Digital Inks

    Shane Woodis explores the wonderful world of web comics!

It's Finished

    Michael Re takes a look back at genre tv series that are over.

Memoirs of a Jaded Otaku

    Jonathan takes time from his other projects to relate what his critical eye sees in the world of manga!

Desert Island Guide to

    Jacobo Roman makes observations on all kinds of genre goodies.

Comic Book Confidential

    Anthony Zicari gives us his take on the world of comic books!

Subscribe

  • Subscribe

Oglaf

Posted by Shane Woodis | January 4, 2010 .

There are a lot of comics that rely on sex to get attention. Hell, most advertisements I did for my own webcomic just focused on one of the female characters wearing less clothes than usual. Still, to look at some of my reviews some would think that I just don’t like sex, or at the very least I think less of people who use it. Which I suppose is true, to a degree: I don’t like when people try to hide bad writing with sex. It’s less of an issue with something like porn because, honestly, we’re only there for spank material.

So, what do you get if you have a comic that’s honest about its intent to be a porn but actually has great writing? Then you’ve got Oglaf, a humor/sex comic created by the mysterious Bodil Bodilson. Seriously, I have no idea who makes this comic. I’ve heard it’s a woman, at least. Unless it’s actually a woman named Bodil Bodilson, but I kind of doubt it. I guess it doesn’t matter, really.

In case you didn’t see the warning earlier, this comic is very NSFW, but for the most part In Genre is a pretty SFW site (the occasional porn review not withstanding). What’s a reviewer to do? Well, that brings me to what I really wanted to talk about this comic. Even though there is a huge focus in the comic on sex, the pages that are perfectly clean are still very well drawn and often hilarious. How could this? Could there be an artist who can use sex as a setting to enhance humor yet doesn’t rely on crudeness and sex as a replacement for actual writing? It seems we have found such an artist. You’ll just have to take my word for it on the naughty stuff (or, y’know, go to the site yourself if you’re 18 years old or whatever), but I’ll provide actual links to the SFW stuff that comes up.

The comic begins with what is ostensibly our main hero. Of course, this is one of those “variety show” style comics with no overarching plot or anything, but the first character to show up is, so far, the one that recurs most frequently. As far as I’m aware he’s just known as Apprentice, and the first we see of him he’s masturbating furiously, when suddenly his ejaculate grows eyes and runs away. The comic didn’t really hit its stride right out of the gate; the art is great in these, but there’s a lot more setup here than in later strips. It takes 5 pages for the reveal of why that happened: it turned out the “Mistress” has enchanted his semen to alert her every time he masturbates, because he’s now forbidden to do so. This leads to the reveal that he’s now assigned the job of “oiling down the hot bitches”, which means applying truffle oil to a pair of succubi. In these early stages the comic had a greater focus on the sex, eschewing actual jokes for a couple of strips just to show the succubi getting covered in oil. For whatever reason, the author seemed to enjoy the humor aspect of the comic more, because after this point pretty much every strip ends with a solid punchline.

With its open-ended fantasy world, Oglaf has a lot of room to move around with funny ideas. In some other series a sudden change of focus on an elderly wizard transforming himself into a leather catsuit in the hopes that a hot girl will just wander by and put him on would be… well, just read that sentence again. But in this comic it just works. I actually feel a bit guilty at this point because I have a tendency to really pick apart the comics I read, but I’m struggling to come up with complaints on this one. I’ve been trying to look for a page with art I don’t like, but I haven’t been able to find one this whole time. This might have something to do with being a weekly comic: when you’ve got an entire week to work on every page, you can make each one very clean and solid. As a reader, though, I can honestly say I wouldn’t mind if the pages were of a bit lower quality if it meant we could get more than one a week.

God, this is a boring review. It’s so much easier to rant about something I didn’t like. There’s a lot in this series I’d like to talk about, but in that case you might as well just go read it yourself. The comic’s at this weird point where there’s not enough of a plot for me to complain about any logical fallacies that occasionally come up. I’ll force myself through something more horrendous for next week; for now, I hope you’re not anywhere where you’ll get in trouble for reading a comic about Robin Hood asking for a blowjob. If you’re at home, read Oglaf now. You’ll thank me for it later.

Posted under Contributor Content, Digital Inks | Like this article? Subscribe to our RSS feed

Leave a Comment

If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.

You must be logged in to post a comment.