Webcomic Review
E and Mu
"Planet Claire"

"She came from Planet Claire..."

Sometimes you find yourself liking something that makes no sense at all. You're filled with glee, for no comprehensible reason, and you know perfectly well that it makes no sense but you don't care.

Meet E and µ.

You see, the glee has already begun. The second letter there is 'mu'. It's also the symbol for microfarads (or part of it). It's a greek letter, which is high-ASCII and I have absolutely no assurances that I can even write the NAME of this comic in such a way that people out there in web-land will understand. And that somehow feels utterly appropriate.

The about page is totally blank. If you select the text, you get a small helpless diatribe with the comic creator explaining basically that he can't explain himself. He's trying, but no useful words come out, and when you go to the trouble of reading it you're not much further on than you were when you were looking at the empty black page.

This is the guy who wanted to update several times a day. Why not? He seems to be able to do these comics as easily as exhaling, provided he doesn't get hung up in trying to make them make sense to anyone outside his tortured brain. All these things are a perfect case study in how to make a useless, masturbatory comic entirely about how useless it is. Why, then, does E and Mu work?

Because it does, somehow. You can't expect every single one to be awesome because that's rather contrary to the spirit of the enterprise. You can't make much of the story because there isn't one. What, then, is left that makes this a good comic?

The best way I can explain it is through using the B-52s as an example, because E and Mu reminds me of nothing so much as early B-52s, and it clearly came from Planet Claire too. I think it's still there. Mind you, on Planet Claire no-one has a head, and on Planet E and Mu sometimes no-one has a body, but the resemblance is still striking.

Here's the secret- it's about refining the nonsense, honing the style. The B-52s had a gloriously clean, chromed, angular sound, very empty except for pointy bits of weirdness poking out, all exactly right. This comic is just the same way. Just looking at it is delightful. Everybody in the comic is a strange sort of hieroglyph, but they're great looking squiggles with a sumi-e japanese brushstroke quality- and better still, the text in the strip is exactly the same way- it's got exactly the same look as the squiggles. It's incredibly loose, but if you've ever tried to ink with a brush you know how tricky this is to do for a novice- we have some sort of skilled brush inker, choosing a strangely arbitrary set of self-imposed rules for the comic, and it's the virtuosity of the brush handling that gives the strip its visual appeal.

Again, it's like B-52s: stark, angular, deceptively simple, and it just clicks somehow. In some ways the text is even greater to look at than the figures- it manages that crazy loose quality while still being absolutely readable at all times.

But, what does that text say?

"That's a great photo of you. Your mother should put that one in the newspaper when you go missing".

"What do you like most about your job?" "It's all pretty good. I meet lots of people, I get to travel, but best of all put me in your mouth." "Sorry?" "Put me in your mouth and flick me with your tongue."

"I thought so. But I've forgotten now. That's so wasteful."

"Who me?" "Yes you, Mr. Pipe. How dare you be so hollow and undefined in length."

"Where is reality?" "I think I see some there." "Quick, perceive it."

"Remember, you only exist because you haven't been destroyed." "OK, hang on, I really want to write that down."

On and on- you never get used to it. Yes, sometimes there are actual gags- one strip has the squiggle lecturing another thing, "Don't talk to me about money. I'm poor. I don't talk to you about significance." but far more often, the words just have no context whatsoever- except that, as you read them, your mind tries to give them a context.

There's a type of non-sequitur humor where you make a point of setting up a gag in such a way that you spring nonsense on people, and make them laugh because their attempts to complete the joke just implode violently. I've got a favorite joke from the old British radio comedy, "The Goon Show", where the characters are supposedly doing a History For Schools lesson, with one asking questions and the other answering them unhelpfully. The question-asker isn't doing that well either. They start off,

"How do you spell C-A-T?" "Cat!"

That's a start- we're obviously in the land of nonsense- then you get:

"Name three English Queens called Elizabeth." "Jim!"

The fellow (Spike Milligan) chimes in with this answer with great eagerness and cheerfulness, but what gets me is, it ALMOST makes no sense at all. But there's a logic in there somewhere- I figure the reason it slays me so completely is that it sounds like the fellow wishes to name all three English Queens 'Jim'- but this thread of logic is so tenuous that there's no point in really leaning on it very hard. You've followed the joke out into a place where you can sense there's some kind of logic, but it's very questionable logic, it's probably ridiculous but most of all, it's the most unexpected thing you could ever not expect.

That's where the best E and Mu strips live. Including some of the ones that are simply not funny... or funny in a really skewed way. For instance, the comb one:

"We could be partners, comb. You be order, I'll be disorder." "I'm not participating in every awful idea you have. You as a person annoy me. Look at your life, it's idiotic. How about you don't talk to me..."

If you're looking for a joke, that falls really flat. But if you're coming to E and Mu because you can't begin to expect what you're going to see next, that was a great comic- it sets you up to expect a punchline, or at least something relevant, and then totally undermines itself and disappears in a poof of cranky grumbling, and you go "wuh?"

If that doesn't sound like fun to you, then you're gonna be incredibly annoyed by this strip. It can't be funny in a regular way, it can't even be predictably unpredictable, it's just sort of THERE, as often as the artist is willing to update it (remember, this is the guy who wanted to update several times a day- I'm going to vote for 'daily' but won't complain if he wants to try the more ambitious schedule).

And every time he does, it's a whiff of Planet Claire.

I'll say it- I love this fucking comic. If you're going to love it too, you've probably figured that out by now. It's like Bob The Angry Flower stripped down to just the randomness and madness, and it fills me with glee, perhaps even more because it's so hard to define or explain what's going on that's so great.

E and Mu has no excuse to be as awesome as it is. It's one of the most fragile, vulnerable comics I've ever seen- most of the time it doesn't even play on that vulnerability- it's just there, being strange in a very simple, unpretentious way.

You've made a new friend who talks to you in no known language. Enjoy.