Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Stopover at Pirate Queen Marianne: Well... how can you NOT like a comic about a smart, spunky, space pirate queen?

This is a relatively new comic I'd just stumbled across. The credit for me actually actually getting around to reading the comic was the spiffy Keenspace newsbox art that caught my eye. There's just something deliciously charming about that stylised artwork:



Check out that mastery of positive/negative space! I'd caught a few glimpses of Stephen Henderson-Grady's (more realistic) artwork before, but this is the first time I've sampled Katie Henderson-Grady's writing. I must say it's promising: mostly light hearted, with some gung-ho action and the occasional (but not overdone) dramatic moment.

There's some slight problems with choppy transitions and unanswered plot holes that may confuse the reader a little in the beginning, but starting from the second chapter things start to smooth out and the art just keeps looking better and better. I'm not sure if they're making full use of infinite canvas just yet, but all in good time I guess.

An interesting aspect of the comic is that it deliberately shuffles the story so it's not told in order. This could either be refreshing to the reader, or it could just plain annoy the conventionals to heck. Either one or other, you might want to decide for yourself.

The navigation could be better handled though. A calendar or comic index would go a long way to help us poor readers who aren't just reading from the beginning to backtrack them pages ;)

It's hasn't started long, and hasn't gone very far... but definitely worth keeping an eye on, this one.