Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan (which I shall call "Rogues" for the rest of the review), located at www.rocr.net is an entertaining comic set 1000 years ago. It centers around a group of bandits who live and work together in a forest in a place called Clwyd-Rahn. I’m sure if I had paid more attention to geography I’d know where that was. I’m so embarrassed. Anyway, let’s move away from my geographical ignorance and on to the story! This comic is unfortunately without an "about" link for me to work from, so I’m going from memory. Rogues started out as a comic written in Dutch. I guess at some point in time the writer/artist Reinder Dijkhuis decided that he should start writing it in English to attract a wider audience. The band consists of their leader Tamlin, middle-aged, boorish, and IMHO, not very likeable. He does a lot of comic relief. There’s Ragnarok, a woman in her thirties who’s supposed to be the brains of the outfit, but who has done a lot of stupid stuff. She’s still smarter than Tamlin, though, and is one of the many strong female characters in this story. There’s also Jake the Gnome. More comic relief, kind of a grumpy guy with an axe. There’s Atra, a daft witch who eats soap. There’s ALSO, Kel the young half-elven (or fae, whichever you prefer) witch, her sweetie Jodoque, and later on they acquire a witch named Krakatoa. Notice a lot of witches? This comic has lots of Pagan themes. Lots of magic. If you are bothered by such things, you need read no further. Rogues is not the comic for you. Rogues is a fantasy adventure comic. There’s lots of humor, but also serious stories. It’s also educational in its own way, and while reading the stories and laughing at the humorous situations that the bandits find themselves in, you pick up historic tidbits along the way. One of my favorite features of this comic are the links that Reinder includes . . . Information on songs being sung (Jodoque is a former court jester/bard), vikings, etc. During a storyline centering on a dragon, every day there was a link to a different dragon-related site. Dragon nut that I am, I had a heyday collecting the links in my bookmarks for leisurely browsing later. I do have a couple of complaints about the comic. While the sprawling archives (starting back in 2000) were an easy matter for me to tackle (ha ha, I’m a housewife! I can read web comics all day if I want to), many stories had links referencing to other stories that could have been very entertaining. Had they been fully translated. Usually there are just a couple of pages, which generally left me feeling more confused than enlightened. My other problem is the nudity. Since there are a lot of witchcraft scenes, the female characters often find themselves nude. While it’s OK in some cases, within context of the story, I found that a lot of strips in the "guest fortnights" did it very tackily and I felt embarassed to be reading the comic! If you have a problem with female nudity, you may wish to skip this comic entirely, especially since the current story features three witches running around nude while time is stopped, trying to save their friend . . . well, I won’t give away too much! If you have time to navigate a large archive, are interested in Pagan themes, or medieval fantasy, Rogues will be an entertaining comic for you. The humorous, adventurous storylines will amuse you, while the serious storylines make you feel for the characters and hope they make it out OK.

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