Demonology 101

Overall score:

by Faith Erin Hicks
http://faith.rydia.net/

One Sentence Synopsis: "An online comic about high school and other forces of evil."

Art:
Category: Original Sketches
Just by looking at a single panel from D101, you get the feeling that it isn't just drawn to tell a story, but to also to achieve an artistic vision. At least half of the mood of the comic comes from the art itself, and Faith does an amazing job establishing the perfect visual atmosphere for the story she tells.

Story:
Category: Continuous
Believable characters and complex inter-relationships bring this comic's story to life. It's often a little heavy on the drama, but the twists and turns definitely keep you hooked.

Humor:
Category: Occasional
Humor in D101 is relatively sparse; but it's still there. Faith can be clever at times, but usually the funny content only serves as a breather between dramatic scenes.

Frequency: Once per week during the summer and Christmas break, and once every two weeks when Faith is in school.

Website/extras: There are detailed character profiles, a FAQ, a forum, and a now-defunct fanart section. Nothing impressive, until you start digging around and find the links to Faith's other pages. She's got at least two LiveJournals, some other online journal, a site showcasing her short stories, and probably a bunch of other things I overlooked.

Overall:

Content: PG-13 for scattered but intense violence, plus occasional harsh language.

3 reasons to read Demonology 101:
1) You think the visual aspects are as important to a comics as the content.
2) You like anything that has both good characters and a good story.
3) You believe in the saying, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well."

3 reasons not to read Demonology 101:
1) Once every two weeks is way too long for you to wait for updates.
2) You don't like subtle blends of fantasy and real-life.
3) You demand laughter from your comics. Dance, monkey! Dance!

At first glance, some may pass this comic off as just another Buffy ripoff; but smart readers will look closer. Yes, they share a similar mood, and Faith herself admits some influence from the world's favorite vampire slayer; but D101 captures a certain innocent charm that butt-kicking, campy TV shows just can't achieve. That's one thing you'll immediately notice when reading the episode archives—there's a surprising lack of super-heroism from all the characters, even the supernatural ones. Faith promises that this will soon change in the upcoming episodes, and I agree that it's a good move. Timid heroes are only fresh and original for so long. If there's no character growth beyond that, they get boring.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The actual first thing you'll notice when diving into the archives is the amazing art. Each page feels more like a professional storyboard for a TV series than an online comic. The panels are always in beautifully shaded black and white, often with detailed backgrounds. Faith uses the lack of color to sometimes startling effect, accentuating moods from soulful to fearful. Some of my favorite panels were where nothing was said or done at all—the scene was just there to establish mood. I should warn, before I get too raving-fanboyish, that Episode 1 has been redone, so reading through the archives can be a little jarring. The first episode looks really good (done after Faith finished the fourth episode, I believe), then the second episode drops off in artistic quality dramatically, slowly getting better and better from there.

My only criticism with the art is that it's sometimes easy to get the characters confused. Faith's artistic talent has grown over the years, and because of that, the way the characters are drawn changes subtley in every episode. Every character has a distinctive trait, which helps, but sometimes they're far away enough from the "camera" that you can't see the scar, or the hair, or whatever it is. And because none of the characters look exactly like they did in the previous episode, you just have to guess until you can get a better view of what's going on. I suspect this will be less and less of a problem in the future, since Faith is settling in to a more permanent look and feel for the comic.

Now, after raving about the art, let me say that what really hooked me on D101 was the story. First off, let me mention that I've watched exactly one episode of Buffy in my entire life. It was called "Hush" and it was admittedly cool. Every other time I've caught Buffy on TV has been just flipping through channels, and it never held my attention for very long. It just wasn't very interesting to me. For some reason, despite their inherent similarities, D101 is far more fascinating. By page five of the first episode, I knew I was hooked on D101. The draw, I believe, is the empathy you feel for the main character. Raven, and otherwise-normal 16-year old girl, happens to be a demon. Her only demonic trait, however, are a couple of pointed ears. In every other aspect she's a nervous, energetic, self-doubting, spunky, naive, trying-to-find-herself teenage girl. Because of what she is, however, she's constantly surrounded by frightening and destructive people. All she really wants is to have a "normal" life, but someone is always jumping in and destroying that dream.

This, I believe, speaks to basically everyone on an emotional level--or at least everyone who had to go through high school. We remember what it was like as a teenager in school. We wanted to do and be what we thought we should, but parents, teachers, and other adults kept taking that away from us. We often realize, later, that those parents and teachers were right; but we can still feel the frustration. And since in the world of Demonology 101 we know that those "outside forces" are wrong, we get to relive those teenage memories with a feeling of justification.

Or maybe that's just me over-analyzing everything. Either way, you gotta admit, Raven's just a cute kid.

The big detraction, and the hardest part of D101 to get over, is the incredibly long wait between updates. Two weeks is forever in the world of online comics, so it's something you just need to bookmark and check once a month or so. Actually, what I'd really like is a D101 mailing list. If I could just get an email for every update, or maybe when an entire episode is finished, I wouldn't have to try to remember it after not checking it for a long time.

To sum up, D101 has a lot of things to recommend it with very few negatives. It's creative, original-yet-familiar, and draws you in more than just about any webcomic out there. The mix of reality and fantasy is really well done; it's almost like Faith is the love-child between Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman, except that they're both men and they...well, let's not go there.


Normally we give 4-5 sample strips, but due to D101's serialized nature, I'm only going to give one example. The other two are the coveres for a couple of the episodes.

When there aren't words to express...

Episode 4 cover (my favorite cover)

Episode 5 cover (the most recent episode)

Written by Tage on November 21st, 2002