn’t that detailed) but nothing very upsetting. I suppose it would be rated T for these reasons. I could read it at work, but depends a bit on the work too

It’s divided into chapters so when discussing something that could be a spoiler, state “spoilers, Chapter 1” etc.

It’ll be an interesting reread for me too, I haven’t read it since it was finished so I may look at it differently now, having been spoiled by SSSS in its glory after that. I hope you guys like it too!

[thorny]

It’s available either on its own site: https://www.alicegrove.com/ page by page, or in 50-page chunks in https://www.questionablecontent.net/alice1.html

From the first link:

We're sorry

Service is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue.

Hope it's back soon. The other version seems to be trying to download all 50 pages simultaneously and I don't know whether, on my connection, it's ever going to succeed in getting there at all. I'll go do something else for a while (which I ought to anyway) and see in an hour or two whether it succeeded, or whether the other site is back up.

-- later: the first chunk of the 50-page version did load eventually, except for halves of two or three panels. And here I thought I was going to get something done today.

[Jitter]

Does it open for anyone?

The second link is indeed loading all 50 pages when it opens so it probably doesn't work too well for slow connections. I have quite a good fibre nowadays so it didn't occur to me to warn you.

[thorny]

The 50-page version did open for me if I went away and left it loading for long enough; and I have read it, but haven't yet worked out what I want to say in comments. Will say now that I enjoyed reading it, and liked the characters.

[thegreyarea]

Reading Alice Grove now! Read the first chapter, and seems promising. I'm curious to see if it's capable to deliver proper answers to questions like "who are these people", "who's really Alice", "what happened to the world" (assuming this is Earth), etc...

 And he art isn't awesome, but serves the story well enough. Loved the "weird dog" part!

[Vulpes]

I'd forgotten all about Alice Grove! I read it as it came out, although I nearly stopped reading at various violent points. I just re-read it in one go (interrupted by lunch, luckily not after a gory bit) and came out with much the same ambivalence about it as my initial read.

I seem not to have made the link between Gavia and the dream-loon until this reading. *forehead smack* As a biologist, how could I miss that?

Jaques seems to be making some grand point about the state of humanity, but I'm not sure I quite get it, or perhaps I don't buy it. On one hand, he seems to be saying that we're horrible, violent creatures that need external help from some benevolent I'm-not-sure-what to overcome our base human instincts; on the other, he seems to suggest that with just the right balance of scarcity & resources, we can live harmoniously. Those messages are at odds, which may explain my confusion.

I'm curious to hear what others made of it!

[Keep Looking]

I read through Alice Grove the other day now that I've actually got a bit of a break for these next two weeks. I definitely enjoyed it - it's probably not something I would've sought out myself, but I'm glad this thread got me to read through it. I feel like it does discuss some interesting implications re: technological progress and the future of humanity. I agree with Vulpes in that some of the messages are a bit confusing: is it better to live with the outside interference, or according to our own ends? Is it possible to avoid a bad future - how much is war engrained in our nature?

And man! It's my turn for Comic of the Month on Friday!

[Jitter]

Yeah, Alice Grove seems to have some sort of "beware of technology" message through most of the story, but then suddenly not at all. The end is somewhat rushed to my taste. Some comments under spoiler, even thought the month is almost over so I suppose spoilers should be expected

Spoiler: show

I hate the way Alice says that most of the deaths were her own fault, and then it's left at that. She could easily have a sufficient guilt trip over, say, 100 million deaths, so why would she have to be responsible for most? Especially with others like Mr Church around?

There were of course many other things left unexplained and that is the nature of this story so I don't mind, but that was an overkill of, well, overkill.

[thegreyarea]

Ok, I read it! (actually I finished a few days ago, but haven't had time to write)

First, I liked it, even if it's a bit confusing sometimes, be it on the story itself or on those contradictions Vulpes mentioned. I guess it deserves a rereading.

Second, there's too many things left unexplained...

Spoiler: show

Why those giant thing(s) in space have the shape of a tree? I can understand them to be of organic nature, but a giant space tree?
How those people in space has acess to very advanced tech but weren't able to do much for Earth, where people live hard lives? Are they amoral or just sadistic?
BTW that kind of technological contradiction is not at all exclusive here. Many creations (books, series, etc...) overlook the deep implications of, let's say, having Gravity control, with floating objects and artificial gravity. That, the capability to create a being that is almost invulnerable/immortal and violates the Laws of Physics (a Maxwell Demon), or being able to create and control nanoclouds... Well, all those are game changing techs, on level (or above) with our beloved electro-magnetism. I suppose is to much to ask, but it is possible to deal better with that kind of element on a story.
I'm also chocked by Alice's calm assumption of so many deaths. Any emphatic being (and she seems to be one) should be overwhelmed by a immense guilty.
Speaking of Alice and others like her, why would being of such power just carry on living almost like ordinary humans? They could be doing so many good things, helping, building, giving those that live on Earth a better life...

The end... No, the whole story seemed a bit rushed to me. It looks like "Hey, I have this bunch of cool ideas and will make a story right away!" It has some concepts that could result in a great story, and also would benefit with better art, but that may be just me.

All that said I enjoyed the story.
Oh, and really apreciated that it was dedicated to Ian M Banks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon