Jump Leads, Chapter Five

Welcome back to another Jump Leads chapter review! The Jump Leads creative team finished Chapter Five several weeks ago, and now that I've read through it, I'm here to give you the lowdown. If you're not up to speed on Jump Leads, I do recommend reading through from the very beginning--it's a good comic. Fortunately, Jump Leads chapters are fairly self-contained and semi-episodic in nature (at least so far!), so if you want to plunge right in with Chapter Five, it should be easy enough to get your bearings.

The chapter begins with a fresh change of scenery. Llew and Meaney land their jumpship in a tropical forest, which provides a nice visual change from the steely blues and metallic interiors of previous dimensions, at least for the first half of this issue. The jungle is detailed and lushly rendered--no surprise there, as Jump Leads has showcased strong artwork from day one. Run-ins with yellow-suited patrolmen quickly reveal that Llew and Meaney are not alone on this tropical island: far from it.

This chapter introduces a villain to the comic. General Donald Gray is a one-time conqueror of the world who returned political rule to its original holders when he grew bored of his newfound power. Now, like a martial artist who lives for the thrill of the fight, he develops elaborate schemes while giving himself deliberate handicaps, and foiling his plans has become a training exercise for field agents. Gray is a truly bizarre villain. Time after time, his character pokes fun at sci-fi concepts and conventions by parodying and subverting them:

General Gray, with his cliche-laden plans straight out of a James Bond film, appears rather eccentric and harmless. Right?

Until he gets his hands on jumpship technology, that is. With the realization that there is an entire multiverse out there waiting to be conquered, Gray decides to get back in the game. Cue the obligatory ominous music: dun dun dunn!

Jump Leads is as much a comedy as an adventure series, and even with the threat of a new villain, this chapter maintains a humorous tone. Llew gets his turn with the shoulder-angels, and while the "manifested crisis of conscience" trope is a bit played-out, here it's executed with enough wit to keep it entertaining. The script delivers several clever lines, such as Meaney's parting threat in the last four panels of this page, and the absurd contrivances by which our protagonists escape capture had me busting a gut more than once. General Gray is a truly ludicrous villain, but by the end of the chapter, we're ready to take him at least as seriously as we take Meaney and Llewellyn.

This chapter is one of the strongest so far, in terms of the potential it opens up for the comic series: in my estimation, rivaled only by Chapter Three. The Jump Leads creative team is already bringing out Chapter Six, so I'm eager to see where they take things from here. At this point, I don't think you need to be told--I'm sold.

Jump Leads, Chapter Three (and Four)

Welcome back, everyone, for another Monday Tuesday night review of a chapter from Jump Leads--which, by the way, has jumped URLS from Soulgeek to its own independent site at jump-leads.com, rendering all the links from my previous reviews useless. Hooray! In all seriousness, though, the new site looks impressive. It's got a cohesive independent look, and incorporates all the helpful information and extras from the old site. Tonight's review brings us to Issue #3.

This issue follows the same dimension-of-the-week format of the previous two, with Llewellyn and Meaney navigating their jumpship to a brand-new alternate universe. This adventure opens right in the middle of an altercation with the locals, resulting in Llewellyn sustaining a painful injury. When our protagonists seek medical help, they run into what appears to be a familiar face, but is actually just the alternate-reality double of Meaney's girlfriend from his home universe. This leads Meaney to a crisis of conscience: follow the girlfriend lookalike, or stick with his friend and wait for Llew's surgery. Meanwhile, all is not as it seems in the operating room, as a twist in the medical procedure reveals our antagonists: body-stealing parasites that use the host's musculature and memories to their advantage. Before the mess gets resolved and Llew and Meaney can get on their way, there are a host of other twists that will keep you gripped and guessing.

In brief, it's a thoroughly entertaining self-contained plot that you can read through in maybe fifteen minutes. Meaney and Llewellyn still embody the familiar trope of the dumb nice guy and the witty cynic, but it's the way that they embody these tropes that makes it interesting. There are individualized quirks here and there, such as when Meaney's darker side comes to light, and it's pretty much just as light as the lighter side. Or when Llew delivers the following quip:


Yes: the writing is the same level of witty, humorous, slightly snarky adventure that you've come to expect if you've read this far through Jump Leads already.

The art is also what you've come to expect: sharp, stylized, dynamic artwork that goes the extra yard in technical details. The well-rendered technological elements and predominantly blue-and-silver color palette help to evoke and characterize the sci-fi metaverse that the protagonists travel through. Jump Leads artist JjAR sticks with his established style, which adds a consistent and professional feel to the work--unlike other webcomics, where you can see the artist's style developing over time. This isn't really a complaint, though. It's just to say that here, the artist started off strong. One especially nice touch is the rippled, distorted lettering to indicate Meaney's shivering and chattering teeth in this chilly scene. It works well with the atmospherics in that scene.

While I'm at it, I might as well review Issue #4, which is a humorously brief four-page dimensional hop wherein Llew and Meaney accidentally park their jumpship on a civilian's car. If you like Jump Leads, it's everything you like about Jump Leads in a tidy and amusing little package.

In short, these two installments of Jump Leads are well worth reading, especially for sci-fi enthusiasts and fans of quality artwork.

Jump Leads review: Issue #1
Jump Leads review: Issue #2

Jump Leads, Chapter Two

Man. You ever about to go to bed, and you realize you made this promise you gotta keep before you go to bed, and it's not a huge trouble and it's even sort of enjoyable but frankly you'd rather be in bed? That's me right now. But I'm a man of my word, so...time to read through chapter two of Jump Leads, and then talk about it with you.

This installment picks up where the last chapter left off: Meaney and Llewellyn, stranded in an alternate universe, find themselves aboard a cargo ship that's harvesting the energy of a nebula. The crew, immediately suspecting that the newcomers are hostile, hold Llew and Meaney for interrogation...which is interrupted by the intrusion of something else. There's plenty of action and danger, but it turns out that things aren't always as they seem. Not to give the ending away or anything, but the resolution of this episode's conflict did remind me I was reading a humor comic. I felt a little bit cheated, but overall this installment was also worth reading.

A big part of that was the art. JjAR, the artist, continues to go the extra mile--environments and characters are skillfully rendered and colored, conveying a strong sense of three-dimensional space. Adding to the effect is the level of artistic detail on the technology (for instance, these backgrounds). Perspective changes (e.g. lofted camera angles) and foreshortening are employed for dramatic effect, with technical precision. JjAR uses his fancy visual tricks liberally, keeping things dynamic, but thankfully he doesn't overuse them. To sum up: continuing the trend of the first issue, the art here is decidedly above the bar set by the average webcomic.

Another plus is the humor and characterization. Llew and Meaney's personalities continue to bounce off each other, the perpetual tension between idealism and realism forced by circumstances to cooperate. There are some clever one-liners, like this quip about how sinister companies pay better than the moral ones, although Llew is a bit of a broken record with his cynical prognostications of interrogational horror. The supporting cast of the nebula-farming ship gets about as much development as you'd expect from folks we won't see next episode, but they provide a setting for our heroes' adventure in the unknown.

And the characterization of our two protagonists is solid and engaging. Llew's wit and Meaney's zeal make for good comedy, and when danger strikes, we care about their fate because they're entertaining. We're invested in their well-being! It's not a deadly serious adventure, but for all their faults, Llew and Meaney are likeable guys that we want to see get out of their predicaments alive. Just as JjAR is a above-average artist, Ben Paddon (the writer) is an above-average writer.

Well, I'm done! That was a fun little exercise, and weird as it may sound, I feel like I've earned the right to go to bed now. I enjoyed reading through chapter two of Jump Leads, and if it sounds from this review like you would also enjoy it, I encourage you to check it out. Ari Collins will be around sometime midweek to deliver his usual alliterative analyses, and I'll be back on Friday with the weekly rundown. Good night, everyone!

Jump Leads, Chapter One

Hey, folks. Jackson here, with an impromp-Tuesday evening update. 'bout a year ago, I started coming across ads for a comic called Jump Leads. I read a handful of pages from the first issue, and it was one of those comics where you recognize it's a quality job, but it fails to grab you. Largely because you read a buttload of webcomics already. But this evening, on a whim, I picked it back up and read all the way through the first issue.

What's the deal with Jump Leads, then? It's reality-hopper sci-fi: a couple members of the Lead Service, a sort of reality enforcement agency thing, go on a live training exercise that goes wrong and strands them in the multiverse. It's also got a fairly humorous tone (the references to pop culture and sci-fi strained the verisimilitude a hair for me, but overall it's good humor), and its protagonists have a familiar comic-and-straight-man vibe going. Meaney is the overenthusiastic numbskull--except that he's got a fairly decent grasp on the rules behind the multiverse, owing to his overenthusiasm. He's very much committed to his career as a Jump Lead. Llewellyn, on the other hand...cynical, detached, not sure what he's doing with his life. Both of them are still trainees--Llewellyn for the fifth time. I found Llewellyn the more interesting of the two, though Meaney is kinda likeable for his youthful energy too. When he's not being annoying, that is.

Overall, I liked the first issue. It's a solid intro story script-wise, nothing too fancy, takes a couple chances but largely a standard setup. Entertaining. The presentation is comic-book-style (a prudent business move, as it makes it easy to produce a print version), and the art is good: well-rendered angular sci-fi machinery, and a good grasp of both realism and stylization. One of my turnoffs on my initial read from a year ago was that the character designs looked kind of monkeyish, but they're very expressive and suited to the humorous tone. An additional fun touch at the issue's end are the pages from the training manual, complete with Meaney and Llewellyn's notes scribbled in the margins. So is it worth a read? Well, it's good quality, and you've heard the premise--you know better than I do whether that sounds like your cup of tea. I know I'll probably head back to read the second issue at some point. Your call, amigos.