Webcomic Review
67th Avenue
"Duck Amuck"

Are we Sinfest yet?

Actually, no.

67th Avenue grows on you when you figure out what it is really. It boasts of being a 'Seinfeld' of webcomics- not the proudest claim to anyone who is annoyed by Seinfeld- and it superficially resembles Sinfest in having an egomanaical little guy with a cute sidekick (which in turn was done by Calvin and Hobbes, so let's not have anyone getting too full of originality here.)

But Jamie is not really Calvin, or Slick. The way 67th Avenue unfolds, he's not Seinfeld either- in a cartoon universe, Jamie is not restricted to the interactions of a Jerry Seinfeld- and while like Seinfeld he is unrepentant and learns nothing, he's better than Seinfeld in that he's not the king of the losers with a stand-up soapbox to pose on.

Jamie's a better thing than that. Jamie is Daffy Duck.

There's one particular moment where the strip caught me by surprise and truly won me over. Jamie's been made the subject of a TV show, and has cartoonishly fought against this fate in every way that he could, getting nothing for his pains but a 67-story drop down a chute into a pile of garbage. Finally, he takes to prancing around his apartment naked. All the viewers are appalled and tune right out, he's won, and his not-girlfriend comes rejoicing, to tell him they've canceled the show. She says, "Your plan worked!"

Offended look. "'Plan?' What plan?"

This is where 67th Avenue lives: it's not that Jamie is a jerk, though he is. It's not that he's bitter and cranky and unlikeable, though he tries to be all of that. It's that he's like Daffy Duck in the classic short, 'Duck Amuck'. That's the one where Daffy's afflicted by a cartoon universe out to get him, and remains totally Daffy Duck no matter what's done to the cartoon. It's neither the character or the world alone that's so funny- it's the way that he remains totally his obnoxious self no matter what happens.

With the 'plan' gag, I was totally expecting Jamie to gloat that his nakedness plan had worked- and suddenly, instead of being a big victory, it's a final humiliation, one that makes Jamie really cranky and annoyed.

Not all of the comic is constantly hilarious- it's tough to maintain this sort of thing- but you have to make big allowances for that Duck Amuck spirit. You really do get the sense that anything can happen, and if you're open to being surprised, you may well end up surprised in surprising ways.

There's a classic Disney movie that contains a segment about the 'Aracuan bird', which is so crazy it does absolutely anything. Sure enough, the bird ignores all laws of common sense and visual logic, and runs amok across even the format of the movie, playing with the borders of the screen. Jamie doesn't do that, but the gag for one strip involves Jamie going "OH SHIT"- except that it's censored, but not by asterisks or "..."- no, he yells it all right, but the word balloon catches on the edge of the panel and is literally split in half so you can only see the SH and the rest of it went behind the page. I've seen word balloons go in front of a panel, and behind a panel, but I never saw a panel edge as sharp as that- Jamie better watch out for those panel borders if he knows what's good for him.

I'm not sure where the strip is going- after its bizarre, cartoony beginning, it seemed to slow down and calm down, updating infrequently and not pushing the bizarreness. Not a good move- the best moments of the ensuing vaguely serious story arcs were when something got incongruous and bizarre- like a flashback with a martial artist and his sensei sharing a solemn bit of wisdom about the fight not truly being about who wins- and then both of them bursting into hysterical laughter and blowing away the apparent point of the sequence.

You can even check in on the strip with a sort of visual litmus test- if Jamie's drawn throughout with just circles or ovals for eyes, the strip is idling. If Jamie's eyes are cut by straight lines, with the angles making a facial expression (anger, dejection, etc) things are starting to heat up. If we have little lines coming off the eyes, or his mouth is so exaggerated it goes right off the face- it's showtime!

That's because the best humor of this comic comes from that Daffy Duck place- where the world can be a very, very treacherous place, and where Jamie's fending for himself and tending to strike out every time. In that way it is like Seinfeld- Jamie doesn't win, the best he can do is be undaunted, or at least hysterical and explosive and really emotionally noisy. We've got this little, annoying guy with huge blank black eyes- when he's not acting up a storm, that's faintly off-putting, but there's something compelling about it when he really gets worked up, in pretty much any way.

And that's when he's least like Seinfeld. Seinfeld has a streak of Bugs Bunny in him- he's expecting to stand in for the viewer. Tammy makes a better Bugs Bunny, as she's cute enough that you tolerate such superiority. Jamie is best when he's pure Daffy Duck- perhaps full of himself, but dragged forcibly into the situation and caring desperately about it, but helpless. He's gotta be hooked- if he's not really in control but still totally engaged, whether it be gloating or lamenting or panicking or raging, that's when the comic is really funny. If he's just watching stuff happen and giving it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down in the manner of a Seinfeld passing judgement on Seinfeld's other colorful characters, it fizzles.

The funny thing is, Jamie the character would clearly LIKE to be that guy. So much so, that Jamie the comic creator even puts blurbs like 'the Seinfeld of webcomics' prominently on the site. But don't be fooled, he's not- potentially, he's something funnier.

And here's hoping Jamie the comic maker learns better- if he's looking for another better pull quote, I'm going to suggest "the ill-fated duck of webcomics". But only if Jamie the cartoon character isn't the least amused by the reference, is made to paste the new pull quote over the old one himself, falls off the navigation bar into the comments section and hurts himself, revealing that he's hung onto the new pullquote and it's ripped in the middle so the part that's still pasted up reads "the ill-f          uck of webcomics", causing other characters to scream and cover the offending advertisement with their bodies.

Okay, maybe not.

But in 67th Avenue at its best, it COULD happen.

Here's to more Jamie, more often, and more ill-fated. Jamie character's loss is certainly Jamie comicmaker's gain.