#fcbd2015

The Plot

The plot of this story is very short, which is to be expected of a comic that only spans a total of eight pages. Simply put, Ty Lee is sitting, mopey-style, to the side in what almost appears to be a part of the Palace Gardens while the remainder of her Kyoshi Warrior sisters are going through their daily drills. Ty Lee is bummed out because she isn't meshing well with the Kyoshi Warriors, and she can't put her finger on what the issue is because she is apparently incapable of introspection. Toph decides to warp into the picture because of boredom and plot, and upon Ty Lee sharing how bummed out she is, Toph grabs her and whisks her away to the circus (because apparently, Suki doesn't care enough about her warriors being snatched up like that to voice any kind of objection). Upon reaching the circus, it takes almost an entire page of panels for Ty Lee to recognize that this is in fact her old circus, when it took the average Avatar fanboy all of two seconds skimming over the panels of the page to reach the same realization. Her old ringmaster, of course, doesn't recognize her, causing many a reader's brow to perk like "whaaaaa?" only for us to stare with Ty Lee in wide-eyed disbelief at the fact that Gene Yang decided to actually take the claim that Ty Lee's sisters are all the same very, very literally!

And any chance of this story actually focusing on the two people who are on the cover of this thing goes up in smoke as Ty Lee, rather than turning tail and running away from what made her abandon family and home in the first place, inexplicably embraces her sisters in a giddy family reunion hug. After taking the time to introduce each of her sisters to Toph, who will not factor into the story in any major way from now on, she finally lets the realization settle in that, and I quote, "You all joined the circus?" And join they all apparently did! After Ty Lee ran off, their parents were worried enough to send out the entire clone horde after the poor girl (because they couldn’t afford a bounty hunter to do the same; they’re one of the poorer families in the Fire Nation aristocracy). What's more, they not only managed to figure out that Ty Lee had run away to the circus and catch up with said circus right after Azula snatched her away, but they all found that they had so much fun at the circus that they decided to stay. All. Of. Them. And that's not all! They're all acrobats! Every one of them apparently either stole the skill that Ty Lee had put so much time and sweat and love into cultivating to help forger her own identity, or acrobatics is the only thing Ty Lee excelled at and with nothing else she could lay claim to, ran away to find a place where her talent would be appreciated and unique. Oh, but it gets better. They also have freaking surpassed her as the most popular attraction at the circus, making said circus far more popular now - in a post-war society with Earth Kingdom peoples travelling to the Fire Nation and the circus actually performing within the Fire Nation mainland - than Ty Lee ever managed to make it - while people were fighting and dying around her in the country that her country was trying to conquer. Imagine that.

Long short, Ty Lee is understandably frustrated at this and wants to leave, but Toph, ever sensitive to emotions that come from other people, drags Ty Lee back to the Big Top so she can watch three platypus-bears ride on unicycles. As she sits, moping with a huge halo inexplicably radiating from them, Ty Lee comes to the realization that she can't be part of the Kyoshi Warriors anymore because her sisters somehow reminded her that the Kyoshi Warriors tend to use wear matching uniforms (there's also some nonsense about the KW also doing the same things, but she says nothing about what those same things are), and decides that she can't live with a group where uniforms are a mandate. But before she can go and tell Suki off about why they should have had a Casual Friday rule instated in the Kyoshi Warriors, two no-name extortionists with absolutely no sense of subtlety fail to set fire to the tent, which they’re only doing in the first place because they suck at extortion (what they’re trying to extort the ringmaster over we will never know). Toph takes down the firebender with no challenge, Ty Lee forgets that she has Kyushu Jutsu (that technique she's kinda famous for, and a technique which Suki used in the previous FCBD comic) and tries a poorly-drawn flying kick at the dude’s chest (bouncing back onto the ground for comedic effect) and witnesses THE POWER OF TEAMWORK as her sisters warp out of nowhere to take the guy down. Then Ty Lee goes back to Suki, shares her lesson about teamwork, which had nothing to do with her issues of being in a matched set, and the comic ends with Ty Lee hugging Suki and a random clone Kyoshi Warrior (I will deal with that in the art section; it's a pretty big gripe of mine).

The Characters

For this section, I’ll be covering the dialogue, mainly any issues I have with it and how it ties into the characterization of our protagonists, and then I will go more in-depth with my opinion of their characterizations in the next sub-section. The dialogue will be done panel-by-panel (dealing with particular enjoyments or issues, not actually going by every panel in the comic), while the characterization will show their progression (or regression, or lack of either) by each page. The art will be a mix of panel-by-panel and just page analysis. The dialogue section will be the longer of the sections, I warn you now. If you don’t want to slog through all of this text, I’ll provide a TL;DR statement/paragraph at the end of each section.

Dialogue

I’ve decided to start here because the dialogue will comprise the biggest contributions to the characters’ characterization. What’s more, I figure it’ll make for an easy segue into talking about the characterization specifically next-section. Word of warning, this is my longest section and will read a bit like how one would probably deeply critique a comic. Intermingled within this are minor nitpicks and major issues. If you're curious to read all of my praises and irks (there are a few praises btw), feel free to read it in its entirety. Otherwise, the important issues will have the page/panel numbers in bold.

Page 1, Panel 1: "*Sigh.*" ... Okay, I'm still new to comics, but I'm almost certain that the medium would follow the conventions of role-playing games and forum texts where any text meant to represent a sound effect should be absent of punctuation. As such, that period should be removed.

Page 1, Panel 3: "Toph? What're you doing in the capital city?"

Okay, this feels like a mix of nitpicking and serious critique, but this does not sound like a natural sounding sentence. Do people usually say, "What are you doing *in the city that we're both currently standing in and you obviously would know where this is*? Shouldn't it just read as, "What are you doing here?" This dialogue seems like it’s meant to inform people who are either new to the franchise or new to Gene Yang's comic universe that they are in the capital city of the Fire Nation. Only problem though, is because of the nature of the sentence, it actually feels like it's incomplete in the information it's trying to shoehorn. As such, it really may as well read "What're you doing in the Fire Nation capital city?" Or, just write the sentence like most people would say it: "What're you doing here?"

Page 1, Panel 4: "To be honest, I've been feeling kind of down. I've been with the Kyoshi Warriors for a while now, and they're so, so amazing! But lately, nothing's felt right. My aura's been off."

Drastic use of over-emphasis on words. In comics, such emphasis is supposed to represent an actual change in inflection of the character's speech, such as drawing out the word more or putting more force into its pronunciation. Outside of saying how the Kyoshi Warriors are "so, so amazing," I can't justify the remaining instances of emphasis in this malformed speech bubble.

Page 1, Panel 5:

Toph: "Well, you're in luck! I know just the thing to punch that aura of yours back into place!"

Ty Lee: "An aura isn't really something you punch."

This is a great instance of Ty Lee and Toph playing off of one another with their banter. It's relatively short, specifically Ty Lee's response to Toph's statement, but the swiftness of the exchange helps make it funny. Well, that, and the fact that Toph apparently has mistaken one’s aura for one’s spleen. xD

Unfortunately, this is the only instance the girls will really interact with one-another in any meaningful way...

Page 2, Panel 1: "Oh my gosh! A circus! Toph, this is so, so great!"

Oh dear God, this is going to be a trend...

Page 2, Panel 2: "The world just seemed so broken after the war, you know? I wanted to help fix it, so I became a Kyoshi Warrior!"

Aside from the odd emphasis on becoming a Kyoshi Warrior, I have no actual qualms about this dialogue on its own. Rather, this will set up a major issue I have with Ty Lee's characterization later on in the comic.

Page 3, Panel 4, Ty Lum: "Oh Ty Lee! We missed you so, so much!

Does Gene Yang only know how to give characters one or two unique dialogue quirks in some feeble attempt at on-the-surface uniqueness? First the "Sweetie" and "Oogies" thing with Aang/Katara and Sokka, then "Lillylivers" with Toph, now "So So [insert thing here]" with Ty Lee and her sisters?

Page 3, Panel 4: "We're the reason the circus got so big!"

Okay...so big, how? As far as we know from the visuals at current, the circus is no bigger than it's ever been. We've seen the big top, a second tent of what might be equal size, and a cart. Perhaps she's implying they've never had more people in the circus before, but I have to believe it's because the circus is finally in the Fire Nation mainland rather than travelling through the colonies and Earth Kingdom rural towns, along with the fact that Earth Kingdom people are starting to visit the Fire Nation for personal entertainment purposes. I doubt they're so big just because of the acrobats, but rather that in tandem to their moving back home in the past year-and-a-half.

Page 4, Panel 1: "Don't take this the wrong way guys, but acrobatics was kind of my thing. Each of us had a thing. You played the flute. You played the harp. You did origami. You swam. You danced. And you....well, you just insulted people. "

The ease at which she cites off their particular childhood talents (before they decided to do like a The Ables absorber and all take Ty Lee's talent 'cause it was "fun"), I can't help wondering how she can so easily remember who's who of her identical sisters. I imagine they don't always have the same outfit color coordination... Seriously, how does she know?!

Also, I seriously think that comics should have to be typed out in HTML or some other coding language in order to apply formatting because this is positively ridiculous. Something has to be done to stem this over-use of emphasises…

Page 5, Panel 3: "Being in the Kyoshi Warriors is just like being at home. A whole bunch of us looking the same, doing the same things... I have to tell Suki I'm ”quitting!”

This is something dealt with in the characterization section, but this highlights just how positively stupid Ty Lee's emotional issue is – not sounds, is! I can understand, to an empathetic extent, how frustrating it must have been to live with siblings that do in fact look and do the same as she does. The page previous even showed that her sisters would dabble in Ty Lee's own talent of acrobatics, to the point where they didn't even keep track of who had the talent first. However, being a sibling to a bunch of identical talent leeches is something entirely different from being in the Kyoshi Warriors! Their similarities in look are strictly for when they are in uniform. The girls do occasionally not wear their uniforms - it's strictly for when doing drills or on duty - and there are times when they're serving people and still not in uniform - such was the case when Suki and her warriors were in service transporting people into Ba Sing Se during Season 2.

What further weakens this bit of dialogue is the fact that we get no comparison about how the members of the Kyoshi Warriors all "do the same things." I understand the comparison between both parties as far as general cosmetics are concerned, but what are the tasks that the warriors perform that are "all the same?" Training? Drills? Sleeping? It can't be the fact that they know Kyushu Jutsu because she offered to teach them that in exchange for admittance into their group, as she pointed out at the end of the final episode! Without any comparison, this statement holds no weight and thus no real meaning. As far as I care, she's blowing things way out of proportion.

Page 5, Panel 5: "Watch how fast these tents catch fire-- "oops!"

Because of course our protagonists just happen to walk out when the non-threats not only are about to set fire to the tent but also feel the need to jabber on about it. What's more, the big guy sounds annoyingly stupid and thus cliche.

Page 6, Panel 2: "Oh, I am... 'Cause my business is kicking your tail!"

I’d like to point out that in the previous panel, the firebender guy says that Toph and Ty should mind their own business while he burns down that tent. This is the second consecutive FCBD comic by Gene Yang in which an antagonist says those words nearly the exact same way.

Anyway...Okay, so I definitely would expect Toph to say this line, but...this is Ty Lee's old circus. Couldn't she have said something to the guy that wants to burn down her old circus?

Page 6, Panel 5: "Wuzzat s'pose to hurt? You really think you can take me on alone?"

I really am glad this guy only got three panels worth of dialogue...

Page 7, Panel 3: "I guess it's a good thing you guys became acrobats! Thank you."

Yes, because you have never been able to take on people either bigger or stronger than you before. You absolutely needed all six of your sisters to take down that big bully when you normally could have done the same thing with a small trailing parry of your knuckles up his back. Totally.

Lesson learned: saving your sister from a giant behemoth and plot-mandated stupidity fixes all family disputes!

Page 8, Panel 1: "Ty Lee! I'm so glad You're here! Toph said you were leaving us!"

I'm shocked Suki didn't say she was "so, so glad..." And, again…you didn’t bother trying to hash out this issue of Ty Lee’s starvation of individuality for the few hours she wears makeup on your own even after learning Ty Lee’s belief that she didn’t belong in the group anymore?

Page 8, Panel 2: "Hanging out with my sisters made me realize there advantages to being part of a matched set. Lots of the world's problems are too big to tackle alone."

And the Stupidity Express has pulled up to Moral Station. First of all, the lesson Ty Lee learned is not demonstrative of an advantage to being part of a matched set, it's demonstrative of an advantage to being part of a team. Being part of a set of talent-leeching clones has nothing to do with teamwork - working as a team does (and while I loathe the implications of the save, the panel showing that save and the roles the sisters each took in downing the brute is fairly good). Secondly, I would think this is a lesson that has been demonstrated to her numerous times. Here are two instances where she should have observed - if not consciously learned - that exact same lesson – some of which she took an active part in: (1) When Aang and his team defeated the giant city-penetrating drill that Azula & Co. were trying to use to break into Ba Sing Se; (2) When Ty Lee, Mai, Azula, and the Dai Li overthrew the city of Ba Sing Se; (3) When Mai and Ty Lee switched between Sokka and Katara during their skirmish by the river in The Chase. The fact that she was part of a team, working with Mai and Azula, should have taught her the importance of teamwork.

What's more, I don't see how this is even a lesson she needed to learn. From what she'd said in page 2, she joined the Kyoshi Warriors because the world was broken. That should imply that she'd already come to realize that if she wanted to make a difference in the world, she would have to be part of a team to do so. Why is she learning this lesson again when she'd already had it committed to her conscious prior?

And finally...

Page 8, Panel 4: "And with you guys, I don't always have to match! I can take off my make-up whenever I want!"

And in other news, birds chirp, dogs in Michael Bay movies have sex on top of tables, and people tend to roll their eyes when the absolutely painfully obvious has be stated by an idiot.

What? I said she's one of my favorite characters. I didn't say i wouldn't acknowledge her stupidity when she’s written to be stupid.

The Characterization

The characterization of these characters is something I'll be somewhat brief with. The only characters of importance in this story are Ty Lee and Toph. I am well aware that the center of the conflict of this short comic is the issue between Ty Lee and her sisters, but I can't include them because these characters get next-to-no characterization, except that Ty Woo is a name-calling wench. Instead of going panel-by-panel for this part, I'll simply go page-by-page, and since there are only eight pages total, I'll again be somewhat brief.

Page 1: I know that I said I'd be focusing on Ty Lee and Toph exclusively in this section, but it's worth noting that Ty Lee is just sitting on these rocks, moping, and Suki doesn't seem to give one flying hog-monkey about it. We don't see her trying to console her or trying to figure out what is wrong. She's just going on ahead with her drills. I have to ask this to anyone who has been in the military - is there such a thing as any sort of drill sergeant or otherwise military superior that you directly answer to letting you just mope around because you're supposedly depressed? I mean, who's to say the other Kyoshi Warriors aren't depressed for some reason? I'd think they would have a far more justified reason to be in the dumps, such as being assigned to help guard Zuko for what seems to have been a year now.

And yet I’m not only annoyed at Suki over this. Ty Lee herself is bugging me here. I understand being in a funk, but she took the time to put on the armor and makeup – I imagine that to be a somewhat arduous process. Why on earth is she just sitting on the rocks if she didn’t want to do drills? Why even bother suiting up if she’s just going to sit around and do nothing? Why not fake being sick or just refuse to come out from the room?

At current, Toph is actually fine. As far as adventure and fun is concerned, she’s pretty spontaneous, and I could easily see her dragging Ty Lee off like this on a whim.

Page 2: Toph is still in character and likable in this page from what I can tell. She doesn’t appreciate Ty Lee hugging all over her neck as she flails around with glee, yet is curious to know why she didn’t go back to the circus when the war ended…wait, you’d think she would have felt Ty Lee with the other Kyoshi Warriors at Zuko’s coronation; wouldn’t she be curious then?

Ignoring the fact that Ty Lee, for reasons I can’t fathom, doesn’t manage to recognize her old circus within ten seconds of walking onto the grounds (I mean seriously, is it that common for circuses to have trained platypus bears? And how many circus brands are there even in the Fire Nation? Considering their standards on fun and the general lack of FN citizens in attendance later on, I can’t fathom there being many…), I find little fault with her behavior here. She’s understandably excited to be in the place that brought her such joy in her childhood, not to mention where her individuality was able to flourish the most. However, things go south in the next page when…

Page 3: Enter the Ty Leegion! Seriously, call me mean, even cruel, but why the hell is Ty Lee hugging any of these clones, let alone all of them? I mean, out of all the characteristics we’ve been shown Ty Lee to possess – her enthusiasm (every episode she’s in), her empathy (The Boiling Rock Pt 2), optimism (nearly every episode she’s in), her want for peace between her friends (The Beach – until her personal buttons were pressed by Mai – and The Boiling Rock Pt 2), lover of cutesy frilly things and comfortable beds (The Beach), her impromptu role as matchmaker (Zuko Alone, Return to Omashu, and The Beach) a girl starving to be noticed (The Beach, every time she hits on Sokka), to be unique (The Beach), oh and a glorified badass (every episode she’s in), I’m pretty sure none of that translates to her being a family girl. She’s shown no interest or concern towards her sisters or even parents. As far as we know and I’m concerned, she could go the rest of her life without seeing them and I don’t think she’d blink away a single tear at the idea. So again I ask, why is she hugging them? Why is she at all excited to see the sisters that drove her away from her home in the first place? In fact, why isn’t her very first question to these clones, “WHAT THE FLAME ARE YOU DOING IN MY CIRCUS?!”

Also, her sisters were sent to retrieve the girl, learned about how she used to be the resident acrobat at the circus, and decided it’d be fun to do the exact same thing. So apparently, Ty Lee is the odd-girl out as far as looking-and-doing-the-same-thing tolerance is concerned. Unlike Ty Lee, it would appear her sisters rather enjoy being clones, even going so far as to adopt Ty Lee’s hairstyle. How does that on its own not cause Ty Lee to turn-heel and storm out of the tent?

Page 4: And now Toph is an unlikable douche. Yes, we also feature Ty Lee ranting about how each of her sisters were supposed to have their own individual thing as a means of deterring her parents comparing the lot of them…wait, what? - and the group bursts into a huge furball of an argument about how Ty Lee was the one to steal acrobatics from any one of them (funnily enough, this is the one time Ty Woo doesn’t say anything. xD), but I can guarantee you that that is completely inconsequential. The biggest issue with this page is the person with the least page real-estate so far. Toph only has two lines of dialogue in this entire page, in the last panel, but it speaks so much volume to how much she doesn’t even care about Ty Lee’s concerns! I mean, yes, this whole conflict is pretty stupid, but at the very least it would have been nice to see Toph at least pretend or even bait-and-switch Ty Lee into thinking she gave a rat’s tail! Instead, she just snarkilly claims Ty Lee to be her favorite, and then eggs her to stay so that she could see the platypus bears. There is no hint at them being friends in this, so why on earth are they teamed up in this comic?

Page 5: And we fall further down the rabbit hole of annoyance. We’ve officially hit the lowest point of characterization for both of our leads. Ty Lee quite literally believes that the reason she has an issue with the Kyoshi Warriors is because they wear uniforms, and that, of all things, is what she connects with her bad history with her sisters. And yes, she makes a glancing mention of how the Kyoshi Warriors supposedly do the same things as well, but we never know what those same things are because she doesn’t expound on that at all, nor does the art give any clue to this, outside of their constant training, so I will not even try to delve on that.

Now I’m not going to act as if cosmetics and appearances have never been an issue or area of importance for Ty Lee – they have. She’s made plenty of quips at Mai for how depressing she looks and constantly compliments Azula on her razor-sharp appearance. The first concern that arose in her mind as tensions rose between her friends at the campfire was that the stress would cause their skin to break out with acne. She even compared her opinions over the Kyoshi Warriors prettiness to her group’s during the skirmish in Appa’s Lost Days. So again, I understand that cosmetics and appearances are important to her. But where as I normally roll my eyes to the point of blindness at most characters who have this mindset over the importance of looks, I don’t react that way to Ty Lee. Why? Because it’s not her only concern! It’s not the only thing that characterizes her! I don’t need to repeat what else defines her character. All I need to say is that aside from her brief bout of euphoria upon arriving back at the circus and then realizing it was her own circus, she has shown nothing of what makes Ty Lee who she is. What I am looking at in this comic is not Ty Lee. This is nothing more than a stupid clone wearing her clothes. The real Ty Lee is probably tied up somewhere in the Fire Nation Palace, seething with rage that for once, she can’t get out of the contortionism pose she’s been bound into while a long-lost seventh clone-twin-sister absconds with her life.

And then there’s Toph. I’ve already touched on this in my comments on the previous page so I won’t be nearly as long with this. Simply put, Toph is absolutely unlikable. She barely is paying any attention to what Ty Lee is talking about and is instead yelling at the platypus bears to eat their handler. I don’t think I need to say much else. Toph quite literally does not care. What’s more, she’s done next to nothing throughout this entire comic. She’s brought Ty Lee to the circus, mockingly called her “her favorite” of the clones, and is jeering at giant mammals. That’s it. She really has no reason to be here. It’s been said before by the likes of swan2swan and heartyhawk(?), and I will repeat their words (more or less): Toph could have been replaced by literally any character in the show – save perhaps for Azula – or she could’ve been simply removed and Ty Lee carry the issue on her own – like she kinda has been – and there would be no difference in the progression of the plot. I can’t say this enough, but Toph has no reason to be here except that she wanted to go to the circus, which she could’ve done on her own! Even the next page doesn’t actually need her to be present!

Page 6: So, we get our obligatory fight scene for this little issue. It’s short and rather inconsequential. I’ll explain that last part more when we get to the last page. Simply put, Toph is to Gene Yang what Batman is to Frank Miller. She can do no wrong and she cannot be stopped. All it takes is one stomp and a trail of creeping dirt to knock the firebender down. I could care less about that, though, because my mind is actively melting as I see something that should frankly be impossible.

Ty Lee. Can’t stop. One guy. One guy that is built like a tank, clearly moves like a tank because he makes no attempts to evade her rapid approach on him, and is probably too stupid to even try. And yet she can’t stop him. Why? Because Gene Yang had to shoehorn his stupid little moral down the throats of people too stupid to engage in critical thinking she apparently forgot how to use her Kyushu Jutsu. Of all the things in the world that Gene Yang could take away from Ty Lee for the sake of this story, why on earth did it have to be her signature martial art? I would try to fathom how Yang could have made Ty Lee lose while keeping that skill which she had taught the Kyoshi Warriors back when she was being held in prison, but quite honestly, nothing would be plausible because of the previous situations she’s been in where she came out on top. She took down the Terra Team single-handedly (yeah, Mai initiated the strike, but Ty Lee carried the duo lol), Katara – the youngest waterbending master of her generation – single-handedly, the Dragon Lady Azula Herself, Single-Handedly. The only person on Team Avatar she has never been able to take down is Aang, and that’s only because she couldn’t get within striking distance of him; let that happen, and the boy is good as jelly! There is absolutely no reason why she couldn’t stop this giant galloot! But again, Gene Yang doesn’t know how to shoehorn a plot without at least hiding the horn, so instead of parrying her fists up his back or into his legs (or even dislocating a kneecap – I mean seriously, have you ever had your kneecap slip while you’re standing? I have. IT HURTS!), she simply does a jump-kick, which I have not observed to be a move featured in either the Kyushu Jutsu nor Tessenjutsu movesets or disciplines. She bounces off like the cartoon she’s being portrayed as, takes forever to get off the ground, stares at this guy with fear and the stupid continues.

Page 7: All six of Ty Lee’s sisters tackle that giant-ish behemoth-ish brute-ish- wait- brute to the ground. I’ll admit it, the panel looks cool with them managing this, and I suppose I should applaud their swift thinking, but the coolness of that feat is marred by the fact that there is no way Ty Lee could not have done that on her own! And what’s worse, this is what serves as the turning-point in Ty Lee’s line of thinking! This is what teaches Ty Lee that she can be part of a “matched set” and still work as a part of a team! What a load of-

…

“Woo-saaaaaaaahhhhhh…”

“Woo-saaaaaaaahhhhhh…”

Okay, I’m good… Let’s…just finish this stupid thing. Still have to deal with the art…

Page 8: And so we end this story with Ty Lee returning to the Kyoshi Warriors with a lesson in tow. And by “in tow,” I mean tethered to her hip and covered with grass stains from being dragged from the circus to her dressing room and back to the garden where her “new sisters” apparently had never left. Seriously, this event either took the span of a few scant hours or almost twenty-four hours exactly, because Suki and the troop are indeed exactly where they’d started off in the story’s beginning…sorry, tangent.

So, that moral. What is it, you may ask? Well, it’s that teamwork sometimes has to be employed when taking on some of the world’s problems. Oh, and that she can remove her makeup whenever she pleases.

Honestly, there isn’t much to say on this moral except that it doesn’t fit with what we were being presented with as Ty Lee’s problem. Throughout the entirety of the middle and end of the comic, Ty Lee’s motivation for joining the Kyoshi Warriors was about helping the world, yet she’s shoved that fact far down the rabbit hole that is her desire for attention and individuality that this is simply a tacked-on lazy attempt to make Ty Lee not look as bad as she’s been portrayed throughout the comic.

TL;DR: Suki has next to no control over her warriors, nor does she appear to try and exercise such control. Ty Lee is a narcissistic moron that can’t retain lessons she should’ve learned at the age of 10 and thinks that having the same face is far more important than bettering herself or associating with a group that is meant to help the world (or in the case of the Gene Yang comics, guard one of her childhood friends that just happens to be the Fire Lord). And Toph? Toph is pretty much as big a jerk as she was in The Rift.

The Art

The art is really so-and-so with this comic. In some instances, such as when conveying Ty Lee in her melancholy mood, the artist draws characters well. Considering they’re modeled exactly after Ty Lee in all but outfits, I can safely say that she draws Ty Lee’s sisters well enough. However, there are some weaknesses, like several times when she draws Toph, and a certain part of a fighting scene…

Page 1, Panels 1, 2, 3: This might sound a bit odd, but the melancholy demeanor of Ty Lee as she sits on this rock in the middle of what I will continue to believe is either one of the Fire Nation Palace’s gardens or plazas is really well-drawn. Even her reaction to getting punched by Toph is pretty good – proper-looking proportions to with the head, a nice expression of “Ow – the crap?!” I think what sells these drawings of Ty Lee is the Kyoshi Warrior uniform. Ms. McNeil really draws those uniforms and the face-paint well and manages to portray its badass look, even when the expressions are decidedly less-than-so (except for the third-panel; little can be done to make Ty Lee’s giddiness look badass unless when that giddiness is taking place while she mows through hordes of dudes xD)

Also, for panel 3, it figures one of the few drawings of Toph I really like is when she’s picking her teeth. I dunno, she just looks like…Toph here.

Unfortunately, I can’t go this stretch without any criticisms. The primary one I have: the remainder of Suki’s troop. Simply put, they’re clones.

Those Kyoshi Warriors in the top and third panels (and during the final page where they appear again), are all the same design as the stock placeholder designs used during the Kyoshi Island episode.

Think I’m exaggerating? Compare the above with the following:

Truth be told, of all the blunders in the art division, I find this to be the most disappointing, mainly because with the way the story went and the issue Gene Yang decided for Ty Lee to have, I can’t help feeling like he directly asked McNeil to draw these girls according to the season 1 designs to drill into our heads that Ty Lee seriously sees these warriors the same way she views her sisters – as a literal clone matched set. And it definitely can’t be said that the Kyoshi Warriors haven’t been drawn as non-placeholder individuals in previous comics, as this panel from The Promise will demonstrate:

Now it could be argued that perhaps these are meant to be a new group of warriors that Suki is training, perhaps the new batch of warriors she’d recruited in last year’s FCBD A:TLA comic. Yet if this is the case, it doesn’t make the situation with Ty Lee look any better. If that is indeed the case, I would actually expect Ty Lee to be far more involved in assisting this training – while she’s not likely to be a senior officer under Suki by any means after only a year and a half, I would expect Suki to trust Ty Lee to help out with this sort of thing, being that she is likely beyond the rank of a private by now. That she would contemplate leaving the Kyoshi Warriors at this point of training recruits (if that’s what these folks are) would just be horrible…

I truly can’t shake the feeling at this point that the only reason these clones exist in this comic is to make a visual connection between Ty Lee’s sisters and the warriors she now associates with, which as far as I am concerned, is simply lazy, if not insulting.

Page 2, Panel 1:

This is a minor gripe, but it looks so odd for Ty Lee’s waving arms to be just as solid looking as the arms that are grasping Toph’s neck, here. Those really should be more transparent, or maybe slightly distorted to give them more of a sense of motion, and the arms that are wrapping around Toph’s neck should definitely be solid, given that’s what Toph is complaining about Ty Lee doing in the panel.

Page 2, Panel 2: I won’t lie. Ty Lee looks positively squeezable here. Only problem with this panel is Toph’s face. She’s actively talking, yet her mouth and cheeks make it look like they’re stuffed with cotton-candy or something.

Page 3, Panel 1: Oy. I don’t know if it’s the hair, or the way her jaw is drawn in this panel, but Toph is resembling her Ember Island Players counterpart far more than herself here. Lol

Page 3, Panel 2: Okay, this panel isn’t that bad, but a minor gripe I can’t help but acknowledge is the fact that Ty Lee’s sister’s eyes. A few of them, such as Ty Woo and Ty Lat, have their eyes either with the whites around the pupils or they’re closed. Yet the remainder of them, whose face is turned to allow you to see the eyes, have just black dots. Again, it’s not terrible, but the inconsistency is distracting and helps make this comic look like a rushed job…

Page 3, panel 4: Ty Lee’s lips. They just look..odd. I dunno, maybe it’s the way they’re inked, but they look far more pronounced than most of the remainder of the comic. Otherwise, I do totally buy the look of “…Oh my Agni, my sisters are all bunking at my old circus…”

Page 3, panel 5: Of all the sisters, why is it that Ty Woo reminds me of Jinora so much?! xD

Page 4, panel 1:

Now I will admit it, for quite a while, I did think that there was no personality between the Ty Sisters. And frankly, I still think that to be true. Ty Woo has constantly shown herself to be contrarian and a jerk, but that’s it. However, after several read-throughs, I’ve finally noticed that Ty Lum is stroking her braid, which denotes nervousness in addition to her being-offended…which she shares with her non-Ty-Woo sister-ren.

Page 4, panel 2: Those fingers. They way they're just jutting up like that in front of her face... I can't describe why, but they bug me. They bug me sooooooo muuuuuuuuuuch...

Page 4, panel 4: Okay, so Ty Lee actually looks fine here as she storms out of the tent, shouting her frustration and obviously wishing she’d never come to the circus with her sisters there. And yet…

Page 4, panel 5: The HECK is with that mouth?! I’m sorry, most of her face is otherwise fine, but that mouth! That’s a mouth I would expect from a cartoon comedy like Tuff Puppy, where Dudely is obnoxiously yelling in Kitty’s ear because he has no concept of volume control, not from someone who is freaking pissed off and wants to leave! Seriously, if Ty Lee were yelling at Toph and they were having a back-and-forth, then okay, maybe that would work as an expression, particularly if the moment was meant to be taken as funny. But this isn’t supposed to be funny. That over-the-top look to her screaming lips is just totally unnecessary and doesn’t fit.

Page 5: So apparently Ty Lee wiped off her lipstick after storming out of the tent and then getting talked back into it by Toph. Odd. Also, I know Toph is sorta-yelling, but does it really warrant a white-out halo around her just ’cause?

Finally, on the first and third panels, we see rather unique looking people in the crowd. None of these audience member designs, whether afar or more up-close, looks like they’re any sort of stock or template design that’s been duplicated like a crowd-shot in G4’s My Little Pony. The reason I am bringing this up is if the comic were under a sort of restrictive budget, then why not clone people in the audience like the Kyoshi Warriors had been in the first and last pages of this comic? This is what makes me seriously believe that the reason for the KY clone designs was to act as a visual reinforcement for what Ty Lee is saying here, that the Kyoshi Warriors apparently look-like and do things like a bunch of clone drones.

I will say one thing that I kinda like, but am yet iffy with about this page, and I know I’ve brought this up a couple times earlier, but I really wanna expound on it a bit now. Between this and the first shot of Ty Lee spazzing out at the fact that she’s at a circus back in page 2, it would appear that there is quite the Earth Kingdom presence at this circus. I don’t have a problem with that on its own, of course, but this implies that there is a lot of tourism/trading traffic nowadays between the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation. I guess I’m just wondering if people of the Earth Kingdom would really be this comfortable dealing with the Fire Nation commercially, let alone actually going there for vacation and checking out their circuses… I mean, wouldn’t tensions still be rather high between the two countries, especially considering the debacle at Yu Dao…?

Page 6, Panel 2: As annoyed as I am that Ty Lee isn’t the one talking about “I’m gonna kick your butts for trying to burn down my circus,” I will give credit to that expression. That is an expression that says, “I flaming dare you to drop that fireball, you piece of colonial trash! >:| ”

Page 6, Panels 5 and 6: …

…

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh….

...Okay, looking at the fifth panel...yet again...I do have one more thing to ponder on here. Okay, two things. First, how does one mess up fingers that badly? Secondly...Why the heck is Ty's face bugging me so much here?

Page 7, Panel 1: Okay, I know I said before that the Ty sisters came out of nowhere, but it’s pretty clear that they jumped from inside the tent to tackle the dude. Of course, this begs the question, how did they know exactly how and where to jump on him from inside the tent? In fact, how did they even know Ty Lee was in trouble from inside the tent? And when they were supposed to be in the middle of their circus act, no less?!

Anywho, this may sound silly, but one almost-big reason I hate this story is because it really saps the honest coolness of this panel. I mean, four of the sisters are pouncing onto this guy’s front while the remaining two kick in the back of his knees in order to topple him. I can’t deny that that is a cool visual of a group of girls working together to down a behemoth brute like this. Yet this scene is messed up by the fact that in order to make this visual even possible, Ty Lee’s intelligence had to take a massive nerf…

Page 7, Panel 2: Dammit, I swear Ty Woo has some of the best expressions in this comic. lol I want a story centering around this particular sister – I must know what led her to a life of permanent bitchy snarkiness! lol

Page 7, Panel 3: Ya know, Woo, if you don’t wanna hug…you could simply not hug. You’re clearly not enjoying it, so why subject yourself to the torment? lol

Page 8: And we round it all out with Ty Lee back in her Kyoshi Warrior garb. She and Suki say some words of silliness, and she hugs Suki and a clone as the metaphorical screen fades to black.

TL;DR, AKA THE CONCLUSION

So, I’m sure that those who read the intro and even the plot summary could easily gleam that I did not like this at all. Simply put, this is a comic that leaves a bad taste in my mouth towards two characters I rather liked from the original series. Ty Lee ends up looking frustratingly flighty, inobservant of obvious facts, and positively selfish, caring more about her comfort as an individual more than the fact that she’d originally had a mission to help the world rebuild under the banner of the Kyoshi Warriors. What’s more, Ty Lee’s dilemma really is just stupid. Wanting to leave just because she’s wearing a uniform – you would think she would feel the same level of discomfort in school or during the infiltration mission in Ba Sing Se when she was wearing the Kyoshi Warriors uniforms then… What’s more, I cannot begin to believe that being in the Kyoshi Warriors is anything like living in a household of talent-leeching clones. Seriously, I cannot stress enough that I can’t take her problems nearly as serious as I would a whiney-emo-teenager-from-today’s problems – and their problems usually consist of “My mom won’t let me to go to XYZ’s concert or tattoo my vagina or get me an $700 Apple iPad so I can play on Farmville and get a bunch of guys to think I’m 19 when I’m actually 13 – SCREW YOU MOM!”

Toph comes out of this just as bad, in my opinion. She resembles far more of her early Season 2 self than by the time she was willing to open up to others in Season 3 and was embracing some of her more mellow emotions (yes, with Toph, I call clutching a guy’s arm in obvious romantic bliss to be “mellow”). She shows absolutely no concern for Ty Lee whatsoever. She makes quips and jokes at the girl’s expense while she’s still upset, and doesn’t even try to help her when Ty Lee fails to flying-kick a giant fool. And as soon as Ty Lee’s sisters show up, she just disappears, never to be seen for the rest of the comic…which yes, was only one more page, but my point still stands! Toph is unhelpful and ultimately unnecessary for this story. Replace her with anyone in Aang’s group, or even have Ty Lee carry the comic on her own, and no part of the plot would’ve been effected, except possibly whether Ty Lee would stay to see the show or not.

And as far as the moral, it’s totally irrelevant to Ty Lee’s dumb woes, and the plot has to dive into a stupid pit just to dig up any justification for its existence. A pity they did not find any.

There are a few funny bits of dialogue, I will admit. For instance, Toph’s insistence that Ty Lee go with her to “punch her aura back into shape,” and Ty Lee’s reaction is cute, and I actually liked the way Toph egged on the platypus bears to maul their handler, even if that scene did feature the worst part of the comic where Toph is concerned. And the art, even with its inconsistencies and weird mouth/lip art is still sorta charming – certainly inoffensive. However, these small things cannot deter the fact that this is a very bad comic.

Originally, I gave the comic an “F”, but I will be kind enough to raise the grade up to a “D-“. All in all, again, this comic is a waste. A waste of potential, a waste of what should’ve been a fun pairing in Ty Lee and Toph, and a waste of both Gene Yang’s and my own time. If it weren’t for the fact that the Plants and Zombies and Bandette comics were fun reads, I’d ‘ave considered this to be a complete waste of a slot in my two-free-comic limit that day.

AFTERWORD

Anywho, that’s it. Fun fact: this ridiculously overly-long review has spanned over 9.5K words. That is the span of a medium-length chapter for many fiction/fanfiction stories these days! lol

I am impressed with anyone who actually read through the entire thing, and appreciate your patience while doing so. But even if you just skipped down to the TL;DR conclusion, I still appreciate that you even gave this a look, especially with how long it’s been since the comic actually came out (just shy of four weeks, I think). If I do in fact review more comics in the future, I will not be making the reviews this long – probably barely 1/4th the length. This has taken me a freaking week to type up between all the things I’m doing in the real world, and I don’t wanna subject myself – or you – to this again.

Finally, for anyone who actually wants to read even more crap, you can read the original post from the Avatarspirit.net forums that earned me quite the 2-week ban! Why? because it provides one of many an example for how not to provide critique for something!

Anyway, time to sign off. To all my followers and curious eyes, I again thank you for taking the time to read this in-depth review/rant. And as always,