Why I Read: Autumn Bay

This “Why I Read” review is by guest contributor Neil Kapit, creator of the dystopian superhero comic Ruby Nation.  Thank you, Neil!

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He explains why he reads and enjoys the comic Autumn Bay, by Professor Etheric.

Synopsis:

Autumn Bay is a normal American city with an abnormal nature, in that the walls between dimensions have become paper thin. A malevolent cosmic trickster named Nesraiel appeared in the city, and following him are a torrent of other things monstrous and malevolent in nature. The comic follows a team of various soldiers, scientists, and other specialists who stand the best chance at understanding what’s going on and surviving it.

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How I Found It:

Author “Professor Etheric” is a regular at the Webcomic Underdogs forums, and I considered it my civic duty to check out their comic.  You can also find Autumn Bay on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and many more!

 

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Why I Like It:

Autumn Bay represents a quintessential webcomic for the internet, a place where there are no boundaries, constant activity, and a lot of things that’ll turn your mind inside out. It has a complex backstory, with its own wiki that chronicles the many characters and their histories. There’s a large cast but they all stay busy, trying to figure out the world in which they live and what they must do. While most stories follow a linear style of progression, going from point A to point B, Autumn Bay takes advantage of its dynamic setting and progresses laterally, with a lot of things happening at once.

The art does a great job establishing this setting. Characters are strongly defined and unique from each other, making it easy to recognize figures. Despite all the supernatural activity, most of the action is conveyed through dialogue, so it’s important that the art convey the subtleties of character expression. On this end, Autumn Bay delivers. Nesraiel’s malevolent mischeviousness, Dr. Decon’s discombobulated brilliance, the quasi-romantic tension between series leads Andrew Chapel and Marie-Ange Lebeau (they used to date, after all), and the profound dysphoria of Jack Bishop are all sold in a visually engaging and empathetic manner.

Jack Bishop—or Jackie Bishop, as she’s currently known—deserves special mention. She used to be Lieutenant Jack Bishop, career military-man of 25 years’ service, until Nesraiel gave him a second chance (implying that he would die of liver failure in a couple years, so it’s not 100% evil) by transforming him into a 16-year-old girl. Having the body of a young woman might seem like a dirty fantasy for some men, but Jackie’s situation is played dramatically. The world is much more dangerous now that she’s in a smaller and weaker body, and her reputation as a badass has been tarnished due to her new form and people not taking her seriously. It’s clearly a painful situation, and it remains to be seen how well Jackie will (or won’t) adjust to it. (Some of the information about Jackie’s struggles comes from her Q&A session with the readers, another example of how potently Professor Etheric interacts with their audience).

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What Could Be Done Better:

Due to its complex plot and cast, Autumn Bay is not an easy comic to get into. It is easy to lose track of who’s who and what’s going on, especially when updates rapidly switch from scene to scene and plotline to plotline. The Wiki, recap pages, and Q&A sessions help, but the amount of knowledge needed to get caught up could be potentially alienating to new readers. However, the webcomic is still relatively new, and its author might naturally get better at balancing what they want to convey to the reader with what the reader can actually understand.

 

Final Thoughts:

Autumn Bay a great metaphor for an information age society where overwhelming knowledge of what’s out there leads to confusion and panic, which is reinforced by the frequent background cameos of other webcomic characters. (The breakdown of the walls between realities is a brilliant plot device, because it literally allows other characters to just peer into Autumn Bay from the corners of their own stories). It is a difficult metaphor, but it is well worth the effort, and has the potentially to develop into something truly great.