Monday, August 22, 2011

Series: Emergency Exit

The Comic

Emergency Exit is a webcomic started in 2003 by an artist known as "NJ Huff." Like many webcomics, it began life as a simple gag-per-day comic featuring some people living in a strange apartment building. As the story continued however, it underwent what is known as "Cerebus Syndrome" -- a "disorder" where a previously plotless series begins to develop a storyline. Emergency Exit is unusual, however, in that it is actually funnier after the plot begins than it was before. The author seems to have noticed this as well, as a large chunk of the pre-Cerebus strips have been removed and replaced with a condensed version containing all of the information necessary to start reading at the start of the plot.

The story itself begins to develop when it becomes apparent that the seemingly ordinary tenants of the apartment aren't quite as ordinary as they seem. Bob is cursed, Eddie's a mad genius, Sal is a witch, Fred the cat is sentient (Though only Karl can understand her), and Karl has an inter-dimensional portal in his cupboard.


What really starts the plot however, is when a man named Bubba Miyagi comes through this portal and asks Karl and the other apartment tenants to use this portal to collect artifacts that have been scattered across the multiverse, allegedly to save his universe from destruction (Which is revealed in fairly short order to be a complete fabrication). This quest draws the attention of an evil overlord known as "Lord Kyran," who decides to try to get the artifacts before the tenants, simply because he has nothing better to do with his time.

Overall however, this summary doesn't really do the story justice. The plot does start out being rather basic, and the humor tends towards the mediocre in early strips (Even with some of them removed). However, NJ gets significantly better with these things as the strip progresses.

What really sets Emergency Exit apart from other webcomics, however, is the crossovers. Emergency Exit has so far crossed over with two other webcomics: Beyond Reality and Parallel Dimentia. These crossovers are generally considered to be some of the best executed crossovers in webcomic history. Both are well-plotted, don't favor either cast over the other, and have far-reaching effects on the plots of all the series involved -- as opposed to most webcomic crossovers, which could easily be removed from canon without effecting the plot in any major way. The second of these, "The Epic Struggle," is also one of the longest webcomic crossovers out there, being 130 pages in length.

Overall Verdict: While not necessarily one of the best webcomics around, Emergency Exit is still quite good, and definitely worth checking out.

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