The Weekly Webcomic Review: Legendary
Legendary is a strip that when I like it, I like a lot. And when I don’t, I feel sort of dumb. But it’s not an XKCD dumb, where I realize I’m just not smart enough to get some of the math nerdery; Legendary is one of those strips where it could be me being slow on the uptake, but my gut tells me that sometimes, it needs a little more clarity in its narrative.
But when it’s on, it’s on. So I figure it’s worth talking about.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way; Legendary calls its art style an “homage” to the far more popular Order of the Stick (which you are all reading, yes?), which is a nice way of saying that yes, we’re dealing with stick figures. And like Rich Burlew’s surprisingly-complex character models, the stick figures of Legendary are well-drawn and pleasantly clean to look at.
And whereas Order of the Stick is lampooning pen-and-paper roleplaying games, interspersing character development with a host of shots to the hoary tropes and arcane rules of D&D, Legendary is aiming its pen at computer roleplaying. Specifically, Japanese RPGs — Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, Dragon Quest, you name it.
It’s not like “making fun of Japanese RPGs” is fresh ground, but Legendary’s got a good sense of the absurd and really mines the tropes quite well. As Rich Burlew discovered a long time ago, having characters inside the game understand just how ludicrous the world they inhabit is can be a rich source of laughs.
And when that’s what they go for, it’s hysterical. Whether Legendary is mocking the idea that dead characters can be revived by sleeping in an inn for a night, or taking issue with the way that characters in a town endlessly repeat the same thing until a plot twist happens, or talking about the stupidity of using status effects (does “Sleep” ever work? What’s the use of “Steal”?), it’s pretty good.
And why are the rabbits and rats attacking our heroes for no reason? Are they doing something so violently against the order of mankind that the very beasts of the field are rising up to try to stop them? Well, actually, this is a Japanese roleplaying game, and the heroes are obligated to discover halfway through their quest that Everything They Know Is Wrong, so… Yes.
But a handful of the jokes? They don’t work. At least not for me. Either they’re written for people who are much more into the genre than I am and thus can be shorthanded, or I’m inexplicably dense.
For example: this strip dealt with the weirdness that comes in certain games where, when you are gallivanting across the countryside, you are represented by a huge sprite that is literally bigger than towns. To enter a town, you gotta click on it, and then suddenly you’re normal size. But the way this gag was written, I literally didn’t understand that that was what he was referencing until he used a variant of the same gag again later on.
It’s a question of clarity, see. And I can’t really judge the gag, because in comedy there’s always a balance between “funny” and “comprehension.” The whole point of a lot of jokes is that they’re kind of hard to get — when you say, “Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana,” you have to realize that you’re going to leave some people behind.
And that’s totally cool.
The “Time flies like an arrow” gag (which is really more of a pun than a gag, but bear with me for a moment) is a clear-cut case of comedy, because if you try to clarify it at all you lose the joke. But most jokes have a little wiggle room; you can make something a little clearer, but at the expense of it being less funny.
As a real-life example: In Home on the Strange, we have established characters. Seth’s vain and hits on women. Branch is the asocial geek. Karla’s the fangirl who demands the entire world share her opinions, and Izzy will chop you off at the knees if you really piss her off. All fine and well.
The problem comes when we do a joke based on someone’s reaction to something.
Let’s set up a simple strip: Karla bumps into someone at the video store who is looking at a Buffy DVD, and is considering purchasing it because they’ve heard it’s good. If I’m writing it for an audience that knows Karla really well, that’s almost a punchline right there. Because we have a history of Karla cramming Buffy down the throats of strangers. I could probably set up a strip that involves Karla overhearing the conversation, sneaking up on the guy as he weighs his options, talking about how he can’t afford it but he kind of wants to see it… And then we cut to the guy (a Buffy DVD in his hand), back at home, explaining dazedly to his wife:
“She made me buy it.”
“Nobody makes you buy a DVD.”
“No, she made me buy it.”
But while that would be hysterical to those in the know, it would make absolutely no sense to those who were just arriving at the strip for the first time. I’d make a small number of people laugh very hard, while leaving the rest in the cold. Thus, is it better for me to engineer a strip where Karla’s personality is somehow explained in the strip itself? It’s not quite as deeply funny if we have to spend time showing how Karla browbeats her victim with girlish glee into coming around to her way of thinking, but more people would get it.
Which is better?
Well, what are you trying to do?
In the case of Legendary, I suspect given his commentary that he’s shooting for the global “Ha, this is funny,” and not some sort of inbred “RPG-Chans Only” territory. And when he fails at a straight gag – which is not often, mind you, since by and large he strikes well with his joke-fu, consistently enough for me to spend several thousand words dissecting it — it’s often because of a failed set-up that doesn’t let me know what’s going on.
Which would be fine. Except the greater problem with Legendary is that it’s slowly moving away from The Gag, as Rich Burlew did, and moving more and more into Plot territory. Which could be totally awesome, since Robert Zakheim’s shown some real flair for plotting thus far. He’s got an in-strip retcon of events that is completely believable and at the same time sets things up for real unpredictability further on down the line. It’s marvelous.
The problem is, once again, clarity.
Not to toot my own horn — Lord knows I’m not holding up Home on the Strange as an Epic Comic That Everyone Should Emulate – but Home on the Strange has relatively simple storylines, and yet I still go way out of my way to try to encapsulate where we are in the first panel of most strips. I’ll have the characters standing about saying, “Tom, I can’t believe you did exactly what you did in the last strip!” or “Izzy, how can you say what you said in the last strip!” or even the ever-popular “Tanner, here’s what happened to Karla in the last strip when neither you nor many of the readers were there!”
It’s pretty hoary (and God knows what happens when we collect the strips together into one place — I hope it’s not too repetitive), but as a lead-in to keep people on track, it works.
(I also, you may note, have my characters repeat the names of other people whenever possible. I know when I’m talking to my wife mano a mano, I hardly ever say, “But Gini, I wants me some sugar!” Instead, I just pull her tight and growl, “Gimme some sugar, baby.” And because I do not live in a comic strip, I usually get no sucrose with that line, but that’s a complaint for another day.)
But Legendary’s at three disadvantages when it comes to creating elaborate plots:
1) It has a lot of characters. Home on the Strange has, essentially, a cast of six. Legendary, I’m pretty sure, has a lot more.
2) It gets even more difficult when you realize that everyone in Home on the Strange is easily discernible. Everyone in Legendary are stick figures, drawn in the same basic style and shape — some are squat and some are different colors, but if you have a brown circle and a brown circle it gets really hard to tell the difference between them at a glance.
3) Because the characters are based on RPG archetypes, their personalities have not been as clearly defined because up until now, they’ve been the channel for whatever gloriously cheap poke at RPGs comes their way. There’s a Ninja, and a White Mage, both of whom have very identifiable character quirks, and then there’s a bunch of other people.
And Legendary is not necessarily the best at explaining itself when it comes to these plot events. For example: In a recent strip, there is a dismembered head thrown upon a table. This is clearly an evil act, and I suspect it’s supposed to be a shocking moment….
…but as a semi-regular reader, I went, “Hey, who’s that head belong to?” And I get a name, that’s cool, but I don’t remember why this person is important, or what her death means to these characters. And they don’t explain it in that strip — which is understandable, because if someone dies nobody whispers, “That’s the Queen of Antville, whose death will sow chaos throughout Fartland!”
(Queen Antville is not the same of the dead person. No worries, I’m saving the plot twists for you.)
But in the next strip, the lead characters could have had some sort of conversation explaining what the death of Queen Antville means to them, and how it throws a wrench in their plans. Without that, it’s just a head on a table.
I’m not saying it’s completely without context, mind you. I’m sure if I reread the strip’s archives, I’d stumble across a reference to Queen Antville and why she’s critical to the plotline. But as a casual guy, that’s not there, which is going to be an increasing problem as the strip starts moving away from Cheap Shot At J-RPGs and moves more into Dense RPG-world. I need these little reminders to help me along.
Another sample line after the Big Death: “Lionel, follow Sarive and make sure she doesn’t – “ “I’m on it.”
From a pure dialogue perspective, this is completely justifiable. I talk like this all the time (say, what does an interrupting cow say?). But from a character revelation perspective, if I didn’t know what sort of person Sarive was, I have even less of a clue after this exchange. What’s she going to do? What must they prevent her from doing? Where’s the tension?
Apparently, you think I know. And I feel dumb because of this, because I want to know. But I drop by twice a week to read your strip, and I am a Bear of Little Brain, and I forget a lot of stuff.
For me to enjoy Legendary on the level I want to, I need some cueing. It doesn’t have to be as blatantly obvious as the blunt and, frankly, oft-charmless tricks I pull with my own strips, but I need a little in-strip help to get it.
And I want to enjoy Legendary, because I have the gut feeling that this might be exploding into something great. There’s a lot of stuff churning around here, and usually when the Solid Gag Guy starts adding layers to his comic without trying to make it too serious, you wind up with the sort of plot-driven Funny that I absolutely adore. I’m reviewing Legendary because I don’t think it’s perfect by any means, but I’m interested in it. He’s got me.
Just help me out a bit. Really. I’m that stupid.
(And as always, if you have an underappreciated webcomic you think I should review, leave a comment and I’ll take a look at it. Reviews will be only for strips with less or equal traffic to my own strip, Home on the Strange, in order to highlight smaller comics; as such, the reviews will always be at least mostly positive. If you note any traffic I’ve sent your way and feel the urge to shower me with gratitude, feel free to plug HotS in your own comic. Danke.)
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