Postcards #9: Hero

Today's postcard is notable in that this is the first Postcard I've been asked to do not by the creator of a comic, but an ardent reader of it instead.

Hello,

As you probably have guessed, I'm emailing about a webcomic: Hero, by Hwei Lin Lim. I know that you are extremely busy and probably have a request list the length of an astronomical unit, but on the off chance that you have a bit of time...

If you haven't read it yet, well, I can recommend it at least as a personal favorite -- the art is beautiful, the story dreamishly meandering but well-told and meaningful. There's about 200 pages in the archive, and the narration/dialogue is done through hovertext, which I think is very liberating for both the visual and textual aspects. And if you have read it before, then I would be very interested in what you have to say about it, again given that you have the time.

And uh, I got some metaphorical weird looks last time I made this clear, but just so you know, I'm not Hwei -- I'm just a really, really invested fan. If that's a problem, then just say so and I'll disappear like a well-bleached stain. Thanks for taking the time to read this email!


Aoede

How am I to refuse such a charming request?

The first thing that will strike anyone who reads this comic is the total absence of the usual text and narration bubbles. Instead Hero truly transcends from "comic" to "webcomic" by making use of hover text for the narration.

This is not the first time I've seen anyone experiment with the web format by making the reader interact with the comic (in fact every page of Dr. McNinja has bonus jokes hidden in the image text) .But this is the first one I've seen that actually seen that makes the hover text the focus of the delivery and succeeds because of its simplicity. 

Others had the readers click to make a text bubbles or additional panels appear. Some played sound effects to go with the action scene when you clicked it... but here...

...you just hover over the relevant panels to make the appropriate text appear.

So the reading of Hero makes one feel more like they are reading an interactive picture-book, and oddly enough it makes one slow down to appreciate the beautifully watercolour-isque art and the enthralling, stylish story more.

Hero has a narrative style that is immensely distinct and endearing. Everything is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist, and by extension, every thing is described as a comparison based on the protagonist experiences.

For example the protagonist is so impressed with the memory of a wolf which is devoted to its human companion that he describes always having someone who will keep you company and wait for you as "having a wolf"

The odd speech bubble does make an appearance, but they are always pictorial "speech" bubbles.

I especially like how Hwei manages to sneak in bits of her local influences into his work. Subtle inside jokes like this one resonate with me :) (Yes yes, I did chuckle when I identified the cendol, sate and ang ku kuei!)

The story flow is interesting, although sometimes it feels like it jumps from one point to another, leaving the reader slightly bewildered at points.

In one chapter the format suddenly changed without warning, leaving me anxious that Hwei was abandoning her trademark speech hover thing only to have be relieved when she went back to it a chapter later. I'm still not clear on why she changed the format, my guess is that she was experimenting... but it did disrupt my reading for a bit.

All in all, Hero is something very special and unique out of the comics I have read, and in terms of webcomic finds, this is a motherlode of a Find! Finding comics like this totally makes writing blog worthwhile. I think I need to send Aoede a thank you email for this.

Edit: I'd confused Hwei's gender (Heh due to me thinking Hwei was the surname and Lin Lim was the name, which is masculine. ) My bad, and fixed ;)

Postcards are reviews requested by (mostly) webcomic authors. They focus less on reviews and more on critical insight and unreserved, honest, feedback. You can request for a review by emailing Ping at webcomicfinds @ gmail . com and if it interests her, she'll take it up. But be warned, when Ping says honest feedback, she really means it.

Postcards #8: The Pen

I'm not sure why I'm hitting a superhero streak in the postcards, it's just the order the requests have been coming in I guess.

Hi! You might be interested in the new online comic "The Pen",
available for free at www.thepencomic.com.

The Pen follows the inmates and staff at Wentworth Ridge Penitentiary,
a correctional facility for superpowered criminals. In the current
story arc, prisoners and guards alike must deal with the upheaval
caused by the arrival of an A-list supervillain.

Tonally, the comic is similar to Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman,
and is heavily influenced by such TV series as Oz, The Shield and The
Wire. The Pen is scripted by new British writer Rob Bray, and
illustrated by talented Philipino artist Randy Valiente.

A new 24-page issue (in JPG and PDF formats) is released every
Saturday for the duration of the introductory 4-issue story arc.

Your comments and criticism are very welcome, and a link from your
site would be very much appreciated!

Cheers,

Rob Bray

This is one of the more professionally written requests I've received so far. Any webcomic creators want to learn how to write a review request that has the highest chance of being responded to can learn from this guy:

1. An introduction and proper link to comic in question (Don't laugh, I've received requests with malfunctioning links before)
   
2. Short description of the comic (For your information "This is an awesome comic" is NOT a description. It's self praise. Try something like "This is a comic about superheroes, but from a different perspective" instead please.)
   
3. Politely letting the reviewer know what kind of feedback they are particularly looking for.
   

The only thing that might improve it a little further would be starting it off with the reviewer's name to give it a personal touch, but that would be the cherry on the icing already.

So on to the actual review. 

By the time I'd actually sat down to read the comic, I'd forgotten about the synopsis, so the actual premise of Wentworth Ridge Penitentiary a.k.a. "The Pen" was a nice change. I have to admit I started off thinking: "Oh great. Another superhero comic. Please don't tell me this is a cheesy Superman knockoff."

However, I hadn't even finished the first issue before I was laughing out loud at how the comic managed to give voice to a lot of little things that often bothered me about superhero comics. There's a dark, yet tongue-in-cheek kind of humour prevalent throughout most of the comic, and it is very welcome and refreshing. And not quite what I expected. In a good way.

Rob Bray's writing also has something that many webcomic authors lack: Succinctness and brevity. He knows how to to tell a story without making it drag. He knows what to put in and what to leave out, and when to pace it right. Most webcomic authors (yours truly included) sometimes fail at this due to not having the constriction of a certain number of pages we have to fit the story into. Self-editing and summarizing takes skill. Putting a story into balanced 24 page chunks is quite amazing.

Mind you the writing's not perfect. For example: I don't understand why in the most recent storyline... no one in "The Pen" has mobile phones so they can actually call for help. Maybe it's set in a world where no one invented the mobile phone. I don't know.

The art is very professional. Definitely no anatomy complaints from me this time; the crisp and edgy lines make the body language expressive and the backgrounds impeccable. You can tell Randy is a master of black-and-white comic art from his compositions and balance of tone.

But his art does have one drawback: it's too perfect.

While the crickets chirp, let me explain the above sentence. The characters are beautifully drawn and proportioned, but they are all based on the same ideal proportions and facial features. In fact, almost all the "normal build" guys are identically good-looking and if it were not for the hair and facial hair, I would be absolutely unable to tell them apart. A friend of mine once shared with me the secret of good character design: 

Include imperfection. And not a "little scar on the forehead" kind of imperfection. I mean, nose slightly too big, or crooked, or overly short eyebrows, and apple-chin... or things like that. They go a loooong way to making your character more distinctive and identifiable.

This may sound like a trivial nitpick about character designs, but it's not. At one point in the story, this flaw caused me a lot of confusion. Let's look at the below collage I made from various panels of the comic



These all look like panels of the same character, but they are two completely different people. One is "Bluestreak", the Superman equilvalent in The Pen. The one on the right is Brady Van Elsen, one of the criminal inmates. But they look so similar that I couldn't tell them apart during a fight between "Black Cape", the antagonist of the storyline, and "King Cole" another one of the inmates.

In this scene, Bluestreak pops up (to presumably save the day). Unfortunately, we have no idea Bluestreak is around since we haven't seen him for a couple of issues, so the most logical person we identify him as is Brady... which gave me the wrong impression that while the fight was going on and the guards were distracted, someone pulled a jailbreak and the inmates were loose. Of course I realized this was wrong within the next page or so, but it broke the flow of the story because I had to go back and check again, the two characters were just too alike.

This is not the only instance where the character designs impeded the story, but that's an example to show how it is a problem that might bear some looking into.

Overall, I think "The Pen" is a very good comic. I certainly haven't enjoyed a superhero comic this much since Magellan. The online navigation through the archives takes a little getting used to, but it's good once you get the hang of it although it took me a while to find the back and forth buttons (which hide themselves)

A far better idea is to read the comics through the whole issue PDF releases. Having all 24 pages at once shot is nice, and I definitely appreciate being able to sit down, read and issue, go off and check on my baking/laundry/other things I do on a lazy Sunday while a new issue loads and come back and read another 24 pages.

According to Rob's email, every week we get an issue of 24 pages. How on earth they manage to churn out content that is publishing-quality at that rate is beyond me, but I'm not complaining. I always like having a new find on my list. 

:D

Update: I got an email from Rob clarifying about the updates:

Just one small correction - the 1 issue per week schedule was only for the first 4 issues, when I put the site up Randy was halfway through drawing issue 4 so I had a backlog of completed pages. We'll hopefully be moving to a roughly monthly schedule, as I'm now completing work on the scripts for issue 5 and 6. The site's RSS feed should hopefully be working - will update as soon as we have new stuff to put out.

Still a pretty good system. I'm definitely looking forward to see what's next!


Postcards are reviews requested by (mostly) webcomic authors. They focus less on reviews and more on critical insight and unreserved, honest, feedback. You can request for a review by emailing Ping at webcomicfinds @ gmail . com but be warned, when Ping says honest feedback, she really means it.

Postcards #7: Seek and Destroy (Anarchy Comics)

Some of the requests I get are short and sweet, but they work.

Hey, Check out this webcomic, its dark and edgey.... in need of a reveiw  
http://www.anarchycomic.com
Cheers,
Daragh

Dark and edgey eh? I can go with that. I haven't read a dark and gritty comic for a while... this could be good.

Nice cover page. The monologue is a little pompous though...

Hm. Why does it keep switching from first to third person in the narrative?

And is it possible to stop............ abusing the punctuation........ and exclamation marks!!!!!!!????!!! (yes, I added them for irony)

Also, Contraction Nazi says:

It's = It Is
Its = That which belongs to "It"

Little nitpicks aside... it seems that this is a superhero comic of sorts. Or I should say, one of those Sin-City/Gotham-esque scenarios where the cops are corrupt, everything is dark and depressing and justice only exists in some poor sod's daydream. The main character whose name I never did quite get around to remembering and nor do I want to, is some sort of bloodthirsty, sadistic hitman. And he kills a crime boss for the bounty. And then runs into a scantily-clad female ninja who wants the same bounty. And they fight.

While I do believe profanity has its place in things, and in some situations they are even appropriate, I think the dialogue needs to refine its vocabulary a bit so that it moves out of the "cheap and crass" category and back into "dark and edgy" . When words like "Shit!" "Motherfucker" and "Piss" are blared every 5 seconds or so, even IF the context is like this comic where everything is crude and gritty... it gets annoying. (Heck, ANY word that's blared every 5 seconds or so would be annoying, come to think of it). But point is, they are used so repetitively here they lose their effect, and it just becomes like I said, cheap and crass.

(goes on reading)

Ok this gets a little bit boring. Violent, yet somehow boring.

It's an entire whole first chapter of some super antihero who thinks he's a big shot judge, jury and executioner blah blah. And worst of all, he won't shut up about it in his self-narrative. There's a lot of fighting, gore and waaay to much dialogue that lacks substance. And worst of all... it's committed the cardinal sin of being repetitive and boring.

Annoying, arrogant, self-obsessed characters can be made to be likable. But you need to have attributes that allow the antihero to still identify with the audience. This guy... well... he has nothing. He might as well have been a cardboard cutout with WARNING: DARK AND MYSTERIOUS BADASS CHARACTER printed on him for all the depth he has.

The art isn't too bad, page composition is good, and I like the way he uses shading to convey the night. But I get the feeling it is drawn using published superhero comic books (you know the Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse types) as a reference. How do I know? Well... the bad anatomy, latex costumes and mysteriously missing nipples particularly might have some influence on my suspicions, yes.

By the way, women have butts. And hips. Just saying. The way this gal's drawn at the moment... the only way she's plausible at all would be if her supervillian name was something like "Anorexia".

Taking pity on the poor girl, I whipped out my tablet and made some proportional corrections. The one on the left is the original, the one of the right is the modified version to show how the female figure (even if idealized) should really be.

The breasts are almost right though. Just need to make them more err... less solid and more organic. At least it's not the usual pair of over-inflated balloons pasted on. But I do feel obliged to point out that if she's going to wear something that uncomfortable without her bra, her nipples are going to be poking out like gobies on the seabed. Really. Yes... Even IF she wore nipple stickers.

I can just say... referencing from print comics for your anatomy is a really bad idea?It's like taking a photocopy of a photocopy's photocopy. One thing I dislike about a lot of print comics when I did read them was that the artists often referenced other artist's work whose anatomy was already atrociously bad to begin with. And if you in turn reference their work, you really get some awful, awful anatomy that looks more like a botox nightmare or a blow up toy gone mad than the streamlined female or well-built hero that you were aiming for. If you want reference, look for art nudes, movie stills or sport magazines, then adapt accordingly. Or invest in a digital camera and be your own model.

Oh it's over. Is it a bad sign I'm relieved?

So, my assessment? Well the best way to describe Seek and Destroy would be like the guy in this comic. (BTW, Dresden Codak is updating again). As in: A guy who is initially not bad looking, might be quite interesting and cool... then he opens his mouth and you throw up a little inside.

Similarly, my initial impression of Seek and Destroy wasn't bad. Nice cover page, atmospheric shading... then the narration boxes started clogging the page with long-winded and pretentiously trying-to-sound-impressive trash talk. Then the whole thing started to feel like bits and pieces of Spawn + The Punisher + Some other "dark and edgy" comic mixed in and I feel rather let down that originality seems to have fled somewhere along the bloodbath.

I think it's mainly because it feels shallow, like a pale imitation of a dark superhero comic. Nothing to set it apart from the norm, and not enough of the real author in it to make it live.

But to be encouraging, this really does remind me of Jess Calcaben, whom I reviewed years ago. I loathed Bilaran Wars for the same reasons as the above comic (yes and I ripped it apart the same way), yet the same author created the masterpiece that was Mute (which to this day I rank as one of the best webcomics I have ever read).

So maybe Daragh just hasn't found his true niche yet. Personally I think he needs to stop emulating superhero comics and write more honestly about something closer to home and his own life. About something original he really knows instead of artificially regurgitating up stuff from other comics out there that have been worn threadbare already.

And that's my opinion. If this comic is just a experimental practice comic, feel free to consider me to have gone overboard and disregard my words (Even if they were requested). Just keep in mind I cannot in good conscience give my recommendation of Seek and Destroy to anyone, sorry.

And Daragh? Don't give up. Keep on trying. It's all part of the journey in finding your niche, all the best to you.



Postcards are reviews requested by (mostly) webcomic authors. They focus less on reviews and more on critical insight and unreserved, honest, feedback. You can request for a review by emailing Ping at webcomicfinds @ gmail . com but be warned, when Ping says honest feedback, she really means it.

39th Leg: Rice Boy

Wayfinder and Kensington the Mouse lounged by the side of the busy festival street, watching the fracas between a group of overly confident hooligans and a rather portly Shaolin Monk.

"So Ken..." said Wayfinder as one of the men lost a front tooth, "Where do you think we should go next?"

Kensington, who was preoccupied with a piece of spilt melon, did not bother to issue anything more than a muffled, can't-speak-my-mouth-is-full kind of squeak.

"Thanks." Wayfinder rolled her eyes before ducking by reflex as a thug whizzed past her right ear. "Very helpful."

"If you're looking for a place to go, I can recommend going to visit the Rice Boy." said one of the onlookers in the crowd, who were too enjoying the free martial arts demonstration.

"Rice Boy?" Echoed Wayfinder, her curiosity piqued. "Sounds rather odd."

"Strange and psychedelic." The Onlooker helpfully supplied further as he pointed to the relevant anchor tag.

"Sounds good to me... KEN! ANCHOR TAG!" Ken gave a resigned squeak and finally abandoned the melon rind. "I guess we'll be out of here." said Wayfinder to the onlooker. "Thanks for the recommendation... Mr..."

"Max." said the Onlooker with a wave as Ken activated the anchor tag and sailed them away into another world...




Comic: Rice Boy
By: Evan Dahm

Setting and Elements: Fantasy, Surreal, Anthropomorphic
Content Type: Epic Adventure

Art Medium: Inked, Colour
Art Style: Unique

Is About: Rice Boy, who has been chosen as the fulfiller of an ancient prophecy to restore balance to the world.

Website: http://www.rice-boy.com/
Frequency: N/A
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
The main page is a portal page, which links to several comic projects, Rice Boy being only one of them. It looks to be that Rice Boy is a completed project, so I should be able to give you a complete review this time round.

Hm ok maybe not several comic projects. More like two, I think I got a miscount first time round.

The website design is really nice. It's minimalistic, but effectively pleasant.

And the art style looks interesting... Weird, but interesting.


The Concept:
A tiny little hermit of the woods, named Rice Boy, is chosen by the "divine messenger" T-O-E as the fulfiller of a great prophecy. But T-O-E doesn't really believe in the prophecy, and neither does Rice Boy. Unfortunately for them, the previously decided "Chosen One", does.


The Art:
The art for Rice boy is very interesting, with loose but well-defined lines, clean but moody colours, and character designs that can only be called unique.

There's a lot of design in this despite the initial simplicity, and a level of detail I find surprising. From the different faces displayed on T-O-E's monitor/head, to the plants in the background, the the landscapes of the radically different places in the world, it's quite amazing how Evan has managed to come up with so different designs for each race and character. Characters (will most of the important ones) are easily recognizable, yet bear elements in their clothing and such that mirror those in the real world that allow the reader to associate it with what they are supposed to represent.

I also love some other non-story details, such as how the header for each chapter is customized for an image suitable for the chapter.


The Writing:
Rice Boy is set in a strange, very original, and very fantastical world. The characters are all non-human, but have human characteristics, and in a way are a pastiche of our own societies.

The dialogue between the characters is often charming and well thought out. It's rare when I find a comic where I can read a page and just enjoy it for the sake of the dialogue. It's not something many comics do well. 

One thing I especially like is how characters introductions are done. The pacing is excellent, you never felt swamped by too many characters, and even the secondary characters who make brief appearances radiate depth of character.

The story starts out whimsical, and light-hearted, until a turning point where it begins to get darker and scarier.

So ok, the story is based on a prophecy being fulfilled and all that. And you all know that due to the premise being overused I tend to look askance at any story that is based around a prophecy. But the reason for that is stories based on that premise tend to be incredibly cliched and (what is possibly the biggest sin of all when storytelling) boring. If someone can take an overused premise, put in interesting characters and give the story new life, there's no reason why I won't like it.

Problems:
The story was an interestingly good read and had lots of original points about it, but there were also times when annoyance at the plot broke my suspension of disbelief. I do think Evan has done a sterling job coming up with the characters and background, and the twist at the story is a refreshing change, but the sheer number of times Rice Boy can run into trouble only to saved/rescued by dumb luck/good samaritans/destiny gets little irritating after a while.

Yes I do realize this is often typical of any stories that involve destiny and prophecies, but it does detract from the writing when it happens too often because it really does smack of being rescued by a deus ex machina.

Of course, it's not saying Rice Boy is an entirely passive or cowardly protagonist. He really is quite courageous in his own way after all. Keep in mind for him, what he does what for him is an incredibly scary thing... he leaves the home he has grown up in, ventures into places he has never heard of and despite all he goes through he never gives up on his goal.

It's hard to put my finger on why it bothers me so much. It could be that my over-thinking mind wonders what would happen if Rice Boy DOESN'T get lucky or saved, and then immediately realises that there wouldn't be much of story left in that point. I guess my preference is for less luck and fate and more on the things the characters proactively do.

However the story still works, mainly because Evan carefully balances out Rice Boy's innocence, naivete and faith with a foil character. This comes in the form of T-O-E, the ancient, jaded and somewhat cynical "divine messenger" who is beginning to suspect his "god" is a hoax.

Still, part of me is niggled by the thought that without this flaw it could have been as close to a perfect find as I've seen.

Overall:
Rice Boy is a beautifully done (and even more amazing) completed comic. I definitely enjoyed it very much despite its flaws.

So... if you have a lazy Sunday afternoon to spend, I'd recommend a comfty seat, good music (Last.fm has really been good at giving me good recommendations of late), a tall glass of iced tea, and reading Rice Boy from page one.

I certainly didn't regret it.

The Next Leg:
"Say Ken..." Wayfinder as she looked as the description on the anchor tag. "What do you think of 'creepy and strange'?"

The winged mouse looked at her with a somewhat aggrieved expression.

"C'mon!" Said Wayfinder, grinning evilly as she tossed him onto the anchor tag. "Where's you sense of adventure?"


So many comics! So little time! Journey Legs aim to explore webcomics through creator recommendations. From the links page of a comic, I select another comic, record my first impressions, and then review it in depth. Once that is done, I repeat the process by selecting another comic through the links page of the current comic. This goes on and on... no I have no idea when I plan to stop...

Postcards #6: The Battle of Dovecote Crest

In my previous postcard we had an example of how bad presentation and marketing correspondence can negatively colour one's impression of a comic. Today I'm going to do the polar opposite and show how good presentation and communication can elevate one.

Some time ago, I received this email from Bridget, the artist who does The Battle of Dovecote Crest

Hello Ping,

Just wanted to make a request for a critique, if you have the time. The Battle of Dovecote Crest is my second webcomic, this time as the artist half of an artist/writer team. We're pretty new, having only started updating in late September 2008, but we've got a bit of an archive going and are about halfway through our first story arc. If you have any advice, it would be greatly appreciated!

Here's the link if you decide to check it out: http://dovecotecrest.comicdish.com.

Thanks,
Bridget Underwood

If you compare this to the previous postcard, I'm sure you can see the difference in approach. There's no self-promotion, only statement of the facts. It's kinda like the difference between a good resume and a bad one really. A bad one has stuff like "I'm intelligent, self-reliant, able to multitask and am a team player." A good one says it like "I did project [X] with a team of 7 people where we coordinated to produce [Y]. My role was doing [A], [B], [C], where for [B] and [C] no prior documentation or precedence had been set yet.

In short, it lets the reader decide. And this does mean a lot.

Anyway, short prattle over, let's get to the comic itself.

I have to admit my initial expectation was apprehensive. It's a comic about history? (History was one of my most hated subjects back in school). However, the site design was just so charming (made to look like a civil ware recruitment poster) and in tune with the rest of the comic that it did allay any reservations I might have. The art and writing pretty much did the rest.

Anyway, Dovecote Crest is a joint project between writer Hailey and artist Bridget. Joint projects tend to be either amazing (think T Campbell and Gisele Lagace) or short-lived (I'd link some comic that this happened to, but I can't for the life of me remember the name) or both. The really bad ones... well they never really get started ;)

Back to the topic, this comic follows the life of "Charlie", a young graduate who majored in history but is finding life out of college with a history degree not quite up to expectations. Stuck working for a historical enactment museum in the diminutive town of Dovecote Crest while her fellow classmates somehow have found careers, her seed of discontentment is offset by the support of her friends: Her sweet but socially-inept boss Jeremy, nice but no-nonsense Tess, and the always cheery and comical Ben. (Well that was a lot of alliterative description).

I really like the art style... it strongly reminds me of Faith Erin Hicks' (of the Demonology 101 fame) early work. While it lacks a lot of flash and fancy special effects (which is not necessarily a bad thing, as it matches with the context very well) it is well done, and the strongest point of Bridget's work is her sublime facial expressions.

Of course all the best art in the world is nothing if the story is not compelling. But as it turns out there's no worries there, because the story crafted by Hailey transcends its setting. OK, so I'm a self-confessed history hater (though that might have been due to the inaccuracy of the history I was made to study suffer, but that's a whole different can of worms), but somehow the characters and writing made it come alive for me. I think even though the setting and subject matter may be unorthodox, there's a lot people who can identify with in the characters themselves. And by association they start to become interested in the setting and subject matter when they couldn't originally.

I think it's really obvious by now I really really like this comic. I guess it's because it surprised me by taking a subject that was anathema to me and transformed it into something interesting and compelling. It takes a lot of skill to be able to do that and when you do manage to do it, you're pretty much doing everything right. In fact I wrote this with the usual feedback and criticism thing in mind but I really can't find anything I would nitpick (well maybe other than don't put the news page posting in every page of the archives too).

So this comic is a rather special and unexpected Find. But when I read a comic like Dovecote Crest I thank the Web for webcomics. Dovecote Crest is a comic that would probably have never been accepted by a conventional publisher because of the unconventional and niche subject matter. It's a shame, but traditional publishers have budgets and costs and businesses to run, so their sense = cents (and dollars). It's business.

The webcomics don't have to be business. It can be about doing something for the heck of it.

And that's the beauty of it.

Postcards #5: Addanac City

Today we're looking at Addanac City, which has had a request correspondence worth reposting:

Hi there,
 
I was just letting you know about this webcomic that's been out for a minute that's pretty funny (at least, I think so. I'm the creator.). It's called ADDANAC CITY, and it's about a seven-year-old kid named Hank who always seems to get into hot water with his friends, family, and school officials to comedic effect. Check it out if you wanna. I update it 5 days a week, Monday thru Friday. Currently, I've also been updating the site with strips on the weekends during December.
 
The link is www.addanaccity.com  Hope you enjoy!
 
Thanks,
George Ford
creator of Addanac City

I always have a suspicion that when someone starts a mail with "Hi there" the mail's been mass mailed to other people as well. But oh well... benefit of the doubt and all that, so I reply:

Hello Hank,

Thanks for your interest, I will have a look and postcard it when I have the time. Of course due to my ruthlessly honest policy I can't exactly guarantee a positive review, but I'm sure you understand that it's all part and parcel of submitting your comic for review :)


Regards,
Ping Teo
http://webcomicfinds.blogspot.com

Incidentally, I should mention that when I do Postcard reviews, I tend to be more critical than in my normal "Journey Leg" reviews. This is because when I do those, the creator never asked me to review their comic in the first place, and those reviews are geared more for readers looking for new comics . Postcards are different however, and the assumption I make is that they are more for the webcomic creators themselves and the requester is after criticism and feedback.

Hello Ping Teo,

I understand you on that one. There are a whole lot of web-comics out there that I don't like either. However, there some I do. Maybe ADDANAC CITY will be one you will, at least, appreciate even if it's not your cup of tea. We'll see.

Thanks for your time,
George

Fair enough. So I add this comic to my postcard list, which takes time to work through. Imagine my surprise when I get another mail over a month later that gave me a feeling of deja vu:

Hi Ping,

I just wanted to let you know about a webcomic that I create called "Addanac City". The strip features seven-year-old Hank Addanac, a wild n' wacky 2nd-grader who constantly finds himself in hot water with his parents, friends, and school officials.

ADDANAC CITY is updated five days a week, Monday thru Friday, only at:

www.addanaccity.com

I would love to get some feedback and/or a review whenever you get the chance (positive or negative).

Thanks,
George Ford

My bemused reply:

Hi George,

Call this odd, but didn't I receive an almost identical email from you on the same subject about a month ago? In fact I think I replied it.

Can't really say anything different this round, except that the comic is indeed in my postcard waiting list. There's only a couple of comics in front of you I think.

Anyway, thanks for your email.

Happy comicking!

Regards,
Ping Teo
The Webcomics Travel-Blog
http://webcomicfinds.blogspot.com

I guess that was a subtle hint I need to speed up my postcards replying rate.

I should mention that even before I had a look at the comic I had a feeling I wasn't going to like it. It sounds like I'm prejudging, but let me explain. When someone describes their comic and tries to tell you "it's pretty funny", I start feeling suspicious. It's the same kind of feeling I get when an salesman approaches me saying "Good day, Miss! I have an offer here that I'm 100% certain you will love!"

Maybe it's the part of me that resents being told how to feel. I'm ok with people describing a comic as a "humour comic" or "I found this comic funny". But when you tell me a comic is a funny comic, I get skeptical.

It's not the same thing, you understand. one is an opinion. One is enforcing your opinion on someone. The difference between them is the difference between being recommended something and being told that you should like something. It's also the difference between being recommended and being offended. Basically, if I want to feel that X object is funny, good, or worthwhile, I will be the one that decides that, thank you very much.

(Incidentally that's why I write my reviews is without any star ranking or ratings systems. I don't believe in scoring comics, only describing them and giving you my opinion of them. If I really like something I'll say I recommend it, but that's about as far as I go.)

Anyway, little rant over. Let's go see what this comic is about.

...


...


...


Well, I don't know about the comic itself, but my first impression was: "Wow. This is a prime candidate for How Not to Present Your Comic."



I showed this page to a mate of mine who described it as "the most zen-disrupting page they had ever seen".

The site is very badly laid out.

Let me rephrase that with less understatement. This isn't a comic page. It's a badly compressed thumbnail of a comic hiding in an obnoxious online equivalent of a classified ads with and even more obnoxious self-adulating tagline: The Official Website of Frank Addanac: America's Funniest Comic-strip Character!

*deep breath*

Ho-kay. Let's start with the comic presentation. If you click on the comic, you get the full-sized thing, which is slightly better than the badly compressed image that most people won't realize is a thumbnail. They'll just think the creator doesn't know how to compress images.

The thing to remember is that your comic is the MOST important thing about your page. Give it prime space. Even if you do not want to put it on front page, make a nice cover page instead. But your comic is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. NOT YOUR ADS.

Yes, everyone wants to make a little money off their comic, but the number of ads in this one is way over the top. Everyone needs to eat, but in the world of webcomics, this kind of over-excessiveness screams to your potential readers that the creator is in this for the fame and not for the love of the art. Whether it is true or not does not matter, because in a net full of other webcomics, first impressions count the most. And the first impression this comic page gives make me want to hit the "back" button and never want to come back.

Let's move on to the dubiousness of the claim on the tagline. How does one even qualify as "America's Funniest Comic-strip Character"?! Did the poster of that tagline do a survey out of all Americans? Was it just based off the comment of a handful of readers who found the comic amusing? Or is it there because someone thought it sounded professional and impressive?

I am being harsh? I don't think so.

Selling your comic is one thing. Pretentiousness is another. It's like the local kebab shop or chippy claiming it's a Michelin 3-star when anyone can see it's not. It puts people off. They may like kebab, but no one likes being told something is something else when they know it isn't. So you end up losing people who might have read your comic but got peeved because they felt misled.

Speaking of misled, for a comic that claims to be funny, I found the level of humour rather absent. There's a lot of old, rehashed attempts at jokes that reminds one of the Sunday funnies you read in the news papers. Except well those stopped being funny a long time ago. 

Well, I'm quite aware that humour is subjective, and my sense of humour may not be the same as other people's sense of humour... for example I find stuff like "Happy Tree Friends" crass instead of funny. Still, while my sense of humour might be slightly kooky I have learnt to recognize what makes other people laugh, even if I don't find it funny personally. And my gut feeling is a lot of people who read this blog won't find it very funny either. 

The navigation of the site is non-existent. It's just a bunch of links to the images, which are hosted on... Photobucket. 

Well, at least they don't have to worry about exceeding Photobucket bandwidth limit at this rate.

One thing that I do notice about Addanac City however, is that there has been a lot of effort (mayhap misguided) put into it and you can definitely feel the enthusiasm of the author in his work. I can commend the the zealousness of the creator at his task of updating the comic 5 days a week, which everyone who has ever done a comic will know, is not easy.

While the art style I personally dislike, (personal opinion only) the lines are cleanly drawn and the colouring and detailing isn't bad. Given time, and if he keeps on drawing, he will probably improve. That is, if he learns from his past work and critical feedback.

But first, he needs to get his head out of the clouds and stop giving himself congratulatory thumps on the back. He needs to learn to present his comic for what it really is. Not what he thinks it is.

Phew, and that was one of the tougher postcards I've ever had to write.

Postcards #4: Jovian Luck (Code Red Comics)

Anyone who knows me will know that I am a terrible correspondent. I tend to leave requests a bit long on reply, so here's one of my earlier comic review requests.

In fact, this was one of the ones that got me started on the whole Postcard thing.

I've left it a little bit later to give it a bit more time to build up more of an archive, but maybe four months was a little much...

Ping,

I'm Kyle Sanders, writer and penciller behind a new
webcomic miniseries I would like you to consider taking a look at.
The introductory 15 pages are finished which are hopefully
enough for you to get a sense of the characters and plot.
...
(Summary of comic)
...
I hope you enjoy it! It will be interesting to see how it
fares against an honest review. Thank you for your time and
consideration.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think!

The comic is located at http://www.coderedcomics.com. This is a portal site of the many webcomic projects. At first glance it's momentarily confusing but after the initial "Umm... which one is it again?" I found my way from the hover option menu on the left. Thankfully there is a link there to start from the first page.

The cover page, the first page, is a very important page. That's the point where people either decide to go on, or hit the back button or surf out of the site. The art is definitely promising; clean lines, full colour, nice style.

Well I say the art style is nice. The composition however, is less impressive. It's nicely drawn, but a few characters standing around with bored expressions against a planetary background is kind of... well... boring. A cover is supposed to draw you in and make you want to read more, not act as a cast page.

Nevertheless, it passes the test. On we go.

The second page is a chapter page. I'm not a big fan of those, and when I do see them I like them short and sweet, or with something profound. Or both. I'm here to read a comic, having to read a bunch of text to start off doesn't necessarily put me in the right mood.

This seems to be a conversation here, but the all black page and white dialogue text is severely uninteresting and I really don't want to read through it. At the very least pop some still objects into it. I like the concept, but the execution of the chapter pages could improve.

Well as far as I can tell the story is sort of an Ocean's Eleven kind of thing, set in space. Unfortunately the introduction to the story IS rather choppy and confusing, so it took me a while to figure that out.

The character introduction is almost overwhelming, too many (especially unnecessary ones at this point) too fast. Most people I know are guilty of this, including yours truly. We tend to forget that because we know the characters too well before we start. All that said, now that I've learnt that fact, it shouldn't happen if we can help it. The characters seem borderline stereotype, but I am sure that's merely because it is new. After all, most characters do start off as stereotypes and develop into distinct individuals later on. Which brings me to the other thing.

Hm. I just figured out something that was bothering me about that character art. All the male characters have the exactly same facial expression (Mouth slightly agape, with a worried/confused look) 90% of the time. This can get really annoying. I am happy to report that the later pages definitely show improvement on this and the posturing though. Which is a good thing, else you might see me complaining more here ;)

Despite the four month lead I gave it it's not quite enough for me to be able to give an accurate appraisal of the data. Sample size matters. But overall, Jovian Luck has the potential to be an interesting comic. At the present it suffers from trying too hard to be an epic story that it forgets to tell the story coherently. A bit of a rough run to work out the kinks is natural, but since I've been asked for feedback and advice, I'd recommend the following:

1. Improve the posturing and composition. The art style is already good, and the inking and coloring is as well. The postures are improving, just more work needs to be done on the facial expressions.
2. Slow down. Jumping from scene to scene is the first chapter was confusing. A new reader needs time to get oriented, so give them a bit before you try to pull off too many scene-jumpingQuentin Taratino-que time mixups. At the present a second read through sorts of helps things fall in place, but a really good comic shouldn't have needed that 2nd read through.
3. The chapter pages need more work to make them 1) shorter and to the point  OR 2) Attractive enough to take the time to read though all the dialogue. Otherwise the tendency to skip them is a little high.
   
4. I like how only 3 main characters were introduced first, but in my opinion, there was still too much detail given to the characters that were unnecessary at the point they were introduced. Keep in mind when a reader is new they can't tell the difference between extras and main characters, so it helps to make it obvious which is which.
   

But it might be worth checking out sometime in the future. You can't really judge a comic by its first issue, the same applies to webcomics. I guess only time will tell.

38th Leg: Shi Long Pang

Comic: Shi Long Pang
By: Ben Costa

Setting and Elements: "17th Century China"
Content Type: Action/Adventure, Historical

Art Medium: Full-Colour, Heavy Inklines, Simplified
Art Style: Manhwa-Simplified Cartoon hybrid

Is About: The adventures of a shaolin monk who is forced to wander away from his monastery.

Website: http://www.shilongpang.com
Frequency: Weekly (about)
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation:
I like the simplistic layout of the site, and how the title image blends with the background. The art is eye catching, if rather heavily styilized, and while I don't mind it for a humour comic it looks to me like this is an action-adventure one. I know some readers might get turned off by that. For some reason the mindset is that simplified = humour and action = realistic, but hey this is webcomics, the rules are made to be bent and broken.

It takes me a moment to realize the main site is no longer at Modern Tales and has moved to http://www.shilongpang.com/

The main site is even more elegantly simplistic. In fact I like the current site design even better. Whatever else you might say for the creator, he knows how to make a site look clean, interesting, and new-reader friendly.


The Concept:
Shi Long Pang is the tale of a wandering monk in ancient China. Yes I know that sounds ridiculously cliched, but this story is more than what it seems at first.

The titular character is a lost monk, wandering around looking for survivors of his monastery after it was razed by an army convinced the monks were harbouring rebels. Aptly described by a city guard as "like a little pork bun", he seems rather nondescript, but as more and more of the story unfolds, we get to see more and more of how he fits into the overall picture of war, intrigue and politics.

And wouldn't you know it, I go and pick a sample image that has the titular character cropped out. Uh... Oops. 

No that monk there is NOT Shi Long Pang.

The Art:

Like I mentioned before, the art at first glance seems over-simplified, but it is by no means simple. The colouring is beautiful, and although sometimes the facial expressions don't quite gel.

But overall the art is subtle and effective. And the detail in some of the pages truly is epic. The fight scenes, (and there are many of them), are intricately done. It's pretty amazing, as is sheer amount of energy and fluidity in them.

The more I read this the more amazed I am than the perspective and point of view the artist uses. It doesn't feel like a comic more, but a full blown movie and I'm in the middle of it. Quite an accomplishment.

And that simplified style really does grow on you.

I have to say though, I'm not a big fan of the use of screentones experimented with in the later pages though. They sort of go against the whole subtle nature of the artist's style. But it could be just teething problems.


The Writing:

One beef I often have with comics set in non-American contexts is pretty much well... the mannerisms and characters in the comics are often pretty much American, transplanted into ancient Japan or Rome or whatever exotic place they are supposed to be in.

There's usually very little research done on what those places WERE like, so it's refreshing for once to see a comic that goes into this with such painstaking detail.

I particularly like the use of authentic terminology, and the very reader-friendly footnotes that explain what they mean. Sometimes they are a little lengthy, but overall they give the comic a feel that I have very rarely encountered elsewhere. This, ladies and gentlemen, is writing with substance.

Although some scenes weave crazily from tragedy to humour the storytelling, pacing and introductions are superbly done. I never felt overwhelmed with characters (who were all humbly lovable), and I loved how the story gradually built up and deepened.
Politics and philosophy in particular, are very difficult subjects to tackle when it comes to comics, but the author carries it off very successfully here, and you can understand why things happen the way they do.

On a personal note, I love the bilingual jokes. Yes I know most people will miss them, which makes it funnier for those who DO get them, I suppose.


Problems:

The layout of the panels, while most of the time artistic, is sometimes confusing. Attempts have been made to improve the readability by adding arrows and such, but in my opinion they didn't work that well. The eye travels faster than the amount of time it takes the brain to register the pointy arrows, so having read a panel or two and then having my eye jerked back to the correct path can get somewhat tiresome.

Sometimes the walls of text in some pages are a little hard to read due to the hand-lettering (rest of the time, the hand-lettering's great though).

Like I mentioned before, the simplistic style of the art might turn new readers off, but I really wouldn't change it for the world. Sometimes you can't pander to the lowest common denominator, and if they miss out on this gem, it's their loss, really.

Overall:

I didn't really expect to like Shi Long Pang as much as I did. You know a comic is good when you continue thinking about it after you're away from your computer and doing something else and you're still pondering about the storyline and your favourite pages.

Yes, I didn't have great expectations of SLP, but the vaunted subtlety I keep talking about managed to get under my skin, and lo and behold, this one's going on my reading list.

The Next Leg:

I'm going to leave the choice of the next leg open for the time being and make my decision on which comic I'm going to pick from the Shi Long Pang links page later. Unless you want to recommend one from there, of course.

Postcards #3: The Cattle Raid of Cooley

Comic: The Cattle Raid of Cooley
By: Patrick "Paddy" Brown

So I got this request to look at this comic from not an email, but one of the comments in my previous postcards.

If you like "story-oriented comics", you might consider checking out mine. "The Ulster Cycle" is a series of serials set in Iron Age Ireland and based on Irish legend. The first story, Ness, followed the daughter of the king of Ulster on a personal vengeance quest as war threatened her father's kingdom. The current one, "The Cattle Raid of Cooley", is set a couple of generations later and stars Ness's grandson, a teenage rookie border guard who has to face an invasion single-handed. It's at:

http://paddybrown.co.uk

hope you enjoy.

I'm a mythology junkie, but for some reason or other I never gave much attention to Irish mythology. I think I've have heard vaguely of the Hound of Ulster, but never quite did I look further into the myth than that. Naturally, when I popped over and had a look and Paddy Brown's site I was quite delighted to see a comic about Irish mythology of all things!

I'm not sure if it's just my connection, but for some reason the page takes a-g-e-s to load on my compy. It could be the sad excuse of my ISP of course, but something on the page seems to wreak havoc on my connection speed every time (a total of three different attempts on different days) I visit the site, which is something I do not experience on other comic sites.

It is just me? No idea, but it makes reading the comic difficult. The first page is inaccessible, due to the multiple pages on one page and the slow load speed causing some of the images to not load at all. Pity, what I can see of them seems interesting.

Hm... checking on the file sizes of the individual pages, they seem to be around 340KB or so each. Strange they should be so large for art that 's pretty much 2 colours. I can see how sticking 6 of these in a single page cause one's connection to have a heart attack. Frankly, for this style of art I would have thought a PNG would do a better job as opposed to a JPEG. Really bloated JPEGs, at that.

Since I had to skip a few pages that refused to load, it's really hard to get into the story. One thing I do note is the style of dialogue is different. In many fantasy comics, you tend to get these medieval looking characters speaking in modern Americanized english, so it's a nice change to see the characters speaking in character, so to speak. (Did I confuse anyone with the last sentence?)

The art is very nice. I love the use of lines and the style, but the use of red line on white background bugs me. It's the same argument as the first postcard: poor contrast and an unnecessary strain on the eyes. (which is my polite way of saying: "Ooo nice art... but MY EYES!).

I quite understand the want to tint greyscale art with a slightly different colour to make it a little more interesting. After all, I sepia tone my comics as well. But even in the tinted art there's still... well black. or at least, very dark areas. In my opinion, the eye-strain can be greatly reduced and the red tint still retained with a simple hue adjustment and a decrease in the colour saturation:


Original - Panel from the comic


Edited - After 60 seconds of Photoshop work

All in all, I could like this comic. It certainly piqued my interest but the harrowing experience of trying to read through the snail-speed-loading archives resulted in me backing off. I would definitely recommend shrinking the image size bloat. It seems unfair that technical issues can torpedo the chances of a comic being read, but alas, if the effort of going through the archives is greater than what the protagonist doing in the comic... it does.

37th Leg: Dresden Codak

Comic: Dresden Codak
By: Aaron Diaz

Setting and Elements: Surreal, Sci-Fi, Semi-Futuristic
Content Type: Philosophical, Adventure, Action, Satire

Art Medium: Full Colour, Tablet
Art Style: Semi-realistic Cartoony

Is About: Kimiko, a transhumanist roboticist and her adventures dealing with her disillusionment with humanity, space robots and other things.

Website: http://dresdencodak.com
Frequency: Irregular weekly
Availability: Free

First Impressions and Presentation: I really like the website design. It's clean but not sterile, and is generously sprinkled with samples of the cartoonist's art style. Navigation is clearly linked... my only beef is I'm not sure where to start from.

You would think that clicking the Comic Archive button would solve everything but it doesn't. Yon reader is presented with a list of comics, but there's no clear indication of the beginning, so I guess I'll go by date and take the earliest one.


The Concept:

Dresden Codak is one of the first examples I've seen of a non-serialized comic. There is no clear beginning or end, it's more of a collection of stort stories and philosophical ramblings of the author. The beginning pages you can read out of order if you like, they are standalones. 

It's only up to the "Hob" storyline when things get a little more sequential and there's more a semblance of a contiguous storyline.

Don't expect your typical webcomic setup here. No siree. No-four-friends-in-an-apartment making wisecracks, no party-of-adventurers setting out to vanquish evil overlord, no band-of-freedom-fighters waging a desperate war against a robotic sentience. Oh wait... forget what I said about the last part.

By the way the title Dresden Codak doesn't really have much to do with the comic's naming. It's more of a pen name. At least, as the creator Aaron Diaz says it:

Why "Dresden Codak"? - Because I don't want to be confused with Latin sensation Aaron Diaz.

The Art:

The art for the comic is downright gorgeous. Aaron is a professional artist, and you can tell that from every panel of art, design, layout and detail in his work.

Apparently he does most of his work digitally, with computer and tablet, though many people might think he inks the art by hand and colours digitally (not so). I think I learned more about drawing just from looking at his technique and detail than I have for a long while.

Words are poor choice for describing the art really, I'll let the self-insertion do the talking:



The Writing:

As nice as the art is for this comic, the writing is the most distinctive thing here.

You know how I always complain about subpar comics with boring and cliched writing and such? And how we should all read comics that are out of our comfort zone once in a while?

Well I can assure you Dresden Codak does not fall in the boring and cliched category. This here is a comic that requires quite a bit of outside reading and thinking to grasp. I'll candidly admit I didn't get all the references to quite a few of the theological discussions. (And poof, there goes the illusion I had that I was reasonably well-read. Apparently when you start working you get depressingly practical and what you read and lose all your idealistic theory :( )

Back to the topic of the writing, the messages behind the comic are surprisingly deep and thought-provoking. The topics cover range form science, religion, psychology etc etc. One might not necessarily like or agree with them, but they do make you think. And I like comics that make me think, even when they make me think of things I'd normally wouldn't choose to think about. Lastly, I like comics that introduce new concepts and topics to me. (First time I've heard of "Transhumanism", for example.)

Oh I should also mention, this comic is unapologetically and proudly atheist. If religion is a taboo subject for you, you might not find this comfortable reading. As one of the Dresden's tagline goes: "Alienating audiences since 2005".

The Hob storyline is a merits a seperate section on the writing, being less of the standalone ramblings and more of a full blown epic storyline. There is a detailed story and characters that we have been briefly introduced to are given a deeper characterization, Some of it had me in stitches. 

It's a little easier to follow than the preceding pages, but still has quite a lot of "thinkety think" involved to understand the whole argument on why the characters do what they do.

It is a satisfying read though.


Problems:

I don't think it's a "problem" per se, but more of an on-purpose designed obstacle by the author that so much of the writing of this comic requires effort to understand. 

The thing is, many people don't really read comics to think.

Frankly? People read about star-ships and alien and fantasy elves not because they want to study alien civilizations or elven anthropology (or whatever you call the study of elven culture *chuckle*). No, they read books and comics about these things as a form of escapism from their own real lives. Even if it's for a little while.

So I suspect many readers will be attracted to something that looks like a steampunk/fantasy comic to them, and then when they start reading they're going to end up with a philosophical brickbat in the face.

And the sadistic part of me is going to giggle when they make a hasty retreat back to those comics about blond elven archers and womanizing starship captains vs space aliens.

You know, the old and comfortable well-worn stuff. And it's probably better that way.

Overall:

Dresden Codak is a well done piece of work, but it's something that isn't for everyone, and I get the impression the creator made it with a niche audience in mind. No pandering to the lowest common denominator here. 

And that's what makes it excellent in its own right.

There are cute references to obscure (or not so obscure, eg. Star Trek) things everywhere, and the Flaming Lips-que page names are (I apologize for the gamerspeak) pure win.

All in all, I find it interesting and refreshing, and a bit of a challenge. I might not exactly be checking it eagerly daily, but I will pop back once in a while to see what Kimiko and gang are up to whenever I need something to think about and want something different.


ps: I had no idea until after I had written this that Dresden Codak was the WCCA winner for 2008. Out of touch much, Ping?

ps again: Oooohhh.... guilty. 

The Next Leg:

Well this looks interesting. Westernized manhua? Easternized comics? Depends on how you look at it I suppose.

Postcards #2: Carribean Blue

Comic: Carribean Blue (http://www.katbox.net/cblueen/)
By: Ronaldo Rodrigues

Welcome to another episode of Postcards. Today I am going to look at another comic request:

Hi, I'm the artist behind the Caribbean Blue webcomic, a full color (save for guest pages), weekly comic, located at http://www.katbox.net/cblueen/. I came across your comic review site and I was hoping you guys would consider me for a review.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to any feedback you can provide!
Ron

Every type of reader has their own particular biases when it comes to the type of comics they want to read. I know I certainly do. My tastes tend towards story-oriented comics with good characterization, original world building and sophisticated plots, and the occasional witty humour comic though I find even the best of them grow slightly stale after a while.

However, on occasion I do read comics that fall out of that particular "comfort reading zone", as a matter of fact, one of the reasons I started this blog is to get myself to read comics out of that aforementioned comfort zone..

"Carribean Blue", I have to admit, falls out of my comfort reading zone. It involves manga-style catgirls, a lot of fanservice and is rather light hearted. I have however, fallen head over heels in love with comics that weren't in my comfort reading zone before, so like they say, proof of the pudding is in the eating.... so let's see how this goes.

In keeping with my policy of being ruthlessly honest, I will say if I hadn't been asked to review this comic, I probably wouldn't have continued reading it as far as I did due to the overwhelmingly jarring intro. I would have given up within the first 6 pages or so.

From the very first page of the comic I felt as though the I was having a whole bunch of main characters shoved in my face. I hadn't even managed to get the names or adjust to the fact they were catgirls, or "Nekocats" when the comic immediately started on introducing even MORE characters and a epic prophecy plot of sorts. I couldn't help but thinking rather resentfully: "Oi, you haven't given me a reason to even CARE about your main characters and I'm supposed to care about whatever else these new characters are?!"

"I feel a little overwhelmed by all this, Kensington..."

It doesn't help that the main characters get less of an intro than the secondary ones. It could be that this comic is a sequel to another one, at least I got the feeling I had started a book in the middle and was supposed to know the backstories of all the main characters at this point. At any rate, I found it very hard to "get" into the comic, particularly as the plot has serious problems in terms of consistency. (So the protagonists are catgirls, which seems a normal thing for them, till they get to their holiday island, where they are something like legends due to a prior catgirl saviour heroine. But there is another catgirl there, and for some reason the townspeople don't trust the other catgirl... and there's a prophecy about a bell that the catgirl heroine had left... you get the idea. Or rather, you don't... which is the problem.)

The lack of coherence in the story intro is a pity, because the full colour art is quite pretty in the later pages (although I prefer the black and white screentone ones more). There is a some cute characterization and humour in there, but without a solid narration and plot to build upon, they lose much of their impact.

Generally I don't recommend backtracking, but I would probably recommend a prologue or something to make the introduction less info-dumpish. Carribean Blue might have promise and a story worth reading behind all its flaws, but to be honest... as much as I tried to keep reading, I lost interest by the third chapter. Sadly, a story is only as good as how well it is told. Without a good intro to hook them in, most readers won't be staying around long enough to find out whether it is or not.

Postcards #1: Washed Ashore

A quick introduction to Postcards:

Ever since I've been writing Webcomic Finds I've often received requests from people to have a look at their comics and review them. But due to the format and methodology of Webcomic Finds' selection process I've been unable to accommodate them until I came up with the idea of Postcards.

I like to think of Postcards as less of a review, more of a critique, as compared to my usual reviews. So I will focus less on describing the comic and more on critique. 

To start it off I am going with David from Kristy VS the Zombie Army. As you recall, I wasn't exactly flattering in my review of his comic previously. In addition, in my previous Hotspot I had wondered if I should let him know about my review, and eventually I did drop him a mail.

Considering I tore his comic into shreds (figuratively of course), he was quite civil and very gracious about it, and provided some insight on why Kristy is the way it is. I hope he doesn't mind my quoting a few lines from his email:

When I started zombie army I had never done much more than a one or two page 

sequential comic, so the entire thing has been a learning experience and one 

that I feel has benefited me greatly.

I'll say you come off a bit haughty in the review, but overall I think it's a reasonable piece and there is definitely stuff in it I agree with.

Having done (and am still doing an experimental comic) I can totally understand that. That doesn't mean what I said about it doesn't apply of course, but I see where he is coming from. 

However, the point of experimental comics is that you learn how to make better comics later. 

Also, do me a favor and check out www.washedashorecomic.com when you have a 

second, heck do a review of it if you want to and let me know what you 

think.

So, when he even invited me to review his other comic project, how could I say no?

Comic: Washed Ashore

By: David "kidnemo" Tekiela

To start with there aren't very many pages of Washed Ashore. In fact there are only 6, which limits how much I can analyze somewhat. However, I'll do what I can.

Washed Ashore follows the adventures of the protagonist who seems to have been well... washed ashore on some strange land. The concept, while not stellar, does have promise, and the character design is something I like very much. 

The art is done in black and white line art over a sandpaperish background. The overall effect is very quaint and eye-catching. Its distinctiveness is a definite plus, but after a while I couldn't help but feel something was off.

(Keep in mind, Postcards is all about critique, so while I will definitely give praise where it is due I focus more on ways a comic can be improved) 

I took me a while to figure out what was wrong with the art, and finally it hit me. The comic art  isn't making proper use of contrast. 

Now in normal black and white art, the artwork stands out very clearly, because you have the black lineart contrasting against the white paper. However, if you start your artwork on a midtone background and use black lineart without another lighter colour over it, the eye of the viewer is scattered all over the page. This is because black does not constrast as well and as a result, there is no clear contrasting point to for the eye to focus on. 

This is bad, because it makes it harder for the reader to see what the artist wants them to see, and you really don't want your reader squinting just to make sense of things.

The best way to illustrate this is that I stop prattling and use a couple of pictures instead:

This is the original panel taken from Washed Ashore. As I mentioned before, something about the art nagged at me as being... well... unfinished...

 

This is the same panel after I added some white for contrast:

Forgive my sloppy effort with the paint bucket tool, I had to write this review between flights so I really wasn't up to plugging my tablet in. (Image editing with a trackpad is no joke, let me tell you.)

But as you can see, the proper use of white "pops" the objects we want the reader to notice the most (the protagonist and the clouds) out from the background and into the foreground, making it so much easier on the eyes. It also provides some balance to the overall image and creates an illusion of depth.

Mind you, I'm not saying David's current style is bad or anything. The line art is impeccable and the colour scheme charming in its own way.  And there are some situations where it might be better suited to leave the white out (for example if you were depicting cave paintings or graffiti on the wall), but in this case, I really do think the white is what was missing.

As this is a postcard and not a dissertation I'm planning to keep this short, but I'd just like to take some time to mention that I really like the narration for this comic. There are no words or dialogue. At all.  All communication is done through the art.

There have been a few occasions where I have read a comic done by one person and absolutely hated it, then read another by the same person and was absolutely astonished that it was done by the same person. This is one of those cases, as my biggest complaint about Kristy VS The Zombie Army was that there was too much unnecessary narration, and here we have a comic that is different narration wise as the other spectrum of the rainbow.

Personally I think it's a vast improvement, and David does seem to have a talent for the subtlety sequential art once the words got out of the way.

So yes David, you really surprised me, and in a good way. I liked what I saw of Washed Ashore so far and hope you do continue it. Hopefully the suggestions in this postcard come in handy in making it better.

To those other people to whom I owe Postcards, hang on in there, your turn is coming, I'm just a bit busy in RL right now. Five weddings in a month is kind of crazy when you have to travel for a few of em. *groan*