I’m a big fan of the “paintcan” scenario, because the starkness of a perfect paintcan creates something heartbreakingly complex when done correctly.

Writing paintcans is a simple recipe: Take a handful of characters — two is the classic number, but you can get away with as many as five. Make sure they’re of extremely different temperaments.

Next, lock your characters inside a “paintcan” where, for whatever reason, they cannot leave – trains are a good bet to serve as a paintcan, but waiting rooms will also suffice, or if you’d like a more dramatic moment sometimes you can use an actual prison. But for reasons that the characters must explain, they cannot leave each other’s presence.

Then let them talk.

That is all.

The perfect paintcan requires nothing more than the Zenlike simplicity of two people who would not normally spend time in each other’s company forced to do just that. You may, occasionally, have them try to leave, but the paintcan requires them to return — and, eventually, to come to some sort of understanding with each other for their own survival.

When the paintcan’s done right, you wind up with some riveting storylines: I’ll wager you never thought of The Breakfast Club as a paintcan scenario, but it is: all you’re doing is sticking folks in a place and seeing what happens when they interact with nothing but each other. Likewise, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a slightly more action-centric paintcan, but in the end it all comes down to an angry, unhappy Steve Martin making peace with the hapless John Candy. And, of course, the field of drama is rife with two-man plays, most of ‘em paintcans, paintcans, paintcans.

Out There is strange in that it started out as a paintcan and is evolving into something that I may not like. But we’ll see where it goes.

The premise (or, at least, the starting premise) is simple: Miriam is driving across the desert. She picks up a hitchhiker named John. And they talk.

It turns out that Miriam is on a quest to get to her friend Sally’s bar, where a job as a bartender at her friend’s bar will rescue her from her own self-destructive impulses. And she needs rescue, for Miriam is not a nice person; she drinks heavily when she’s upset, she wants to have sex with just about anyone to forget about her problems, and she’s continually trying to sabotage her trip to the one place that might actually save her.

John, on the other hand, is her perfect foil. He is a bald ascetic, seemingly uninterested in sex or material wealth at all; when Miriam picks him up, he is walking down the road not knowing where he is or where he’s going. He lives in a tent, and works part-time jobs to get money when he has to, and is remarkably cynical about Miriam.

Miriam needs John; she cannot bear to be alone. And John becomes her casual protector; he knows that left to her own devices, Miriam would pick up the next guy on the road just so she wouldn’t have to face her own inner demons, so he sticks around to ensure she’ll be okay.

And they talk.

This makes Out There sound like Serious Drama, but really it’s not. It’s a clean, four-panel layout with a punchline at the end of every strip, and thankfully the characters don’t take themselves all that seriously. Miriam knows she’s a wreck, and oscillates rapidly between being disgusted with John for not succumbing to her charms and with herself for being a crazy drunk girl. There’s a lot of amusing introspection.

The real joy of Out There is in how cleanly it presents its archetypes. In the beginning, we know little about them (and I’m sorry I had to tell you as much as I did to hopefully get you interested), but watching each facet of their personalities revealed strip by strip is the core of the experience; Miriam and John are getting to understand each other. It’s not entirely clear whether either of them will affect each other, since they’re fairly ensconced in their own philosophies, but you never know who might have the breakthrough.

And, fascinatingly, there’s no backstory. The strip’s been going on for half a year, and we still don’t know why John wanders, or what Miriam was doing before she decided to drive across the United States to get to her pal’s bar. Unlike the occasional month-long flashback segments of Queen of Wands (or even S*P), everything in Out There takes place right there. It’s neat to watch.

Out There is also quiet. It’s not a zany sitcom; it takes place in the real world, and as such there are limits to where its humor can go. Most of what happens is purely verbal, but I don’t always need the flash-bang grenades and the talking half-breed werewolf and the crazy cop-relating antics to rope me in.

Alas, Out There is currently evolving, which is something I have mixed feelings about. It’s true that Miriam and John couldn’t drive across the desert for all eternity; eventually, they had to get to the other side, and we’re just crossing that particular bridge. Which means that the strip’s tone is going to change as they abandon the paintcan and settle into something a little more predictable… Or maybe not. I’m not second-guessing R.C. Monroe.

But even as I miss the loss of the paintcan scenario, it’s built up enough good will for me to see where this goes. I recommend it. It’s quirky yet somehow satisfying.

(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.)

Tags: webcomic review

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