A few people lately have been saying that I am all about the hate. But I am not! I like things! So, today, here is some discussion of something I like.
On Twitter yesterday I briefly mentioned how Order of the Stick was getting lots of appreciation for making a million dollars on Kickstarter, but the fact that it got a lot of money isn’t really indicative of how good it is. I mean, Vanilla Ice made a lot of money once upon a time as well.
So let me just say, then, that Order of the Stick is good. It is very good. It is one of those rare webcomics that has actually only gotten better over a long period of time (as opposed to disappearing up its own ass in metanarrative, which is what happens to most webcomics and we all know it); it started as an amusing riff on Dungeons and Dragons tropes and has, over time, become an incredibly deep and complex fantasy epic that never sacrifices its metahumour origins, but doesn’t get stuck in them, either. How rare is it for a comic to be good at both comedy and dramatic beats? Most webcomickers aim for it; they almost all fail miserably, because they are either good jokesmiths who are shit at drama or good melodramatists who are shit at gags.
And Rich Burlew’s plotting has only gotten denser and denser. It’s rare that a plot twist in any comic really surprises me any more, but Burlew managed it in the last week with a Chekov’s gun that I didn’t even identify as a Chekov’s gun until it went BANG. And it was not the first time he has managed this, mostly because his climax points serve as story fodder for his broader arc. It’s amazingly impressive. I’m hardpressed to think of many comics that have done this as successfully as Burlew has in OOTS, and the first two that came to mind were Bone and the first half of Cerebus, and that is extremely good company to be in.
So there you go! Positivity!
