Delta Dawn
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| Original review author: | SmashLampjaw |
| Webcomic name: | Delta Dawn (archive) |
| Author: | Scott Bachmann |
| Start Date: | November 27, 2017 |
| End Date: | April 28, 2021 |
| Genre: | Superhero comics, despite a near absolute lack of heroism. |
| Defining Flaw: | Page after page of unintentional racism and sexism, in an intentionally racist and sexist social justice comic so woke its eyelids have permanently vanished. |
Rating Summary
| Art: | 
The art is adequate for a published comic. While it doesn't take shortcuts with backgrounds, the character designs aren't exactly great, and some of the "attractive" characters are ugly looking. |
| Storyline: | [no stars given]
A nonsensical, self-contradicting dumpster fire. The only thing as bad as the story is the navigation. |
| Characters: |
All of the villains are straight white men, a couple white women (Catholics, I think), a body-switching WWII-era Nazi, and a greedy gold-lusting Jew (yes, really). All of the protagonists are unlikable racist caricatures of people whose amorality makes it a stretch to call them heroes. If you're a fan of the word "generic" you're in luck, because you'll be seeing it a lot. |
| Miscellaneous Details: |
This webcomic is so toxic you could use it in place of chemo treatments.* SmashLampjaw is not a doctor and this is not sound medical advice. Delta Dawn © is not a viable alternative to chemo treatments because cancer cells lack sentience, rendering them immune to psychological poisoning. Talk with your doctor before reading Delta Dawn. |
| Overall: |
In the same way staring at the sun leaves a dark spot on your vision, reading this webcomic will leave you thinking women and minorities are better off being oppressed. |
Background
This comic was dropped on our forums for discussion. We have an informal rule about social/political topic comics: we don't review them solely because they're propaganda, since all comics in that vein are propaganda. It only took a few pages of reading Delta Dawn to discover it is a deeply terrible comic. By the end of what was up there, I knew it needed a review.
Downfall
This webcomic always sucked.
Story and Plot
Are you woke? No, you're not woke enough. You don't even begin to know what woke is. Get ready for some wokeness, you phobophobic bigot piece of shit.
Protagonist Storyline
The story opens with Angry Black Woman getting cat-called by a tiny white man she can't defend herself from when he corners her, despite having 6 inches and 50 pounds on him. She is rescued from this absolute non-threat by summoning Principle Murdermom of Xavier's the School for the Gifted Delta Academy. Given 2 seconds to evaluate what's happening, Principle Murdermom decides to go straight to summary execution. That's okay, though! She works for the UN, has lawyers, and can fly. It's worth keeping in mind she may also be the ethics teacher. I suspect someone pointed this out to the author as Principle Murdermom's victim turns up in chapter 3 unharmed by the event.
We're then treated to a series of tedious training bits in the "STEM academy" that only has 5 students. Angry Black Woman is revealed to have some power over inertia which somehow could give her power over the unrelated force of gravity. Some of the other characters are introduced at this point:
- White THOT, a slut with a "living arrangement" whose power is creating pink bubbles that can't be broken and suffocates men unconscious with them (what would Freud say?). As the white character in the Affirmative Action Avengers, she is the dumbest and sluttiest.
- Adult Anchor Baby, a shy generic off-brown woman from one of the other Americas. Her backstory is "her illegal alien parents were deported." That's not a summary; it's the entirety of her backstory. Her power is having an overpowered ghost sister who dresses in gypsy whore chic and renders every other team member unnecessary.
- Generic Goth Dream Girl, a decidedly uninteresting psychic with the power of psychometry which the writer keeps calling "scrying" because he did zero research. She's that generic brown race (possibly generic Asian) that's super popular on tumblr, has a streak of purple hair, and dresses like the 90's never ended. She's made the team leader because there's basically nothing of value she can do 99% of the time in this action comic.
Suddenly, the totally uninteresting slice-of-life college boredom is interrupted by a school shooting! Well... it's more like a coordinated attack... and no one gets shot... and it's not by bullied students on psychotropic drugs but a bunch of straight white men who are dressed like hillbillies... but there is shooting and it is happening on a school. Naturally, Principle Murdermom who flies and is indestructible delegates this matter to the poorly trained Affirmative Action Avengers. I guess this was in order to "signal boost" them instead of ending the crisis in seconds herself. The excuse the writer used was Principle Murdermom was the only one capable of getting the "children" at a college into "safe rooms". Luckily they subdue the shoorters who are obviously white and male with minimal effort.
Chapter 2 is an uninteresting training sequence featuring a new character, Furry Vigilante, who is the second character named after a famous WWII Nazi. It's hard to guess which generic brown race she is, but my money is on Palestinian due to the comic's heavy Antisemitism. The only thing worth mentioning about the whole story arc is Furry Vigilante makes a really good case for the government murdering the Affirmative Action Avengers.
Basically Angry Black Woman could destroy the Earth with her Black Power, White THOT can murder anyone she sees, Generic Goth Dream Girl can learn any secret by touching the right thing, and Adult Anchor Baby could assassinate anyone anywhere on the planet and no one could stop her. Training them in a government-funded academy makes much more sense than the government killing them in it before they become powerful. Yes.
This chapter also features some backstory on side characters so worthless I refuse to cover it.
Chapter 3, which is currently incomplete, starts with a pointless First Responder sequence that is only noteworthy for featuring the only positive depictions of white men in the entire comic. I have to assume the author has firefighters in his family since he hasn't made them turn out as secretly wife beaters... but the chapter's not complete yet, so who knows? Angry Black Woman becomes Neo from the Matrix by learning to stop bullets Matrix-style like in The Matrix. Whoa. Certainly no one is tired of seeing that to the point they'd repeatedly think of how many times they've seen it since The Matrix came out.
The chapter cuts off in the middle of a hostage situation. The shooter is Internet Incel, a mutant with the power to interface with machines and bend them to his will. As you might expect, instead of using his power to make bank vaults open themselves for him, he works a generic office job at a generic vacuum company. The only thing less sensible than his job is that he's holding a handgun on his hostage instead of using one of the machine gun equipped robot dogs he brought in the building. Moving on.
Due to his limited male gaze, toxic masculinity, and [third moronic buzz phrase not found], he is terrorizing some THOT who wouldn't have sex with him while looking like he's on the verge of tears the whole time. This situation somehow requires all four Affirmative Action Avengers to land on the roof because of course it does. Try not to remember Adult Anchor Baby could resolve the whole thing remotely with a ghost knockout touch in 20 seconds.
Antagonist Storyline
Let's just rip this bandage off: the primary antagonist in Delta Dawn is Literally Heinrich Himmler. His cringe-worthy, time-skipping story runs parallel to the unlikable protagonists'. I'm saving you a lot of pain here. His real name is kept a mystery for two chapters and some change but the author shits the bed on the reveal. He's a critical figure. His identity is important. Then all that build-up gets completely wasted. Here's how you do a proper reveal for a famous Nazi who's been running things from the shadows for 2/3 of your story. Now here's how Bachmann did it.
Literally Heinrich Himmler is a body-switching Nazi mad scientist who is revealed to have worked from the shadows to cause the events of the first two chapters. Yes, even the catcalling. His story starts in prison, which he's in because he is Heinrich Himmler, and his appeals to have his case overturned are based on claiming he's been the victim of mistaken identity. Please make a note these claims of mistaken identity are part of steps Literally Heinrich Himmler takes over a decade to prove in order to win his freedom. When he finally succeeds his first act as a free man is the absolute stupidest thing in this comic full of idiocy: running for Congress under his real name, Heinrich Himmler.
Yes, after winning an appeal that he was imprisoned because of mistaken identity, Literally Heinrich Himmler runs for Congress under that identity. (Presumably, this run for the Federal Legislature will involve the Nazi's "Hate Gun" in a sequence with all the subtlety this comic's shown so far.)
The first step to accomplishing his long-term exoneration plans is to buy off a prison guard. To be specific, Literally Heinrich Himmler buys off a Jewish prison guard (one who 100% believes his prisoner is literally the Nazi Party member Heinrich Himmler) by bribing him with gold. Officer Greedy Jew helps destroy the only proof that Literally Heinrich Himmler is occupying the body in this prison. Next, Literally Heinrich Himmler then arranges the murder of a Proud Black Woman Judge who rejected his appeals. Her replacement, Honorable Judge Honky WASP naturally overturns his conviction because an entire decade after a legal conviction and multiple appeals a piece of evidence is missing. Apparently that's how appeals work.
Ultimately, Officer Greedy Jew is rewarded for his efforts by being murdered by the Jew-murdering Nazi Heinrich Himmler for being a Jew. Honestly, how else was that going to go?
Writing review
It's been argued that the author is simply feeding his audience what it is hungry for. In other words, this webcomic may suck by design as slop meant for SJWs to feast upon, shit out, and roll around in. While I don't believe that to be the case I cannot rule it out. It also doesn't matter why the webcomic has such bad writing. The writing is bad. It is an absolute painful slog to read. That's how Delta Dawn wound up here.
The writing is not thought out, there are glaring mistakes in its core ideas (e.g. gravity and inertia aren't the same force, scrying and psychometry look through time in opposite directions, etc.), and it really could have benefited from a third-party reader going over the outline. That's just assuming there was a plan! Instead of passion, there's a distinct lack of artistic effort throughout the whole webcomic. Delta Dawn is a product that attempts to hit on every social justice topic the author has mistaken for marketable with "acceptable" racism and sexism as a substitute for originality. In the process, it's managed to accidentally be both racist and sexist unintentionally towards pretty much everyone in it.
Speaking of which, perhaps you think it's unfair how Delta Dawn's characters were named in this review. I labeled them based on how much thought went into characterizing them by the author, not how much I hated them. Let's look at the worst two (from a technical standpoint):
- Angry Black Woman is a great place to start. She spends the webcomic complaining about being poor, when she's not pissed off about something specific, or just plain angry. Not stereotypical enough? At one point someone asks her why she's so angry. Angry Black Woman's black anger is due to being a black woman. Oh, that's not my opinion, either: it's canon. She even quotes Malcolm X to maximize the scene's cringe; I'm assuming it was something from the movie about him because reading books is undoubtedly "a white thing" in this webcomic. (You know who else liked books? HITLER)
- Meanwhile, Adult Anchor Baby's defining characteristic is her ghost sister. The rest of her team may be be dangerous at some point in the future but she is the most effective assassin on the planet right now. Adult Anchor Baby's sister also seems to be the only ghost on the planet... but it's been floated she may really be a manifestation of Adult Anchor Baby's power that she imagined as a sister. Obviously resolving that mystery would be an interesting piece of backstory to explore, wouldn't it? Instead, the entirety of her backstory at present is a single sentence about how her parents (who are never mentioned before or after this sentence) were deported. I've mentioned it twice, which means there's now more coverage of her backstory in the review than in three chapters of the webcomic.
The comic also stinks of "MEN ARE THE WORST!!1" pandering to court female readers future cat ladies. The random sexual assault the story opens with later turns out to be straight white male frat bros telling a third he'll get a job with the law firm(?) of Sheister and Foreigner if he rapes Angry Black Woman. All three of them show up again toward the end of chapter 2 for another shot at initiation rape. That's a pretty extreme angle to take but don't worry, this webcomic covers the whole social spectrum of male-female relations. If you're the kind of rat bastard who'd try cheering a girl up with compliments and a free drink, you should be terrorized and this is funny. Never mind that if the genders were switched -like they were for the first 6 pages of this webcomic- you'd be thrown to your death by Principle Murdermom. That's not to imply Delta Dawn offers no example of how men should treat women! You can be an unfaithful a polygamist who rents a room for sex and trades car rides for "doing that thing". Nothing's more empowering than treating women like interchangeable collections of sex holes for rent in [CURRENT YEAR], apparently.
Take out all the horrific pandering and cringe, and what's left in this story? Just old ideas mixed with references to current events. It's not hard to guess where the story is headed. Literally Heinrich Himmler's run for Congress introduced some obvious MAGA hat references. It's only a matter of time before he starts talking about building a wall out of dead Jews and making them pay for it - the cringe must flow!
The only positive thing about the writing is it will distract you from the spelling errors.
Art review
The art quality is pretty much average. It works for a comic book, the action is usually easy to follow, and it doesn't suffer from sameface. Principle Murdermom sometimes has a younger looking face than protagonists 20 years younger than her, but it's not that distracting. There have been a lot of diverse backgrounds and the artist hasn't cut corners on it. All-in-all, competent work from a technical standpoint.
On the other hand, the character design leaves a lot to be desired. All of the female characters have large breasts, particularly Furry Vigilante, who looks like her spine should be broken by the momentum of throwing a punch. The Defense Force jackets often look like garbage bags; it's hard to pass that off as intentional, for some kind of "realism in comics" angle with Roboblack over here.
Pretty much every evil white guy who isn't some form of Nazi is wearing a bow tie. They're often drawn skinny, pathetic looking, and dressed like it's still the 1950's. Internet Incel is a clear exception to this, as he's from the internet, can't get laid, and is a semi-pudgy, weepy rage monster. He's probably a stand-in for this webcomic's unwoke critics. Sleeping critics? What's the slur for sane people these assclowns throw around again? That moronic thing they're trying to make into yet another "privilege"... oh! Neurotypical! Internet Incel is a stand-in for this webcomic's neurotypical critics.
Author biography
Delta Dawn is written by Scott A. Bachmann. He is also his own publisher and has a few other comics we haven't reviewed at the time of writing this, but if Delta Dawn is any indication, they will likely wind up here too. Apparently he's also made a card game out of his characters from various comics. I don't know much about him because his Twitter has been exclusively used to promote the webcomic. Going by what makes it into his comics, I'd put his political leanings somewhere between NPC and partially-sentient vegetable.
I've been completely unable to find examples of him reacting to criticism. Either he's too poorly known to get flak for his writing or he legitimately is able to handle it. It'd be nice if it turned out to be the latter even if the former's more entertaining.
Conclusion
Take a hard pass on this one unless you need to show someone the dangers of indoctrination in college.
UPDATE: This comic stopped updating two years ago.
Links
- Comic: Chapter 1 - Because the nav sucks
- Comic: Chapter 2 - Some of the "Next Page" links will redirect you into a members-only part of the site with no links provided to get you back on track
- Comic: Chapter 3 - Still sucks
- The card game
