Sea of Insanity

Overall score:

By LKM
fractuslux.keenspace.com
Edit by EUOL June 18, 2004
In an effort to avoid 'review inflation' I bumped this comic down half a clock to reflect new review standards.

One Sentence Synopsis: A webcomic that postulates what would happen if the Greek gods and their mythological associates were actually real, had been in existence for time eternal, and were now living amongst modern mankind.

Art:
Category: Original Sketches

One problem with reviewing webcomics is that sometimes you have to give fairly good artists bad grades. There is a leap to be made in comic-stripping. It doesn’t (usually) matter how well one can draw—it matters how well one can draw when one doesn’t have much time, or much space, to work with.

Many of LKM’s filler-art pieces are actually quite good. However, Sea of Insanity tries to have relatively detailed, realistic art while at the same time maintaining a three-a-week schedule. With these constrictions, the art in the comic betrays a common problem with semi-professional strips. The posings don’t seem quite natural, the characters don’t always maintain visual continuity, and the overall feel of the comic suffers for it.

Therefore, when compared against other webcomics in the more detailed-art category, Sea of Insanity only gets an average grade. The art isn’t a detriment, and neither is it a great strength, of the comic.

Story:
Category: Continuous
Sea of Insanity gets its highest grade here, in the story section. The characterizations are interesting (except, notably, the main character, who fills the requisite webcomic role of ‘slacking college student.’) The characterizations of the various gods are the best, especially since LKM breaks from simply making them the stereotypes based on modern views of the Greek pantheon. Rather than being crude representations of forces, the various figures from mythology have unfolding motivations and personalities.

While the characters are good, the true charm of Sea of Insanity is the world-building. The updates from Greek mythology are done very cleverly, and the mixture of modern America with mythological elements creates a unique backdrop for the comic.

LKM stays thankfully away from giving the comic an episodic nature. I’m fine with tiny, unimportant storylines in ‘joke-a-day’ style comics, but doing so in one that focuses so much on progressive storytelling could easily make the comic seem flippant. Instead, Sea of Insanity has a gradual story gradient that tells us more and more about the characters while revealing the underlying plot.

There is also a good sense of foreshadowing and internal cohesion. Things that happen in the comic are often referred back to later on, and LKM usually gives a link at the side of a given comic to refer back to the referenced event, in case one has forgotten about it.

Humor:
Category: Situational
Sea of Insanity’s humor is done well, but is not particularly original. Most of the jokes are filtered through character interactions, with the occasional sarcastic comment making the punchline. LKM relies a lot on the mythological juxtapositions mentioned above to proved the comic’s humor.

This makes the comic very readable, but does not lend it toward brilliant humor. There are no intricate set-ups for jokes, nor are there many extremely clever connections made. The humor’s main job function is to humanize the characters, making them seem more realistic.

Frequency: M-W-F

Website/extras: Good website design, with an extensive characters page. I would have put the comic at the top of the page (as it is, you have to scroll down past the comic’s introduction to see it.) However, the extras one would expect are all there, along with a nice FAQ and a page on Greek mythology.

Overall:

Despite a few weaknesses in art and humor, the truth about this comic is that I really enjoyed reading it. The mild jokes mixed with the interesting world was enough to keep me moving through the archives at a consistent pace. When I was done, I wanted to read more--and that’s probably the best compliment any storyteller can receive.

Archives: Nearly two years, with consistent updates.

Content: The artist gives the site a PG-13, which I found to be a reasonable content rating. Some of the side characters get it on in the other room, and there is some very infrequent swearing.

3 reasons to read Sea of Insanity
1) You’re a fan of mythology done well.
2) You want a comic that mixes its humor with a world that’s a little more meaty than ‘guys in a dorm play Quake.’
3) You prefer progressive stories to episodic stories.

3 reasons not to read Sea of Insanity
1) How can anything be more amusing than ‘guys in a dorm play Quake?’
2) You think long storylines take too much time and effort to keep up with when updates only come three times a week.
3) Your name is Hades and your only real amusement comes from dead people and young girls who have a taste for pomegranate seeds.

Sea of Insanity is a kind of "Men in Black" story about Greek gods hiding out amongst regular people. The idea is that they, and other forces of mythology, are all around us—they just wear spells that make them look like regular people. Of course, this metaphor only goes so far—from what I’ve seen of the comic, the gods don’t really try that hard to stay out of humankind’s way. The comic gives the sense that a good percentage of the world is in on the secret in one way or another, and the rest are just too caught-up in themselves to notice.

The story begins with two main characters. Finn, a twenty-year-old college student, acts as the comic’s ‘Watson’ character. A normal guy, he finds the fabric of his understanding destroyed when he goes looking for a place to live at the wrong house.

Isle, the other main character, is a water nymph recently blessed/cursed with intelligence by Apollo. (Most nymphs, apparently, have the mental capacity of a bunny—and the looks of a playboy bunny.) Since her last roommate left, she is looking for a new one. Poor Finn shows up to answer the add for a roommate, and from that point on, nothing is ever the same for him.

Other characters include Calliope (one of the Muses), a man with a curse that periodically turns him into a fish, and a small cast of gods. Apollo, the main god dealt with in the story, is courting Isle because of a bet, and immediately becomes jealous of Finn.

As I mentioned above, the best thing about this comic is the story, so I won’t go into much beyond the basic set-up. The most interesting thing about the comic is the way that it builds upon this foundation. With the Apollo-Finn triangle, it would have been easy to spin into a simple ‘sitcom’ style story that doesn’t really go anywhere. However, the more you read, the more LKM foreshadows a higher purpose to Isle’s life, adding some elements and characters that go beyond the simple humor of men turning into fish and gods being jealous of men.

One problem with this, however, is that Sea of Insanity has the same disease as most webcomics. It takes forever for anything to happen. And, because there aren’t episodic sub-stories, this one will take even longer to unfold. With a couple years of archives, the story is only just beginning to take off.

That said, the archives are definitely worth a read. Once you get through them you can decide if you’re hooked enough to want to wait for the updates.

Sample Strips:
(I had to choose strips that didn’t give away—or rely on—any of the storyline, so these are a little more stand-alone than the strip overall.)

An early strip, playing off some of the mythology

An example of typical Sea of Insanity humor

An amusing poke at the weirdness of Finn’s life

Written by EUOL on December 06th, 2002