Evan Dahm updates his web comic, Rice Boy, weekly.
|
If you are ever in Boone, North Carolina, and you see some college kid absent-mindedly crossing the street, please slow down. It might be Evan Dahm, and he's probably in another world called "Overside." Dahm created this world for a character called Rice Boy, the subject of a web comic by the same name.
Shoes can talk in this fictional world, and they can take their wearer to a destination as if on autopilot. It's almost as if Dahm, a Spanish major/art minor, wears such shoes as he walks to and from classes at Appalachian State. He is not paying much attention to the real world, because he is planning the next page in his web comic. "It's probably going to be the death of me," he says.
Web comics have married the comic book and the Internet. They can be anything from a single drawing with a caption to a 500-page graphic novel. They are an enigma that have been around since the 1990s, but have really begun to gain traction in recent years.
Rice Boy would be considered a graphic novel, an extended-length comic book, some might say.
The namesake character is humble, seemingly helpless at first. He is a little guy with no arms or legs who is supposed to save the world.
The setting of Overside resembles an amalgamation of every science fiction and fantasy world ever created. Hundreds of talking species and objects inhabit the land. Robots become estranged from their community. The landscapes have strange features, such as plants that look and glow like light bulbs. Or are they light bulbs that look and grow like plants?
Rice Boy's readers ask similar questions and dissect the story on Koala Wallop, a popular web comic Internet forum. Dahm doesn't track how many people read the web comic, but Rice Boy has its own thread, and more than 1,500 posts had been recorded at the time this article was written.
"Conventional popularity is pretty difficult to determine on the Internet — it's a big place," says James Newberry, founder of Koala Wallop and co-creator of web comics such as Gorillas vs. Robots. "I do know this: Everyone who reads Rice Boy becomes instantly enamored of it. They tell friends about it, and link to it on their LiveJournal page, or whatever. And if you start reading it, you're hooked; you want to see what happens. That's the very definition of popularity on the web."
So, how did Evan Dahm become a semi-famous web comicker? His success has been intricately linked with the growth of the medium.
For him, it started as far back as the first grade. "I got a lot more out of doodling than paying attention in class," he says.
He made four-panel comic strips modeled after the newspaper funnies, but lost interest in them when Bill Watterson retired the Calvin and Hobbes series. Dahm calls Calvin and Hobbes "the last great comic strip."
Spiderman and other superhero comic books were also staples of Dahm's youth. He self-published his own comic books in high school, with science fiction themes and parodies of movies, similar to the satires of Mad magazine. Rice Boy might have begun as a frequent doodle as early as his freshman year in high school, Dahm thinks.
He also began to read graphic novels, like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan — The Smartest Kid on Earth. The theme of the 388-page Jimmy Corrigan was not as simple as a juvenile superhero. The main character is a middle-aged man who relieves his quiet desperation by retreating into a fantasy world in which he is the smartest kid on earth.
Traditional comic books — like the kind that have been around for several generations of readers now — had already delved into mature themes by the time graphic novels came along. The size of the graphic novel simply allowed comic creators to delve deeper into those themes in one cohesive unit.
Of course, self-publishing a graphic novel is an entirely different challenge than photocopying and stapling pages for self-published comic books.
Enter the Web, a medium that not only allows comic artists to reach a wide audience at a minimal cost, but also connects the artist to the readers. "Without the Internet, I probably wouldn't have done something like this," Dahm says.
Of course, Dahm's creative process doesn't leap straight from his head to the web. At home, he brews some tea and sits down at his drawing board. No music, no television.
"I'm easily overstimulated," he says. "I can't think clearly with music and TV."
First, he sketches with a pencil. Then he defines the outlines with black ink. Because Dahm is left handed, he has to draw from right to left to avoid smudging the ink.
Next, he scans the artwork and uploads it onto his computer. Then he digitally colors the pages.
Pages are posted online one at a time, sometimes daily in the summer but less when school is back in session. Since he has begun publishing in April 2006, he has posted more than 300 pages.
Fellow artist and writer Aaron Diaz, creator of the web comic Dresden Codak, said many web comickers reuse artwork and publish sporadically. Diaz, who recently quit his day job to pursue his web comic full time, praised Dahm's consistency. "He updates weekly with several pages of original artwork, all while going to school," Diaz says. "To keep to that kind of schedule shows a very mature work ethic that's pretty rare in web comics."
That consistency has created a world that has almost taken on a life of its own. As the plot has grown, Dahm has struggled with its complexity, and he recently decided to fully plan the conclusion of Rice Boy by writing an actual script. "It's not something I've ever really done," he says. "With comics, I've always winged it. But I didn't expect Rice Boy to last this long."
That doesn't mean the world of Overside will disappear. Dahm has considered publishing a hard copy of the series (some of the work is already available in a bound edition on his website). He is also thinking about a spinoff and a video game. "This comic is something that's extremely personal to me," he says. "That sounds corny, but I feel strongly about identifying with it more than anything else."
Guide to Overside
You can find Rice Boy at http://riceboy.jho-tan.com. For the backstory, Evan's website includes both a map of Overside as well as a comprehensive encyclopedia. Here, you'll find entries for places like the Hideous Child Tavern and Knosus (a shaman who looks like a rabbit).
Mail Article
Print Article
Add to favorites
