Written By: Will Davies
It’s a sad truth that a lot of webcomics die before their time but Rice Boy wasn’t one of them. It had a good long life, filled with happy memories and even managed to reproduce. I suppose that makes it the webcomics equivalent of one of those old hardy explorer types with an autobiography full of them punching things in exotic locations. Like Ranulph Fiennes maybe, although he isn’t dead and doesn’t reproduce asexually like webcomics. Or so they would have us believe…

Rice Boy also differs from Ranulph Fiennes in a number of other ways. While Fiennes is not a charming and surreal fantasy adventure Rice Boy is and does an extraordinarily good job at it. The story is fairly simple, following the journey of the titular Rice Boy as he seeks to fulfil a prophesy ahead of insidious pretenders. While the plot is unlikely to shatter the boundaries of modern story telling such issues are over shadowed by the quality of the setting, the world of Overside, which does not prescribe to any of the regular fantasy cliché’s and presents spectacle after spectacle. Therein lies the appeal of Rice Boy. The artwork is certainly most impressive, the design of Overside and its occupants doubly so, delivering a stream of wondrous sights that range from haunting locales to bright and endearing characters.

Rice Boy is one of the most memorable comics available on the net and we can only hope that its progeny, Order of Tales, continues in its footsteps. It’s early days but things are looking good. The art style has taken a darker turn with Dahm foregoing colour for simpler black and white line art and we can only expect that the story will take a similar turn what with dastardly deeds being committed already in the opening pages.

Evan Dahm, creator of both Rice Boy and Order of Tales, was kind enough to sit down and discuss his work with us.

Will: So first off, tell us about Rice Boy and Order of Tales. What are they about and how do they relate to each other?

Evan Dahm: Rice Boy and Order of Tales are two stories set up in a little fantasy-type world I’ve developed. Rice Boy, to me, served largely to develop the world around its central character, and I didn’t really have any idea that I’d go anywhere with Overside after I finished it. Rice Boy is loosely plotted and kind of wandery, following a few characters wrapped up in an almost absurdly big epic-fantasy type scenario. Order of Tales is something I started very recently and have been doing preliminary work on for at least a year, so it is much more tightly plotted and sensible, you could say. Also probably a whole lot more ambitious. They are both meant to be mutually enriching views of the same world; neither dependent on the other in any way.

Will: Rice Boy is something relatively rare in webcomics, a completed long-form story spanning four-hundred-and-thirty-eight pages across five volumes. Did you know at the start how it would play out or did it grow from a more casual outline?

Evan Dahm: I knew when I started Rice Boy that I wanted to keep it going for a while, and make it an Adventure of Epic Proportions type deal, but beyond that I wasn’t going on much until late in the game. Some of it is almost stream-of-consciousness, and some of it is deliberate steering in a particular direction. Plotting on the fly was a very interesting experience, but leads to a lot of difficulty in the conclusion stage.

Will: While Rice Boy was a consistently colourful title Order of Tales is in black and white. Why the switch?

Evan Dahm: Coloring digitally sucks. It is unpleasant and dehumanizing to me, after coloring that whole comic. I think I leaned on it a lot, to the detriment of my drawing skill, and to me it sometimes shows. In Order of Tales (OoT) I’m depending entirely on the original art, so it’s looking a lot better in that respect. Drawing by hand is what attracted me to comics, not staring into a computer screen. And for this particular story I really enjoy the drama and clarity of black and white; I feel it is more important than the atmospheric stuff I did with color in Rice Boy. I really don’t see myself doing any comics in color in the near future.

Will: Both titles are interlaced with their own mythologies and even a few of their own languages. Did you spend a lot of time developing these?

Evan Dahm: Part of the development I did for OoT was working on all of this background, and tightening up the loose mythology introduced in Rice Boy. I have become immensely interested in linguistics recently, and that’s something that will figure into OoT.

Will: You’re part of the Koala Wallop comics collective along with Dresden Codak and a number of other webcomics. How did you get involved and has your involvement been a boon for you?

Evan Dahm: I was approached by the Koala Wallop folks, and wasn’t aware that there were webcomics like that until then. It has been very nice to be a part of a group of people making such interesting and new comics, and yeah it has absolutely helped me more pragmatically…

Will: What webcomics aren’t people reading that you think they should be?

Evan Dahm: I don’t honestly read a lot of webcomics, and I certainly don’t read many obscure ones, so I don’t know how to help with that. Achewood is one I keep with, and is really something special. XKCD is very smart and very expertly done for a comic drawn so, uh, simply. The other Koala Wallop folks are making very good stuff. As far as obscure real-world comics, Moebius and Vaughn Bode have been what I’ve been reading lately.

Will: Spike of Templar, Arizona wants to know if you are at peace with all your humiliating failures.

Evan Dahm: Of course not! I can’t think of a better reason to do comics but to distract oneself from that sort of thing.

Will: And what’s the worst possible question I could ask the next person in line?

Evan Dahm:  How much money would you have to be paid to allow the characters of your comic to be mascots in a commercial for adult diapers?

Rice Boy and Order of Tales can be found at http://riceboy.jho-tan.com . Elves sold separately.

Discussion Prod
So yeah. Stuff. Merchandising specifically, how much webcomic related junk do you buy and how much of it is worth our time?

Five Items or Less

San Diego has been and gone. It threw a whole monkey into the works here and I wasn’t even on the same bloody continent so some if anyone has any neat anecdotes to share that’d probably go someway to healing the damage. Also a time machine would be great.

Dresden Codak of www.dresdencodak.com  broke his hands in a freak bicycle accident.

Next week on FPE: Marvel as the scheduling remains horribly mangled , also possibly partially eaten by forest animals.

Feedback, questions and suggestions can be directed towards fourthpanelestate@googlemail.com  and unadulterated hate towards www.twitter.com/WTDavies .

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