Furry/Anthro Triple-Threat 08’ – Part 3 of 3

As you know, when I get fired up about a project, it ceases to be a critique, and becomes a review.

Fire three!

Here we go: Kaspall

By Lucy Lyall (European, if not British), Kaspall is the name of a fantasy ‘otherworld’ that exists as something of a hub between many other places, including our human world.

This is some of the strongest and interesting world-building I’ve seen in any SFF (sci-fi/fanstasy) project.

And the first fifty strips aren’t active exposition about history and politics, not the run-down on what makes Kaspall tick. Fuck, the world doesn’t even have a name until Strip 59. Up until then, it’s all character story and intrigue, which is the fucking perfect way to introduce your audience to a new world. Show me there’s humans and anthros living together and interacting. Show me there’s a language barrier. Show me there’s mysticism, teleportation-gating, a social-stratus between races, and a very delicate economy.

Lucy does all this without shoving a single word down my throat. Lucy does this by showing me the characters interact with eachother and the world around them. Often, this can be a double edged sword, but the 160-strip archives read so fast, so fluid, there’s really no excuse for missing a bit, much less feeling weighed down by too much exposition.

The art is full-page B&W, crass-hatched inks with solid outlines. The shading is schooled. The character design is stylized but anatomically correct. The architecture and props are clean. There’s lots to look at and most of it’s interesting. We even have a hand-lettered font, which is always fun, even though I don’t really care about that debate. The chacacters are expressive without being overly dramatized because:

Lucy doesn’t skimp on the dialogue.

In the ultra-rare combination of above-average art and talented writing, the character voice carries the burden that a lot of artists like to crutch-upon with the art: zomg-emo-face, bug-eyed-shock, and lol~teardrop.

No. Fuck that.

Tell your fucking story through your fucking characters like Kaspall and you won’t need to use ‘dynamic’ poses, LOUD FONTS, and that chibi bullshit that went passé in 2001.

Lest I ignore the plot, Kaspall builds from an off-worlder human and his friends dealing with light-hearted poverty, to some multi-layered local mystery involving serial murders, the cops, the local government, daydream-walking, teleport gates, all that shit. It’s really fun watching it develop, especially as more nuggets of Kaspall-the-world are revealed bit by bit.

As far as this triple-threat’s furry-theme goes, I barely noticed. And that’s not to say the cast is racially balanced or furry-lite. Kaspall is populated primarily by anthro characters of sometimes vague species. Each race has a unique scribbly language other than ‘D&D-common,’ and each has their own culture and social standards. This is what fantasy with anthros should feel like. It should feel believable and damn-near natural.

I recommend Kaspall to anyone who enjoys serial fantasy. It’s better than 95% of the big hitters and doesn’t get nearly enough props. The only problem might be the weekly update schedule and a rather middling webdesign, but anyone excited about quality serial SFF is probably used to that by now.