End of an Era: Darths & Droids

Let's do this thing.

Gosh, I seem to be doing a lot of these lately. Apparently it really is the end of an era in webcomics.

Darths & Droids is a Star Wars screencap webcomic produced by Australian writing collective the Comic Irregulars – composed of Andrew Coker, Andrew Shellshear, David Karlov, David McLeish, David Morgan-Mar (the Slim Shady of this D12, in as much as he has his own Wikipedia page,) Ian Boreham, Loki Patrick and Steven Irrgang – and inspired by Shamus Young's DM Of the Rings, a screencap comic in which a highly driven DM railroads his players through the plot of The Lord of the Rings in a world in which the original work does not exist. 

Darths & Droids likewise takes a classic work of fiction – the at-the-time six part Star Wars series – and uses screencaps from those films to form a comic. The dialogue is written to represent the roleplaying group running through this adventure in a world where Star Wars does not exist. Unlike DM of the Rings, the GM of Darths & Droids is a giver, and the plot of the films - more or, in some cases much, less - is created through the interactions between his intended plot and whatever craziness the players can come up with. Jar Jar Binks, for example, turns out in this version to be the result of having to let the younger sister of one of the original players, join in in lieu of babysitting, while R2D2 is a min-maxed engineering twink whose sudden leg jets are the result of letting his player run a session while the GM is busy and the 'laser sword' was just the only thing the starting characters could afford until one of the players rationalised into the ultimate weapon.

A phrase is born.

The in-game narrative of the series runs through the six episodes of the series, each given a slightly different name from the film  – The Phantasmal Malevolence, The Silence of the Clones, Revelation of the Sith, A New Generation, The Enemy Let Slip and The Jedi Reloaded – while an accompanying meta-narrative follows the gaming group over a period of perhaps six years. 

Said group consists of a broad mix of gaming archetypes: Jim (Qui-Gon Jin, Padme Amidala, 'Han Solo'), is a gung-ho would-be master strategist, hindered by his inability to see the glaring holes in his plans(1); Ben (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Chewbacca), is the rationalist, always trying to argue advantages from circumstance(2). They are joined by Sally (Jar-Jar, C3PO), Ben's sister, an imaginative free spirit; Pete (R2D2), a calculating min-maxer with an overabundance of dice superstitions; and Annie (Anakin, Leia, Darth Vader), an actress and hardcore method roleplayer. Finally, Pete's nephew Corey (Luke), joins them for the original trilogy having only previously played computer RPGs. They can all be caricatures when needed for comic effect, but there will be things that any gamer can recognise.

In addition to the plot of the films, the comic also plays with common RPG tropes, such as frequent horrified commentary on grappling rules, and more general fictional archetypes through the medium of out of character commentary.

No plot survives contact with the players.

Among the comic's achievements are giving the prequel trilogy a coherent plot, making Anakin an involving character, keeping the meta-narrative as involving as the main - if these people were real, I would totes hang out with them, although I might be wary of committing to a campaign - and coining the never-before used phrase 'Jar-Jar, you're a genius!' It's also really funny, and often makes valid yet affectionate commentary on the original works.

The series spawned running gags – casting summon bigger fish, and the hints dropped each year about the games they have been playing in the interim, each based on a different film – and (almost) every 50 comics added a bonus page to a chain linked from episode 50, each presenting a page from the Comic Irregular's works in an alternate dimension(3). From A New Generation onwards, the writers worked less to explain or correct perceived flaws in the films, and more to create a genuinely continuous emotional arc from the prequel trilogy, for example by having Naboo and not Alderaan suffer destruction as a test of the Death Star, since that was a world that the players knew and were invested in. It also featured a Han Solo who was really a conman who killed the real Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and Han and Chewie as Imperial double agents, without actually derailing the plot at any point.

It turns out Greedo shot first.

And now, after ten years, the screen circle-wipes on the triumphant party after the Battle of Endor. The circle is now complete; those who went astray have been redeemed and those who engineered the straying - mostly Anakin - have been... Well, okay, maybe that's something for another time, since he's still knocking about as a Force Spirit. The Empire is defeated and the second Death Star... I'm sorry, Naboo Peace Moon has been destroyed. All or most is well with the galaxy, and it it's time to draw the curtain.

This is not the end, mark you; any more than it was the end of Star Wars. What's more, we won't have to wait nearly so long for Darths & Droids to continue. They have announced plans to begin Rogue One soon, and to continue doing the Star Wars Stories until they have a whole new main series trilogy to plot out. The end of The Jedi Reloaded is, however, a very significant milestone, and makes this a great time to get stuck in, beginning with The Phantasmal Malevolence, if you haven't read the comic before and have the time to read through around 1,520 comics.

(1) It is later revealed that he is a brilliant geophysicist who simply considers roleplaying to be an opportunity to switch his brain off for a while and go with whatever seems like a good idea at the time.

(2) Including the fact that a laser sword must be able to deflect a blaster bolt if there is any sense in the world.

(3) In the world of Darths & Droids they were working on a Harry Potter comic, in the world of which they were working on one based on The Sound of Music and so on.

End of an Era - Bad Machinery

Once upon a time there was a comic named Bobbins, which followed the adventures of a group of friends working at a local listings magazine in the West Yorkshire city of Tackleford. It was… 

End of an era, take 1.

Okay, honestly, it was probably a miracle of the internet that Bobbins got off the ground and a testament to writer-illustrator John Allison's perseverance that it made it through the difficult early period when the illustrator part of his job title was more a function of necessity than of ability. Like many webcomics it took a while for the strip to get its art style in hand, and Allison has bounced back and forth between hand drawn, computer drawn and something inbetween pretty much ever since, with Bad Machinery perhaps his first comic to adopt a consistent style from beginning to end. 

Bobbins ran from late 1998 to early 2002. Leading character Holly West vanished in the Himalayas and returned an unrepentant bitch queen to run the City Limits magazine into the ground. The magazine folded, the cast were laid off and they stepped aside to allow minor characters Tessa Davies and Rachel Montford-Dukakis, journalism students on a course run by former City Limits editor Len Pickering, to shine in their own spin off, Scary Go Round from June 2002.

You could be forgiven for expecting
the comic to be about these characters.

By October, however, Tessa and Rachel were sharing the limelight with Bobbins veterans Shelley Winters, Amy Chilton and Tim Jones. Admittedly, Shelley was dead and revived as a zombie, but you can't keep a good ginger down and she was soon sporting a sassy new pulse; and not the only member of the cast to whom this would happen. Tessa and Rachel disappeared for a while, returning as worshippers of a satanic figure until one of them went mad with power and the other allowed the cult they had formed to burn her in a wicker vole or something. Reminiscing about Scary Go Round is like what I imagine remembering a drug-fuelled wilderness period might be like; you're never entirely sure what really happened. Bobbins-born slacker Ryan died and came back, Amy and Shelley travelled back in time via teapot and gazumped Lennon and McCartney's songwriting credits, and supersexy, semi-competent superspy Fallon Young was definitely there, battling international crime with a sassy look and a Chinese burn.

End of an era, take 2.

We met younger characters via Shelley's sister Erin, including Dark Esther – later the star of Allison's actually published as a comic comic Giant Days – and the Boy (son of the Mother and the Father, despite 'the Boy' being confirmed as a nickname; apparently the Family is hella supportive.) Thanks to Jekyll and Hyde potions and an attempt to sell a difficult class to the devil to help pad the school coffee budget (I was teaching at the time; I'm not sure sticking the 'what goes on teacher training day stays on teacher training day' comic up in the staff room went down so well,) Erin sort of ended up as the Queen of Hell. An exchange trip went perilous when the Boy thwarted an attempt by a Wendigo to terrorise France in the guise of an Easter Bunny with the help of the briefly-retired Easter Bell (you see what I mean, right?)

The even younger characters Shauna Wickle and Lottie de Groote featured in a late comic. They were girl detectives, but were pipped to the post in solving a school mystery by boy detectives Linton, Sonny and Jack, despite the boys not appearing in most of the story. Scary Go Round wrapped in September 2009 and new comic Bad Machinery took up the mantle ten days later, following the feud of these intrepid young mystery solvers as they navigated the perils of big school (with some indirect assistance from reformed slacker-turned-inspirational teacher Ryan Beckwith.)

Again, you could be forgiven to thinking that Jack was going
to be the lead.

And now, in April 2017, Bad Machinery has finally wrapped. There were mystery beasts and giant flying walnuts; occult shenanigans and human douchebaggery; love and rivalry; mods and rockers; an inner city grammar school with at least two Selkies in simultaneous attendance; and an attempt to get banned from every municipal swimming pool in the UK by performing all of the prohibited acts on the pool safety poster in a single swimming session. The comic has been brightening my weekdays for more than seven years – with intermittent breaks for Scary Go Round and Bobbins revivals, the original Giant Days strips, and the story of how Erin came back from Hell at least twice and the Boy (now going by his actual name, Eustace) joined Tackleford's exclusive club for those who have actually died and come back by one means or another – but the adventures of the Mystery Solvers are over.

Well, that is to say that they will no longer be front and centre. In 2002 we thought we were losing Shelley and co. and they couldn't stay away for six months. Against pretty much all expectation, Ryan turned out to have trained as a teacher and was in Bad Machinery almost from the off, and even more unexpectedly, Amy turned out to have married him, and later gave Shauna a job. Erin Winters returned from Hell the first time before Bad Machinery kicked off and has been a thorn in the Mystery Girls' side (and source of befuddled admiration for the Mystery Boys) since.

What this means for the future is that I would be most surprised if this is the last we ever heard of Shauna and Lottie, or Mildred, or the Mystery Boys, or Little Claire never turned up again as we march forward into a bold new era of All-New Scary Go Round.

End of an era.

The End of an Era - The Adventures of Doctor McNinja

In 2004, Christopher Hastings began publishing The Adventures of Doctor McNinja online. A few years back, he started getting professional comic-writing gigs from Marvel, and about a year ago announced that he would be winding up the story of Doctor McNinja.

As his name suggests, Doctor McNinja is a doctor from a family of ninjas (specifically, Irish Ninjas(1), although his mother is Jewish by birth,) who, having abandoned the family business of assassination and pursuing memetic fueds with pirates, heals the sick and fights - and also, if we're honest, commits a lot of - crime in the city of Cumberland, Maryland(2). Initially facing an eclectic gaggle of threats such as copyright trolling fast food clown Donald McBonald, 'American Ninja' Frans Rayner, velociraptor-riding palaeontologists, vengeful pirates and Dracula, he eventually found his nemesis in the form of King Radical, a super cool crimelord intent on making the world a more radical place.

After travelling into space and into the future with Cumberland's mayor, astronaut and chrononaut Chuck Goodrich, and thwarting Radical's attempts to merge the world with his own home in the Radical Lands, McNinja entered into a final duel with his enemy as King Radical managed to become President and used the power of his office to exact petty and extravagant revenge on those who had thwarted him over the years(3). It is a fight that will cost McNinja his clone brother, his family and his very identity; and perhaps his life.

Ninjas can't grab you if you're on fire. Tru fax.

The twelve years of The Adventures of Dr McNinja is probably as textbook an example of Cerebus Syndrome as you'll find without having to read past the first couple of volumes of Cerebus itself and into the crazy stuff(4). It runs from a weird little comic about a doctor who is also a ninja to something with a coherent arc plot and goes to some pretty dark places by the end. And yes, it's still about a doctor who is also a ninja, who fights a man who wears a crown and rides a motorbike and dreams of filling the world with dinosaur people and introducing proper, radical tennis, whose secretary is a gorilla named Judy, who studied with a clone of Benjamin Franklin and whose youthful ward has a resplendent moustache. It's been a real blast, and if you haven't done so already, maybe you should check out the archive; it's substantial, yet finite, and that's not something you can say of many webcomics.

Also, he does a team up with Axe Cop.

(1) While the 'Mc' prefix is more commonly associated with Scots names, the two countries share a lot of cultural roots, and 'O'Ninja' just doesn't pop the same way.
(2) By long-standing agreement, the local police won't pursue him for any crime as long as he can reach his office and call 'base'.
(3) Well, this feels ominously prescient now.
(4) Cerebus Syndrome is when a work gets more serious over time, rather then the author having a complete psychological collapse, although that also happened with Cerebus the Aardvark.