Perki Goth/Candi Raver

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Rating Summary

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Background
I saw this ad (top of the page) on another webcomic I read, and decided to check it out. I was expecting an "Odd Couple"-type comedy as the ad promised.

Downfall
This comic always sucked.

Story and Plot
The comic's two main characters are Katina "Perki" Perkins, a vixen goth, and Candace "Candi" Charm, an otter candi raver. The ad describes them as "dating", though actually they live together and share a household, and have an open relationship. The comic starts off as a farce and then turns into a soap opera.

Art review


At the beginning, Jim Tarpley's art looks like it could have been drawn by an average five-year-old. Monique Morgan has done several strips, but sadly, only a few.  Early on, Jim Tarpley tries doing color strips, but reverts to black and white. Okay, this is a new webcomic and Jim is arguably experimenting. But it takes several years before he even adds some crude shading. Later he tries color again and refines his shading.

Yet in the end the artwork is still stiff, erratically proportioned, and without any subtlety, despite years of practice. And even now, long after the comic has been discontinued, here is Jim Tarpley's artwork on his DeviantArt page: Jim Tarpley (calling himself "Mutt12").

Writing review
Even a badly-drawn comic might get by if the writing were good enough, but the storyline is as erratic as the artwork. Take the initial story arc, The Sticky Wrath of Kandi Kamen:

Jim Tarpley gives a brief summary: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Perki tries being a music store clerk to raise money for Candace's bail, but it doesn't work out, so she resorts to her backup plan.  (Which I didn't think could be done in real life.)  In jail, Candace is found by two unscrupulous prison guards, but she finds the way to make them regret it.  And the story arc ends happily.

Okay, the strip starts off as a farce. But when the next arc starts, the strip's tone abruptly changes and turns into a soap opera, and we're suddenly supposed to sympathize with the protagonists. When Perki is 13, a boy named Whisk falls in love with her, but the feeling isn't mutual. We also learn that Perki at 13 was a straight A student, never touched drugs, and rarely got into trouble. (Rather hard to swallow considering her behavior in the current storyline.)

(A one-year hiatus later...)

The strip returns to the present day. But the Whisk storyline hasn't been forgotten; in fact it is told from a flashback perspective.  However, it takes a goofy turn, when Perki is first rescued from a speeding truck by Brimston, then he and Perki have a meeting, and all of a sudden, the scene is replayed but this time Whisk does the rescuing.  (This little interlude with Brimston serves no purpose and could have been omitted, because it only makes things confusing.)  And to top things off, the accident takes place in front of Brimston's store.  Then of course Perki's attitude toward Whisk abruptly changes, but the story doesn't quite resolve as expected.  Perki and Whisk try to see each other anyway, but Whisk's mother has other ideas. Namely this idea. So in the present day, Whisk contacts Perki again, but of course Whisk has changed quite a bit.

If the idea was to make Perki sympathetic, it didn't quite work out that way. Considering how she treated Whisk initially, if I were Whisk's mother I wouldn't want him and Perki together either. She turned out to be not entirely wrong about Perki either, especially when Perki behaves like this. Okay, Perki's childhood may have been unhappy, but what do you say about someone who is in the habit of punching everything and everybody? Really, would you want someone you love to be around her?

But you ain't seen nothin' yet. In another story arc, Perki's brother Nicki returns home. And guess what he does?  And if Trip didn't happen to arrive, would things have turned out differently?  But how did this relationship even get started? It started when Nicki was depressed when he met a salamander girl, but for a rather obvious reason, it didn't work out. (At least in this furry comic, species does matter.) So to cheer Nicki up, Perki resorts to this.  In public. And-what a surprise!-everyone finds out about it. This didn't occur to a straight-A student?

The strip has more about Perki, but that covers the most important parts. Let us turn our attention to what Candace "Kandi" Charm's background is...

Except after going through the entire comic, I found nothing. No mention of her family life. No mention of her past or what drew her to being a candi raver. Not even the story of how she and Perki met and fell in love. And she's the co-star!

Author biography
Jim Tarpley's biography in his own words. You read right; he describes himself as having "really gotten serious about [drawing]" before starting this strip. Evidently not serious enough to learn how to do it properly. There is a biography space for Monique Morgan, but it is empty, and it is hardly surprising if she wanted it left blank. Actually, Monique Morgan only contributed a few strips in the entire comic; W. "Raven" Coons contributed more to the strip, including several characters. Arguably he deserves more to be in the strip's byline. Then again, maybe he doesn't.

Conclusion
The premise of two mismatched lesbian lovers could have been good. It could have been an interesting story about how two very different people could still love one another, or alternatively could have simply played everything for laughs, as it did initially. But the comic fails at everything; the artwork is bad, the jokes mostly fail, we hear too much about Katina "Perki" Perkins and her family and almost nothing about Candace "Candi" Charm (other than that she acts utterly goofy when she eats too much sugar and that she cries a lot), and the relationship between the two is hardly covered. What a waste!

Links

 * My Private Little Hell is a related webcomic by W. "Raven" Coons Jr., but drawn by Jim Tarpley and with a supernatural bent. This comic is also on indefinite hiatus.