Sixth Review - Mute

Mute

http://www.nightgig.com/subcultured/mute/index.php

Notice – I do know and have worked with the creator of Mute, Jess Calcaben. Just saying for disclosure’s sake.

Pro:
I really like how experimental and free the comic is. The panels, the text, even the coloring is done in a very stylized way to help convey the thoughts and emotions of the main character (which is helpful considering this is main a first person story). It can be a bit abstract, but the feelings of the main character aren’t very black and white so the abstract style fits rather well. The story is basically one long inner monologue from the main character, so it’s very creative how the art and layout helps to explain is perspective on the story.

Cons:
While the coloring and SFX is very good, the basic human anatomy is very weak. It almost seems like the lack of skill of anatomy is covered up under the gloss of the computer coloring. Some could say that it’s just artistic style and some panels would help support that, but a lot of panels show a lot of poorly rendered faces, hands, and bodies. If the creator put as much time and effort in the basic structure of the people (and also the backgrounds) as they did the coloring, this would be so much better.

Also the changing from color to black and white felt more like a shortcut than a stylistic choice.

Final Verdict:
The art and the creative layouts is what makes this story work at any level. The plot is fine, but it’s the art that really explains the main character and emotions. The main character could have been explained more through writing, but that would be a different type of book. But that’s why the art is so important for Mute as a story to work, and why it’s disappointing to see it fail because of the lack of attention to details like the basic anatomy of the characters in the story.

Suggestion – A lot of webcomics and “art comics” have this problem where they feel that if a story and/or art are wild or different enough, then it can transcend the faults of the art and/or story. Kind of like the old phrase of “art for art’s sake”, which could be true if I was looking at it as “art”, but I’m looking at it as storytelling and there are certain things to be done to make a story work. I’m not saying it has to be done my way, there are thousands if not millions of ways to tell a story, but people can tell if creator didn’t put his all into creating it. Its fine if a creator want to be more “right brained” about his storytelling, but that’s not an excuse for shortcuts. Creating any story is going to be work regardless of how you do it.

5th Review

Lancaster: The Ghost Detective

Art

Lancaster is written and drawn by P. Gibson. The art is clean and cartoony with furry inspired designs. Pages begin with only 2 or 3 panels and lots of splash pages making this a fast read as I browse through the archives.The low panel count has the effect of drawing out the tension as Lancaster finds and fights the ghosts, this is a format I feel more webcomics should be using. The artist isn't afraid to experiment a little and you see variations in style and playful coloring here and there. His coloring is solid but personally I like his black and white work, as it shows off his rendering skills.

Writing

The writing is generally light hearted, featuring a likable hero in Lancaster. There are gadgets galore and it's always amusing when Lancaster excitedly revels in his own cleverness. He insists that he's a ghost DETECTIVE not a hunter, and he does all he can to come up with a peaceful solution. There are a lot of funny elements that make each story unique. The constantly nasty turtle spirit that was Lancaster's first case and for a time resides in a jar (read the comic to figure that one out). Later on there's an impromptu Freestyle Rap Battle that is really amusing too.

Overall

Lancaster proves to be a unique webcomic, with nice art and an amusing story. It's not perfect but it generally doesn't make the mistakes of the armies of high school dramas and manga wannabes. The constant "what's going to happen next feel" is a nice touch and people looking for a real comic should enjoy this.

-Wrong

Fifth Review - Lancaster The Ghost Detective

Lancaster The Ghost Detective

http://lancaster.spiderspawn.com/

Pro:
Well it was refreshing to see a simple, cute, light, fun action adventure story as a webcomic. A really nice change of pace. Also I liked how they weren’t afraid to experiment with various art techniques. The creator does black and white, tone shading and hatchwork and manages to pull it off rather well.

Cons:
Remember how I just said I liked it as a fun action adventure story? Well the comic doesn’t stay that way. Rather abruptly, in my opinion, the story gets a bit dark and not as fun any more. Story elements of betrayal, suffering, pain, death, malevolence, and cruelty all of a sudden come out basically at once. Yes I know a story about ghosts is not going to be all happy, but this felt like a major turn in the tone and style of the comic. Also while I applaud the creator’s experimentations with the art, I do have some points of contention about it. Mainly while he was trying all these styles he was forgetting a very basic rule of inking, line weight. There’s was no sense of depth or dimension because of that lack of line weight. The creator seemed to pick up on it much later in the comic but then would seem to only use it for black and white. Still no line weight for color. Also the experimentation was nice but it was a bit random and haphazard. At first I thought maybe it was for dramatic effect, but after awhile it would just switch from color to hatch to shaded at a whim. And the final nick pick about the art is that while I understand its dark for dramatic purposes, it doesn’t help much if the coloring is too dark and muddy that I can follow what’s going on.

Final Verdict:
I liked the original story arc. The current arc with the evil organization working against the main character just doesn’t seem fun or original enough to keep reading. I thinking going into it now, some people would enjoy this style, but I can’t because I thought the original style had more potential to it.

Suggestion:
I’ve noticed that this webcomic and some others have a fairly ambitious update schedule of several times a week. While that’s fine, but I think the quality suffers some because the artist may be rushed to meet the deadlines. What if instead of having an idea of a webcomic and immediately going to a several times a week update schedule that they actually spend some time doing pages before their first update. Say they take 6 months to really plot out, layout and draw a good amount of pages and take the time to put a good polish on it all. Then release the pages on say a once a week schedule. Then while releasing finishes pages you can take more time on new pages and always have a backlog of comics to release. This also would eliminate the need for guest comics too.

Fourth Review

Loserz

Loserz has been running for a couple years and is created by Erik Schoenik.

Art

The art started out pretty basic, though anyone can see Schoenik has talent, in the years the comic has been running it's become much more refined and unique. These days the art is quite good, clean inking, attractive character designs, and some good expressions throughout.

Schoenik is pretty good at storytelling, mostly using a 3 panel design. Occasionally he breaks out and gives us some larged colored pages that show off his art chops nicely.


Writing

The writing has evolved as the art has. Mostly the jokes are contained with a single strip, and focus on Jodie the Slut, Erik the Stoner, and Ben the Loser. Occasionally, and more frequently the characters discuss their individual take on the world around them, and this is where Loserz shines.


Overall

Loserz has nice art, and distinct likable characters, which is rare in webcomics. Schoenik needs to bring more continuity and character development and I feel he's working on it. In my opinion this is a comic to watch for a while, and this year it's finally living up to it's potential.


-Wrong

Fourth Review – Loserz

Loserz

http://loserz.scribblekid.org/

Pros:
The art evolves from a very rough style that heavily apes an anime style to its own unique individualistic cartooning style. Also the characters go from merely being props for simplistic jokes to actually being fleshed out personalities.

Cons:
First off I’m getting this feeling that maybe some webcomics shouldn’t be read in large doses because the development of the webcomic is so organic and not as methodical. But thinking about that, I don’t know if I would have stuck around so long for the creator to find his voice (or change his voice). The first part of the webcomic is just bland Anime/Video Game/School/Sex/Pop culture humor that too many webcomics seems to rely on. I honestly didn’t laugh once while reading it because the humor was too obvious or too contrived. Then later as the creator seems to get a feel for the characters that he’s been writing for so long, he starts to make them have “real” issues and there’s all this drama and angst flying around. I’m sorry but the early strips of the webcomic didn’t really endear me to the characters, so I don’t see why I would be interested in their problems now that they’ve added a 3rd dimension.

Final Verdict:
I’m noticing a trend with some webcomics now. The same with Waspi Square, this webcomic seems to be a serious learning experience for the creator. The annoying thing is that they all graduate from a humor strip, to a coming of age story. How come these webcomics end at the same destination? And how come if they’ve learned things from making the webcomic and make a new better crafted story with a more defined structure and plot. Their original webcomic is so meandering and organic that I don’t know what it’s suppose to be and I’ve lost interest in figuring it out. Do they not make new stories because they’re afraid to loose the audience they’ve established?

Are webcomics in their tween or teen years where they’re getting maturity and depth but still don’t have a firm grasp on their own identities and their place in the world? (But they assume they fully understand everything regardless).

Third Review

SuperNatural Law -

Art - Batton Lash has been doing Supernatural Law/ AKA Wolff and Byrd Counselors of the Macabre for over 20 years and is just recently expanding his press franchise on to the web.
His art is very old school and I would compare him somewhat to Will Eisner in style and story telling.

Lash has adapted his newspaper style work for the internet, adding color and using a one panel format that gives him more freedom. The colors are flat but appropriate for his line work, personally I think the B&W stuff, I own several of his printed collections, is masterful and prefer that but I understand the change.

Writing - The catchphrase for Supernatural Law reads " Beware the Undead, They have Lawyers!" SL mixes tounge-in-cheek humor with the law process. Wolff and Byrd play it very straight among their over the top clientel, Frankenstien going through a divorce and a murdered woman suing her husband over her murder.

Personally I think the humor is clever, and I chuckle despite the cheesiness. Things are kept light, and some of the minor characters are more interesting than the counselors themselves, Mavis the "World's Greatest Secretary" is more popular than either Wolff or Byrd.

Overall - While the humor may not be for everyone, this is a comic to look out for. Batton Lash is a pro and it's really nice to see someone of his caliber sailing the sea of subpar work on the internet.

-wrong

Second Review

Wapsi Square

Art -

The art of Wapsi Square is confident and skillful, Paul Taylor really knows his stuff.. Character designs are all distinctive and designed in a unique looking cartoon style. Most of the archives are black and white with occasional color, though in the last year I've noticed that Taylor has branched out into screen tones quite a bit.

Really there's nothing bad I can say about the art, I think it looks fantastic.

Writing -

Wapsi Square is an ongoing real to life story with some fantastical elements (such as a mexican god of beverage that the main character Monica discovers early on.) Paul Taylor has a nice grasp of sequential art and leaves each strip at the cusp of a new plot twist. There's a lot of webtoonists out there that could learn from this guy.

On the negative side I'm not estatic about the current Muse storyline. The three Muses are likable enough but I'm not really into supernatural atonement stories. At the moment I find the Tomboy Rachel and her sturggle to try and help Monica deal with her demons, much more interesting then Monica herself.

But I'm confident this will change in due time. Wapsi Square is strongest when the characters are seeking and most often missing opportunities to fall in love and it will turn back to that eventually.

Overall -

Wapsi Square is an enjoyable comic, though perhaps not for everyone (lots of boob jokes). I would recommend reading this daily as there is always something new going on.

-Wrong