Never grow. Never become better animals.
Complication is what life is Ness."
In the Summer of 2011 Foster Eber jumped off a 10 meter diving platform at a swim camp in Annapolis, Maryland. for the split moment that he was airborn, the idea of flying materialized into his brain. Fixated with the idea, he simply drew himself as a dragon.
The Character seemed to be more than just himself, and he began to create the plot for Complicated Ness soon afterwards.
The idea soon became and obsession, a story he had to tell to the world, but through which medium? First there were Simple Comic Strips, then Flash Animations, then a Novel, and then finally, it wrapped its way back to Full Page Comics located on Smack Jeeves!
The website for the comic can be found here.
Currently the web comic is on hiatus. This is due to the fact that Foster wants to be sure he's telling the story he wants to tell. The webcomic is still up on Smack Jeeves if you want to read it, but there is no news about an update or reboot at this time.
Ness Roo, The Last Orange Dragon left in the entire world, struggles to find out the difference between who he is, and who people think he is. Ness must overcome his fear of growing up, as well as his fear of his older brother Ozzie Roo (A Professional Football Playing Kangaroo). The power of music helps Ness to figure out who he is, who his parents were, and what his life was always meant to be about.
[Complicated Ness] contains examples of:
- All There in the Manual: Information on Dracology, maps of the area, Character profiles listing information not brought up in any of the work's past incarnations, and the history of Complicatedness can be found on the Smack Jeeves website.
- All Drummers Are Animals: Every living being is an animal.
- Art Evolution: The comic becomes more detailed as it goes on. This slowed the updates from two pages a week to one a week.
- Carnivore Confusion: Happens in one of the older comic strips before the full length comic came out.
- Cartoon Conductor: Ness is one.
- Catapult Nightmare: Happens to Ness in the begining.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The comic is mostly black and white. When color is added it means that Ness is diving into a musical world. In the novel this actually means he is going undomesticated.
- The color of the dragons also counts. Each dragon has a basic personality with the color of its scales. Meanings can be found here [1]
- The color of the dragons also counts. Each dragon has a basic personality with the color of its scales. Meanings can be found here [1]
- Everything Is an Instrument: Ness has the ability to recognize musical notes in anything, like bell tones, to teacher's voices, to ice in a pitcher of water.
- Family Relationship Switcheroo: In the graphic novel it is revealed that Ozzy did this because he was young when he took in Ness.
- Flash Back Echo: Type 1 and Type 2. In the novel the four notes have significant meaning to Ness' early life.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Nolan.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: In the novel, Ozzie reveals that he is Ness' adoptive father, not his adoptive brother. Ozzie did this because he was 18 at the time he found Ness and felt that their relationship would be better if they had a brother relationship as opposed to a father sun relationship.
- Moses in the Bulrushes: In the novel Ozzie finds a baby Ness in his bag at the airport when he first lands in the USA. This was to protect him from the color war.
- No Social Skills: Nolan due to the fact that he is a porcupine. He can't touch anyone else unless he asks first due to his quills.
- Paparazzi: Ozzie and Ness come home to find the paparazzi sawarming the front to their apartment.
- Parental Abandonment: No one knows the fate of Ness' parents. Ness has no idea weather his parents are alive or not.
- Promotion to Parent: Happens to Ozzie in the novel. He finds toddler Ness and takes care of him. In the web comic he takes Ness with him because it is in Ness' best interest.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Ness at times.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Muzzy has a pony tail and eyelashes on the novel cover.
- The Napoleon: Ness is known to be one at times.
- Why Mao Changed His Name: In the novel Ozzie changed Ness' name. It was originally Neth but Ozzie could only pronounce it as Ness.
