I think one of the core problems many people have with ethnic diversity in media is how shallowly the people and culture are portrayed. It’s abundantly clear that most of the time the writers and artists have no idea whatsoever how people from other cultures live, and pat themselves on the back for their insufferable self-righteousness despite doing the bare minimum of acceptable research from the comfort of their own wealthy, 95% Saxon neighborhoods.

That’s why it’s always a delight for me when I come across a comic written by someone who’s actually ethnic. Ayme Sotuyo clearly knows what growing up Cuban is really like, and [un]Divine is infinitely better for it. Not!Havana is an absolutely gorgeous setting and there are so many little touches referencing subtler points of hispanic culture, I could read the whole thing a dozen times and not catch them all.

The story itself, however, starts off as nothing too special. It’s basically your standard mahou shoujo plot - girl with magical powers comes to live with awkward loner guy, and shenanigans ensue. There are some fun characters, but nothing too out of the ordinary for the genre, (aside from the magical girl in question being a 6’4 tomboyish musclegirl, but hey, I like that sort of thing) , until chapter six, where it quickly became one of the best comics I’ve ever read. Wow, chapter six.

I found Daniel’s transformation into a monster and the complete upheaval of any chance he might ever have had at a normal life to be an incredibly compelling plot hook, and the comic then proceeded to blow me out of the water by showing me one of the coolest, most intense fight sequences I’ve ever seen in an animated format. As great as the story becomes by this point, the real draw is the art. Even in the lead-up to chapter six there were already panels which took my breath away, but the clock tower and in particular the fight between Daniel and the archangel is better than the overwhelming majority of professional art I’ve seen in this field, even from manga. The design of the angels is beyond cool - mixing christian imagery of heaven with lovecraftian horror is an awesome concept and one that I desperately wish was more common.

…And then the comic went patreon-exclusive. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

But, if you do wanna pay for it, I think I can safely say it’s worth the cost. It’s incredibly good.

I was very impressed with the beginning of this comic. A slow, almost slice-of-life pace where the two main characters get to know each other better, and both of them felt very believable, almost like real people, yet anything but mundane. By the time the twist about Jakob comes to light I was really invested - only for the comic to take a massive turn for the worse immediately after. The plot and even the characters turn incredibly goofy to the point that it killed any interest I had in the story. Within the space of only a few pages the setting goes from a very grounded world populated by equally grounded people, to a Saturday morning cartoon where laughably evil mad scientists attempt to take over the world with killer robots and magic macguffins. Everyone suddenly becomes a moron, nothing makes any sense - and this is one of those comics that is veeeeeerrrryyyyy slow to update, too. By the time the party reaches Rathbourne I had lost the desire to read any further.

This comic left a bad taste in my mouth. Something about how the demon hunter delights in torture and cruelty while deriding people who lost their homes and families for being "weak", going on a sadistic holier than thou ego trip and having the comic 100% take his side for it - it wasn't a fun read. I would have greatly preferred it if the whole comic was just about the two oni girls going around raiding villages, eating humans, getting into fights, and bantering with each other.

I gotta give props to the author, she absolutely NAILS Spidey's personality. Style-wise, this feels more like Spider-Man than many official Spider-Man comics. I didn't really like Mary Jane here though, I prefer classic Mary Jane's personality where she was a bombshell actress who revelled in her sexuality to this stuck-up "nerd" (I use this term very loosely) doctor with daddy issues.

A very unusual and rather alien take on robots. The entire planet serving as the setting consists of bizarre machines designed to look and function like living things, and even the ground itself seems to be made of or covered with metal. It creates an otherworldly atmosphere that I just adore, and what makes it even better is Jun herself. She's delightfully straightforward and part of what makes the comic so fun is seeing her approach such surreal, bizzare scenarios with blunt yet irrefutable logic. It's a wonderful comic - up until the movie factory arc.

The way Alethia was initially structured is that each chapter Jun would go to a new tribal society and try to understand how it functions in order to help improve it. Alethia's chapters are very long, so each location is usually explored in excellent detail and there's plenty of time for full character arcs before moving on to the next factory. However, around chapter 7, Jun goes to a factory devoted to the production of movies, and this arc really overstays its welcome. As of writing, there are currently 14 chapters of this comic and EIGHT of them are devoted to the movie robots. But what really didn't sit right with me is that Jun is effectively shafted midway through in favor of focusing on an actor robot and an outcaste scriptwriter robot, both of whom I found to be particularly insufferable. You know that one meme image of /v/-tan with the caption “It’s not enough to just hate something. You have to take pleasure from lambasting people who like the things you hate”? That’s these characters. Misery.

Fortunately the movie arc does seem to be wrapping up but as it stands, what is currently the entire second half of this comic is bad. I hope it can recover from this, but I have a morbid feeling that the author might try to have the movie robots tag along with Jun on the next factory she goes to. But I'll probably never find out because this comic is basically dead with no word from the author on a continuation date as of writing this, and honestly unless the quality of the next chapter is just as good or better as the pre-movie chapters I don't feel like continuing to read it, part of the reason I put comics in this list is because I don't want to go through the trouble of adjusting their status if I don't care that much about them anyway.

Awaken was a journey for me.

I’ve never had a comic take me on a rollercoaster quite like this one did. First, there’s the setting. Piras Dameschi lives on the highest level of a megacity, whose people are divided based on wealth. The government is dystopian and secretive, and a shadowy group of "terrorists" are using a disease known as Blue Pest to wage biological warfare against them. Blue Pest was responsible for a major pandemic in the not-so-distant past. Quarantines and lockdowns are part and parcel of life in the city, and there is constant skepticism by the populace about how deadly Blue Pest actually is, but since nobody knows how to verify information about it, the only reasonable choices are to believe the government or to accept that you don’t know. As the story progresses, though, it becomes increasingly obvious that Blue Pest is not actually the biohazard the government makes it out to be, and that the quarantines were just there to keep up an illusion.I’d like to emphasize that the opening to this comic was written in 2015. Very impressive.

I also enjoy how believable the dystopia feels. The working class acts with the same compassion, resignment, and straightforwardness that comes from living in tight-knit communities who don’t have much going for them, while the upper class culture is based around advancing themselves further, with the expectation, not the hope, that they make something special of their lives. But what really makes this comic so interesting for me, and at the same time so frustrating, is the dynamic between Piras and Faen.

(Check part 2 for my continuation, I had so much to say it doesn't even fit in the spoiler box lmao)

Piras Dameschi is immensely privileged and spoiled rotten - his father was a war hero and he’s known nothing but wealth and status all his life. His looks are so incredible he could be a model, and girls swoon over him. He’s never known struggle or hardship in his entire life. Everything has been handed to him. Even after having his day-to-day existence completely uprooted, he still manages to find a way to be extra special, because not only is he able to use magic (rare), his abilities are valuable even within the setting’s magic system, and in fact he’s so special that not only is he a rare gem among rare gems, his abilities seem to break the rules of the magic system, making him possibly the most significant magic user to have ever lived up to that point. (Much like how Korra was able to demonstrate proficiency with 3 elements as an infant and subsequently went on to be the most special and important avatar ever by resetting the Avatar reincarnation cycle.) And of course, he’s excessively self-righteous, particularly after getting involved with the terrorists, constantly moralizing to others while at the same time failing to uphold any of his stated values, because his true values are simply the fulfillment of his own base desires no matter what they be, as clearly demonstrated when he attempts to sell out the people who saved his life for a chance at returning to society and resuming his old lifestyle.

Normally comics with characters like this I would just put down, and move on to something else. However, Awaken did start off with some very strong writing. In addition to the retroactively prophetic nature of the setting, there was one scene which really caught my attention - At this point in the story Piras is infected with “Blue Pest” (unsactioned magic), and in addition to the lockdowns, the police and medical professionals came to his school unannounced to run tests on every student they can to check for infection. Piras isn't smart, and is painfully aware of this. But he has to act like someone smart if he has any chance of escape. It was extremely interesting to see his attempts to get out of the situation, and the tension was through the roof. So that really kept me going.

I started wavering after Piras ignored the warnings of the terrorists that they needed to stay quiet and innocuous so as not to attract the police as they made their way out of the city, and instead went in front of a video camera to give a good-bye message to his girlfriend and make an unbearably cringeworthy speech against the government. The response of the terrorists to this when he rejoins them right after is to slap him and then laugh and say “oh, so quirky, what are we gonna do with you, you rapscallion?”

What Piras did was believable. How the terrorists reacted to it was not. These people are supposed to be hyper-competent and very experienced at sneaking in and out of the city. They're also very aware of how dire the consequences will be for them if they get caught. Yet they're not nearly as alarmed as they, by all accounts, should be, considering what the reader knows about them, and the overall down-to-earth tone of the story. The police, however, do behave believably, and immediately find them and arrest them, lead by a man named Faen. Faen's awesome. I think the comic wouldn't be nearly as good without him.

After arresting all of them, the secret police come in and demand that the prisoners be handed over, in flagrent disregard of protocal. This is very much against the law and Faen and his men suddenly begin to think that maybe the terrorists have a point after all. So they revolt and get into a shoot-out with the secret police, and Faen escapes into the sewers with Piras and the terrorists.

Faen is set up to be Piras’s opposite in every conceivable way. Piras was born into luxury. Faen was born into poverty. Piras inherited his status from his father. Faen earned his status as youngest police chief in history through relentless hard work and ambition. Piras has appalling street smarts from his life in high society, Faen has outstanding street smarts through his work in law enforcement and knows things about the city even the terrorists don’t. Piras is intuitively good at magic and can use it to a broken level effortlessly, Faen is able to use magic but is completely average and unremakable with it, and has to struggle and practice constantly to use it even at an acceptable level. And, best of all, he has no patience for Piras’s constant moralizing. Because of this, Piras HATES Faen, and constantly attempts to sabotage and provoke him, despite Faen throwing away his entire life and everything he had worked for, in order to save Piras’s life just a few hours ago. This dynamic, plus being on the run from something hostile and inordinately powerful, (a trope I can't get enough of) hooked me in a way few other comics have.

Unfortunately, I became significantly less interested after they leave the city, since Faen begins to have more self-doubt at this point and the situation of being on the run had ended, however, there is one more scene I think is worth mentioning. During the escape from the city, Piras attempted to betray the entire group several times. Eventually he had a change of heart and returned to help them, and after leaving the city, he acknowledges that he acted recklessly and doesn’t trust himself to control his own impulses, asking for an overseer from the larger terrorist group to help keep him in line from now on. However, upon going on a trip to a black market, Piras “accidently” bumps into someone else and spills his coin purse, so that the marketgoers go crazy and scramble to pick it all up, fighting each other. One thief manages to directly steal something from Piras and after a long chase sequence, DIES in the attempt. Of course Piras spilling the coins was not accidental, nor on impulse, he PLANNED it beforehand because he wanted to explore the market without interference from the overseer that he himself had asked for. Piras’s “impulsiveness” had already lead to many people dying or having their lives uprooted by this point, but here is an example of a needless death as a direct result of something he did on purpose.

Piras at no point shows remorse for her death or for anyone who died or had their lives destroyed as a result of his actions. This makes me think, more than anything, that Piras has never been “impulsive”, and that not only does he not care about any of the values he claims to hold, but that he is at least partially psychopathic. Piras states clearly that he is fully aware about how much damage his “recklessness” has caused, but then proceeds to carry out a reckless plan knowing that it runs the risk of going the same way, and for purely selfish motives. The implication, then, is that Piras was manipulating the group by trying to make them believe he felt remorseful, and that this way he could shift blame for his actions to the overseer for failing to do her job properly.

I saw a lot of people in the comments of Awaken who liked Piras, calling him “cute”, “quirky” and “relateable”. He's an example of the problems that come with a character built on relateability. He is relateable only to a certain demographic, and if you aren’t part of that demographic, his actions can only be judged from the view of an outsider looking in.

Awaken is my ultimate “Love & Hate” comic. It was a rollercoaster of emotions from beginning to end, and I still don’t fully know what to think of it. The only reason I haven't continued reading it is because the author toned down Faen significantly in later chapters which really harmed the dynamic the two had, imo. Check it out, whether or not you like it more than I did, it’s an experience I think shouldn’t be passed up!

This is a cute comic, but I found it kinda boring. I like the weird aliens they come up with, but Quinn is too much of a Mary Sue for me. It sucks the tension out of every fight, which wouldn't be a problem except the jokes tend not to land for me either, and even Quinn herself is pretty toned-down when it comes to ecchi-ness.

I like the concept. A Vietnamese scavenger on a barely functioning yacht scavenging what she can to survive while dodging various supernatural threats. Unfortunately this is one of those "I swear I'll be back to finish it one day!" comics. The artist's never coming back.

Not my thing, otherwise it would be on the main list. The concept of a mall the size of a Canadian county, under military occupation by Americans after an apocalypse? Insane. But it just didn't quite click with me. It might be the main character, I never really felt invested in her struggles since so much of it felt self-inflicted and brought about by her own stupidity.

Kinda clumsy. It feels like the story can't decide whether it should be a comedy or a more serious comic, and the result is that there don't seem to be many stakes. Nate leaves home no questions asked, he can pull cardboard cutouts of himself out of thin air - but other times physics do seem to matter, and there are problems with law enforcement and tax collectors, the tone is really odd. I think the pacing also leaves a lot to be desired. There's one part with a massive ravine that they take several panels to climb down, but it just skips any scene of them climbing back up afterwards, making it seem like it ascending/descending it wasn't a big deal - but in that case, why couldn't Melissa's friend just climb back up herself, or why couldn't Melissa go down to get her and then go back up?

Folklore is a visual feast. Easily one of the best-looking webcomics I've read. In fact, some chapters actually reminded me a lot of Tsutomu Nihei's work, with the super-detailed architecture giving an awe-inspiring sense of scale. Unfortunately, that's about where my praise ends.

Helios is the only character worth mentioning (except for maybe the old lady with the sniper rifle). Everyone else just sort of blends together. They're barely distinct characters at all. In the first chapter one character in the group, a former journalist, is shown to harbor a grudge towards Helios due to a resentment she has towards capes. Several pages are dedicated to setting up this character arc, which you'd think would have some sort of payoff, but as far as I can tell she is never shown again. To my dismay, this becomes a theme.

That's really my main problem with this comic: The presentation is atrocious. I'm serious, it's some of the worst I've ever seen. The story and characters and all that are fine, but it's displayed to the reader so clumsily that I don't even know what's going on or who's doing what most of the time.

However - It is very nice to look at, to the point where I was willing to accept the constant confusion as long as I just didn't think about it too hard. It's also pretty short, which made it more bearable on that front. This comic does have a lot of supplementary material, so maybe that sheds a bit more clarity, but I'm under the opinion that you shouldn't need to read supplementary materials just to understand the basic plot.

I love how much tension this comic has. It just builds and builds and I was constantly left wondering what was gonna happen next, which is the best possible feeling I can have when reading a comic, I'm always looking for that kind of feeling.

Freefall has the slowest pacing of any comic I’ve ever read. The author started it in 1998, and chapter one ended in 2016. I think it works here - I was never irritated by any subplot or lingering by the characters at a specific location - but it is really, really slow.

Half the comic is an excuse to nerd out over physics and chemistry, and it's clear the author is reasonably well educated when it comes to that. Not so much when it comes to religion though, in particular the part where the alien Sam is asked to tell a story from his culture about how his people stole fire from the gods, I thought was really bad. He says that everything they have, even life, they stole from a god, so that part's good - especially the panel where he talks about the goddess which his tribe stole life from as a terrifying monster from the deep sea who will one day come to take back what was robbed from her. This is reflective of the themes of many nomadic tribal cults, with the understanding that everything which is taken from the earth, must one day be returned to it. But then he launches into the actual story, and it's trash. The "maker god" is called Bob. Seriously? Bob lays out traps to prevent the Sqid from stealing his fire, but they do it anyway and spread it so far he can't take it all back. It's so shallow that I remember better religious tales from my friends in 3rd grade where we had to write stories like "how snake lost his legs" as part of a class project.

This is a massive nitpick, of course, but I think it's worth noting because I've seen a lot of sciency types take this kind of approach to mythology, where they regard it as silly cultural tales designed to explain things they don't understand or give meaning to otherwise pointless rituals. It's an incredibly snobbish understanding of culture and human psychology.

This also leans into another trend I've noticed from these sorts of hard sci-fi settings: The hypothetical future they envision is almost always some sort of horrifying dystopia, but they describe it as if it were a utopia. Freefall has not escaped this: Almost everyone in this comic is friendly and civil and most people seem happy, but peer just a little bit deeper, and the facade breaks immediately.

The planet the comic takes place on was colonized as an investment by a hyper-corporation called Ecosystems Unlimited, who owns effectively everything on it and views the population as lower than slaves. In fact, at one point one of the higher-ranking managers says that it’s more profitable to keep the population as consumers rather than slaves because the corporation has nearly the same amount of control over them, but doesn’t have to foot the bill to actually take care of them. One of the main characters is a genetically engineered dog who's designed as a "biological machine" who has to obey commands given to her by her "masters", and is frequently mind controlled with a remote. Another scene states that in order to get approval from the larger interplanetary government on something, it might have to go through decades of intense bureaucracy. There's also just a lot of heavy industrial imagery in general, since robots outnumber humans on the planet so heavily. It makes the easy-going atmosphere feel kind of unsettling.

SO CUTE!!! Out of all the incomplete comics in this section, this is the one I feel the most torn up about. I want a whole series about Gao and Friends.

Really weird. I guess the moral of the story is that Crange's path to fulfillment was to just plant himself like his father tree told him, and like he's biologically designed to do, but instead he refused to grow up and wasted his life drinking and wallowing in self-pity. But the plotline gets way too big for its own good and an entire series worth of twists and plot developments are crammed in all at once during the finale. I think a much smaller scale ending where Crange just realizes what he needed to do all along would have worked better.

The only reason this comic isn't on the main list is because it's not my cup of tea. I can't stand the 1940's aesthetic. Nonetheless, the author is clearly very well-researched and knows a lot of trivia about the Winter War. The characters are all memorable and the artstyle, though a bit crude, is actually pretty unique. Highly recommended.

This is another comic with a big following. And much like Scoob and Shag, I find it to be incredibly overrated. The main characters are just miserable. I know that's the point, but why does it have to be presented in a way that makes the reader feel miserable, too? And the big moral at the end is essentially "We're terrible people, but we've come to accept that". As if they have some moral high ground in deciding that the 4 billion y/o artificially preserved ecosystem NEEDS to die. If they had just admitted that they were doing it to save their own skins, then at least by learning to be honest with themselves there could have been something a little more satisfying to end their character arcs.

As far as the ecosystem itself goes, I actually found it really underwhelming. There's some cool panels, but I don't think the art showcased the majesty of the place nearly as well as it could have. There's hardly any weird flora or fauna shown off, and any sense of scale was kinda muted. Compare this to the thunderstorm in It's a Hard Life, or the Ith from The End. The thunderstorm was just a normal thunderstorm, but because of the colors and the perspective, it felt so large and mysterious. Likewise, the whole gimmick of the Ith is that they're extraterrestrials which, by sheer coincidence, look completely human, but because of the fantastical way they behave due to the nature of their psychic powers, they feel surprisingly alien. The ecosystem in Mare Internum is played up as being wondrous and mysterious, but hardly anything about it is shown either through the art or the writing, which makes it feel like it's not all its cracked up to be despite having the potential to feel far more alien and wondrous than the thunderstorm and the Ith.

Ultimately, Mare Internum left me with kind of a sour feeling. If you're new to webcomics, I can't recommend it. But if you're experienced, there are some moments from it that I think are worth experiencing.

The premise interested me. A bunch of kids with powers they don't understand on the run from an SCP-like organization? Awesome concept. Two problems: first, the art. I'm not a fan. The characters in particular I think look really ugly. It gets a bit better as the comic goes on but not to the point where I wasn't cringing. Second, the story. Nothing happens in this comic, and when things do happen, it doesn't make any sense within the universe's established laws. I'm really supposed to buy that one kid has gotten captured and escaped from the foundation multiple times to the point he doesn't even see it as a big deal? I'm really supposed to suspend my disbelief to the point I can accept the kids just going back to school like nothing happened after fleeing their homes and families for days or weeks on end?

In fact, that's another thing - the kid with the eye dragon familiar seems to be the only one even remotely taking this seriously or acting in a believable manner. Almost every other character is rather blause about the whole situation, as if this is a minor inconvenience like a long car trip instead of a complete upheaval of their entire lifestyles and everything they thought they knew.

It's rare I've seen such a cool premise executed so terribly. I don't want to bash on the artist/author too much because it's clear they put a lot of work into this comic, and it shows, but unfortunately I can't say I recommend it.

Surprisingly compelling. I think a lot of webcomic authors go out of their way to portray gay relationships as being exactly the same as normal relationships, even when it doesn't even make any sense within the context of the story. (Sleepless Domain, Scoob and Shag, etc.) But here, the author doesn't try to preach one bit and it feels like he actually did his research. This is the single most believable gay relationship I've seen in fiction by far. It's also one of those stories where there are no good guys, which I always find interesting.

Perhaps the most unusual comic I've seen so far. In some ways it blurs the line between a webcomic and a webnovel. I will say this is by far the most gorgeous webcomic I've seen. I doubt I'll ever see another one that looks as stunning as this. It also makes brilliant use of gifs, which is something that, aside from here, I've only seen in Kochab. But what really pushed me away is how goofy the story is. Nothing wrong with goofiness, but since this comic sets the tone by emphasizing just how grim and awful the world has become after the apocalypse, it crippled my interest and I couldn't get into it. This comic needed some Orks. Good ol' Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka could show you how to really do grimdark comedy relief.

Hot take, I don't think Scoob and Shag is all that good. The story makes no sense even within the confines of its own universe, half the dialogue is just people constantly explaining things, and the novelty of cartoon characters fighting each other in shonen battles was done way way WAY better in Tails Gets Trolled.

Cute artstyle, very colorful. The presentation here isn't nearly as bad as it is in Folklore, but it's still pretty bad. I knew I couldn't consider this as a candidate for the main list when I realized I was a third of the way through the comic and only just then had the basic plot been established.

You know how in Godzilla films, nobody cares about the humans, but most of the screentime focuses on them anyway because the budget for a film focused entirely on the monsters just isn't there? Well, that's the feeling I get from The End, except this is a webcomic which never had any budget in the first place. Why does the story focus so much on the humans? The humans are by FAR the worst part about it. Most of them are so stupid and arrogant that reading through their scenes made me want to strangle them. And they're not just arrogant, they're self-righteous too. I think at one point one of the humans says he would actually rather stay in space with the psychic ultra-hierarchical aliens whose leaders would have him killed on sight if they knew what he was doing, than return to Earth and go through thanksgiving dinner parties with "homophobic relatives", because at least the aliens are accepting of gay relationships. The humans aren't compelling, they aren't fascinating - they do not spark joy.

The aliens, however, are pretty cool. Even the Fiah are pretty interesting, but the Ith are where the comic really shines. The history of their society and the nature of their caste system is absolutely fascinating and the comic really delves into the way their access to psychic powers shapes how they live, and why contact between them and humanity is such a big deal from their perspective.

The End should honestly have a filler guide like some shonen anime have, except for scenes with the humans. Only read pages crucial to the plot, skip the rest.

Really weird art style, I honestly don't know if I love it or hate it. I also really like Samma, that kind of stubborn, tough personality is a trait I admire.

If I could chose one incomplete comic from this list to be continued at the same level of quality, it would be this one. This is one of the best fanfics I've ever read. Buttercup's frustration with the state of her home and how little agency she has to change it in spite of all her ridiculous powers is so compelling it's insane. The one drawback is that it's very obvious English is not the artist's first language. I mean, he tries, and it's readable - but it's very awkward in a lot of spots.

Cool art style, but the writing is too corny for me. Admittedly it has some great scenes like showing the tragic pointlessness of WW1 using the hunting rifle as both example and metaphor, but other times it's just mediocre. Quoting poetry and making quips while fighting off a lovecraftian horror, bleh. This comic actually reminds me a lot of a book I read as a kid called Skullduggery Pleasant, since it's about a skeleton ghost acting as a paranormal investigator. It was equally as corny, too. As far as the paranormal entities themselves... I think they're a lot better than in The Sword Interval, but I still don't know that I'd call them interesting. Honestly the whole comic is hard carried by the stunning artwork, and if it wasn't for that I'm not sure I'd give it a second thought.

This comic has a big following, and I really wanted to put it on the main list, but I just couldn't. The dialogue is unbearably trite - it actually reminds me a lot of Atomic Robo with all the cheesy one-liners and battle monologues and people wearing absurd outfits into combat, but where Atomic Robo was at least meant to be schlocky, The Sword Interval takes itself completely seriously.

I think what really kills it for me though, is that there's nothing fascinating about it. Despite there being so many weird monster designs, they're all cliches in the worst way. The serial killer who considers torture art, the hivemind creature who goes crazy with loneliness after being cut off from it, these are concepts which have been done innumerable times before - and they're not interesting! They've never been interesting. There's no depth to these creatures, and there's no depth to the story, either. The big twist is that the protagonist is actually a vessel whose purpose is to destroy the world. That is such an unbearably cliche'd plot point I actively groaned when I read it. There's nothing wrong with using common tropes and cliches, in fact that can often work better than a story trying too hard to be 'original', but there always needs to be some new spin or interpretation on it. That's why all those isekai novels have overly long titles like "I was turned into a demon lord in another world but the hero wants to have his way with me" explaining exactly what their specific twists on the tropes are.

The characters are the same. Other than the Hierophant, I can't remember any of their names, which is always a bad sign. Even the artwork suffers - it's very competent, but nothing about it stands out. In fact, that pretty sums up The Sword Interval as a whole - competent, but nothing about it stands out. The best comics are ones that feel like they could only have been made by the author, and are like a distorted view into their subconscious mind. The Sword Interval feels like anyone with a background in comics could have made it.

Read the author's other comic, Derelict, instead. It's incomplete, but it's so much better.

I've never played Final Fantasy IV, or any FF game actually. Except VIII, but I prefer to pretend that game doesn't exist. Wayrift's blurb said that it deviated from the canon story pretty drastically, so I thought I might be able to follow along, but no. You really need to have played the original game to understand what's happening. After about chapter 13 lore references without context became dense enough that I couldn't continue. Maybe I'll pick this comic back up one day, but I don't really have much desire to play FFIV, so probably not.