Brent P. Newhall's Blog

One of my favorite webcomics, North World, had a guest strip today by Nick Daniel of 70 Seas, so I decided to check out 70 Seas.

It’s got a unique art style, and I mean well by that. Heads are mostly spheres, colors are bright but clear, everything is hand-drawn (including the lettering), and the artist has a thus-far-flawless sense of panel composition and timing. The art style appears to be a fusion of manga, furry, experimental American comics, and Vinnie Veritas.

Note that there’s some strong language here and there.

Either way, I like the story and the characters, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Every time I try to write about Loading Ready Run, I end up with a dry essay. Which is the antithesis of Loading Ready Run.

LRR is an online comedy team. Which immediately conjures up images of college-age guys making cheap videos and desperately trying to be funny; folks who see Saturday Night Live and think, “That’s easy!”

Ironically, LRR’s videos are cheap, but they’re also funny. Some of them are absolutely perfect; I’ve re-watched It’s Very Simple and Halo: The Future of Combat many times and am consistently floored at how well they’re executed.

LRR’s got about a dozen regular cast members, and about that many more occasional contributors. They post a new video every week, almost always a sketch a few minutes long. They have a few themes that they occasionally return to, but those rarely amount to more than three videos.

Then they did something interesting.

After posting videos every week for years, they felt a need to grow. So they created “Commodore Hustle.”

How to describe this? Okay, in creating several hundred short comedy videos, the cast members inevitably made videos in which they played, essentially, themselves. But just as inevitably, they were playing dramatized versions of themselves. Pushed to extremes. In reality, Paul isn’t quite as single-mindedly geeky as the “Paul” you see in videos.

So they decided to create an ongoing video series starring these dramatized versions of themselves. They’re essentially making a movie, in 15-minute segments of inter-related sketches about themselves working on their videos and generally dealing with life.

Which was fine and funny for the first few segments. Some of it’s bizarre, some of it well-written, some relies on editing.

Then around about episode 5, it got really interesting. They developed a villain—who plays his role perfectly—as a frustrated comedy writer who works at a video store and wants to Take Them Down. It’s evolving into a serial, really, something that I look forward to watching more of.

And they keep posting their regular videos every week, too, so they keep fresh with that.

Awesome to see folks build and develop their skills, and grow into creating something remarkable. They’re an inspiration.

(Warning: I haven’t been watching LRR recently, so likely they’ve finished Commodore Hustle or gone in a completely new direction or summat.)