We interrupt the lack of reviews on this review blog for:
THE WILD WEBCOMIC REVIEW!
Yeah, I got the first batch done and am well on my way through the next. If you missed it, I got 10 comics via the blog's email account and have decided to do them all in two potent batches. And I managed to get the first batch done early, so yay for that. So let's see what's in the first, shall we?
251. [IMG] Insert Image - Right from the get go, here's a comic I likely wouldn't have read if it hadn't been sent to me. And right after it was, the comic ended, so now I feel really bad about not reviewing it sooner. Anyway, this is not a comic for me, because it's a Christan comic. It is NOT, as I initially feared when I realized what it was, a comic that beats you about the head with a Bible until you believe, and I appreciate that. No, it's more telling jokes that the Christan community would understand and relate to, and does so while being generally approachable. I mean, it's a fine enough comic, and the jokes I got were funny enough (including the $6.66 stuff), but most of it is beyond my understanding. I am sad that it is ending (because he wants to eat and the comic doesn't pay for that), and hope he changes his mind, but I'm not sad I read it.
252. Blue Blaster - I'm glad to see the increase in the number of superhero comics out there, and Blue Blaster is a fine addition. I like that it doesn't do the straight-to-heroing angle, allowing the main character to explore the other side of the fence for a bit. This leads to actually a great direction for the overall story and I really want to keep reading it to see how things turn out. I will file one serious and one not so serious complaint. Not so serious is the lack of color. The line work is fine, and conveys the story quite well, but for a comic called "BLUE Blaster" the only time we know it's blue is from the covers. I suspect this was done with an eye toward publication, but a touch of color (like Dead Winter does) might help improve the art quite a bit. The more serious issue is that while the story claims it's set in a college, it's high school. High school is not college in my experience, and it grates me when college is shown like high school. I may have to write an article on that. Once I decided that the story is actually about a high school student (senior year is fine), the story flowed much better for me. I'll still be reading it of course, it's quite good.
253. Bohemian Nights - It's easy to sum up this comic: A group of friends whose lives didn't quite turn out like they wished it had, spend their weekends drinking, dancing and partying to forget it for a while. Oh, it's not all about the drinking thing, it covers their lives when not doing that and I enjoy it. It's rather young (less than 100 strips) so it's hard to judge how good it'll be in the long run, but so far, so good. The only thing that might turn a reader off is the art. Loose would be the best way to describe it. It's not bad, far from it, the art is distinctive and easy to follow and identify, but the loose structure might come off as "bad" for people who judge quickly. I like it well enough and I will continue to read it.
254. Licensed Heroes - This comic has one joke: Bureaucracy sucks. Comics can work with just one joke, and this one does it quite well. That said, it does get old after a bit, though I suspect that's more the way I read the comic during an archive dive than any fault of the comic. After a bit, I just want SOMETHING positive to happen this band of adventurers without a proper adventure to go on. I suspect that if I got it in smaller doses, like a standard update, it wouldn't be so bad. It's a fun look at swords and sorcery settings, something Dungeon Crawl Inc. messed up terribly. Worth reading, at least I hope it isn't as depressing.
255. Rudek and the Bear - I don't know if I would have found this comic normally, mostly because the site isn't really about Rudek and the Bear, it's about another comic, but I'll get to that in a moment. This is a kind of historic comic, set in 1929 along the Polish/Soviet border. Which is told in the introduction page at the beginning of the comic. I would complain more about it, but in this case, some kind of set up is necessary (though I don't much like this set up). The comic after that is, well, kind of generic. It reminds me of early Beetle Baily strips (after he joined the military) or some of the silly 50's shows that involved the military in some way. Nothing wrong with this, the jokes are simple and rather funny, but I've seen enough of it to know it's nothing special. The most interesting thing is the setting and, well, the art. It looks old, and I know it's the shading because there's a later strip that has no shading and it looks much more modern than the rest of the strip. It's weird, but interesting. That said, this is not the main comic, and it's currently on a kind of hiatus while the main comic, Zuzel and The Fox, is being worked on as a graphic novel, covering a lot of the same territory. I'll probably follow the comic for a bit to see if it starts updating again. Nothing special, but nothing terrible either.
That's it for this week. I should be reading the next batch of comics by the time you read this, so next week, reviewSPLOSION part 2, until then kiddies.
THE WILD WEBCOMIC REVIEW!
Yeah, I got the first batch done and am well on my way through the next. If you missed it, I got 10 comics via the blog's email account and have decided to do them all in two potent batches. And I managed to get the first batch done early, so yay for that. So let's see what's in the first, shall we?
251. [IMG] Insert Image - Right from the get go, here's a comic I likely wouldn't have read if it hadn't been sent to me. And right after it was, the comic ended, so now I feel really bad about not reviewing it sooner. Anyway, this is not a comic for me, because it's a Christan comic. It is NOT, as I initially feared when I realized what it was, a comic that beats you about the head with a Bible until you believe, and I appreciate that. No, it's more telling jokes that the Christan community would understand and relate to, and does so while being generally approachable. I mean, it's a fine enough comic, and the jokes I got were funny enough (including the $6.66 stuff), but most of it is beyond my understanding. I am sad that it is ending (because he wants to eat and the comic doesn't pay for that), and hope he changes his mind, but I'm not sad I read it.
252. Blue Blaster - I'm glad to see the increase in the number of superhero comics out there, and Blue Blaster is a fine addition. I like that it doesn't do the straight-to-heroing angle, allowing the main character to explore the other side of the fence for a bit. This leads to actually a great direction for the overall story and I really want to keep reading it to see how things turn out. I will file one serious and one not so serious complaint. Not so serious is the lack of color. The line work is fine, and conveys the story quite well, but for a comic called "BLUE Blaster" the only time we know it's blue is from the covers. I suspect this was done with an eye toward publication, but a touch of color (like Dead Winter does) might help improve the art quite a bit. The more serious issue is that while the story claims it's set in a college, it's high school. High school is not college in my experience, and it grates me when college is shown like high school. I may have to write an article on that. Once I decided that the story is actually about a high school student (senior year is fine), the story flowed much better for me. I'll still be reading it of course, it's quite good.
253. Bohemian Nights - It's easy to sum up this comic: A group of friends whose lives didn't quite turn out like they wished it had, spend their weekends drinking, dancing and partying to forget it for a while. Oh, it's not all about the drinking thing, it covers their lives when not doing that and I enjoy it. It's rather young (less than 100 strips) so it's hard to judge how good it'll be in the long run, but so far, so good. The only thing that might turn a reader off is the art. Loose would be the best way to describe it. It's not bad, far from it, the art is distinctive and easy to follow and identify, but the loose structure might come off as "bad" for people who judge quickly. I like it well enough and I will continue to read it.
254. Licensed Heroes - This comic has one joke: Bureaucracy sucks. Comics can work with just one joke, and this one does it quite well. That said, it does get old after a bit, though I suspect that's more the way I read the comic during an archive dive than any fault of the comic. After a bit, I just want SOMETHING positive to happen this band of adventurers without a proper adventure to go on. I suspect that if I got it in smaller doses, like a standard update, it wouldn't be so bad. It's a fun look at swords and sorcery settings, something Dungeon Crawl Inc. messed up terribly. Worth reading, at least I hope it isn't as depressing.
255. Rudek and the Bear - I don't know if I would have found this comic normally, mostly because the site isn't really about Rudek and the Bear, it's about another comic, but I'll get to that in a moment. This is a kind of historic comic, set in 1929 along the Polish/Soviet border. Which is told in the introduction page at the beginning of the comic. I would complain more about it, but in this case, some kind of set up is necessary (though I don't much like this set up). The comic after that is, well, kind of generic. It reminds me of early Beetle Baily strips (after he joined the military) or some of the silly 50's shows that involved the military in some way. Nothing wrong with this, the jokes are simple and rather funny, but I've seen enough of it to know it's nothing special. The most interesting thing is the setting and, well, the art. It looks old, and I know it's the shading because there's a later strip that has no shading and it looks much more modern than the rest of the strip. It's weird, but interesting. That said, this is not the main comic, and it's currently on a kind of hiatus while the main comic, Zuzel and The Fox, is being worked on as a graphic novel, covering a lot of the same territory. I'll probably follow the comic for a bit to see if it starts updating again. Nothing special, but nothing terrible either.
That's it for this week. I should be reading the next batch of comics by the time you read this, so next week, reviewSPLOSION part 2, until then kiddies.
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