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goddamnwebcomics · 1 year

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My Brief Review of Alien Dice (Day 1 to Day 27)

When I first started reading this comic, I thought it was going to suck, but now that I've reached well past the halfway point after riffing it nonstop for almost 3 years, I feel that the comic is probably the most objectively well made comic in this blog. It has likable protagonists, cool worldbuilding and this comic knows how to have stakes, that being said I'd be a fucking liar if I said this comic had nothing bad in it, and sadly I'm afraid the bad outweights the good, let's get into it.

PLOT & WRITING

The comic starts with our protagonist, Chel, spending the night at her home when she meets a strange two-tailed cat and a blue alien named Lexx who is hunting for the cat. Chel then nurtures Lexx after he gets injured and learns that Lexx is an Alien Dice player, who has come to Earth to hunt for dice animals. Chel t´hen ends up in his spaceship, where she learns about Lexx's origins, the true nature of the game, the true nature of the dice, and soon is taken into an adventure of a lifetime as she meets Lexx's friends and foes. She also has to tolerate Lexx's unstable personality problems, ends up having her fed family go after Lexx, learns about the horrible society ADC has created in the galaxy, and finslly is taken through countless twists and turns, half of which make no sense.

In terms of writing, Alien Dice is probably the only comic in my blog that can create a good balance of comedy and very grimdark stuff. Comedy is often saved for lighter moments and not in the middle of a serious event. Granted, there is one aspect that can ruin the seriousness of a scene, but that has nothing to do with writing, more on that in the Art section. While Alien Dice has good balance, it often can sometimes take FOREVER for stuff to progress. At the beginning the pacing wasn't bad, sometimes there would be a scene that'd go way too long here or there, but once Chel gets kidnapped we spend an ungodly long amount of time in Riley's spaceship, where we see too many scenes of Lexx training and his pets arguing. It gets even worse after Trasik's incident, once the Greys come and reprogram Lexx and get rid of his evil side, we spend an entire year without conflict. It's like this comic is looking to do everything but progress the plot, we have long scenes of Lexx and Victor having repetitive conversations, we have a pointless subplot where Keith tries to get relay and Zaile teaches him how to use it, we have ANIMAL ROMANCE, we have scenes where Lexx learns what light soup and salad tastes like and more animals playing and fighting. It's really tiresome when you're waiting for shit to get serious, and there are many unanswered questions. We don't even see a glimpse of many of the central cast, like Riley or Damian during these segments, not that it's a bad thing, but it shows you how much comfort Tiffany likes to put into the comic sometimes.

Another thing I'm not a huge fan of is how characters have tendency to flip their plans over several times. For example, Lexx doesn't want to live with Chel, but then someone says something to him which immediately makes him state "oh I want to live with Chel now", and then several pages later he is suddenly like "I don't want to live with Chel" again. It's very annoying and happens a lot throughout this comic, it makes you question just what is the future of Chel and Lexx. And it seems other characters are very easily convinced over anything.

Then we have the technology of the Dice world, the usual sci-fi tropes and such are often left unexplained, but when this comic introduces something unique, such as the concept of relays and dice animals, or even non-living dice, things get confusing. The nature of the Dice Animals is explained early on that they're living entities that take over another animal, as it seems to have happened with Chel's former cat Mittens, who was replaced by Stealth. However, Stealth shares Mittens's memories but still remembers Lexx from the past, and then it's later implied she always was Mittens, as opposed to always being Stealth. There is also the question of sentience for the Dice animals, they're like Digimon at first, technological creatures with sentience, but then you get into the fact they're capable of breeding, and can also "go feral" and turn back into animals with no speech or human-level intelligence. At some point Keith even calls them not quite human or animal. Then you add in the fact Zeta talks like a caveman while other dice talk normally, and Zeta is dumber than most dice as he has no concept of parenting according to Riley, and if I started talking about whether or not him impregnating Epsy was done with or without her consent, I'd be here all week. The point is, a lot of shit regarding dices is murky.

Relay starts off as mysterious, and Stealth putting it inside Chel is the main reason why Chel and Lexx have to be close, but overtime TIffany expands on it, and reveals the reason Lexx and Chel's relays are less advanced is because they have certain features disabled. But also apparently relay can even store "mind creatures", such as soul echoes, which are basically ghosts inside people's minds, and even creatures created by nanites, which can somehow possess people to the point of manipulating their physical strength, and it's never made quite clear how these creatures exist, and I feel Tiffany sort of regretted how confusing she made them, because "Evil Lexx" was eliminated from the comic as soon as his big moment came. If you're confused by all these words, I don't blame you, because I was just as confused by all of this when I read the comic.

Lastly there are the plot twists. The way how this comic treats plot twists is rather odd. For the first half of the comic, the audience knows big plot twists before the characters do, these are "Chel has relay", "Zaile is Lexx's brother", "Kane is NOT Lexx's sister" and so forth. But there are also whole bunch of plot twists that are implied but never followed upon, like Lexx possibly being an advanced form of dice animal himself (granted this is not abandoned, just never outright stated, and the further evolution of this twist - dice players with animalistic abilities being treated as slaves by other dice players - is eventually abandoned) or the secret role humans have in Alien Dice. When the big plot twists that do happen are stated, they often happen off-screen. Probably the most bizarre example of this is when Lexx tells Chel she has relay, we see Lexx open his mouth, but we see no words, then we see Chel's reaction and then she leaves and we see her crying. It's such a bizarre moment, you don't think Lexx told Chel anything and she just left, but no.

Then we get to the second half of plot twists, which are just ass pull after ass pull after ass pull. We got two big comic-changing plot twists back to back which had virtually no foreshadowing, first we learned that Lexx's mom was alive this whole time, and then it was revealed that Trasik, who had kidnapped Chel, was actually a mimic all along, and she didn't find out until after killing her. It was just a really stupid attempt at making Chel not look like a murderer. Sometimes murder is okay.

Overall, the writing is competent but has it's own issues as well.

CHARACTERS

One of the first things about Alien Dice's cast is that it has something no other comic riffed so far in this blog has, likable protagonists. I would actually argue Chel is the best character in this entire comic. Although she first is in Audience Surrogate role and doesn't do much besides follow Lexx around and nurture the dice animals, she eventually starts doing more and more things, she starts calling out other characters for being assholes, we slowly start to get a good view into her psyche and we also see that she is not a helpless damsel who needs Lexx to save her. Her biggest highlight is killing Trasik, she just goes and stabs her to death without hesitation. If it didn't turn out to be a mimic, I would be praising that scene so much more.

But yeah, Chel doesn't really have any moments where she does stupid things, if she does a mistake it's on purpose, the stupidest thing she probably has done is blurt out to Lexx that his mom is alive, but it seems Lexx forgets about it as soon as it's mentioned. Granted, she does have the indecisiveness I talked about in the writing section, but that's not a problem unique to her.

Then we have Lexx, the other main protagonist, Lexx has a really sad backstory and he is a more mysterious character who really needs someone like Chel in his life. Sadly, he is more of a mixed bag than Chel. He often does stupid things and acts like a complete idiot at times, which I'm not sure is intentional, as sometimes he will suddenly get psychosis and try to kill one of his dice, sometimes he just acts like an asshole to Chel for no reason, sometimes he makes justifications for his asshole friends (we'll get to them later) and sometimes he is acting like a creepy simp. It could be argued Evil Lexx is influencing him during some of these moments, but just talking about Evil Lexx gives me a headache, so let's say Evil Lexx has only influenced Lexx's actions once and that was when he possessed him. Lexx becomes a better person throughout the comic, but sometimes reset button is hit which makes him lose all his development, but eventually he regains his development out of nowhere. I would still argue Lexx is a protagonist worth rooting for, because the world he lives in, his predicament and his own friends are much worse than he is.

Then there's Lexx's pets, the Dice animals. I feel like these characters purely exist for merchandising reasons, because during my riff I saw a ton of pictures of posters, totebags, pins and stickers with these guys all over them. Tiffany however does try to give them development with mixed results. The main Dice is arguably Stealth, she starts off as a decent character, and she acts as a good conscience to Lexx at the beginning of the comic. Unfortunately as soon as she turns into her white puma form, not only does she look more and more ridiculous, she becomes a massive dick who is always ANGRY. Both her backstory and motivation are also quite confusing, like I said it's never really established if she has the mind of Stealth or mind of Mittens, and she wants freedom but also she wants to protect Chel and Lexx. She hates other dice animals for "stealing Chel/Lexx" but doesn't also like it if Chel/Lexx disrespect her independence. Eventually she stops hating other animals, but continues being kind of a dick throughout the rest of the comic with occassional moments of decency, but she's probably easier to listen to than look at, more about that on the Art section. Then there's Sirius, Sirius started off as creepy dog energy dice we nicknamed Dog Sothoth, but he somehow evolved into a dopey dragon thing. Sirius also starts wanting independence from Lexx, but outside of arguing with Stealth he doesn't really develop any of this, and soon becomes horny for Serenity, the random hyena who wasn't used at all until that point and then she suddenly turns into a palette swap of Sirius, and every page from then on looks like they're coming close to fucking right then and there.

While Tiffany generally keeps away from writing blatant romance, the ANIMAL ROMANCE segments make me feel dirty, and I don't think that would be the case if it wasn't for the original main dice of the series, Zeta. Zeta talks like a caveman unlike other dice, and it is eventually implied that he raped Epsy off-screen because he tells her "Zeta sorry. Zeta not know what he did". And it's justified because Zeta did not have the ability to think? Meanwhile this whole event causes Epsy to go feral, and this is all Epsy's fault because she laid Zeta's eggs. The consent on this entire thing is never cleared up, and I feel like Tiffany should've had second thoughts about this whole arc. So yeah, that's why I'm not fond of any other romances the chinpokomon in this comic have.

The only other dice with any sort of personality are Dash, who eventually becomes Stealth's lover after being a prose-spouting, Zeta-mauling, MURR HELLOIng idiot who Lexx once wanted to kill, as well as Swiftpaw. He is a winged fox who eventually develops fondness for Keith, and he does whole bunch of cutesy shit. There's also other dice but they have one note gimmicks, and rest are just straight up gone, like Lexx catches them and then we never see them again, remember the giant bat? Drunk kangaroo? The weird raccoon thing? Yeah, the less dice-focused this comic becomes, the more their presence feels like an afterthought outside of Stealth, Sirius, Zeta and the rest.

And then there's Lexx's so called friends, these assholes are the reason Lexx's understanding of certain social issues are so warped, to the point some of his flaws may be almost justified. First we have Damian, he went from a supportive friend of Lexx's into a greedy partyloving womanizer with a Pinocchio nose who didn't contribute anything, then there is Claudia, she straight up wants to rape Lexx at first. However, Claudia seems to eventually just go from a wannabe rapist to a desperate lover, but she doesn't get any better as a character. Claudia and Damian want Lexx to be their comfort doll, and while they're willing to protect him, they really dislike Chel and don't want her to be around. But they're the most likable characters in the world compared to the one who I think is not only the worst character in this comic but also the worst character in this entire blog, RILEY.

Where do I begin with Riley? He is Lexx's best friend and soul brother, but he has never done one good thing for Lexx or Chel. In his first appearance, he first tries to hit on Chel and then tries to use her to get chicks? After that, we learn that Riley is working for Lexx's brother Zaile, who hates him, and Riley knows a whole bunch of shit Lexx doesn't know, which we learn throughout the whole comic, he also knows that LEXX'S MOM WAS ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME. He is the brother of Trasik, the crazy child trafficking psychopath who wants to kill Lexx because she is racist against rishans, and a whole bunch of other siblings AND THEY ALL PLAY. Riley also belittles Lexx and reads his mind by force but doesn't let Lexx read his mind, victimblames and insults Lisaan for being a slave and a prostitute, drugs both Chel and Lexx in their sleep, calls Chel's breasts "deformed", enables his sister's child trafficking business, the list goes on and on. He is a manipulative piece of shit fucktard that might as well be the main antagonist, because almost all the problems in Lexx's life are his fault.

Speaking of let's move on to the ACTUAL antagonists. We learn slowly that ADC, which stands for Alien Dice Council if I remember correctly, controls the whole galaxy except for greys and Earth, they monitor Lexx constantly and try to kill him. They have destroyed semantics around the word "parents" so that anyone who doesn't have a caretaker qualifies as an orphan and thus can be sentenced to play the game, and the game itself is a hellish meatgrinder that is impossible to win, you can't kill yourself because nanites take control of your body and create unstable mutations within your mind, but you can easily be killed at any time, and ADC might as well kill you solely because you're popular, and they can also send mimics that can easily impersonate your loved ones.

Sounds like a pretty good case for a hateable antagonist, right? Unfortunately, whenever ADC appears on screen, it's two people, an orange haired loser who loves to be evil and a purple rishan woman who also loves to be evil, and she wants to kill off Lexx for whatever reason. These two are bland and rather than being portrayed as a dark shadow totalitarian despot government they're just two rich assholes who do the ohohohoho anime woman laugh when they see children starving. In a similar train is Trasik, the secondary antagonist of the comic, she wants to kill Lexx for some reason and eventually we learn she one day decided to become racist, because her father liked to go out with Lexx's mom. Bigotry really isn't part of her character though, she just loves to traffic children and try to kill Lexx for her own amusement, and then when Chel finally kills her we learn she has been replaced with a perfect mimic. I feel that Trasik and ADC both work better off as antagonists when they're off-screen. When we actually see them, they're bland and not complicated enough to be part of this universe. An antagonist who does work better is Saign who runs an Alien Dice slave ring, she has a grudge against Lexx so she wants to recruit her into her ring. However she never shows up again so what's the point. Riley should be the main antagonist of the comic more than anyone else.

As for the rest of the noteworthy characters, we have Keith and Victor, the most prevalent earthlings after Chel to appear. Victor is Chel's father and a determined Alien hunter who goes from hating Lexx and wanting to dissect him into respecting him as a living creature. The problem is we have to run in circles several times before he starts showing his more humble side, but other than that he is not an awful character, and he is right about Lexx's "friends" treating him like shit. Keith is a friend of Chel's, and he is okay when he isn't being a manchild or when Lexx isn't getting green eyes in his vicinity. And the subplot about him getting relay is completely pointless.

Really the last character worth talking about is Maenae. I usually dislike kid characters, but Maenae not only is likable but also she has a pretty sad backstory, and I wish she was used more as opposed to Lexx's asshole friends. Just, make sure she has clothes on.

There's one more thing that I want to talk about in this comic and that is the background characters. Often in crowd scenes we see a wide variety of different Georgelucasian aliens going out and about, but most major characters and many of the background characters outside of large public venues are just humans with another skin color. I feel like it's odd that there are fantastical aliens and also humans with wacky colors and let's face it, just regular ass humans with few quirks to make them "alien" among the aliens. Lexx's first opponent is a donut head crab alien which was pretty cool to see, but outside of that we never get any major character that are non-humanoid outside of greys and the Dice animals. I blame that on the lack of risks in the art department, and boy I've got a lot to talk about that one.

ART

I am not an art critic by any means. That being said I am aware that I can point out when certain art looks bad, weird or goofy. And I can safely make the statement that the worst thing about Alien Dice is the art. The art is a gigantic ball of inconsistency, and I don't know why. It seems that Tiffany isn't drawing characters based on existing references, and instead she is trying to desperately find an artstyle to stick to. This is demonstrated best with the evolution of main character herself, Chel.

Just look at how much she has changed over the years, at first you'd be like "yeah this is natural character evolution", but the third row is literally the character's design changing within the span of a year. I know constant redesigning of characters is a webcomic tradition by now, but the fact her design can just change in the middle of a page is ridiculous.

I would argue that the current iteration of Alien Dice has the most decent art, it has been up and down though, sometimes the artstyle has been good, and other times it has been shit. The weird thing is Lexx, Victor and Riley don't have this issue. They can sometimes look weird, but they also keep most of their facial structure, like I can buy them having refs for them that Tiffany comes back, unlike Chel whose skull's shape has probably changed 35 times by now.

And what happens when you combine inconsistent artstyle with a design that is not good at all? You get Stealth. More specifically Stealth's fourth form.

Stealth is just a sleep paralysis demon, there are times she looks decent but it depends entirely on the angle, the size of her face and whatever random artstyle Tiffany is going for that week. I genuinely think she needs to evolve into something that looks less like a realistic cat with human hair. If Sirius's fourth form can be based on a made up animal, why not Stealth?

I've bitched enough about the artstyle itself and how certain characters are affected by it, let's talk about another universal problem this comic has that has something to do with art, the chibi faces.

I don't hate chibi but it needs to be used in moderation, and mainly in comedic stuff. However Alien Dice tends to use chibi faces whether or not they're appropriate for the scene. They're not your typical anime faces though, many of them are instead unique exaggerated expressions, that have a lot in common with chibi. The most notorious one is the "Riley Eyes", where characters eyes turn simple and oval shaped, and Riley gets them a lot which is why they're named after him. There's also moments when characters get huge pillow mouths or their nose and mouth turns invisible. I feel like Tiffany didn't have talent to give characters exaggerated expressions so she struck to chibi faces. However over time the chibi faces are used less and less, but they don't disappear completely. Lexx's eyes losing their sclera seems to be something he does everytime he is angry, to the point I'm questioning if it's not a chibi face but rather anatomically part of his rishan expression.

There's also times when characters are drawn with chibi proportions, mainly in Relay, and this comic can't seem to make up just how chibi they are. They might just have big eyes and chibi proportions, sometimes they just look like literal children, sometimes there is no chibi proportions, but characters just do chibi faces. It's so damn confusing and I think Tiffany just gave up trying to be consistent on that department.

Yeah, the art is very inconsistent as a whole and on top of that has it's own issues. The layout of the pages is often very short but outside of few questionable page placement and speech bubble decisions, I didn't have any major issues with it.

FINAL WORDS

Alien Dice is the best webcomic on this blog, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't an avid reader of webcomics. The most you're gonna get out of it is a pairing of likable and rootable protagonists, some interesting but also confusing concepts and good worldbuilding, but it's all hidden behind a sidecast of horribly unlikeable assholes, terrible plot twists, pacing that can drag at times and insanely inconsistent art style that never really goes above mildly decent. I only riffed up until 2014 though and it's possible some of the issues in this comic may have been fixed, but also not really.

I feel like both the comic's good and bad parts helped to keep my interest going. At one point I actually considered abandoning riffing this comic because it was getting too boringly decent, but then the whole Saign scene happened and the comic regularly kept my attention since. I think I'm going to miss Chel the most because I doubt we're going to be running into a protagonist that is as likable as her for a while.

Tiffany herself is somehow able to regularly update 5 webcomics at once, which I find highly admirable. If you check out the story and enjoy it, I recommend supporting her. Alien Dice will come back from hold once it's over, but until then I may check out those other webcomics she did.

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