Foreword: This was going to be a less gushy post about specific characters in the webcomic ''Taiki'' I was talking about yesterday. Alas, I have come to the conclusion that Taiki is just one of those things my coldly analytical and logical mind absolutely refuses to be coldly analytical or logical about. My... excessive enthusiasm towards the comic surprised even me when I read through what I had written, and I think I probably need to either wait a week or so after reading it (to get it out of my system) or to read it through a couple of dozen more times (to flood it through my system until I’m bored of it) before I’m able to talk about it calmly. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I’ll probably go with the latter. So you get Sandra And Woo instead! Enjoy.
Sandra And Woo
[Trope Page] is a story of a girl and her pet talking racoon. It varies between gag-a-day and short story arcs, but it’s generally a cute, funny, and sometimes downright adorable, comic with good art and writing behind it. It also has a Sly Racoon reference in the first strip.
Despite the title though, the comic, more recently at least, could be better called “Sandra & friends and Woo & friends”. That’s not a criticism. Far from it, since it lets the author/artist flesh out the characters better and use them more effectively. Woo’s good for humour, but not an awful lot else. He’s present in quite a few of my favourite strips, but I think that it's the strips which explore the human characters (Sandra, Cloud and Larissa) which really make it so enjoyable to read. Woo makes me laugh, but it’s all the other characters which can make me go “daww”.
I really don’t feel like talking generics today (don’t ask me why, I don’t know) so let’s get into specifics. My favourite strip of the entire comic is probably ‘An Overdue Visit’. Probably wouldn’t be as funny or meaningful if I hadn’t followed the same logic chain as Woo apparently did, but nonetheless the strip is clear, funny and just a teensy bit emotional without being overly so. This (‘Pizza II’) on the other hand is an “aww” moment, followed immediately by a “daww” moment and is only surpassed by this strip, which is goddamn adorable. God. Damn. Adorable.
It’s not just because of what happens in that strip either. The art for that particular page really stands out from the crowd (for me at least), probably because of the facial expressions and the colour. From the concern on Cloud’s (the boy if you hadn’t figured it out) face in the first panel, through the panic of the second to that look in the third panel (which is one of my favourites, it’s like he expects the doorbell to explode when he touches it) and the complete and total shock and confusion of the fourth, combined with the pure glee from Sandra make this the most visually expressive strip I can remember from the entire comic. Of course, it has the unfair advantage of being in colour, when the majority is in black and white. I don’t have any problems with black and white (at least, not when done reasonably well), but I much prefer full colour. It allows the same image to convey so much more.
I’m going to wrap up now by saying that if you like the cute, funny (although not for kids) kind of webcomic than you should definitely check out Sandra And Woo. It’s a great webcomic, one of my favourites, well written and executed from beginning to end with only a few (very subjective) lapses in quality.
Thanks for reading.
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