The Door

I guess going off the “even bad publicity is still publicity” policy, I have yet again been asked to review a comic by the comic’s actual author, fully aware of how I tend to treat the comics I review and, in fact, seeming to count on it. This week I’ll be looking at The Door, by Hunchedbunch (as far as I’m aware, it’s just one person). Hunchy got clever and had me review her older comic, so no matter how mean I am she can just say, “well, that was my old work, and I’ve learned a lot since then”. You’ve won this round, Ms. Bunch, but we’ll see what the future brings…

Anyway, with that bit of awkwardness out of the way, we have The Door. This comic is actually more of a short story than a series or anything. A short story that takes 50 pages to tell a pretty simple tale, but whatever. We get things started with some painfully awkward art and our introduction to main character Kay, stealing a loaf of bread to show off how poor he is. Yes, really. It doesn’t take him long during his run from… the law? The baker? We never actually see who’s chasing him, or if he’s even being chased. What does happen is two random jerks start accosting him. Sure, there’s already, presumably, one or more people he’s stolen from who he has a legitimate reason to confront, but screw that: here’s two dudes. This does, however, introduce one of the strengths of this comic: Hunchedbunch is aware that comics are a visual medium, and doesn’t insert words if she doesn’t need to. We don’t need any smartass comments from these two jerks: you can tell by their expressions that they’re trying to steal Kay’s ill-gotten bread, and that Kay doesn’t want to give it to them. Obviously, this leads to a fight, and Kay gets shot. Yes, those two seriously decided to shoot a child to steal his bread. I’m not saying that’s not dramatic, but isn’t it a bit excessive? It’s not like Kay has superpowers or anything: he’s just some street urchin, and those dudes are almost twice his height. If I wanted a 10 year old kid’s bread, I assure you I could get it from him without resorting to firearms. I’m not even that strong—I’m a comic artist for God’s sake! Gotta give Hunch credit again: the actual shooting isn’t shown, and its somehow more poignant for it. There’s a lot of potential in the actual execution of sequential art: it’s just marred by inexperience and forced writing.

So after taking a bullet to the gut Kay finds himself in the care of Maria, who tends to have that awkward, cat-like smile on her face more than she probably should. That page also introduces a recurring annoyance in the comic: a panel with nothing but text and a white flare over a black background. Why? I guess it does give the term more significance, but it’s just awkward, especially in other pages later where it’s not always reserved for important phrases. I’m assuming she’s rich because she’s got this mansion… I think. We never really see the whole thing, so for all I know it’s just 5 or six rooms. She also has a… butler? Yeah, probably a butler. We never actually see him do any butling, but he definitely seems like he should butle. He calls her “Lady Maria” a couple times, which is the only reason I didn’t assume he was her boyfriend or brother or something. Anyway, he doesn’t seem to do anything aside from harass the small boy Maria adopted. For that matter I have no idea what Maria does for a living either, or what time period this story is set in. Do we still have adorable street urchins stealing loaves of bread in the modern day? Maybe in London… That page I linked earlier said “present day”, so I’m gonna go with that.

At about 17 pages in we finally get something resembling a plot: Kay finds a door. A fucking shiny door. Of course it’s locked, though it takes about five more pages before we get to some kind of explanation of why the room is worth naming the comic after. It seems Maria’s father kept some sort of secret locked in there, but he died before he could give Maria the key. Thus Kay vows to fulfill Maria’s wish to discover her father’s lost secret. Thus begins an epic adventure as Kay journeys in search of the key to the door. There are many trials and tribulations, and the tale is fraught with mystery and intr—nah, I’m just messing with you. He just enters through the unlocked exterior window. What, seriously!? It wasn’t even locked!? Good god, how lazy is Maria that she couldn’t get a ladder? It’s not like it’s 10 stories up: it’s on the second story! I guess her father’s dying secret wasn’t that big a deal to her. He’s there for all of a minute before finding the key to The Door. Wow. What a mystery. Then he hears someone messing with the door into the room, which he knows is locked, but still freaks out and leaves. Why? He openly expressed his intent to get into the room, and Maria approved. Is he afraid she’s gonna get pissed that he cheated by going in through the window? The next page picks up with Kay apparently unconscious and bleeding. Um… why? All we get is Kay announcing that the probably-butler tried to kill him, but we’re not given any indication of how. Whatever the case, Kay immediately sneaks out to find butler dude trying to get into the room, which he apparently has a key to. When confronted about it, Butler dude straight up loses his shit, and immediately assaults a 10 year old child for, reportedly, the second time in one night. Kay responds with an extremely sissy kick to the knee. Seriously, as far as can be seen, it barely connects. The butler must be even more of a wuss than originally suspected because that extremely pathetic assault is all Kay needs to escape. Throughout all this the butler is turning red with rage, but with the art style he just looks adorably rosey-cheeked and hi-larious.

It’s at this point that Maria walks in and immediately calls the cops. At this threat the butler… just kinda gives up. Seriously, he was willing to savagely beat a child to get into that room, and all it takes is one disapproving glare from Maria to turn him into a blubbering child. Um… yay? I mean, it’s nice that everything works out in the end, but couldn’t we get a bit more conflict out of this? Oh well, at least we get to see his brilliant parting words. Yes, he literally shouts NRR! as they’re carting his ass away. Awesome.

So, what’s behind the door? Just a room… or is it!? Kay, who spent all of a minute in there earlier in the day, has somehow immediately deduced that the book shelf slides out of the way to reveal a second locked door. When did the butler get a key to this room? It must have just been earlier that day: there’s no other reason he shouldn’t have found the other key and second door in any more time than that. So, what mysterious and endearing gift could a dying father have left for his beloved daughter? CASH, that’s what! Wait, isn’t Maria rich already? Well, now she’s more rich. Yay? So, what do you reward yourself with after discovering a literal treasure chest hidden in a closet? Fucking TOAST, that’s what! Oh well, at least they use the riches for something good: opening a shelter for children who have apparently lost their fingers in street-urchin related activities.

The art has a lot to be desired, but if you’ve clicked any of the links so far you’ll know that. It’s hard to really get angry about it, though, because it’s clear that Hunch is still learning: it’s not like some comics where the art is bad from misuse of skill or anything. It’s just amateur art, and honestly, not any worse than the kind of crap I drew when I first started drawing comics. The big part is the story, which manages to both be much longer than it needs to be while providing very little information. This whole thing should, frankly, be half as long as it is. If pressed I could compress the story bits to 15 pages. It’s almost half-way into the comic before any of the main “getting into The Door” plot really gets underway. I think it’s good that Hunch is trusting the audience to put together some of the details on their own, but this particular story is in desperate need of balance. There are a lot of plot details that are never addressed and just come out of nowhere, whereas in other places we’ve got an excess of mundane details that don’t contribute to the actual narrative.

At the end of the day what you end up with is a relatively solid, if predictable, mystery story. I think it’s pretty cool, actually, to see an honest-to-God short story presented as a webcomic: I just wish that it had more substance.