Looking for Group offers mature content
Published Thursday November 5th, 2009
Since 2006, writer Ryan Sohmer and illustrator Lar deSouza have been steadily building a fan base for their webcomic, Looking For Group.
Looking For Group is a parody of the fantasy and sword-and-sorcery genres. It mostly focuses on videogames, like World of Warcraft, and role playing games, like Dungeons & Dragons.
Although it's a webcomic, Looking For Group formats its online pages as if they are taken from an actual comic book. Like a traditional comic, each consecutive group of 32 pages or so is considered as an "issue" with its own "cover" posted.
That formatting structure works fine because it allows for printed reprint collections to be similar to those of regular comics.
As you may have guessed, Looking For Group Vol. 2, by Montreal-based Blind Ferret Entertainment, is a reprint book collecting issues 5 thru 8.
The Regular Protagonists:
Like Lord of The Rings, Looking For Group features a large ensemble cast of characters but, of course, its main focus is mostly on a few.
Primarily, the adventures revolve around a somewhat naïve and, at times, "goody-two shoes" elf named Cale and his pet panther Sooba.
They roam the lands while making friends with other characters they the meet along the way.
However, choosing good people to associate with doesn't appear to be one of Cale's attributes because his friends have a taste for killing and stealing.
A good example would be Richard The Warlock. He's used with comic relief but, in the context of the webcomic, is very sadistic with a love for killing innocent people.
And those are some of the good guys.
The Plot:
Continuing from where volume one left off, the series focuses on its regular, but seemingly unrelated, band of adventures trying to prevent an invasion by Legara of its surrounding territories.
As expected, from the first page until the last, battles and blood are ever present.
Somewhat hidden under the layers of magic is a subplot involving politics between nations.
Random Thoughts and Observations:
Generally speaking, Looking For Group Vol. 2 is an entertaining book. Unfortunately, it somewhat self-reduces its potential in at least three distinct ways.
Firstly, humour involving killing and death can be fine if adults are the only ones reading it. However, its cover doesn't recommend that it be only for mature readers. That means there's a chance that parents may pick it up after looking at its cartoony artwork and not realize how bloody it actually is.
Let's face it: most of the characters are not candidates to be role models for children.
Secondly, it's a little too heavy with the World of Warcraft/Dungeons & Dragons-type of pop culture references.
Many of those references will likely not be understood by non-gamers.
Thirdly, it contains too many sequences of characters "singing." To make matters worse, they sing what appear to be real, known songs.
If they are, in fact, "real, known songs," where are the songwriting credits printed?
The Bottom Line:
To sum it up, Looking For Group Vol. 2's not for children but perfectly fine for adults who like bloody, fantasy-based humour.
Looking For Group Vol. 2: 6/10
Publisher: Blind Ferret Entertainment
Bernard C. Cormier is, among other things, a freelance writer and broadcaster. www.myspace.com/bernardccormier. www.twitter.com/bernardccormier. E-mail: Bernardccormier-gncb@hotmail.com © Bernard C. Cormier 2009
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