Joe Chouinard delivers enjoyable comedic motion in CLOWN CORPS

Clown Corps

Creator: Joe Chouinard
Obtainable: clowncorps.internet

Assessment By Masha Zhdanova

Just a few months in the past, a hilarious Frasier and Columbo crossover comedian was going round on Twitter, notable for its pitch-perfect characterization and hilarious cartoon stylization of the enduring solid. The comic, titled “I HEAR THE BLUES A-KILLIN’”, was posted in 4 components on Twitter by its creator, Joe Chouinard to nice acclaim. However this isn’t a evaluate of that comedian. My enjoyment of Joe Chouinard’s crossover fancomic prompted me to take a look at his ongoing longform webcomic Clown Corps, linked in his bio.

Clown Corps, similar to “I HEAR THE BLUES A-KILLIN’”, demonstrates an unimaginable understanding of comedic timing, caricature, and snappy banter. In contrast to the minicomic, nonetheless, Clown Corps can also be filled with dynamic, intense motion sequences, beginning proper from the opening chapter. Clown Corps follows the adventures of Mary McBell, an clever and gifted thief expert in a number of martial arts who’s apprehended by the titular Clown Corps when a theft goes mistaken. After saving the lifetime of the trainee clown bringing her to justice, McBell is obtainable a selection between jail and changing into a pupil at Clown School, main her to affix this colourful and thrilling new world. Unbeknownst to the clowns, a darker power is concentrating on their crime-fighting group…

This webcomic is a visible delight. Every character is designed thoughtfully, with their completely different clowning routines reflecting their personalities and the way they strategy clowning. Chouinard is aware of when to magnify the artwork right into a extra cartoony fashion and the place to tug again for optimum emotional affect. The fourth-wall jokes and references to the comics medium intensify the artifice of the clown performances, and draw consideration to the truth that the world the characters exist in isn’t fairly as sensible as our personal. They’re additionally very humorous.

As hilarious as Clown Corps could also be, the comedian can also be able to being extra critical. Chouinard isn’t unaware of the issues with regulation enforcement and the authorized system, and the gradual corruption of the Clown Corps from emergency response crew to non-public safety and safety for large enterprise is a recurring throughline within the story. As Binky places it in chapter 2, “there’s one thing unsettling about watching the firefighters develop into the cops.” The characters are all sensible, self-aware individuals in a foolish world, who wield humor with as a lot precision because the pies they throw. Mustard’s happy-go-lucky nature contrasts with Binky’s stoicism, however when push involves shove, she’s able to placing all jokes apart to give attention to the menace in entrance of her. Understanding when to be critical and when to be humorous, when to make a intelligent quip and when to let the motion shine, is an extremely highly effective ability to have as a cartoonist, and Chouinard does it masterfully all all through.

The comedian is, sadly, a sufferer of Webcomic Pacing: the stress to make every particular person web page passable by itself can result in some scenes dragging a bit as a result of necessity of together with some type of “beat” or punchline on each web page. After almost 400 pages and 5 chapters, there may be nonetheless clearly rather more story to go, and plenty of extra threads that may be explored in future chapters. However whether or not these characters and subplots will really be adopted up on stays to be seen. Nonetheless, the originality of the humor makes up for any pacing inconsistencies.

Clown Corps is a hilarious, well-drawn, action-packed webcomic about clowns who struggle crime with teleporting pies, and the various factors that may push marginalized individuals from one aspect of the regulation to the opposite. A robust solid of interesting characters who bounce off one another effectively make this comedian straightforward to binge and skim as an ongoing story.

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Masha Zhdanova is a part-time editor at The Anime Herald, the manga critiques editor at Ladies Write About Comics, and a contributor at Shelfdust and Writer’s Weekly. She likes webcomics, manga, and graphic novels. When she’s not writing about comics, she’s drawing comics or working at her hometown bookstore.