JakeBurner
My thoughts on Knuckle Up
Hey y'all. So you're probably looking at this and wondering why I made this? Well to be perfectly honest, this webcomic has been burrowed in my mind for quite a while, and I felt like I had to express my thoughts on it.
For those who are unaware, Knuckle Up is a webcomic made by Mastergodai, who also created Rascals, which many of you may have heard about. Not even kidding, I remember reading that Rascals was the number 1 voted furry webcomic on...somewhere, I don't remember.
Anyways, Knuckle Up started in 2012 and as of now is currently at 155 pages, which...isn't exactly a lot for such a long lifespan. For comparison Rascals, which started in 2009 and has just about reached 750 pages. This is mainly thanks to Rascals having a consistent schedule, posting a new page weekly every Friday, whereas Knuckle Up...doesn't really have a release schedule. And this is because of the comic's colourist, Upstairstudios.
One major thing you'll notice between this and Rascals is the colouring and shading is much more glossy and gradient. Which is a big thumbs up for me! I dunno, just seeing hot girls all shiny, looking like they've been lubed up with oil really tickles me down below. Notably in the more recent pages, it genuinely looks really well done. You can certainly see how much the art has improved as you read through. I wouldn't blame you if you started off in the last couple of pages and thought this was a professionably made comic by IDW or something. Okay, well...maybe aside from the nudity, but we'll get to that.
Unfortunately, Upstairstudios has gone through a number of IRL issues, which explains the long gaps between each upload. A comment I found on Furaffinity by UStudios pretty much jots down the things he's had to deal with behind the scenes lately. Searching for a job, family issues, and wanting to get a project of his own making into production. I do wish there was a way to support the guy directly, cause I'm honestly curious to see what this project of his is like.
Plus, I can't help but relate to him. I'm pretty much working off of art commissions but it's much more refreshing than working as some cashier at the local supermarket, cause I can actually work on something I love and do it at my own pace. I just wanna work as freelance artist for indie games and hope one day to get projects of mine off the ground like Harbingers. Hell, it's because of this webcomic that motivated me into working on it. I even tried looking back into coding on Unity to see if I can improve, but I pretty much just hit a dead end. Plus, maybe it's a good thing I stopped working on Unity, considering...recent events.
Regardless, I do wish the best for UStudios that hopefully things for him turn out well.
Now, about the comic itself. I'm gonna do my best and condense as much of the story as I can, while providing some of my own thoughts in between.
So disclaimer, don't expect this to be a well constructed review, I'm just here to express my personal thoughts.
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The comic starts off with our protag Hawke, a mercenary, meeting with a young space wizard named Moon, who hired Hawke to help recover a magic jewel, which is her source of power, from a mob boss. In order to get close without suspicion, Moon transforms Hawke into a girl, so as you could imagine, Hawke approaches the mob boss, leaving them alone and simply knocks the guy out. Then two members of Hawke's crew, Rushana and Swoop, barge in looking for Hawke. Rushana is basically the tsundere of the cast, having an obvious crush with Hawke, which he, or rather she, is completely oblivious to. I remember some people who didn't really like Rush that much since she's basically...well...a bitch. Swoop is a space dragon that can change from a small chibi dragon form to a much more mature looking form, who pretty much stays that way for most of the comic.
So Moon now has her jewel back, but before Moon can change Hawke back, the jewel suddenly vanishes and Jupiter appears, a member of the magic order and Moon's mentor(?). Jupiter tells her that because it was her fault that she lost the jewel in the first place, her punishment is still ongoing. And now the jewel is broken off into ten pieces across the galaxy for Moon to search for, containing fragments of her power. And since Moon was the one who turned Hawke into a girl, she can't change her back until all the pieces are retrieved.
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Ok, now as I said before, this was made back in 2012, and story isn't exactly this comic's main focus.
But first off...what the hell lady?! You couldn't wait ten seconds for your student to turn the guy she hired back to normal?! I'm serious, this whole comic would've been over in just 15 pages if Jupiter didn't show up the very moment before Moon was gonna turn Hawke back.
And second, isn't it kinda dangerous to scatter pieces of a magical jewel across the galaxy? Like what if some bloodthirsty warlord got his hands on one of these things? Wouldn't it have been much smarter and safer to just...lock the jewel away until Moon underwent another kind of trial?
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So you can probably see where this is going: a ragtag group of mercenaries travel across the galaxy collecting the pieces of Moon's jewel to turn Hawke back to normal, and shenanigans ensue. Well...that's where it was going for at first...I think.
The KU crew meet up with this guy named Saint, who's basically the "connections guy", the guy who knows virtually anyone and everyone across the galaxy. Not to mention, he's literally Pyrocynical's sona before he even debuted in YouTube. Seriously, they both have a TV for a head and a purple jacket, I'm just pointing that out. They also meet with Jake, who's basically the pervert, and (as of now) the only guy in the whole crew.
The first piece of Moon's jewel is taken by Chica, which resulted in her mimicking Hawke's sword fighting skills (which...we never actually see in this whole comic), because when Moon used her powers to turn Hawke into a girl, it...also copied some of Hawke's traits. I'm not even gonna ask on how that works.
Also Jupiter tags along, because apparently someone from the magic order anonymously ratted her out for aiding Moon in her quest and she now must share her punishment.
The crew go see Chica and Rush challenges her to a fight for the jewel piece. Chica looks like she's gonna take the win, but then Hawke steps in and just casually throws her into a wall, knocking her out. So did Moon also give Hawke super strength, or was she always that strong?
After Chica wakes up, she decides to tag along, wanting to get a share of the reward to help her family. Hawke and Rush get into one of their usual arguments, but when Hawke then outright asks Rush if she loves her, Rush just panics and runs off without answering.
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I think I can speak for everybody that this kind of trope is just exhausting at this point. I suppose I can forgive this moment in particular since Hawke did just blurt this out of nowhere after just having an argument. So, yeah, not exactly the best moment to ask that. And again...this was the mid 2010's. Need I say more?
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So the KU crew hide out on Swoop's home world for a while and...honestly, this just feels like a filler episode. I mean there is a bit of a lore dump of why Swoop joined the KU crew in the first place. Swoop's mother is the queen of the northern side of the planet and she wants to unify the kingdoms by arranging a marriage between Swoop and a prince from the south. But Swoop wasn't exactly down for this, hence why she ran away. But her mother isn't actually mad at her or anything. In fact, she encourages Swoop to keep doing what she does.
After that little pitstop, Rush's sister Rita shows up with a possible cure to turn Hawke back to normal...and it actually works! But Jupiter and Moon aren't exactly convinced, and when Jupiter is left alone, Hawke suddenly comes in and starts talking dirty to her, which then puts Jupiter in a trance. So they get busy in the sheets with Rush ultimately finding out and storms off, taking her sister's ship.
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Okay, was that really necessary? Just jacking your sister's ship without even asking?
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But surprise, turns out it wasn't actually Hawke, but Ariel, a shape shifting "skunkubus" who happens to have some history with Jupiter. Also, her original name was Keisha but she decided to go by "Ariel" now for...some reason? She happened to be the one who sold the "cure" to Rita and knocked out and tied the real Hawke in a closet. Ariel wants to use the jewel to become a full blooded vampire.
Meanwhile, Rush, along with Swoop who snuck on board her ship, go their own way to find the jewel themselves, so for help, they head to meet the original KU captain Deva, who now leads her own space pirate crew, I shit you not, the "Bikini Space Pirate Squad."
Back on the K-U-1, Hawke makes a deal to Ariel by helping find Rush in exchange for the jewel. Also, there was a thing that Hawke had to be blindfolded whenever she was around other naked women, but when Hawke was concerned about Rush and ended up taking her blindfold off, Jupiter seemed surprised that nothing happened.
Why? Does something happen when Hawke gets aroused or whatever?
Anyways, back with Rush and Swoop, they learn that Deva apparently has a wish granting jewel that gives members of her crew much more voluptuous bodies, but it's then established that it...isn't one of the pieces of Moon's jewel? And when Deva gives it to Rush, the jewel also happened to contain the spirit of an evil wizard that Jupiter knew and thought was dead, years ago?? Who posesses Rush and basically becomes the new leader of Deva's crew???
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This whole plot point just raises so many questions.
First off, if it's a totally different jewel from Moon's, then where and how did Deva get her hands on it?
Second, why didn't the spirit possess Deva or anybody else in her crew? You could argue that maybe she was influencing them through the jewel, but that still doesn't answer why she just went ahead and flat out possesses Rush.
Thirdly, how exactly did the spirit end up in said jewel in the first place? Jupiter was obviously surprised that she was still alive, so it wasn't like the magic order they were from didn't imprison her. And if they did and they never told Jupiter (I mean the part about Jupiter being ratted out anonymously by the magic order does raise a red flag for me), then I repeat my first question.
You could really tell at this point that the story has completely derailed and pretty much turned into a softcore lesbian hentai. I mean, again, story was never really the main appeal in the first place.
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Anyways, Rush gets possessed, gets a bigger body, she mind controls Swoop, the rest of the KU crew show up, Rush fights Jupiter, then mind controls Chica and Rita, Jupiter teleports away with Swoop, they're found by Hawke and Jake, and are brought back into the ship. Jupiter and Swoop are dying, so Hawke, Jake and Ariel perform a ritual to save them, which turns Jake into a girl, instead of killing him somehow.
Oh and apparently we find out that Jake actually had a girlfriend, Victoria. Who...just so happens to be Amanda from Rascals?
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Okay, I should probably explain. So in Rascals, Knuckle Up is, in fact, a tv show and some of the actors who played the main cast actually play a part in some of the overarching plots. For instance, Hawke is actually played by twins, Paige and Keith Creed, and Jupiter is played by Scarlett who actually meets and befriends Amanda, the girl who plays Victoria.
But then that would mean Knuckle Up would have to have been made some time after Scarlett and Amanda met. Granted, this Knuckle Up is more or less it's own thing, it's just odd that Victoria is just Amanda. Maybe she was just meant to be a cameo initially?
Also, I highly doubt something as raunchy as this would be allowed on cable. Maybe on streaming services, I mean Netflix has Devilman Crybaby and Amazon has The Boys. But these two comics came out way before streaming services became mainstream.
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So Victoria was the captain of a previous crew Jake, Hawke, Rush and Swoop were part of, until she sacrificed herself when a mission they took on went horribly wrong, and Jake's perverted antics were all an act to purposely keep other women away from him.
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I mean, it's definitely a spin on the usual pervert trope, not really sure if its the right way to grieve over your girlfriend's death but...alright.
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So later on, Jupiter visits Jake and they get busy, then Swoop joins in, things get steamy, until Jake suddenly flashes in a bright light, but one page later, it seemed as if nothing happened to him, but the three are obviously nervous to tell anyone. So the crew sneak in to find Rush, which goes about as well as you'd think. Like when has *anything* gone to plan with these guys? So it turns out, whenever Jake is aroused, she turns back into a guy, but for a short time, so he gets caught, runs through the showers and into...Victoria. Who's still alive. After they just talked about her several pages ago.
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I know, I've said multiple times to suspend your disbelief for a furry webcomic that started in 2012, but the amount of conveniences in this comic are just unreal.
Let me just recap: Rush runs off to Deva, who just so happens to have a jewel that contains the spirit of an evil wizard that Jupiter knew years ago, and Victoria, Jake's girlfriend, who everybody thought was dead, is ALSO still alive and was a part of Deva's crew.
Like, I don't think even Domino can pull off something like that.
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So Jake gets caught, but Jupiter saves him, however she's still low on power, so the crew regroups back to the ship, where Rush is waiting for them, they get captured and brought to a dungeon, and that's pretty much where we are right now.
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So yeah, if you couldn't tell, the story is just...a complete trainwreck, but it's pretty apparent that the comic knows this and just doesn't care. I mean, it's a furry fan-service webcomic with full on nudity so, what else did you expect.
I honestly don't know if you could call it a story, like...they're just doing things at this point, the whole fetch quest with the jewel pieces has just been completely thrown out the window.
And some characters are just...there, not really serving any real purpose. Chica and Rita for example, they just become eye-candy after their introduction. You could take those two out of the comic entirely, and nothing would change
Yet despite all of that...I'm honestly curious as to where this is gonna lead to. I feel like this is gonna lead to something that just completely blows everything out of proportion, like there's the whole thing with Hawke being kept blindfolded around naked women.
If Jake turns back into a guy when he gets aroused, then...what in the hell happens to Hawke when she does? Is it like in that one episode of Billy and Mandy where Mandy smiles and then...all of reality just completely falls apart?
And another thing that I caught on was...where the hell is Moon off to most of the time? Like is it just me or does it feel like she disappears more than often? Hell in page 120, Moon just pops out of nowhere after they had just revived Swoop and Jupiter, and they're like "where the heck have you been?"
I'm not kidding, she only appeared in just 32 pages, out of 155! Keep in mind, this is the girl who basically started this whole comic in the first place! You'd think she'd be a lot more active on looking for her jewel pieces, but most of the time, she's more focused on stuffing her face in another girl's breasts.
Waaaait a minute...did she somehow orchestrate all of this???
Given that everything pretty much started cause of Moon, who we all know is a huge lesbo perv, seems pretty convenient that the comic later on pretty much goes all out with the full on frontal nudity, and the magic stuff has become more lewd, like the ritual done to revive Swoop and Jupiter involving grasping each other's breasts? Where Jake, instead of dying, ended up as a girl?
And again, there's the whole deal with Victoria and the evil spirit.
Also, going back on how this is supposed to be a TV show, with all the raunchy stuff in it...what if this is actually a fanfiction? In page 290 of Rascals, one of the main characters, Reiko, is chatting with Paige, one of Hawke's actors, and they're going through fanfictions, including one that Reiko actually made herself. And for those who don't know, Reiko is a bit of a nymphomaniac, much like Moon... And in page 117 of KU, we see a silhouette of who the evil spirit was, and you might notice that she looks familiar...
Does this mean this whole comic is all Reiko's vision of the show? Or is there something else going on here???
This might also explain why Victoria is literally just Amanda from Rascals. Reiko probably just wrote her into her story cuz, well...why wouldn't she? Look at her!
Now you may look back on all this and ask:
"Did I really type down all of this for a furry fanservice webcomic, just because I was bored out of my mind and had nothing else to do?"
...Yes.
"Do I even care at this point?"
...Not really.
UPDATE 14/03/2024:
So a couple of more thoughts surrounding this webcomic, big shocker, I know. But continuing my list of questions regarding that evil spirit:
If she was planning on taking on the magic order she and Jupiter were part of (I mean we don't really know if that's her plan, there's been no new update as of now), I'm pretty sure it's gonna be a suicide march, cuz the magic order must have like a dozen of experienced wizards, and her "Armee Sexy", yes, that's the name of her "army", just a ragtag crew, a fairly large crew, granted, of half naked women with magic themselves, but they probably have little to no experience and probably nowhere near as powerful, cuz they all got their magic from just the *one* jewel the spirit was trapped in.
Although it does make me wonder, if Jupter must have a jewel of her own somewhere, since these magic jewels are like sources of power for these wizards like Moon and the spirit, so the order must have like a ton of these things, and they would just wipe out this whole "army" into atoms or whatever.
And another thought that came to mind, is that, okay, maybe the spirit was just gonna let Rush slide and just give her a bigger body, but when she looked into her mind and found out that Jupiter was tagging along, so that's when she decided to take control of her body, but again, if she wanted to kill Jupiter and possibly overthrow the magic order (or at least attempt at it), she could've just possessed Deva and do all this much sooner.
So it got me thinking that, maybe this spirit, is actually a victim of circumstance, like she caused something that was completely out of her control, maybe accidentally killed someone, or it looked like she killed someone, but she decided to play into it for whatever reason, perhaps she hated being in the order, maybe she was forced in cause she had magic, and she decided to use this accident, as a way for her to get out of the order and live a quiet life, just left completely alone to do whatever. So when she was thought to be dead, she was probably like "y'know what? This is fine, I can work with being a genie." But then when she went inside Rush's head and found out Jupiter is basically part of her crew, she panics and is like: "OH SHIT THEY FOUND ME?! Okay, okay, it's fine, I can work with this." And then she possesses Rush, and starts acting as this "mad, vengeful space witch" where really she's just a frustrated klutz who wants to be left alone, and all of this was just a huge misunderstanding.
I feel like that's also a pretty good possible outcome that feels in line with how bonkers this webcomic is, cause like I said, the story has just been thrown out of the window, and it's just batshit insanity at this point.
UPDATE 8/04/2024
Yup, another thought of mine just came up that I had to get out of my head about this comic.
Y'know those anime adaptations that start off fine, following the first arc in the manga, until suddenly fast forwarding into the middle of another for the sake of rushing the story out? That's basically what this comic feels like, it's like we skipped from the first season after just two or three episodes into the middle of season 2. At this point we still know bugger all about the magic order Jupiter and Moon are a part of, and speaking of Jupiter, why hasn't she explained who this spirit posessing Rush is? Like they had several pages planning out how to sneak in and get to her, yet they never used any of that spare time to ask who this spirit even is?
In fact, during that, Jupiter doesn't even adress said spirit by her real name, she just refers to her as "the spirit."
*Who is she?!* What did she do?! Why is she so dangerous?! How is she this powerful?! How do we defeat her?! You say you've known her for over 15 years, but you don't even adress her by her name or anything? Why keep everything about her a secret? All you've shown us of her is a silhouette, and...yeah it's obviously Reiko from the looks of it but other than that, we know absolutely nothing about her. So much information could have helped in defeating her and freeing Rush, discovering her weaknesses, but no! It feels like they were just asking to be caught and brainwashed by her or something!
It's because of how nonsensical this comic has been that it made me come up with theories like the scene of that one guy from Sunny in Philadelphia, you know the one.
Like how Moon is somehow responsible for everything, like...maybe all of this is some weird, erotic simulation she created, it would explain why everything so far is so nonsensical and why Moon herself is barely present.
Or perhaps in a similar manner this is some twisted reality TV show broadcasted across the galaxy that Hawke and the others are completely unaware of, something similar to the anime Deca-Dence, where in that, we initially believe that this is a post apocalyptic world with kaiju and humanity is struggling to fight back, but then we find out that it's all a giant continent sized theme park thing for these aliens and the humans are absolutely oblivious to this, or take films like The Truman Show and Cabin In The Woods.
A twist like that could really open a number of possibilities, like this could all be a part of some Borderlands like universe where everything is so corrupt that megacorporations have now become the powerhouses of the galaxy.
I know I've said a million times now that I'm yapping about a furry webcomic, but hopefully I'm pretty much done with that. I'm still gonna be looking out on this webcomic for..."obvious reasons."
So yeah, it's March, I finished up the Sirbus pic so I thought I'd give an update on what I have planned this month.
1. Commissions are closed this month, but I am open for art trades, and perhaps some potential YCH's, if anybody's willing to give me ideas (as long as they're not explicit).
2. I've been thinking I should sell some of my other old OCs which I hadn't used in forever, and probably never will.
So here's what I'm gonna do: I'll revamp these OCs of mine as reference sheets, and put them up for sale. Those being:
Drago Alphaflame:
Sylvia Silverwing:
Overlord Dragon:
Procella Mare:
Now you may ask: "Well, what about your Pokemon OCs? Are you gonna put those up for sale since you haven't made pics of them in forever?"
Honestly I don't think so, mainly because they're all just standard designs, there are no unique features that make them stand out.
power outage
I'm currently at a LAN Party that actually has power.
I was literally just finishing up sigmathegalvantula's commission, and this fucking bullshit happens.
I have no goddamn idea when our power is gonna return, I can't even use mobile internet cuz our provider fucking hates us, idk.
I'm actually gonna lose my fucking mind.
Discord server invite!
Yep, doing another one of these. I was gonna post this during the time of my birthday but I got carried away by other things. As usual, link expires in 7 days: https://discord.gg/d8gTTTzM
Commission Schedule
So this has been something on my mind for some time now, but with 2024 around the corner, I think this is the time.
After rushing through commissions nearly every month, I didn't really have much time to work on personal stuff or other things such as potential Art Trades or YCH's.
With that in mind, I decided to make a schedule of sorts on when I will be open for Commissions:
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February (starting from the 9th)
April
June
August
October
December
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So basically, I'll be skipping one month so I can have time to breathe.