Back Office review

Back Office is a webcomic of the strip format by Mark Egan, owner of the site rawrtacular.com.

The story is loosely inspired from the author's friends of his girlfriend, without exactly being them, but rather the prototypes of persons you can find in your office, and I can certainly relate.

It starts with the main character, Mike, who returns after his sales experience to his office, a Call Center, when suddenly his colleague and his (teh evil?) boss need help because the call queue (Q-Matic) has gotten so big that it came to life in the form of a great virus!!!

Mike is transported against his will to the inner world of Q-Matic, and it's quite similar to Hueco Mundo in Bleach, the callers (clients) are alienated in rows, resigned to wait years till they are recognized at the top of the queue.

This begins the 'Second series' of the story, while the First serves as a prequel

The characters are compelling, with each contributing something unique to the story. I have a fondness for Magnus, one of the System guys, the living and breathing irony of a contemporary Cro-Magnon man whose brain melted after endless hours of programming, and now 'his head runs in a cocktail of Java and Turbo Pascal', as his friend best described it.

What I also find great is that the site's interface is very intuitive, with playback buttons that let you go forward and back, as well as the first strip, to the most current strip. The style reminds me very much of Four-coma specials that mangakas use to add comedy and depth to serious-themed stories.

While there's a solid continuity between strips, which are frequently updated every Monday, some of them can be interpreted separately, such as this that pertains to the very first strip (from the first series) published in 2010.

In regards to tone, I can say that this is like Dilbert, but with a more optimistic approach, you can identify with the character's frustration with routine and daily life in a cubicle, but they want to do something about it, they are active about the conflicts that surround them, not passive and cynical. And it doesn't lose any ounce of satire.

The story can be found here! http://rawrtacular.com/bo/ or in the banner section of this very blog!