Over analysis of a little-known webcomic

Here I am awake at 5 AM again.

Here I am writing about digital media again:

Aikonia is a webcomic I just got into a couple minutes ago. I am very impressed by the writing and the art.

The writing is what pulls me in— I imagine that with the same art, if the writing/story was poor, I wouldn't like it all.  I'm no critic, and it's been a long time since I took a literature class, but I'll attempt some analysis.

It feels suspenseful when I read it. God, am I really going to fully cite specific instances, like I'm writing a paper? Hell yeah.*

• Chapter 1 page 1 panel 4- mention of danger and implied depiction of death, in a non-specific instance, which implies that death may occur but hasn't yet, which is basically the definition of suspense.
• Chapter 1 page 3 - nervous discussion of monsters, anticipating encountering monsters soon, without a depiction of monsters
• Chapter 1 page 7 - serious discussion of grave consequences, with specifics left out

The plot seems to jump to different viewpoints at all the right times.

• Chapter 1 page 12 to 13- we go from a character investigating something and getting attacked, to her friend who asked her to do so being approached by the person they were investigating.
• Chapter 1 page 20 to 21 and 22- we go from a character and his friend being tortured, to the funeral service featuring the torturer and on of the "torturees."

I'm not sure if what I wrote about jumping viewpoints makes sense, but know that the citations I made are examples of what I would consider good narrative choices.

pic related: an example of a poor narrative choice

It's written from a third-person omniscient point of view, like Harry Potter, and involves a school of magic, like Harry Potter. It also has some common fantasy tropes; like Power-hungry Bad Guy, Good Guys Trying to Unravel Conspiracy, Magic Has a Downside (like Full Metal Alchemist), Magic Comes From Another Dimension, etc. But the execution is really good; it doesn't feel like a Harry Potter knock-off, to me at least. It's written by Timothy Hely, who is a programmer as well as a writer.

The art is by Katie Tiedrich, a mechanical engineering student in Hoboken, New Jersey, who also draws Awkward Zombie, which is mostly about popular video games, and is pretty popular. I should probably read Scott McCloud's books before I attempt analysis, but here goes anyway.

From what I can tell the art creates the setting and tells me what the characters are feeling really well. For a great example, Here's a couple panels:

The character's faces show emotion clearly and specifically (in acting you're always supposed to be as specific as possible). The robes and candle make it instantly clear we're in a pseudo-medieval setting. The backgrounds (aptly) fade into the background, letting us focus on the characters.  

Here's the clever thing- as I see it, Grey Robe was reading this book, and after what Purple Robe said in panel 2, he was surprised and quickly shut the book in panel 3. Maybe this is elementary comic-ing or something, but notice there are no motion lines in panel 3. The only thing that's telling you that he shut the book quickly is the puffs of dust, and the surprised look on his face. In theatre, I was taught to show, not tell, and this is an example I think in comics of showing, not telling. Those little puffs of dust show (instead of indicating using lines) that he closed the book quickly. The color of the puffs and the book also give me the impression that the book is old. Hopefully your impression of the panels lines up with mine. If not, what is your impression? (if I haven't spoiled it by giving you mine.)

Again, this may be pants-on-head basic comic technique, but it's things like this that make a comic work, and not all amateur webcomics work this well. 

One more note about the art: all the characters are in hooded robes, which is interesting for a few reasons. First, it makes it easier to draw, but it removes some of the expressive possibilities of body language. Second, it increase the capability to communicate social structure and class through color and style of the robes, but as a trade off makes it virtually impossible to tell characters apart from behind if they have the same color robe. 

Another thing that I must mention is that the site is incredibly well done, which I confess I did not expect, because most webcomics are done as hobbies, and the sites are not always this nice. After some research, I found that the site was put up by MADSOFT games inc., and they put together this website because the comic is a prequel to their game of the same name. 

So there's my analysis. Check it out if you want! 

Maybe I should go to bed.

-Chris

*Here's what my education has wrought. Applying memorized definitions of floaty terms in a robotic fashion to support an argument. Well, maybe it's not so useless. I'm tempted to think, however, that the most useful things are things that cannot be memorized or easily taught.