Clown Corps
Creator: Joe Chouinard
Available: clowncorps.internet
Review By Masha Zhdanova
A couple of months in the past, a hilarious Frasier and Columbo crossover comedian was going round on Twitter, notable for its pitch-perfect characterization and hilarious cartoon stylization of the long-lasting solid. The comic, titled “I HEAR THE BLUES A-KILLIN’”, was posted in 4 components on Twitter by its creator, Joe Chouinard to nice acclaim. But this isn’t a evaluate of that comedian. My enjoyment of Joe Chouinard’s crossover fancomic prompted me to take a look at his ongoing longform webcomic Clown Corps, linked in his bio.
Clown Corps, identical to “I HEAR THE BLUES A-KILLIN’”, demonstrates an unimaginable understanding of comedic timing, caricature, and snappy banter. Unlike the minicomic, nevertheless, Clown Corps can also be stuffed with dynamic, intense action sequences, beginning proper from the opening chapter. Clown Corps follows the adventures of Mary McBell, an clever and gifted thief expert in a number of martial arts who’s apprehended by the titular Clown Corps when a theft goes mistaken. After saving the lifetime of the trainee clown bringing her to justice, McBell is obtainable a alternative between jail and turning into a scholar at Clown College, main her to hitch this colourful and thrilling new world. Unbeknownst to the clowns, a darker drive is focusing on their crime-fighting group…
This webcomic is a visible delight. Each character is designed thoughtfully, with their totally different clowning routines reflecting their personalities and the way they method clowning. Chouinard is aware of when to magnify the artwork right into a extra cartoony model and the place to tug again for max emotional impression. The fourth-wall jokes and references to the comics medium intensify the artifice of the clown performances, and draw consideration to the truth that the world the characters exist in isn’t fairly as reasonable as our personal. They are additionally very humorous.
As hilarious as Clown Corps could also be, the comedian can also be able to being extra critical. Chouinard isn’t unaware of the issues with legislation enforcement and the authorized system, and the gradual corruption of the Clown Corps from emergency response crew to personal safety and safety for large enterprise is a recurring throughline in the story. As Binky places it in chapter 2, “there’s something unsettling about watching the firefighters become the cops.” The characters are all good, self-aware individuals in a foolish world, who wield humor with as a lot precision because the pies they throw. Mustard’s happy-go-lucky nature contrasts with Binky’s stoicism, however when push involves shove, she’s able to placing all jokes apart to concentrate on the risk in entrance of her. Knowing when to be critical and when to be humorous, when to make a intelligent quip and when to let the action shine, is an extremely highly effective ability to have as a cartoonist, and Chouinard does it masterfully all all through.
The comedian is, sadly, a sufferer of Webcomic Pacing: the strain to make every particular person web page passable by itself can result in some scenes dragging a bit because of the necessity of together with some sort of “beat” or punchline on each web page. After practically 400 pages and 5 chapters, there may be nonetheless clearly rather more story to go, and plenty of extra threads that may be explored in future chapters. But whether or not these characters and subplots will really be adopted up on stays to be seen. Nevertheless, the originality of the humor makes up for any pacing inconsistencies.
Clown Corps is a hilarious, well-drawn, action-packed webcomic about clowns who battle crime with teleporting pies, and the various factors that may push marginalized individuals from one aspect of the legislation to the opposite. A robust solid of interesting characters who bounce off one another nicely make this comedian simple to binge and skim as an ongoing story.
Read extra comics evaluations at The Beat!
Masha Zhdanova is a part-time editor at The Anime Herald, the manga evaluations editor at Women Write About Comics, and a contributor at Shelfdust and Publisher’s Weekly. She likes webcomics, manga, and graphic novels. When she’s not writing about comics, she’s drawing comics or working at her hometown bookstore.
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