When I Am King

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When I am King is a wordless infinite canvas webcomic by Swiss artist demian5 about an Egyptian king's travels through a desert. It has an unusual visual style that makes heavy use of oranges and reds, uses arrows to emphasize horizontal movement, and has occasional GIF animation.

Chapter One, Episode Three - The King meets The Camel.

[edit] Plot summary

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The king of Egypt wakes up, dresses himself in a royal towel and goes for a stroll. He meets a camel that is eating cactus. The camel eats his towel. The naked king remonstrates with the camel, but it throws up on him. He then returns to the palace, wishing that the camel were dead, but is stopped at the entrance by his two palace guards. (These guards don't get along, and one of them called the other gay earlier because of excessive smiling). He tells them that he is the king, but the guards make fun of his nudity and refuse to believe him. He points his crown to them, but they think he made it himself out of paper and throw it away. He then calls them a gay couple. They threaten his nudity with a spear. The king goes away. Meanwhile, the camel has fallen in love with the king and approaches the palace. The guards threaten it with a spear, but the camel eats it.

The king is now sitting dejected in a garden and ranting about the guards' gay behavior. He then has an idea and covers his nudity with a large flower. However this attracts a bee, which chases him and the flower covering him. Finally he concedes defeat, gives the flower to the bee angrily and walks away. The bee is burned to death and eaten by the camel.

The king realizes that the flower he used to cover himself has given him a yellow coloring, and he tries to rub the pollen off himself. But he only gets an erection, which embarrasses him. Two passing women giggle at him and one of them gives him money out of pity for his shortcomings. The king tries to make the most of a bad situation, and sets out to buy underwear with this money. On the way to the market place, he runs into a group of children, who chase him, making fun of his nudity. He tries to shoo them off but this only makes them taunt him more.

Meanwhile, the two women meet the camel and pet it. This only inflames the camel's passions for the king, and it sets off at a gallop. The women then meet the palace guards, who strike muscleman poses to attract them. However the women examine the guards' sizes and both of them choose the better endowed guard, the one who was earlier called gay by his partner for excessive smiling. The other guard is left humiliated. The chosen guard and the women head off to some place.

The king finally succeeds in shaking off the kids, and makes his way to a shop. While the kids are standing around making fun of the king, the camel gallops past, and comes to a stop outside the shop that the king went into. Inside the shop, the king asks the Elvis-lookalike shopkeeper for underwear. The shopkeeper has a pair but it costs more than what the king has with him. The king says that he is the king, to which the shopkeeper replies that he is Elvis. Unable to reach a deal, Elvis then sells the king a cigarette and a match for the money he has on him. The king agrees to this deal, and steps outside for a smoke, immediately running into the camel.

Meanwhile, the two women and the guard have arrived at a large garden of flowers. Here the women strip the guard, take off their clothes and all three dive into the flowers. There is a lot of activity in the flowers. The guard suddenly yells in pain, for he has sat on the sharp royal crown that the king was wearing earlier. He then throws it away and settles down to enjoy the women’s attentions. Later he returns to his post outside the palace carrying a flower, and does not stop grinning, much to the discomfort of the other guard.

The king and the camel have a fight over sharing the cigarette, and the king punches the camel. The camel is heartbroken. Just then the king is attacked by the same group of kids from before and knocked unconscious. The enraged camel eats one of them and frightens the others away. Darkness falls. The camel carries the king to the location of the first cactus plant. The king has a dream where he is falling in a void when the camel flies up and catches him. In real life, the camel eats the cactus and sleeps off.

The king then wakes up, realizes what his dream meant, and makes peace with the camel. He is hungry however, and resorts to eating the cactus. This causes him to hallucinate in 3D. In his hallucination, he makes his way to a pool of bubbling water, dives in and retrieves his crown. In real life, when he wakes up from his hallucination, he has the crown. He then throws up. He snuggles next to the camel for warmth and dozes off.

The two palace guards are on a sleep rotation for the night. The unsuccessful guard contemplates killing the other in his sleep, who is dreaming about the naked women. But he does not kill him and wakes him up for guard duty while he himself goes to sleep. He starts to dream about women examining his size. The two women dream about the well-endowed guard, now with exaggerated dimensions. The children dream about being burned alive and eaten by the camel. The unsuccessful guard dreams about flowers, but at the end of his dream all his flowers are stolen by the successful guard.

Next morning, the two women come back and take the same guard as before. He leaves with them, leaving the flower behind for the other guard. They make their way to the bed of flowers as before. On the way they pass the sleeping king and the camel. When they arrive at the flowers, they strip off their clothes and jump in for a good time. The guard then sees something and screams. The women also see it and scream. They have just seen a huge swarm of giant bees diving into the flowers.

The camel and the king wake up. After some brief innuendo, the king puts his hand into the camel's digestive tract and pulls out the dead bee, the live kid, who runs away, and finally his royal towel!

Back at the palace, the other guard is still on duty, holding the flower. He sees the small kid running away, and then the king arrives. He sees the flower and takes it for himself. The guard is heartbroken. Just then the camel arrives at the palace. The guard stops it and yells at it. The camel feels attracted to him. The king goes into his palace and admires the flower for a while, but then he gets bored and throws it away. As he is leaving the palace, he sees the guard get serviced by the lovestruck camel, and finds it funny.

The credits follow, showing four giant bees carry off the dead guard and women, and a flower.

[edit] Media Attention and Critical Acclaim

When I Am King has been described by Wired magazine as "the amusing, sometimes otherworldly story of an Egyptian royal who ventures out into a bizarre world"^[1]. The Comics Journal writes that it "treats the underground staples of sex, low humor, and drug experiences with wit and artistic virtuosity. ... Demian 5's work seems to be influenced by the graphics of rave cards and the culture of techno music. ... The story scrolls like an electronic codex, moving horizontally across a minimalist landscape for much of the narrative and is peppered with animation throughout. ... The story's climax in Chapter 4 is an experimental tour de force that begins the falling action with a descending scroll and includes some outstanding 3-D rendering and animation."^[2] The work has also been featured as one of The Independent's "10 Best Sites of the Week" ^[3] and in Salon's "No laughing matter" about the relationship between traditional comics and webcomics ^[4]. When I Am King was nominated for 2 Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards, Best Infinite Canvas Comic & Best Use of the Digital Medium, winning the latter award.

Scott McCloud gives demian5 as an example of a "native digital artist [who has] pushed the limits of vector stylization and other forms of digital art."^[5]

demian5's comic Square Fiction has been published in the Zurich Express newspaper as well as on the subscription webcomics site Serializer.

[edit] References