A review of Nowhere Girl
By Kajamir the Giant
After reading through Nowhere Girl (which was pleasantly short compared to previous webcomics for this club), I leave it with a generally favorable impression, but not one too deeply set. It's good work, I feel sure of that, but it's not entirely of full appeal to me either. As a change, Nowhere Girl is a rather realism drama based comic, though the final cliff hanger looks to swerve a bit from this.
There are, as time of this writing, two chapters, concerning different age experiences of a young mildly punkish and seemingly asian girl, named Jaime. The first one is very dark and is filled with the main character wallowing in a suicidal mindset. She is fairly realistic in terms of a dark teenage mindset, and I found her appropriate to her time in life. The writing includes the constant awkward nuances of speaking too, which enhanced the realism factor. I never doubted for a second she was her age.
While it was realistic, it could also be construed as whiny and irritating, but perhaps a teenager running on a constant depressive diatribe would come off like that. Content wise, it wasn't my cup of tea. Again, its quite understandable, but it didn't compel me to want to read more because of it. It was more dour than Demonology 101's broodiness.
The second chapter reflects a new spin on Jaime's life, where she learns to be a little more empowered and social. She shares an interesting thought process on the social structure of ants, and compares it on a human level. Perhaps it is just me, but I thought it was deep for the character, and made me think she really was starting to get a handle on her life, compared to chapter one's content of self hatred and destruction.
I could have stood to felt more for the characters. Often, it just felt like I was overhearing them, but not really being drawn into their lives. A few characters are introduced that seemed almost unnecessary, or perhaps irrelevant to the flow of things. Still, the comic is young, and this could change.
The art is very nice. Stylish definitely defines it, although chapter one has times (the teacher talking with Jaime) that I couldn't tell one person from another from all the black. I think a bit more definition could have been done gender wise. This was yet another comic I couldn't tell who was man and woman sometimes, so their relationships would come off confusing. Jaime is very androgynous in chapter one, but again, this is mainly due to the over use of black on black background.
The writing for Nowhere Girl is sturdy, but in several ways like Demonology 101, it needs a bit more to hook me in. In particular, I give high points to the ant monologue and an intriguing cliff hanger. Until I read that 'ender', I wasn't too convinced I would be inclined to read this further. Now, I give doubt to that motive.
Nowhere Girl shows some promise, at least in quality of the creators. The comic itself, is not really my thing, but I can feel things could go either way in this comic, once the next chapter begins.
I give this webcomic 7 out of 10 stars. A short read, a bit of a shakey start, yet reasonably worth the time. |
