#pixie trix comics

[theartofthecover]

Kickstarter’s Ménage à 3 Gold Edition Poster (2018)

[Three's Company's "Come and Knock on Our Door" poster (1977) homage]

Art by: Gisèle Lagacé and Anwar Hanano

[sybilius]

Still keeping up with Ma3 et. al (now Pixie Trix comics) and I gotta say they made a good call moving the comments section to the comic page. It’s fucking hilarious watching people argue whether this total garbage comic is “bad representation”

[webcomics-commentary]

A few fragile pages

Ugh, I don’t have time this week to review an entire webcomic. I have to finish up my essay for school! What to do, what to do. Oh well, let’s just review five pages instead.

Have you ever read the webcomic Fragile? It’s a highschool drama story written and drawn by M. Victoria Robado (or Shouri), who also does stuff for Pixie Trix Comics like Eerie Cuties and Magic Chicks. Regardless of whether you have or haven’t read the webcomic, you should be able to enjoy the first few pages of its seventh chapter, which were uploaded quite recently. I’m just going to go through them and say why I like them so much. Feel free to read along!

So, chapter 7 page 1: our heroine Emily’s alarm goes off. She presses snooze and goes back to sleep. Nothing particularly unusual here, for comics standards. I can’t think of any specific examples right now, but surely this is pretty common both in fiction and real-life. You can really see her tugging herself back into her sheets in the fourth panel. But, as page 2 shows, such things simply don’t last very long. Well, because this is a webcomic, it lasted for a few days from our perspective, but that’s beside the point.

Page 2 is probably my favorite page of the bunch, because it’s by far the most recognizable to me. How often has it happened to you that you were in the middle of doing something when someone tells you to do that very thing? It is the most demoralizing thing. These two pages alone get you to really understand Emily’s mindset this morning. But it gets even better.

Page 3 may be less relatable for most of us. I mean, standing in the mirror and trying to cope with your reflection, yeah I know what that is like, but having scar tissue like that is different. The past two pages worked to get you to sympathize with Emily, and this page then reaps a bit of profit from that. It’s easy to understand her annoyance here, and from a storytelling perspective, that is really great.

Page 4, then… well, I don’t know about you, but having a set of text messages you really don’t want to read is one of the most common feelings in my life. I’d run out of that room as well ^_^; The final page of this set (page 5) is similarly a relatable scene: not really listening as your parents are talking to one another about useless stuff, and getting dragged out of your own little world when you are called. I really like how that is visualized as well, with punctuation still visible as she can hear her parents perfectly well but simply isn’t processing what they are saying.

These pages not only give great insight into how Emily is feeling (which may have already been obvious from her depressed/snarky demeanor throughout the webcomic), but also work really well on your sympathy receptors. The pace may be excruciatingly slow, these five pages work because they are relatable. Reading one of these pages is like reading a “don’t you hate it when” kind of post, except with an actual narrative background. I just wanted to point out how well-done these pages were (and I couldn’t think of anything else to post about).

Whether Fragile is something I recommend… I honestly still don’t know. It’s been running for seven chapters and it still feels like the webcomic lacks any kind of depth. Emily is still very introverted, making it difficult to ascertain what exactly the webcomic is about, and the theme of teenagers trying to figure out what to do with their life is somewhat simplistic. I like the way it is executed, though! The story doesn’t shy away from throwing some emotional punches every once in a while. Furthermore, it is definitely something more grounded compared to the wacky fantasy you usually see. If you’re into that sort of thing, be sure to check it out :)