Gone with the Blastwave

By Kimmo Lemetti

The Short and Unloved Life of Gone with the Blastwave                    REVIEW BY Joe Quigley           Gone with the Blastwave is a webcomic that follows post-apocalyptic conventions following two unnamed soldiers in red garb as they march through a barren and dead city. Despite its generic setting the comic offers a lot of humor and beautiful art, but lacks one thing—love.

The great tragedy of Gone with the Blastwave is that it breaks the rule of success that most young webcomics follow which is having a consistent updating schedule. Despite starting nearly three years ago, the comic has collected under forty strips. Finnish creator, Kimmo Lemetti has stated that while he will eventually give the strip a proper ending, new updates won’t be coming till 2009. 

Lemetti doesn’t seem to care too much about making money off the strip nor collecting a strong fanbase and that’s fair enough. Still, one can’t help to feel that the comic deserves a lot more care from its creator because it is a damn good strip. 

The comic starts very simply following our two soldiers with red garb as they sit in an abandoned building discussing why they are fighting this war and settling on the answer, “To win the war.” 

This really sets the dark comedic tone of the comic. The soldiers quickly realize that they no longer remember their orders or purpose for being in the city nor do they remember how to get out of the city.

The quest to leave the city begins a small arc where our protagonists try to figure out there way out while dealing with opposing forces (The blue army and the yellow army) who are also trying to escape the seemingly infinite landscape of tan rubble. 

The comic at first reminded me of the Shakespearian spoof, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in its presentation of two minor characters in an obviously bigger story who act out their roles while being unclear of their motivation.

The strip also creates a dark satire on the nature and absurdity of war. The soldiers fight for the sake of fighting and the main thing that separates the different sides seems to be what color their helmets are on their identical military wear.

A lot of the laughs are derived from gallows humor as our heroes find elaborate ways to kill their blue and yellow enemies. The comic also deals with how the soldiers try to avoid boredom with cruel pranks, games, and more killing. There is even some fun with mundane run-ins with zombies and mutated moths.

The comic loses steam when the two heroes join up with more red forces. The comic from that point on loses some of its philosophical edge that really gave it its push and ends up focusing more on the mundane day-to-day lives of the soldiers. The gallows humor even begins to wear a bit thin.

I hope when the comic’s long hiatus eventually ends that Lemetti brings things back on track and provides the strip with a real direction again like when the heroes were trying to escape the city.

The art is great and while being very realistic there is a great use of visual slapstick humor and nothing ever looks stiff or dead on the page. The coloring and lines have become a lot sharper as the strip’s progressed although I sort of prefer the initial softer look.

If there is a flaw it’s that it sometimes becomes difficult to tell which soldier is which as you have to use the markings on the helmets to identify them, this becomes sort of a problem when the amount of red soldiers balloons from two to about three dozen.

It’s still a solid strip that will hopefully be tied up in a way that it deserves to be. You can purchase Gone with the Blastwave, Vol. 1 at Amazon.com, or through the strip’s website where all the comics are available, www.blastwavecomic.com.