Ménage à 3 (webcomic)

Ménage à 3

Cover of Ménage à 3 Volume 2 with Didi, Zii, Gary & Lita
Author(s) Gisele Lagace & David Lumsdon
Website Ma3comic.com
Current status / schedule Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday
Launch date May 16, 2008
Genre(s) Sexuality; Young Adult

Ménage à 3 (often abbreviated as Ma3) is a webcomic published by Pixie Trix Comix and created by artist Gisele Lagace & Dave Lumsdon, known as Giz and Dave Zero.[1] It was started on May 16, 2008, and is currently ongoing. Set in Montreal, Canada, the webcomic follows the lives and adventures of three roommates in their attempts to find love, success and the pleasures of life. Ménage à 3 is consistently rated amongst the top 50 webcomics annually and has enjoyed success in print in addition to online.[2]

Plot

Ménage à 3 centers around the life of Gary, Montreal resident and 29-year-old virgin. Upon losing his old roommates Matt and Dillon at short notice (when they decide to become an official gay couple), Gary is desperate to find a couple of new roomies to pay the rent. Luckily, Matt and Dillon put an ad in the local paper to find new people in need of shared living quarters, and before long, the search pays off. Things change drastically for Gary when two girls, Zii and DiDi, suddenly start sharing his apartment. Zii, obviously perplexed by Gary's (unwanted) purity, declares that her goal is to make him more confident and help him lose his virginity. But life proves full of distractions for all three of them, as other characters and objectives come and go through the story.[3][4]

Characters

Primary

Secondary

Former

Style and themes

Example of how the author begins and ends a year's volume. Left panel is the first strip showing Gary having a bad dream. Right panel is the last strip showing Yuki having a bad dream.

Ménage à 3 is storyline based. Each strip is connected to a greater storyline arc, or chapters, that culminates with a resolving event. Arcs tend to last anywhere from 10 to 30 strips and are part of an annual storyline volume. Over the course of the year, only days have passed within the storyline.[7] Each volume ends the second week of May with the following strip initiating the next volume of strips. Each volume is symmetrical in that the last strip is similar in style to the first strip of the volume. For example, in volume one, Gary walks in on his roommates having sex in the first strip whereas in the last strip, Dillon walks in on his lover having sex with another.

Ménage à 3 mostly tackles themes related to sex and relationships - rarely in a serious manner. The characters deal with trying to overcome a myriad of issues. The characters range from being heterosexual, heterosexual but questioning their sexual orientation, in denial of their sexual orientation, bisexual, and homosexual. They deal with issues of trying to find sexual satisfaction, jealousy of each other, competing over each other, and trying to find a committed relationship. Characters also deal with issues from their past, such as being a pornstar or traumatic childhood experiences.

Reception

Ménage à 3 is consistently rated in the top 50 webcomics[6] on the internet and is one of the top 25 most read.[8] Reviews for Ménage à 3 have commended the artistic style as being similar to Archie Comics[6] in a setting comparable to the American 1970s television show, Three’s Company, but with much more nudity and a heavier sexual theme more in line with the American Pie movies.[2][3] Some online reviews have been critical of Ménage à 3's amount of nudity and explicit panels showing sexual actions.[2][4] The NSFW label has been criticized by some reviewers as a downside, but others have noted it as a strength, claiming it is obvious the webcomic is geared towards a certain demographic.[9][10]

References

  1. Langley, Alex (2011-01-28). "Interview with Ménage à 3 creators". Nerdspan. Archived from the original on 2013-11-07.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Yaoi Huntress Earth. "Review of Ménage à 3". Bad Webcomics Wiki. Retrieved 2014-03-09.
  3. 1 2 TV Tropes. "Ménage à 3 summary". TV Tropes. Retrieved 2014-03-10.
  4. 1 2 El Santo (2008-11-05). "Review of Ménage à 3". The Webcomic Overlook. Retrieved 2015-12-10.
  5. 1 2 3 Lauren Davis (2012-01-20). "Three’s Company gets Omnisexual in Ménage à 3". Comics Alliance. Retrieved 2014-03-09.
  6. 1 2 3 Jen Friel (2010-08-22). "Review: Ménage à 3 Webcomic". NerdsUnite Productions. Retrieved 2014-03-07.
  7. Lauren Davis (2009-02-13). "Gisèle Lagacé's "Ménage à 3"". Storming the Tower. Retrieved 2014-03-10.
  8. "Most Read Webcomics – Final Version". Archived from the original on July 19, 2012. Retrieved 2014-03-07.
  9. Shadow Akuma (2011-06-14). "Comic Review: Ménage à 3". D Saint Radio Podcast. Retrieved 2014-03-12.
  10. Kara Dennison (2010-07-13). "Comic Non-Sans: Ménage à 3 and the Other Side of the Line". Geeking Out About. Retrieved 2014-03-07.

Individual comics

In the text these references are preceded by a double dagger: ‡

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 26, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.