Webcomic Weekly: Alan Kerr’s Great Set Of Comic Shorts

by Richard Bruton

More Webcomic Weekly for you, the Comicon feature that never knowingly lives up to the weekly bit of its name. This time round, the online comics of 2000 AD Art Stars winner Alan Kerr.

When Alan Kerr won the recent 2000 AD Art Stars contest with a cracking single-page Dredd tale that will see print in a future Prog, I headed off to have a look at what else Kerr had online – and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.

We’ve already covered that Art Stars win here, but it’s still good to remind you of just how good it is…

Now, let’s show you some of what you can find on Kerr’s website as well. He’s already been published in a few places, most notably with Kreepy Kat in several magazines and Lusi Sulfura published in the much missed Alan Grant’s Wasted comic anthology.

Of them all, it’s Kreepy Kat that’s the weakest of the lot – and much of that surely has to do with its age, from 2017 and complete with old school webcomic gag strips, adult-orientated, gross-out humour, four-panels, you know the sort of thing.

Kerr’s style, artistically and with storytelling and comedy have improved a hell of a lot since then. It’s not that Kreepy Kat is bad, just of its time, an obvious early step, glimpses of good gags and that’s about it. , and pretty funny. It’s the weakest artistically of what you’ll see here but it does date back to 2017 and Kerr’s art’s come a long way since then.

After that, the more recent and much-improved work comes thick and fast, seven short comics to be seen online, all of them enjoyable, showing a skill and a style that should see Kerr way more involved in comics in his future.

In fact, I was chatting to Kerr about some of them and made the comment that a lot of these have the sort of 2000 AD Regened feel to them, and I always mean that as a compliment – and I’m sure there’s at least a couple that would be a great fit for The Phoenix Comic. In fact, I can easily see Kerr fitting into either comic with a few tweaks, maybe with a new comic that I’m sure he’ll be more than capable of creating.

So, although they’re all well worth a look and should appeal to pretty much everyone and anyone, here’s my pick of three from the seven that Kerr has made available to you online, three that showcase different bits of his style and his skills as a comics maker.

Let’s start off with a recent one… No-Man. Kerr describes it, pretty damn well, thus:

Hands up who wants surreal hipster pseudo-superhero zombie occult-detective postmodern pop-art meta-comics? THAT’S RIGHT, EVERYBODY DOES!

It’s super light, very stylish, has this great madcap energy about it all. Tellingly, there’s a reference to the Peter Milligan, Jamie Hewlett Hewligan’s Haircut in here and you can see the influence all over No-Man.

Next up, Tombworld.

It might begin with the serious adventuring and peril – and Kerr does page after page of mean and moddy effective b&w here to really set the scene – but as soon as the adventurer/tomb raider gets where he wants to be, it heads swiftly off into unexpected places with switch in tone and a great ending.

Okay, next it’s back into colour, and a strip that could absolutely sit amongst the comics in either Regened or The Phoenix Comic – Amy Excalibur:

Amy accidentally found Excalibur round the back of her Gran’s caravan; now she fights evil and is technically Fae Queen of Britain.

You’ve got Merlin trapped in the body of a cat (it’s temporary says Merlin, although Amy thinks 1,000 years might be pushing it for temporary) and young Amy off on another daring adventure, this time involving a troll that’s sneaked out of the fairy world and is stealing dreams tonight.

Time for them to come up with a clever plan… next couple of panels, Amy’s gone AWOL and we get this from below…

Hey, Troll Face! Stop stealing people’s dreams! It’s rude!

This one’s perhaps my favourite of all of Kerr’s short comics here, one that shows off Kerr’s comedic talents perfectly. Great fun and, like I say, one that would absolutely fit in either Regened or The Phoenix. Anybody from either reading? I’m sure Kerr would be up for that!