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Wait no

There we go

Planets have gone missing, and Leadfoot is on a mission to find them! But things get a little complicated when she joins up with a group of people who are on the blacklist of a terribly powerful Space Monster, known as The Queen (of the whole world, no less!)

https://tapas.io/series/BACKLASH

So, Tapastic. It really doesn’t like me saving images for use in reviews, so this’ll be a bit more image-light than normal. Probably shorter, too. It also won’t have a liveblog-type section, since I had to read it during my lunch break at work to meet the deadline. Anyway, that out of the way.

Backlash is a pretty neat comic about a group of misfits in a bar who have to save the world from an evil queen. There’s quite a bit of demons and celestials and comets, but that feels more like a way to stand out and justify more varied character designs than this being a deep science fiction exploration of the concept of a sentient black hole. You’d think the above page, where Laura declares she’s in fact a comet in human form, would be a big spoiler, but…enh. It’s just some set dressing to make the ride look nice.

Luckily, the ride feels nice as well. The pacing, a common problem for webcomics, is quite good here. The first chapter establishes all the major players, the premise, Laura’s goals, and the weird “Fuck it here’s a tengu” nature of the world while also clocking in at a brisk ~30 pages (displayed as one long page).

The characters are quirky and have fun interactions, but never veer too far into “wacky”. And while the plot has a lot of weird-ass elements, I never felt lost or confused by them (in part because they don’t seem to matter much. Why is Eduardo a demon? Looks cool). And while I can’t say there’s any part of this comic that blew my fucking mind, everything is consistently executed at a level a bit north of complicated. Plus I like this style of semi-surrealism. I do have some nitpicks, though.

Some nitpicks, though

Alias totally forgets he’s carrying Laura in the second panel here, even though he’s still doing it in subsequent panels. WAY TO FUCK UP VISUAL CONTINUITY, BITEGHOST, JESUS.

And I’m not particularly fond of how the Queen’s Goons dress in such an obviously Nazi-ish way, especially when they’re not even Nazi analogues and are just bad guys with goals not at all comparable to nazi-ism. It seems a little edgelordy to me.

Otherwise, it’s just a good comic. Not a comic I’m going to shake you and tell you to drop everything and start reading now now now, but one I read through all 200ish pages off pretty quickly without my mind wandering. I actually am going to give this comic a numerical review score: It’s a solid 8/10. If you think it sounds interesting, you’ll probably like it. If not, you’ll probably give it a miss.