I know why you’re here, and you know why I….Well, you’re probably actually looking at me and saying, “What are you doing here, again?” So let’s get to it, eh? Be warned, this is a long one….But debuts are the perfect time to pull out the stops!

This week’s webcomic review is Chris Hazelton’s Misfile, active since March 2004. This comic updates Monday through Friday, and in the several years I’ve been reading, I haven’t seen the artist miss an update yet. That already puts him ahead of much of the webcomickin’ pack!

The story in Misfile is definitely an attention-grabber: A teenage boy named Ash wakes up one morning missing something very near and very dear to him…but he’s gained a lovely girlish figure in return! Then there’s Emily, a senior in high school who’s just been accepted to her dream university, Harvard. Well, until she wakes up on this fateful day, only to suddenly find herself a sophomore in high school, with Harvard a distant dream.

The reason for all this oddness is Rumisiel, a pot-smoking failure of a file clerk in Heaven–or, I should say, former file clerk. He’s been booted out of the divine realm after getting caught with a lit blunt on the job. But right before being kicked out, he tried to hurriedly cover up one of his many other mistakes, a file and some loose papers he’d neglected to put away earlier, thus disturbing the order of the Universe. Of course, the file was Ash’s, mistakenly placed in the celestial filing cabinet for females instead of males. The loose papers were two years of Emily’s life, shoved under the rug since Rumisiel didn’t know where they belonged. Now unemployed, Rumisiel seeks Ash and Emily out in order to explain things and help them, needing some very good deeds on his record in order to get his job back and fix his filing snafu before it’s found, which would result in Ash and Emily being permanently altered in order to cover up the screw-up in Heaven. Although they’re pretty furious with this lazy angelic bumbler, Ash and Emily want their old lives back, so they agree to help Rumisiel with his good deeds. (Of course, as the comic goes on, Emily and Ash are forced to admit their new lives aren’t so bad, and would it really be THAT awful if they were never returned to normal?)

(Also: why couldn’t Rumisiel’s filing glitch be one that transforms me into a lottery winner?)

Only Ash, Emily, and Rumisiel are aware of the filing errors; the divine order of things prevents paradox by changing all of existence based upon how files were, you know, filed. However, since Ash and Emily were misfiled, they still remember how their lives were beforehand. But now they have to deal with reality being rewritten, and this is where the story really gets interesting, especially regarding Ash.

The boy-transformed-into-girl plot is one that’s too easy to turn into a cliché. It’s been done in anime, comics, and more than a few comedy variety shows, most of which revolve around a boy-turned-girl being alternately embarrassed and turned on by the sudden presence of boobs. It’s done mainly for comedic effect. It’s been overdone mainly for comedic effect, I’d say. I’m happy to state that Misfile does not fall into this trap. In fact, none of the genderbending stories I’ve encountered (and I seem to have an oddly large number of them under my belt) have ever done what Misfile does. Keep reading….

Since all of Ash’s reality has changed along with her sex (good thing her parents had the foresight to give her a gender-neutral name, eh?), she discovers how different things are as a girl…not just in the present, but throughout her entire life. For example, boy-type Ash knows next to nothing about his mother, except that she’s a model. She walked out on the family to pursue her dreams when Ash was very young. A few years before the beginning of the comic, Ash wrote a heartfelt letter to his mother, wanting to be part of her life again. But he never sent it, embarrassed at showing such emotion. Girl-type Ash, however, is surprised to learn that she has a close relationship with her mom, because in this reality, she actually did send the letter and initiate a reunion between the two. Meanwhile, Ash’s father, Dr. Upton, is very distant to his son in the male reality, but in the female one, he’s a loving, overprotective daddy (who is also responsible for one of the most amusing scenes in the comic so far, when Emily realizes Ash’s dad is her gynecologist).

Of course, Ash also has to deal with other side effects of the female life, such as being hit on when she goes to the auto parts store, female “problems,” and…oh, right, auto parts store. See, that’s something else this comic does that you don’t see a lot of. The artist is a big car buff, so many of the characters in his comic are racers who know their stuff under the hood. I have to admit, I actually learned a thing or three about car engines just from reading this webcomic. Luckily, for those of you who aren’t interested in that fancy learnin’ stuff, the artist never makes the car talk and racing the stars. It’s all about the story. And lest you think Misfile is one big dramatic wah-wahfest of teen identity angst: oh, no. This comic is freakin’ funny. What with Rumisiel’s drunken/stoned bumbling, Ash’s hard-learned lessons in female life, her somewhat perverted father, and Rumisiel’s vengeful ex-girlfriend, an angel who is literally Lucifer’s niece, there’s no lack in the amusement department.

Now, there’s no such thing as perfection, and it wouldn’t really be fair for me to only talk about the things I like, but I’ve gone on for far too long already. Next episode, we’ll hit the other side of the coin, and address some little issues I have with reading Misfile (obviously VERY little, or I wouldn’t enjoy the comic!) But, hey, what’s stopping you from going ahead and checking out Misfile for yourself if this review intrigued you? Who knows, maybe you’ll read something in next week’s article and think, “Hey, I totally noticed this issue while I was reading the comic. Cool to know I’m not the only one who thought that!”

Stay frosty, peeps. I’ll see you next time, so study up! You never know when there’s gonna be a pop quiz….

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 9:48 pm and is filed under American Comics, DKM Marlink, Internet, art, the Internets, webcomics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.