Parallel Dementia (first strip
) by Ben "834n" Fleuter was a somber webcomic about a world that is under siege by creatures of nightmare and the Templar organisation that secretly defends it. Although there are many bit parts, the story usually holds Character Focus on one of a few key members of the cast:
- Fall Boxer is a talented maverick Templar who is plagued by Nightmares. She also has lots of bad dreams. Fall is good at using Guns Akimbo. She has something to do with the destruction of the UniCorp tower.
- Reginald is a tall sentient robot who works with Fall. He's a Genius Bruiser who favors Good Old Fisticuffs.
- Timothy is a fire demon who now works for Fall. He uses fire, natch.
- David Shizukana is a former member of the Peace Keepers (riot police) who now works with Fall. He likes to use an assault rifle and grenades.
- Alexandra "Alexi" Ivanova, Mistress of Blades, is a Russian immigrant and an amazing, fearless knife-wielder. Never underestimate her.
The human figures at the beginning are loose and rubbery, the comic's greatest weakness. However, it had a brilliantly executed Crossover with NJ Huff's Emergency Exit from 2006-12-25 to 2007-06-14 that really seemed to bring out the best in both webcomickers. A comparison of recent strips with the early ones shows great improvement in the human figures, clearly influenced by NJ's style.
Aside from that, the art has nice backgrounds (avoiding a common weakness of webcomics) and makes good use of a wide variety of palettes. Other strengths are good Character Development, a compelling story, creative panel arrangement and choice of POVs, slick written effects, and evocative lettering in general.
As of 18/04/2010, it no longer updates.
On June 24, 2015, Fleuter introduced a new webcomic called The Sword Interval (here). While the plot is different from Parallel Dementia, it still has a modern supernatural theme and many PD characters were only slightly changed to fit back in. It has a Kickstarter here.
As of January 2018, the address pd.milkinthepantry.com is down with a DNS error, likely because the DNS registration has not been renewed.
Provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: All the Templars who use firearms have a long list. Amethyst, obsidian, silver, blessed, or even all of these at once!
- Each is specific to a particular supernatural threat-silver for werewolves, obsidian for angels, blessed for demons, what have you. Agents going into an unknown situation start with a test clip containing one of each, and when they find the one that pisses off their target, they switch to clips of that. "All at once" ammo is for when there's no time to bother with trying to figure out what it is, but is heavily rationed because of the expense of making it.
- Deliberately Monochrome: All of Visage's backstory, with the lone splashes of colour being his fiancé's eyes and the windows of his castle (see Shout-Out below).
- Determinator: Reginald. He's Made of Iron already, but in Chapter 11 he keeps going even when his armor is broken and he's been pummeled by the mercenaries.
- Painting the Medium: Virtually any non-human has some kind of special speech bubble, usually becoming more fancy if the increase in power. The comic makes great use of the infinite canvas as well. Also, Alter!Fall causes the panels to crack in her vicinity.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Tim and Miyan (although inverted in that Miyan in the Dark Action Girl and Tim is the Anti-Hero).
- The Shadow Knows: When David passes Midas in the hospital, Midas' shadow looks suspiciously like the god Greed.
- Slasher Smile: Visage. Beneath his mask, he doesn't smile an awful lot though.
- Speech Bubbles: Most Nightmares get their own distinctive speech bubbles: Timmy has orange ones, Visage's are black and white, Miyan has blue ones, etc.
- The World Is Not Ready: The more people know about nightmares, the more there will appear. Because of this, the Templar tries to keep their existence a secret.
- Unexplained Recovery: Visage is asked why he's still alive in this strip. His answer? "I got better."
- Your Head A-Splode: Fall can do this when Alter!Fall starts ... surfacing. Or however that works.
