Scipio: That is absolutely the most evil thing I've ever seen you do
Reagan: Bullshit. I ate that panda.
Scipio: That was not a panda and you know that was not a panda.
Reagan: I dunno, tasted pretty cute.
— ''Templar Arizona, chapter one The Great Outdoors'
Templar Arizona is a long form full page sepia toned webcomic by the artist C. Spike Trotman. The comic takes place in a fictional version of Arizona, in a city that, if it existed in our world, would be in or near the Navajo reservation and has a that-world-only river, the Phocas, cutting through it that has been dammed upstream to the point of being non-existent in the town itself.All of this and everything else shown so far has been heavily implied to be relevant. Someday.Although the comic takes place in arguably a fantasy world it is better described as Alternate History, one in which perhaps a few wars didn't go the same way as they did here, but the base culture and the basic foundations of reality are the same as in reality.Self described as an exercise in decompressed storytelling, it has an in-comic timeline of less than a month not including the flashbacks and the intermissions that take place at unspecified times in the Canon. The comic is available for free online and print editions that can be bought direct from Spike and, for now, through Diamond publishing. Templar Arizona has won Web Cartoonist Choice Awards for Character Design and Character Writing. thisis a recent review of the comicThe chapters so far released are:
Alternate History: At some point, possibly ongoing, there is or was a guerilla war in Australia between the descendants of the colonists and the natives. Word Of God is that the Nile Revivalists were founded in 1911 as a reaction to British colonialism.
Cult: A guide to Templar's various subcultures can be found here.
Culture Clash: Tuesday and Moze when she finds out he has a child fiancee due to an Arranged Marriage back in Egypt that he's never actually met. Doesn't help that she's 11 although they won't actually get married until she's 18.
Cute and Psycho: Curio displays some of this personality type.
"If you ever hand me some fucking travesty about peyote and quaaludes and Mexican transvestites, I will strangle you like a goddamn parakeet. I will twist your head off. Clean. Off. And I will do it over the phone. Everyone will be amazed.
Reagan's fury when Zora turns up at Scipio's door step when she should be in school fits here, too:
"Gonna get so many pants pissed ain't nobody gonna bug you an' yer ol' man 'til yer in grad school."
Dirty Communists: Averted. Reclamation, Templar's resident communist movement, are portrayed in a cosistently even handed manner, at worst containing a few somewhat over-zealous (although consistently non-violent) members.
I Ate What? Xenophage: Morally Indefensible Fine Dining.
"...Petrified deer penis, with sesame and lemon. Fruit bat consomme. Minerva's Shield... that's mostly pike livers, lark tongues, and some peacock brain... Stir-fried porpoise head. Honey-grilled panther with earwigs... and, of course, puppies. Whole and quarters. Braised, broiled, or grilled. In a delicate human milk sauce. Excellent. And especially divine, if I may say so. I find that canids are most ambrosial before they open their eyes."
Kissing Cousins: Moze's grandfather tries to get him to court some of the temple dancers. Moze objects on the basis of their being both his cousins and underage.
She does it a little too well and Ben suspects she doesn't like him.
Positive Discrimination: The Jakes are all horrible racist bastards—who strangely focus on the positive stereotypes associated with various ethnicities. "Africans = strong," "Asians = smart," etc. Their plan is to have as many children they can with a cross-section of all these groups to have a perfect hybrid race.
"All th' water's behind a dam in California." Come to think of it, though, this trope is pretty thoroughly averted: much of the town's history concerns a long-running feud between rival whoremongers, which would constitute a dark secret in most other places, but in Templar, it's just some stuff that happened.
There Are No Coincidences: In Templar, AZ, everything happens for a reason. Everything that you read, anything alluded to, anything that gets a passing mention, is completely relevant, and you should really consider taking notes.
The Stoic: Gene and Scipio, though they are, on rare occasion, known to lose their shit.
is a long form full page sepia toned webcomic by the artist C. Spike Trotman. The comic takes place in a fictional version of Arizona, in a city that, if it existed in our world, would be in or near the Navajo reservation and has a that-world-only river, the Phocas, cutting through it that has been dammed upstream to the point of being non-existent in the town itself.All of this and everything else shown so far has been heavily implied to be relevant. Someday.Although the comic takes place in arguably a fantasy world it is better described as Alternate History, one in which perhaps a few wars didn't go the same way as they did here, but the base culture and the basic foundations of reality are the same as in reality.Self described as an exercise in decompressed storytelling, it has an in-comic timeline of less than a month not including the flashbacks and the intermissions that take place at unspecified times in the Canon. The comic is available for free online and print editions that can be bought direct from Spike and, for now, through Diamond publishing. Templar Arizona has won Web Cartoonist Choice Awards for Character Design and Character Writing. this
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