Like Goblins, I should note that Templar Arizona is probably not reading material I would hand to a young child. That’s not who it’s written for.
I would also like to take this chance to note that there is new artwork up on my DeviantArt page. It’s all fairy themed, though much darker than Emma.
I love Templar fiercely. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought so at first–I enjoyed it, I spent a good share of a thoroughly worthwhile summer’s day reading through the archives, but I wouldn’t have pegged it as one of the comics which would become my favorite reading material.
I think it was Zora who I first fell in love with. Not all of the fan base agrees with me, but I adore Zora, and I really think the grown ups should pay more attention to her because this six year old is smart but she’s still six and she’s not going to be able to take care of herself and her daddy alone (ok, I fell in love with Gene pretty quickly too, so it wasn’t just Zora who stole my heart).
My ipod, for those who care, is named Zora for this character.
I love the characters. I love the art work. I have a tendency to make references and quotations. Even the characters I don’t like, or wouldn’t like in real life, I’m still sort of fond of. Like Tuesday, or Mesmer. Unfortunately for me, very few of my friends read this comic, so my references are lost on them unless I’ve made the reference and explained it so many times that they can anticipate what I’m about to say. It’s not as bad as my Kurt Vonnegut or Buffy the Vampire Slayer referencing, but it’s noticeable.
What is it about Templar that makes it special? I have already talked about loving characters in stories, liking the webcomic format, and admiring artwork. But there is something specific about Templar that it’s hard for me to put my finger on, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to write this post.
Templar is… Simultaneously strange and ordinary. It takes all of this craziness of it’s world in stride as if this is exactly as things are and there is nothing exceptional about it. Spike has never stooped to explaining things to us, telling us what’s different and how things have changed and sorting out details for us. She just presents it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And I love it.
I’m afraid this installment of the influences series is shorter than the others and doesn’t do it’s comic justice, but I’m kind of distracted right now and I’ve already hit a lot of the points I tend to gush over in previous posts.
The best thing that you can do to help me do a better job of describing how awesome this comic is is to go read it and then start commenting here and we can start discussing it and demonstrating the awesomeness to the rest of the world. I mean, that is unless you don’t like awesome webcomics with awesome characters and a strange but awesome setting.
Is my opinion of it’s awesomeness coming through yet? I’m not sure I’ve been very clear.