There are few names more evocative of rock and roll than Tommy. It is fitting that the penwrite of Road Crew, at least shares the sound of that magical name. The Road Crew follows the unheralded members of music with jokes that are leaden and panels that are pointedly, not child-friendly. It is difficult to gauge the authenticity of the strip from my position behind a type-writer but it certainly feels accurate. Brooding with sophomoric permanence. Dark, interspersed with naked vixens. Opinionated, staunchly against singing drummers (applause). Full of music knowledge and no care for spelling. Characters that look foreign and strung out on… well everything one could be strung out on. In short, authentic to my visage of the rock and roll industry.

Though sometimes the figures look like zombies in drag, the comic makes Oprah appear unctuous; short of covering the paper in butyrin or muck, this is in itself impressive. Nauseating but impressive. If ever a anthropomorphic, visual dictionary is made of any one of these characters it could deno-illustrate ‘tool’. Kudus for use of Oprah as… well you just have to see it for yourself.

In the first Road Crew compellation, “Electric Ladyland”, you get to relive or experience for the first time (if you have been under a rock, Yanni fan maybe) the quick wit of the Road Crew. Callous disregard for sound quality with a hint of questionable paternity fills the pages which pick up and fall with a fast and furious pace. If you abide the adage “sex, drugs and rock and roll” you’ll love Road Crew, a fun filled romp throughout the back allies behind the behind-the-music. After reading Electric Ladyland you might need a tenuous shot and a bath though.

Getting these new comics can be such a joy. The biggest problem these kiddies have is a lack of staying power. They come out of the gate strong with some beautiful strips but then 30 strips in you have no idea what is going on or why this strip was created. Gag and journal strips are particularly victim to this problem because story arcs are not prevalent and people feel they need to funny all the time.

The latest comic, less than 100 strips, for me to review is later, watch the world end. Imagine Bunny meets A Softer World and those happen to be #3 and #1 on the site’s comic list. Darcie Frederick has started a strip with superb art and what I have found to be completely scattered writing. I’m going to admit up front that I don’t understand post- apocalyptic worlds, because I don’t get the idea of needing to start over. She describes it as an experiment where some things have changed, many have stayed the same. The world has the same places, same emotions, but far fewer people.

Each strip is presented as 1-3 panoramic strips (usually just one) with a title and sometimes some words in the strip. Over the past 59 strips there have been a smattering of characters, my favorite of which has been Simon the cat. This is the first problem. The best post-apocalyptic story ever written is “I am Legend” and there was one person in the entire serious. Isn’t the whole point to explore one person’s mind as they go crazy or one person running through the world meeting crazy people? In Later I don’t understand anything about the characters and I keep getting new ones thrown at me. On top of this there is very little written explanation for any of them. The only one that even comes close to having development is the man with the beard.

The art behind the strips is fantastic. It doesn’t look like the end of the world in so much as all the humans are and animals are gone. Almost like being on an alien world where animals never walked up out of the sea to feed on all the wonderfully detailed plants. It’s really kind of spooky, in a Vanilla Sky sort of way, and the comic could stand on it’s own if no words at all are ever used. Where I get lost is trying to match the title with strip, and then the verses thrown into every other one. Must of the time all three seem to be telling different stories and I get the impression I should read it 3 different ways while going through the archives.

What I would really like is to either get more information out of the site about what is going on or perhaps make a more obvious separation between everything. The titles, verses, and art can be disjointed but they should be consistent in that pursuit. If they mingle then they should always relate. If Darcie meant for all three to relate throughout the series then we have the main problem. She has tried to hard to extract too much meaning. The best strips in the entire comic are those with very little words or have words with very little art. Despite all this I have to say this is a brilliant comic that I’m glad has been around for a year.

The flow of suggestions for reviewing is pretty much constant. Some times it’s as high as one per day so you can imagine how many I have in the backlog. What many don’t realize is we don’t interview just any strip out there. Typically Midnight and The Geek pick one they’ve already been reading and like. That doesn’t mean they can’t read through a suggestion and put it on the show, but that’s some of the more rare circumstances.

To help stim the tide building up in our inbox I am slowly going to review this every week, but with a twist. A good number of these are not necessarily strips that I would like or go back to. Instead I will read through and point out what is good and what could use improvement. First on the list is Superfrat.

The story about a frat house full of super-powered brothers. Each brother with a different power as a result of a meteor hitting the house, but each one an archetype we all hate in fraternity brothers. At the beginning this strip starts strong, if not a little immaturely. There’s an arc over the pledges being forced to clean up an indestructible turd left in the toilet. Almost a neat way of telling the readers to not expect “just another superhero” comic.

From there it sort of goes down hill as we find each character are extreme versions of bad archetypes. Starting a strip unexpectedly left me a little upset to find everything else was what I would expect, from the pretty boy player, to the over zealous black panther descendent. We have the pot-head Rastafarian, beer guzzling slob, berkley freedom fighter, a goth so angst he follows every fashion, and the brainy but sexually repressed geek. By the time I made it to the end the only ones I liked were the president and the two pledges, but that may be because they were the only ones that required me to figure them out instead of guess from their art.

The strips strongest appeal was the art. The style is reminiscent of both the old school comics and newspapers, with enough maturity where I could probably recognize the comic outside the site. The arc with the pyramids was a good use of MPH and I thoroughly enjoyed the Dick Masterson in a weird “I hate this guy” sort of way. But it was during the pyramids arc that things start going down hill. Second panel of the second strip was an exact copy of the third panel of the previous strip. All they did was replace the words.

From that point on more and more artwork is reused to the point where I stop being able to tell what day I’m on. This becomes such a problem Tony and Chris begin to make fun of themselves with such strips as this. As it progresses it comes to the point where we lose all stories, and that’s where it finally recovers from it’s split personality. So from June 18th, 2007 to April 9th, 2009, I have no idea what’s going on. I’m so lost I almost couldn’t finish the strip. After the 9th, it becomes a once a day gag strip without any point, which is so much better then where it started then at least a place for it to park.

Advice would be to add a little more depth to the characters or stick to a specific subject for each static strip. For instance drug references stick to Mistah, politics to the invisible f’er, etc. The whole point of static strips is to be predictable to begin with but through the reader for a loop at the end. The whole spider trap trick.

Also stop regurgitating the same old comments from everyone else. At the very least take those and add you’re own at the end. The strip where Dick Cheney talks about Wolf Blitzer no longer being cool is so much better then putting Jon Stewart’s words down. Chances are most of the readers who are still around will have already heard it. Oh, and has Chris gone on vacation? Why are there so rarely any new art work any more?

Bottom line this strip starts well, gained a split personality, and recovered after spending some time in a round rubber room. Now that it has recovered it has potential to grow to a strong political satire strip. Only time will tell.