| Odd... I would consider this one of the one or two best-written webcomics I know of, and even if I reserved a ten out of ten rating for only the best of the best, it would still receive it.
I guess the over-the-top characters and plots are a matter of taste. It isn't realism by any stretch of imagination, and if you object to that, then you probably aren't going to be too pleased with it. But if you're willing to accept crazy sci-fi adventure and characters that run a little closer to the mythic than the realistic, its a dang smart comic.
The story starts with this straight-forward, innocent, us-against-the-badguys, metality, yes. And yes, that isn't original, and yes, it's a bit silly, though I find it charming as well. But the stereotypical people it begins with start changing, they learn, we discover things about them, it all grows more and more complex. And, no, it's never all that subtle, but even in those bold, black-and-whites, T Campbell has some interesting things to say about people.
For me, Fans lives for those moments when the whole viewpoint of the world shifts just a little, and we realize we aren't looking at what we thought we were looking at. Sometimes it's this shocking plot twist, but that's not so much what I'm talking about. It's the moments when we realize that a character becomes more than their stereotype-- better, worse, or, best of all, some sort of sidestep that doesn't fit that dichotomy. The characters learn this too. They start out as stereotypes, and they think of themselves that way, and then another piece of their solid-coloredness breaks off or coalesces back to them in a new direction, and they are just as much larger than life is, but not in the familar uninteresting ways they were before.
I called Fans "smart" before. I think it is. I think the best quality of T Cambell's writing is that he is always and constantly aware of the ramifications of his plot points, character traits, or each and every statement that his people make, and he always--Always-- doubles, triples, and quadruples back to add another, more complex point of view to what we thought was blindingly simple.
Fans is not a depiction of real people or the real situations people live in, and any attempt to view it in that light is going to reflect on it horrendously. I think its relationship to reality is of a different kind than that, for its twists and turns are as if projected onto a huge screen.
But they are wise, and fresh, and interesting, and subtle, for all that.
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