The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is a weekly story-driven webcomic based on the continuing adventures of (stay with me here) a Ninja of Irish ancestry who is also a practicing doctor. The comic is a running parody of the kind of ridiculous, convoluted stories and overly kinetic, splash-page focused artwork of the most ludicrous popular superhero comics. Scenes and situations in the comic often seem like they were imagined by an eight-year-old boy whose body is simultaneously inhabited by the spirits of Michael Bay and Rob Liefeld (who we’ll pretend are dead for the sake of this metaphor) but with enough common sense and humor to take none of his work seriously.
In spite of how completely ridiculous this series tries to be (and is), you’ll find that there is some actual story here. We’re all aware of the glut of shitty movie parodies that do little more than loosely string together one cumbersome pop-culture reference after another. While Dr. McNinja sometimes veers close to this extreme, it holds together because the author, Christopher Hastings, has a strong sense of continuity. No little detail is forgotten, and seemingly minor and nonsensical events (like Dr. McNinja catching a fleeting glimpse of himself as a child while chasing King Radical through a cave) are consistently woven in and out of story arcs to keep the attentive reader paying attention. Occasionally the story is even surprisingly smart.
Of course, being an action comic, dynamic visuals are extremely important. The artwork in early episodes of Dr. McNinja is inconsistent in regards to the quality of line work, anatomy, gesture, perspective, and facial expressions. Layouts in the earlier storylines also tend to be a bit muddled. As the series has progresses, though, you’ll note marked improvements in the overall visual style. The first several episodes (up to 
“Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja”) feature simple black and white linework with no shading. From that point on, the artwork becomes more complex, with increased attention to dynamic shading; however, there’s still some inconsistency. “Monster Mart” is the first episode of the series to be fully colorized and also seems to mark a jump in the quality and consistency of the artwork, although there are notable and gradual improvements that you can see in each successive episode. In each of the colorized episodes, you’ll find that the quality of the artwork matches anything you’d find in a mainstream comic production. If you’re a whore for shiny artwork, I won’t blame you entirely for starting with “Monster Mart,” but you’ll be missing out on some interesting (and occasionally important) story elements that might confuse you later in the series.
If you’re a fan of comics and are familiar with Internet “in” jokes, then you’ll find a lot to love in Dr. McNinja. Even if you’re not into those things, you’ll still probably appreciate the almost Pythonesque level of absurdity and the overblown action of the series. Either way, I recommend you give Dr. McNinja a moment of your time – he’ll kick your ass AND cure what ails you.
