So it finally happened and Area has published the last pages of the ‘Next Summer‘. This has been one of my favorite lewd fan projects for Gravity Falls, if not my all-time favorite.
I want to spend a few minutes gushing over the things I loved about this comic and Area’s work.
But first, I have to express the only complaint I have with the comic and one issue that made it harder than it should have been to distribute the comic around.
I never had it in my heart to call it out directly, but Area’s choice to have the story begin with the kids still being young was a mistake, in my opinion. However, I believe it comes from a place of respect for the source material. After all, the characters we love and know were these kids from the show.
It could be possible Area felt it necessary to depict them as they were to not ‘violate’ their personalities and work from that, but in my personal opinion it would have been great if she began the story with them grown up, avoiding this complicated situation of them being both grown up and not.
The premise of the comic involves Pacifica feeling bad about her parents prohibiting her from meeting up with the Pine Twins. She also has to deal with her feelings of inadequacy regarding her love for Dipper, feeling guilty for being a Northwest.
The flow of the story can be erratic for the first 29 pages. Area chose to focus on telling certain tidbits of information and jumping around different times. This would be great if the content was episodic, but when you read the comic as a whole it can feel odd since you are going back and forth between scenes at different time frames.
To make it easy for me and anyone interested here’s a proposed time line to read the events in order.
- July 17 05:40 PM – Page 3
- July 19 10:30 PM – Page 13
- July 20 08:30 PM – Page 10
- July 24 06:00 PM – Page 1
- July 24 06:15 PM – Page 15
- July 24 06:43 PM – Page 21
- July 24 07:03 PM – Page 23-25
- July 24 07:05 PM – Page 17
- STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE 26
Aside from that, the narrative is pretty straight forward. The story involves Pacifica having trouble fitting in with the Pines’ friends. Dipper steps up to the challenge and tries to help her socialize with them, but is immediately betrayed by his latent crush on her. Wendy and Mabel realize this so they start planning away for them to get together and making it easier for Pacifica to be part of the group.
The plan involves a party in the woods with Dipper, Pacifica, Wendy, Mabel, Gideon, Candy, Grenda, Soos and Melody. While playing cupid they make sure Dipper ends up alone in the cabin where the party is going to take place. Conveniently for the story Soos drops Wendy and Pacifica first before going for the rest of the people invited.
From here on the lewd parts of the comic play out. Using an eye that can show the future Pacifica ‘transports’ Dipper, Wendy and herself to the future. We are told that in this vision of the future they know and feel all the things their future selves would, but they still retain some sort of awareness that they just were at the cabin in the woods before showing up naked sharing a bed in a Northwest lakeside manor.
Area did an amazing job with the grown up Dipper, Wendy and Pacifica designs. They show extreme care to detail with the trademark style mimicry that Area is capable of doing. Their design consistency with the original show’s aesthetic is remarkable.
The scenario that plays where they are embarrassedly exchanging dialogue also mimics their canon personalities incredibly well, which makes the whole story come together in an extremely natural way.
Overall it seems that Area wanted to tell a story that focused on Pacifica’s emotional struggles, which are the result of her bashful nature. Canonically she constantly tries to take back what she says when her true feelings surface and that comes through in Next Summer too. Same happens with Wendy, she remains as a cool, fun-loving girl in the whole affair but demonstrates a shy, tomboyish personality underneath that.
Dipper is also shown to have a big emotional hurdle to overcome because of his characteristic inability to commit and be confident with his decisions, as he gets confronted by Pacifica and Wendy in such an extremely intimate situation.
Being a porn parody of the show, this story focuses on the sexual exploits of the trio once they find themselves together, naked and alone in an isolated home. Apparently their future selves have this sort of relationship.
The fun thing about this comic is discovering all this alongside the characters. What initially is considered an embarrassing situation quickly turns into social exploration, Pacifica explores her emotions and jealousness of Wendy and they bare their thoughts as they become closer.
Dipper has it easy, being on the receiving end of the emotions the girls are fighting through. Overall the bigger development occurs with Pacifica as she lets go of her hesitant thoughts towards Dipper and boldly jumps to action.
Sex starts clumsily but exponentially gets more fun as the girls become more enthusiastic, at some points even playing as if it was a competition. Dipper is taken for a ride as both girls start losing their inhibitions and being bolder.
Area builds up the scenes in a very sweet and slow pace. As the story evolves her framing tools adjust and help the story. Initially, three pages give way to a slow kiss between Pacifica and Dipper, but in the meantime these pages also show Wendy’s involvement as a one third of the relationship.
For a few frames Area focuses on Wendy’s reaction to the new bold Pacifica. She repeats this formula again to show Wendy getting accustomed to it, eventually showing her face expressing lust and desire too. She gets involved with Dipper and Pacifica and the framing still remains slow and sweet.
Facial expressions used throughout provide great emphasis on key story bits. There are lots of casual bits of dialogue that can make you laugh as the characters jokingly taunt each other.
The comic pacing feels extremely intimate. The panels focus on their faces or their hands as the story goes through intimate moments. Special care seems to be taken to have their faces lead to the next panel. Motion is kept from frame to frame when motion is implied and it never seems to break into an awkward position.
Orgasms are depicted tastefully and with special attention to aftercare, the characters being thoughtful of their fictional partners. Perhaps one the best aspects of Area’s comics is that the implied relationship between the characters is 100% believably affectionate.
Halfway through the comic some of the panels start getting very creative. Since the comic itself took somewhere near 2 years to be done as a weekly release, this implies artistic growth on behalf of Area. Camera angles move around to emphasize dynamic scenes while the character style remains intact.
Background art throughout the comic remains pretty simple and effective. In some panels you can notice a texture blending into the background more visibly than it probably should but it rarely comes off as looking bad.
Panel composition is also something that is strong throughout the entire comic. There are several panels which I personally believe can make extremely impressive single art pieces. The frame composition of some panels also strengthens the implied motion they depict, making it easy to imagine animated loops with them.
And well, the Climactic Climax Scene (page 77) involving the three characters turns out to be a very strong panel itself immediately leading to a couple of pages of sweet slow paced resolution.
The lewd portion of story comes to an end with a very sweet and lovely tone. Lots of lovey dovey dialogue and a kiss.
Which brings the story back to the past, with the characters wiser and more perverted than when they left, to resume the story at the party part.
The final couple of pages are very well done and showcase Area’s love for the show’s format. Mabel comes in to pull the strings and everyone seems to enjoy themselves as the story wraps up.
The last 5 pages showcase Mabel with Gideon, a day after the party, and using the eye to show their future. Before things can get interesting the scene ends in a way that if this were an animation you could roll out the credits after that.
Overall “Next Summer” by Area ended up being an extremely good ride. Hiccups and all. More content out there should try and be this good and focus on the wholesome aspects revolving sexuality and relationships.
Next Summer by Area
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
erolair 