Ye gads, what do I say...
Art: Life Squared's art is... mediocre. It's as if the artist knew exact and proper anatomy but couldn't be bothered to draw it right. The style appears very rushed and simplistic, as does the lettering, though it does get a little more refined in the later strips. While you can generally tell what's happening in the strip, the work looks very sketchy, not a style I'd like to grate my eyes over.
Plot and Writing: Presumably, Life Squared's story revolves around the writer and artist herself, Elaine Hornby, and her life. There is no real 'story' per se, and the strip is quite like a series of random observations about life. In some ways it resembles an afore-reviewed strip ("As If!") and the way it follows Hunter's and Angela's misadventures, but Life Squared's version is much cruder and poorly executed. In a sense, Life Squared is like a pseudo-Comic Journal that documents the writer/artist's trip through life in what, perhaps, is a funny and/or sensitive way.
Characters: Since the plot is basically about the Writer/Artist's life, the characters involved are herself, her lovers (Steve, and short time acquaintance Tommy), her family, her working colleagues and design course classmates. The strip naturally focuses on Elaine the whole time (with a rare few exceptions), and beyond that there is very little elaboration on the characters. Given the nature of the comic, however, character development doesn't seem to be necessary.
Misc: While the idea behind Life Squared is... interesting, and something I haven't seen before, it's execution could be much better.
On a side note, the archives are incomplete. Some of the navigation buttons don't work. And the strip itself seems to be very sporadically updated. I suppose for a comic on Life this is to be expected, and may very well be a sort of gimmick, but it doesn't appeal to me.
Overall: Life Squared appears to be a self-centred comic strip full of existential angst sprinkled with random super-sensitive 'awww' moments. It's not terribly bad, and I admit I cracked a smile a couple of times while leafing through the archives, but for the most part I felt like saying "I don't care" to many of the strips. If you enjoy following the lives of other people in odd and vaguely amusing comics, Life Squared may be for you, but it's not a comic that I'll bother to read daily, or whenever the artist next updates.
Score: I give Life Squared 4.5/10. |
