Hell on Wheels
by Rob McCarthy and Shaennon Garrity
webcomic: http://www.howcomics.com/
Rating: Neat-O
My online pal Rob McCarthy finally has a website, or at least the beginnings of one, with his comic Hell on Wheels, illustrated by the inimitable Shaennon Garrity of Narbonic fame. I like it, and I don't think it's just because I've known Rob (at least as an online presence on Compuserve's Comics and Animation forum) almost since I began Amused in Review, so I can clearly hear his "voice" in it. I do wish he'd stop trying to batter down the doors to Marvel and do, if not more comedy like Hell on Wheels, at least superhero work using his own or public domain characters. I mean, why obsess over the Yellow Claw, when Fu Manchu is in the public domain? Unfortunately, I'm sure that Rob could tell me: Rob knows the ins and outs of Golden Age Marvel comics the way Mark Waid knows Silver-Age DC, and that, my friends, is scary. Be that as it may, I want more Rob McCarthy material, and I don't want to have to wait until some twit at Marvel "gives him a break."
On the surface, Hell On Wheels is about the trials, tribulations, and rare triumphs of a wannabe comic book writer, who happens to be disabled and wheelchair-bound. I say "happens", because although much of the strip revolves around his disability, it's not a high concept strip in the sense of being about how his disability affects his comic book writing aspirations. HoW, though, gets more complicated than that rapidly (maybe too rapidly) as it goes meta--it involves how the protagonist, Dave is actually a comic strip character, by another wheelchair-bound writer named Dave and his cartoonist partner Norb and her talking gerbil...but they don't know that they're all actually characters of ("wheelchair guy") Rob and cartoonist Shaennon. Clear?
I know it sounds like the Seven Deadly Sins of Webcomics smooshed in a blender and stuck on Frappe, and that's before you get to Dave's creation "AppleButter Man", but it's quirky, bitter, and funny, and that's worth something.