#opplopolis

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

It's been more than four years since my once favorite webcomic, Opplopolis, last updated. I am the only person to ever use the hashtag on Tumblr so far as I know (although Tumblr search is notoriously shitty, so I find that implausible). I hope the author is OK, even if he never finishes it.

[dwagom]

for the love of fuck read opplopolis because it’s fuckin amazing

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Opplopolis is my favorite webcomic and it has posted exactly 6 pages this year and the suspense is actually literally murdering me. 

[alwayseventually]

Opplopolis #5

[cucureviews]

OPPLOPOLIS: Diverse cast try to solve the mystery of the word marvedyne

BASICS

Title:  Opplopolis Updates: Tuesday and Friday Genre:  Drama / Science Fiction Premise:  A diverse cast tries to decipher the significance of the word "marvedyne". Recommended if you... enjoy off-kilter bizarro media like Cherry 2000 and Brazil where you don't quite understand what's going on, but want more dialogue like Ghost World and neo-noir spy fiction.

For a spy thriller/strange scifi/conspiracy mystery, Opplopolis is certainly  colorful (thanks in part to the presence of Vesper).   The fun flat coloring and gorgeous inked lines are really appealing, and often remind me of vintage pulp comics, if vintage comics sometimes used pop art palettes.  For me the best part is how different everyone looks from each other.  None of the women look the same!  Older people actually look older, and do not look like young people with more creases around their eyes!

Opplopolis is a weird setting.  Google results are spat out on continuous paper as if printed by a dot-matrix machine; phones can be rotary, wall-mounted, or cell phones; both horse-drawn carriages and limos exist as vehicles for the rich.  The elite wear what looks like vaguely colonial-era clothing, while average people wear something recognizably contemporary; yet Vesper looks like a popstar from JEM and the Holograms.  Marvin asks for a Sega Saturn as payment for his assistance with Google.  Everything is familiar, but not quite right.  It all adds to the surreal feel of the webcomic.  That surreal feeling and eccentric cast will either make you love this comic, or hate it.  The pursuit of marvedyne's mysterious meaning by such oddballs can be frustrating or too deliberately precious.  An immortal grad student lives in a library of esoteric information; zinesters look forward to reviewing the Bollywood remake of Short Circuit; Vesper is actually a collective of people, so she can fulfill her narrative duty of engaging in all sorts of behavior a pop celebrity is supposed to indulge in without missing tour dates or diluting her brand image.  If all of this together sounds too bizarre, well, in some ways it is.  Personally, I like everybody's quirkiness, even if I find some of their dialogue inscrutable.  But there are just so many personalities on show here that it's fairly easy to find one or more of them likeable, so if you find Tomaj's crotchety philosophy insufferable, then take heart Birdie's adamantine no-nonsense attitude.  You will love Birdie, trust me.  Birdie is awesome.

Opplopolis is not the kind of mystery readers can solve ahead of the characters.  You will be as mystified and intrigued as they are as they pursue the meaning of marvedyne for their own reasons, no matter how absurd their circumstances are or how confusing the search becomes.

[2amideamonster]

Opplopolis gives me hope about my own wordy wordy panels. 

PS if you're not reading Opplopolis, do it now, ok?