(review by Kiana S)
You are one of the top Problem Sleuths in the city. Solicitations for your service are numerous in quantity. Compensation, adequate. It is a balmy summer
evening. You are feeling particularly hard boiled tonight.
What will you do?
I've ended up at MS Paint Adventures a few times, a collection of different comics by Andrew Hussie, but could never make it more than a few pages into any of the stories. A friend recommended I read Homestuck, one very popular tale that's still in progress on this website, so I did and found that I enjoyed it. I began to wonder what other treasures MS Paint Adventures might have held...
I only glanced at the other stories though, and kind of dropped off the site because other things, like my life, got in the way.
I came back to MSPA this year and decided to take up Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth is the harrowing tale of three detectives, Problem Sleuth, Ace Dick and Pickle Inspector, who are inexplicably locked within an office building and are trying to figure their way out. Originally conceived as a noir story, it takes many surreal and ridiculous twists that actually begin to make sense as you read on.
Problem Sleuth is such a fun story to read, and I think it's power comes from not only its visual style, but by the cool way it manipulates its narrative elements. This story is presented as an interactive fiction game, although you don't actually get much choice in what happens. You, the reader, click on pre-written commands that dictate what the characters do, although the characters that you play also have their own will to a degree. They can refuse to perform the commands that you "enter" if they think your idea is stupid.
Since "you" are the characters, most of their personalities come from the actions that they're willed to do, and their reactions become what makes up the other half of who they are. I'd even warrant saying that "you", the enterer of the commands, becomes a character in itself, since whoever writes what happens next drives the story forward. As far as personalities go, the titular Problem Sleuth is our charming everyman, and the character we first meet and play. He sees himself as a hardboiled detective who works tough cases, although he doesn't get much work as he is confined in his office.
Ace Dick is the second character we meet and is originally presented as Problem Sleuth's arch nemesis neighbour, and is responsible for initally locking Problem Sleuth in his office (note: not the building). He's the tough brute of the crew who uses his strength to fight, yet is very uncreative when it comes to solving problems.Pickle Inspector is the tall, third playable character who is much gentler than his counterparts. He has an exceptionally strong imagination which is particularly useful, and even though he is more socially awkward than the other two, he's more polite and not as hard-boiled as his compatriots.
These three characters make up that symbolic group of three that's seen in a lot of stories and fairy tales, like The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Each one has their own separate personality that comes together as a complete set, a triad, and one character can make up for another's weakness, especially against a common enemy (in this story, the Mobster Kingpin).
The setting of Problem Sleuth is pretty interesting in that it doesn't seem to take place in a specific time, although determining the location is a bit simpler. Problem Sleuth himself likes to imagine himself as a hard-boiled Prohibition Era detective, although there are plenty of references to modern pop culture and somewhat futuristic devices. As for the location, the characters seem to operate in two realms: reality and imagination. The characters can enter and change location by traveling through suspicious electrical windows that lead to a fake outside city location. They can also enter this alternative world of imagination with a fair amount of alcohol consumption.
Trying to keep up with how these worlds work can be a little difficult, especially since these characters move between them pretty easily and often. Hussie uses complex settings in his other stories, and it although entertaining, it's completely absurd. I think the archetypal triad of characters are supported by this complicated backdrop because it gives this group of three a set of obstacles that is much more complex than, say, having their houses blown down by a wolf.
Language-wise, the writing is hilarious. The vocabulary used is great, with there being plenty of words I've never seen or used that give just the right amounts of sarcasm and wit.
Some favourite sentences:
Problem Sleuth also takes great advantage of its medium. The internet can support more than ink on paper, and even though most of Problem Sleuth's panels are static images, there are lots of cool panels that range from subtle animation to more ambitious shots such as dramatic close-ups that are heightened by bold flashing colours. Only with the internet is this kind of interactivity possible, utilizing using both animations and the ability to click through pages to make it a visually stimulating experience.
The art is drawn pretty simply, and apparently not with MS Paint at all, but with Photoshop. The characters and their surrounding environments are mostly black and white with some varying greys for shading with pops of colour for emphasis. As mentioned in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, the use of black and white over full colour emphasizes them not as objects, but as actual characters which lends us, the audience, the ability to enter this simply drawn yet complicated world as participants instead of viewers. I'd like to point out that we almost never see colour on the characters. Sometime there's colour in certain outfits they wear, but it's almost always kept to objects and stat metres.
The artwork specifically does have that MS Paint look, albeit a little more polished than the average doodle one would usually make. The lines have that pixelated look that makes its connection to the digital world more obvious. Its rough style makes it little grittier, possibly going back to the original noir theme of the comic.
What's interesting in this story is that there are no word balloons. Everything is written in a second person point of view, and what the characters feel or how they react is expressed in the panel and in the written caption of the image. When the characters interact with each other, it's through motion alone. They never actually talk to each other since the description of what's going on is always given back to "you", the character who actually plays each of the three.
Sometimes Problem Sleuth uses panels within a panel, but mostly, each panel acts as its own page. It feels like more happens typically in each of these panels rather than those in a physical graphic novel, possibly because the author decided enough has to happen to warrant clicking on to a new page so often. They have a simple rectangular design, yet in action scenes they sometimes become more agitated and crazy within the confines of the shape.
I really enjoy reading Problem Sleuth because it's just fun. The animations are exciting because they add something different to traditional comics, and the whole plot just gets stranger as the comic continues on. The writing makes me laugh (and even learn some new words) while the art is simple enough that it's charming, and when big twists in the story come along they're made even more significant by the contrast. It takes a long, long time to read, and it can be hard to keep up with what's happening, but it's completely worth it! Check it out!
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