Why I Read: The Black Mudpuppy

Dan here, with another edition of “Why I Read.”  This week I’ll tell you why I read the webcomic The Black Mudpuppy by Ethan Kocak.

Synopsis:

The Black Mudpuppy is a hilarious adventure/romp, steeped in Aztec (and other) mythologies, and designed to be a lot of fun.  It follows the adventures of the banished/demoted Aztec god Xolotl, as he and his human friend Simon have adventures and try to do enough good for Xolotl to get his full godhood back.  This involves a fair amount of battling truly delightful bad guys like the Hitlersaurus, as well as meeting all sorts of mythological characters.

There are several different storylines finished, and Ethan is about to start doing something different by posting gag-a-day style stripes while working on the next storyline.  Should be exciting 🙂

How I Found It:

I originally discovered BMP thru the Webcomic Underdogs, but mostly now follow Ethan on Twitter for updates 🙂

Why I Like It:

Main reason: BMP is just dang funny.  Truly, Ethan is an inspiration for me in telling an action packed story while including as humor as possible.  Those of you who read The Demon Archives will recognize that we’re a little lacking in smiles and happiness most of the time.  So not only does BMP make me smile, snort, and sometimes even actually laugh at my computer screen, it does it while teaching me how to be a better writer.

I also really enjoy the episodic nature of the story.  Each chapter is it’s own self-contained storyline.  I could easily imagine it as an episode or two of a Saturday morning cartoon or something.  In fact, that may be a really good way to describe the BMP in general, as it has that sort of flavor to it.  The art, characters, writing, etc, are all kind of like a fun cartoon for adults 🙂  But yeah, back to the storylines, it’s nice that I don’t have to know the entire story archive in order to jump in and enjoy one of the later chapters.

I’m also really looking forward to the gag-a-day strips, which (from the few WIPs I’ve seen) are going to quite funny as well as educational (Ethan is always including sciency facts, especially about amphibians and other fun creatures).

So yeah, art is good, fun colors that reminds me of classic cartoons, characters and story are funny, overall it’s just a great comic.

Things I Think Could Be Better:

Not much here either.  BMP updates regularly, Ethan is very involved and present socially with his readers, and BMP educates and entertains.  Because it’ll make Delta-v happy I’ll say that Ethan could maybe self promote via TWC more.  Have a button for it on his site or something.  I do think that making some gag-a-day strips will be very good for BMP from a promotional aspect, as it will bring in more readers for the laughs who will stay for the stories.

One thing that might be nice: summaries and teaser images of the different chapter storylines on the archive page, so that it isn’t just a wall of links to different pages.

Closing Thoughts:

BMP is a very fun comic to read, but I think it’s criminally underappreciated and deserves a larger audience.  But! You can fix that, by clicking on over and giving it a read through 🙂