By Thea Srinivasan

I’ve always been a fan of the multiverse theory. The idea that that multiple universes always made me curious to the possibilities that exist beyond certain boundaries.  While the idea of universes created by various timelines irks me, I am always wondering what could lie beyond our universe and space. (I still get nightmares of seeing a version of myself.) Discord happens to be one such comic that helps me to wrap my head around the concept of various universes beyond everything I know that is logical.

Discord starts off with a teenage girl named Flora. She just moved to Washington D.C with her dad after some altercations involving her mom.  She spends her first day exploring the city and ends up in a dark, mysterious alley with signs that say “Discord.” As she follows the sign, she ends up in some type and ends up meeting an old man. She’s informed that the location is not a museum, but rather is a sort of library where the old man convinces her to sign a contract for “newcomers” to “Discord.”  She skips over reading the contract, signs it and borrows the book for the night only to find it alive and walking through a glowing portal.  Flora goes back to the library and demands to know why the book came to life. Since she skipped over reading the contract, the old man tells her the price of losing the book: she has to become his assistant. With that, Flora joins the old man and works to preserve all the knowledge that exists in the Discord and along the way is tasked to help all the workers who work for the Discord to help save or destroy the different things in their respective 13 universes.

Unfortunately, I’m only on chapter 3, even though there are several more chapters that are getting uploaded almost every week. But so far, I find myself laughing half the time because of the amount of randomness that takes place because of the Discord. It’s not the type of random that makes me think, “What the hell is going on?” Personally, I think about how the creators even came up with the idea in the first place.  If it wasn’t the fact that the old man appears to have the lower body of a bug, to the fact the alive book has a giant butt that makes every girl jealous, I’m wouldn't be drawing a blank on ideas the authors are planning for all the characters. 

While the work does introduce the usual themes such as magic, artificial intelligence, and carnivorous, flesh-eating snails, there are qualities about the characters that make them distinct in terms of their abilities, species and their background. For example, although the old man is a caretaker of the Discord, he ends up taking a “biased” standpoint when it comes to helping beings from the 13 universes as he always puts the preservation of the Discord above everything else. Or the fact that a cat-octopus hybrid is glad to be a pet and can eat miniature assassin’s that invade the Discord.  It’s these moments and creations that make me bust out in laughter or ponder on how the creators think up these ideas.

The characters are nice enough, but I’m not really interested in who they are. Rather, I’m kind of interested in what they do instead. I haven’t fallen in love with Flora aside from her quirky moments that make me feel like I can relate to her as a girl. To me, she seems kind of ordinary enough to be able to get along with some of the characters and be able to take a stand when she needs to. Plus there is the hard-edged warrior woman, the clean perfectionist, the knowledgeable wise man, the bad-ass muscle, etc.  Earlier I mentioned that I did get to see some depth with the old man. While that’s great, I hope I get to see more unique personalities behind all of the characters and various species.

The art is nice enough that I get to focus on the characters and there is some emphasis on the background. The color choices are really nice and the way the shadows are created around the characters give more to the scene and I personally find that really appealing in an artist’s work.  Plus the art style is really angular and block-like that it could be found in a cartoon.

I think that this has a great start and I would love to see what awaits in the other dimensions. I really hope that I get to see Flora and the rest of the main characters go out and play their roles they’ve been assigned to. I also hope I can see some of the relationships grow and hopefully see as many sides to every character. For now, all I can say is that this story is for someone who wants humor that’s unique and timed well enough to seem random with a side of abstract worlds with odd intertwining connections to our world through our past and present.

Score: 4/5

Discord
Self- Published