Romantically Apocalyptic Webcomic
by Vitaly S Alexius
Charles Snippy finds himself lost and alone at the end of the world. He makes a wish for a friend and meets Zee Captain, an eccentric lunatic luminary, who drags him on an adventure through the eldritch, deadly, questionable and limitless post-apocalyptic world of tomorrow, a place where Goodness makes the rules and everything has purpose and passion.
~A post-apocalyptic, dark comedy webcomic that I've been working on since 2005 by myself at first and then with friends from all around the world.
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- Style Score
- Story Score
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- Total Views :
- 1,449,416
- Average Views :
- 5,408
- Followers :
- 1,566
- Favorites :
- 671
- Ratings :
- 364
- Pages :
- 643
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Romantically Apocalyptic - a personal review
I originally started reading the Romantically Apocalyptic webcomic back in 2011 and have been wonderfully confused and bewildered throughout.
Reading it here again again lets me be dazed and amazed all over again.
The story makes you feel lost at times which makes you sympathize with one of our main protagonists as the confusion you feel reflects their own. The blending of the words with the mind blowing imagery builds a magnificent world where some things are so close to our own experience but then we look around the corner and find that none of it is true, or all of it is true, or both at the same time.
Not for the faint of heart or feeble of mind, though the later might have a better chance as they are used to things not being clear.
The characters are more animated then some people I know even when the character is inanimate. For an existence in which most everything has died the story that unfolds .. unfurls .. collapses on itself and vise versa or verse visa is very very lively.
I do very much wish that the constant pressure in my templates would subside …
Amazing creative story with beautiful radiant art keeps you wanting to read more and more. Humorous, entertaining, engaging, a true pleasure to read.
At times the story lapses into hilarious nonsensical asides, and at times follows an overarching insane and creative story that the Author takes places you can hardly imagine - Lovecraftian nightmares ironically put into visual medium.
If you're at all interested in the postapocalyptic setting and comical stories and visuals, you'll love Romantically Apocalyptic!
Quite literally love at first sight. I was introduced to this by a relative of mine (Whom I am eternally grateful for) in a birthday party.
Ever since that day, I've been hooked on it. I was particularly fond of Charles Snippy, who remains to be my favorite character in this, and I quickly came to like everything this story offered. Fast forward and we have an electronic device and internet access. Eventually, I found out the name of this webcomic and experienced a rush of nostalgia.
There he was! Charles Snippy in all his glory!
As mentioned before, Charles is really what drew me into this work but I stayed for the rest of the crew, the story, and the art.
I personally found that the story does get a bit confusing at times, but that might just be a me thing since English isn't my first language. Usually what I can't figure out on my own will be cleared up by someone else on the internet, which I am grateful for.
The character dialogues and the written bits are honestly so much fun to read. From my perspective, everything is written well and there are usually little to no grammatical errors from what I can tell. There will be occasional ones but it’s clear that these “errors” aren’t errors, but rather devices used to further a character’s speech pattern and dialogue and their overall understanding of the world around them (like with Pilot).
The characters really are what drives this story home for me. Getting diverse characters with seemingly ranging sanity levels and different perspectives really helps me grasp what is going on in this world. These different points of view fit perfectly into one puzzle and it also serves to help further the story. And the way these characters interact with each other is often comical yet consistent with what we know of a certain character. I absolutely love the characters, and their designs are unique yet fitting to them. Let me tell you, Charles is great. He's as confused as the reader is and slowly begins to somewhat adjust just as the reader does as well. I think it's a clever way to introduce the reader to the story and the world of ROMAC.
I found myself entranced with the grand backgrounds and artwork that truly help the reader feel a certain way and understand the atmosphere and setting of the story. Gosh, the art in this is just great. The backgrounds play a very important role in this story. They do a great job at showing the reader what the world is like instead of simply telling them.
One of the major reasons why I'm still sticking to this piece is because of the emotional impact it has left on me. If I ever felt very down, I would have this as a way to comfort and ground me. This is so ingrained into me that I'll just gravitate towards it whenever I feel negative.
I'm glad I was introduced to this piece, and I'm glad that it's still prevalent in my life.
I find this highly entertaining and a very fresh approach on the appocalyptic world.
The marvellous graphics are a wonderful addition, I Never saw this combination of story telling and pictures before and a Love it.
So far, I got to meet Snippy, the Captain and -at least the head of- the pilot. I am really entertained very well.
If there was one common thread in reviews of the original webcomic edition of this story, it's that, while the earlier episodes were self-contained comical sketches, the later episodes were a bit off the rails. While the art style improved, the storytelling became confusing and disjointed.
Coming from the original at rom.ac to this, I can report that the timeline now makes much more sense, and the image quality is higher too, emphasising the great strides made in Alexiuss's skills. I look forward to reading more.
Loses a star for weird text layout and odd grammatical style. Gains half a star back for absurdist comical language.
I've read this story once before, when it was originally posted to this site, and even back then it was already an amazing wild ride of a story helped by all its beautiful art illustrating it all, and it became better than it already was which is impressive.
For any readers already familiar with the previous version of the story, stop wasting time and go read this story now if you already arent. And for other readers i would also recommend to just start reading this weird tale, its just worth the read, if you need more convincing, go ahead and read the reviews for more information.
So as said up there, this story is a rewrite, the original was already amazing, and this is even more so, with all the extra content added filling out the story even more, and lots of added art.
The story features a rather varied cast, of humans as the main characters featured, and many other things outside of that, with each one of them having their own distinct quirky personality! With the likes of Snippy having the thankless job of being the grumbly ‘voice of reason’ in this wild band while having barely an idea whatever the hell is happening, basically being the normal person in this wild bunch, as far as one can be normal in all this weirdness, then there is Pilot, one of the hardest workers there are, with quite the jealousy towards a certain person… and a complete loyalty to the greatest of all, Zee Captain, who I cannot even start to describe. Lets just say Zee is MUCH more than what Zee initially seems to be.
Expect just damn about anything happening in this story, it basically goes no holds barred in how crazy and weird it will go! It is just completely a wild trip with lots of twists! It goes from simple post Apocalyptic survival, with a weird comedic tint which makes the story even better, to full on eldritch insanity later on. And the backstory is also freaking massive and confusing as there is hardly anything being explained, though there are hints from the very start, even in the art itself if you take a good look at it. As the story goes on, the backstory starts to make some sense as we get tidbits about the world and its past, but even with that it is very hard to get an accurate timeline of events, it is just so confusing yet makes sense at the same time!
Grammar is pretty much flawless, even in this rewritten version, and any present oddities with grammar are pretty much on purpose.
The story as a whole is pretty readable, even with how chaotic and messy it can get! Expect a gratuitous use of caps button, to the extent of entire chapters being capitalized. The style, well yeah, lots of different povs, though the swaps are well defined in general, and smooth also. Actually the entire story is more or less a smooth read, even with how helluva weird it can get, though do expect to get confused as a reader multiple times throughout the story. Though for the rest it is wonderfully told, And on the describing side… the author honestly does a good job at it, even if they aren’t required to since of the use of art in this story, to an extent I have rarely seen before, mostly in actual webcomics such as Erfworld, notably chapters are shorter than the standard for this site, with descriptions being mostly left to the art plus there being relatively few amounts of dialogue
The art bears mentioning, as it just adds greatly to the story as a whole, it all adds just so much to the overall reading experience, making this story truly a wondrous & bizarre read as it gives the reader an even better idea at how the world portrayed in the story is like. The author is absolutely very skilled at his art, having refined his skill to as perfect as he could make it, and yet also constantly improving on it all while having multiple kinds of art styles which do get used in this webcomic/webnovel mix, to maximum effect.
Plus with the rewrite the author has gone above and beyond with the art, adding a hell lot more art, making good use of AI art which is by its very nature of being weird already a good fit.
It may seem that this story is having rather quick releases, but thats mainly because there is such a huge backlog to pull from, once that is exhausted, releases likely will slow down massively, as it is hard to expect from a serial with art like this to have a webnovel type of release pace, that would be just unattainable! And having such quality, even if there is a slow release pace, is something im perfectly fine with myself!
One thing to note though is that this story did have the tendency to go on extended periods of hiatus between releases in its original version, but no telling if it will be the same now with the rewritten version.
So this rewrite is even better than the original was, certainly i am expecting to enjoy it even more thusly.
For any reader looking for an unique read, wait no more and just start reading this, it will be absolutely worth the time spent reading through it all.
This work absolutely proves that freelance authors can truly make corporations VERY SHY.
I , from the old version, and to the new version, absolutely adore this comic and wish that the reborn shall be grand.
It has inspired me to never fear the future, for you can always adapt or find crazy friends or crew, in case of poor Snippy. X)
Thank you, VitalySAlexius, for this masterpiece.
A long-term favorite comic! Unusual, fascinating, confusing, madcap world of the apocalypse. I don't know where this ride is taking me and I'm here for it. My only complaint about this comic is that I can't figure out the best way to tell people about it so that they want to read it. But it's fantastic.
I first heard about Romantically Apocalyptic from a dear friend, way after 2010, long after the graphic novel had started publication. This friend had recommended it to me multiple times, but I always found a reason to avoid reading it, to put it off for an indeterminate "later" that I thought was never to come. But, one day, finding nothing better to do, and not wanting to disappoint my friend any longer, I finally decided to start what I thought would be slogging through literally years of published material, if for no other reason than to be able to say that I had done what I said I would do. Imagine my shock upon starting to read it, only to find that I did not want to stop reading it!
I considered Romantically Apocalyptic to be a truly unique work of art in the past, and if anything, I have only grown more entrenched in that opinion.
Does this saga have Style? Here is a published work that uses music, that uses colors, that uses pictures static and kinetic, that uses everything (except your tastebuds) to tell a story, a saga about a ragtag group of survivors traversing what we first believe is just an irradiated wasteland, but soon discover is more dangerous and more beautiful than that. The amount of passionate effort that went into using greenscreen effects, matte paintings, actors, photography, costume design, location scouting, and character creation is all amazing, and it all comes together to birth something greater than the sum of its parts, a sometimes-serious, sometimes-funny, sometimes-heart-wrenching story that Vitaly S. Alexius clearly enjoys telling.
Does the story score soundly? Without giving away too much, the story is a fun one. It feels episodic, at first, somewhat like a bizarre slice-of-life comedy taking place under an atomic sky, but it does not stay that way for long. The story slowly escalates in both scope and intensity, and tropes are played with in ways that The Sexy Audience can appreciate. Some pieces are said outright, and others are left to be inferred by the reader, because the comic treats the reader with respect, and assumes you have been either paying close attention or have been taking notes. Things that might seem irrelevant might have major importance, while plot points that seem out of left field at first glance make a lot more sense upon re-reading events and re-examining behviors exhibited before, and the story is richer for it.
How good is the grammar? Not much to say about this part. The grammar is good, and it feels like the author has as great a grasp upon the English language as any native speaker. The words used do not feel awkward, and sentences flow freely.
How would you qualify the characters? I think the characters of Romantically Apocalyptic are rich, vibrant and feel alive. Each character has their own distinct personality, style, and voice. Captain feels like that crazy uncle that everyone likes to hang out with, except cooler and with an abundance of charisma. Snippy comes off like a jaded retail worker who has survived the worst that working with the public has to offer, refuses to quit, yet always seems to keep getting pulled into his coworker's zany schemes. PIlot....is Pilot, with all of the madness, tragedy, and laughs that his character entails. There are other characters, of course, but to delve too deep would be to risk spoiling the fun in getting to know them, and it would also spoil the fun in learning that you probably do not know them as well as you think.
That friend of mine has gone, moved on, as people tend to do in life. However, years after the fact, I am still talking about the digital graphic novel they introduced me to, this body of work that influenced me far more than I would have originally guessed. I was hooked when I first read it on the original website, and I find myself hooked still, now that it is on Royal Road. I was surprised to have been notified that not only was the comic moving to this website, but that it would be updated with new art and more information! I am very happy and excited to hear that others will have the opportunity to read and be amazed with the work that Vitaly S. Alexius and his team have done, and hope that others will be as smitten with the work as I am.
If you have made it this far into my review, thank you, I hope it has helped to at least convince you to give the comic a shot. As for me, even though years have passed since I originally read this comic, I plan on finding the right opportunity to re-read this from the beginning, like catching up with an old friend again.
I have been reading this comic since it began, nothing else is quite like it. The surreal imagery, the dystopian future cyberpunk storyline, the crazed protagonist and Zee Captain all mix to make one of my favourite web comics.
You have to see the images to believe it. Built from photographs of real people and locations and developed into the science fiction world which feels like it continues when you're not reading. I have re-read this so many times and always come back for any updates. Cannot praise this enough. Over the long time it has been online it has become a cult, I've even seen cosplay at Comic Conventions.