Art and Story by Brian Rhodes
www.mikeandtheninja.com
Recently fired from his dead-end job, Mike befriends Stu the Ninja at the Stumpville unemployment office and the two set off on a cross country quest to restore Stu's honor. Along the way, they make new friends and must thwart several strange, and unstable, foes in order to reach San Francisco to expose the city's corrupt mayor.
In the earliest strips, the page design, layouts and artwork are amateur. Many of the jokes here are self-deprecating reactions toward plot holes or Brian's skill as an artist. If there's anything about the book I genuinely don't like, it's that. I fully understand why it's there, it's frustrating to embark on any artistic endeavor when your ambition exceeds your skill, but you have to start somewhere. All Rhodes began with was a desire to draw comics, a loose idea for a story and the courage to put himself out there. That's all he needed, no apologies required. Fortunately, as our creator's talent grows, so does his confidence toward his work.
One of the most common pieces of writing advice I have ever heard is to avoid using cliches. The story's comedic nature allows Rhodes to defy this old adage by embracing the overused and forcing it to serve his needs. In doing so, he creates a strange world that discards conventional rules and replaces them with its own. Despite its highly ordered structure, where every group has a union and must be aware of their contractual boundaries, the bureaucracy of Rhodes' world is just as disorganized as our own, often leaving it the butt of his jokes.
The most crucial thing I look for in any story is whether its characters grow. If the characters aren't challenged by the events happening around them, if they're not forced to re-evaluate themselves in some way, it makes us wonder why the story was worth telling. Again, this is a rule that can be overlooked in some genres, comedy included, because those stories are not always character driven. Regardless, I believe Rhodes pulls it off with Mike.
In the earlier strips Mike is largely a viewpoint character and seems to have little influence on what is happening around him. Near the middle of the book, when Mike asks Renee to stop the truck, the situation changes and Mike no longer simply questions the world around him, but demands answers. This trend continues as the group arrives in San Francisco and faces off against the mayor. It's not the kind of character transition that will jump out at you and, to be honest, I'm not sure if it was intentional or further reflection of Brian's evolution as a storyteller. In either case, it improves the strip overall and transforms it from being a series to comedic situations into a cohesive story.
So, perhaps Mike and the Ninja is not just the tale of a recently fired guy and his ninja friend traveling across the country on an honor quest, but it is also the story of a fledgling creator honing his skills. I don't believe this observation is unique to Brian Rhodes, it applies to every creator who has publicly shared their early work, but it's quite easy to see here.
You can check out Mike and the Ninja for free, but I encourage you to buy a printed copy to help Brian support his video game addiction (or you can make your own comics and he might trade you at a show sometime).
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