Welcome back to the Web Comic Spotlight where we take a look at a piece of the comic book world that keeps us entertained on a daily basis. Last week, we featured the controversial web comic Ctrl + Alt + Del. This week, we take a look at Next Town Over, so put on your cowboy hats and get your six shooters out!
Next Town Over takes place in the wild west, but it's a bit more than your typical western web comic. It mixes in a bit of fantasy and a little bit of steampunk elements in the book, and it's awesome. So far, there are three completed stories (a bit shorter than the length of one traditional comic book) which are about the bounty hunter Vane Black and the dastardly John Henry Hunter.
The first story is about Vane Black finding John Hunter and she tries to bring him in for the $10,000 reward. Things get blown up and things are not was they seem. In the first story, entitled "Lookback" there's a bit of set-up, but a lot of great action.
What I really enjoyed, first and foremost, about this web comic was that it is incredibly professional. In fact, you can actually buy all these books in regular comic book format if you'd like. It's set up like a traditional comic book, and not so much like many web comics which are more strips than anything else.
While I thought the art in "Lookback" was great, by the time you get to the third story, the art gets even better. It's really cool to watch an artist's craft evolve over the course of their work.
One of the coolest things about this web comic is the panels. There's a lot of stylization to the frames, and the actual frame itself will leak into the panel. It's something you rarely see in comics, and not only is it cool, but it fits the wild west style and adds something to the story.
The same goes for the word bubbles as well. Next Town Over takes a small step away from the traditional and adds a bit of flair. Instead of the normal white bubbles, Next Town Over gives the same gold outline to them as we see in the panels, and changes the white bubble background to more of a beige to fit in with the western theme. It's little things like that which make this comic even more awesome.
The art has an animated style to it, but the background are painted, much like you'd see in older (well, actually most) cartoons. It's a style mash we're all accustomed to, and it gives the book a very familiar feel to the reader.
The series is all created by Erin Mehlos from Wisconsin. Aside from Next Town Over, she has a great Deviant Art page to check out. Although the site has been around for two years now, there's three great stories to check out, and one cool short story that came from an anthology. Next Town Over is a fantastic web comic for fans of western and great art.
All the pictures here were taken from the Next Town Over website and were drawn by Erin Mehlos.
Huge thanks to Bruce Bateman for sending this to our e-mail! Do you have or know a webcomic you think should be featured? E-mail us at comicvinespotlight@gmail.com
Mat "Inferiorego" Elfring is a comedian, writer, and host of the internet show no one watches, Barely Watchable. Follow him on Twitter: @inferiorego
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