I hadn’t planned on writing about this comic, but then this post came up on AE, so I decided to write about Misfile instead.
Misfile is a pretty good example of the weirdness that you can get in a webcomic. The basic idea of Misfile is this: There’s a pot smoking angel. He gets high, screws up some heavenly files, and gets kicked out of heaven before he can rectify the situation. As a result, a boy get turned into a girl, and a girl loses the last year. Silliness ensues. When I first found the comic, I thought it would be pretty stupid – and there are lots of pointless jokes about feminine hygiene products, not to mention the rather regular ‘Oops, I forget I had boobs!’ jokes.
But ignoring the juvenile humor, the comic actually works rather well. Somehow, the author has managed to present the weirdness of the situation in a way that’s believably humorous without making it completely unbelievable. I suspect that the author’s wife/gf (I can’t remember which, she handles the business end of the site) acts as ‘girl talk editor’, and when the strip is not so good, it’s because she missed something.
It’s not perfect. The girl who lost the year sometimes acts out of character, and the stories are often rather boring, especially the ones involving the pot-smoking angel. Also, the angel has a brother who is very, very annoying, and not funny at all. The strip is certainly not one of those ‘must read’ sorts – the characters are not particularly easy to relate to, so the strip fails to really hold my attention. Still, the odd plot ideas and the well-thought out semi-lesbian relationship that has been developing make it fairly unique.
In reference to the AE post, this is a pretty good example of a male writer writing queerish characters and doing an okay, but not perfect, job.
Oh, and I actually enjoy the car race scenes – and I really, really hate cars. That’s got to be worth something!