"Rapid Eye Movement" Review
The Medium
As Benor and Kajamir noted, REM isn't really a webcomic in that the images weren't really integrated with the text, and seemed perhaps optional. It describes itself as a "graphic novel" which is odd since I thought graphic novels were comic books packaged to be sold in book form like novel. But it doesn't really matter what you call it; I'm here to share my reactions.
The Story itself
It really kept me reading. The plot itself was fairly tight and intriguing. Each chapter introduced just enough of some new suspenseful element at the end and teased me into wanting to go on and find out more. Chapter 6 was particularly enticing and really hooked me into mystery.
I've tried reading online stories before, and even with fairly good material, I find the process can be tedious. The structure and chapter length seemed ideal in REM, with each one being just long enough to be substantive without being tedious. Having images interspersed on each page added just enough extra eye candy to break up the text even further.
The Writing
As much as I enjoyed the story, the writing itself seemed weak and underdeveloped. It might have worked as a script where the actors could breathe some life into the characters, but as written, the characters were just rather bland and the dialogue was stiff. There were no interesting, peculiar character traits or little details that a good writer would use to make the characters seem real and distinctive. They all seemed generic, existing purely to drive the plot. For a story focused on psychology, there was surprisingly little interest in actual human nature.
Also, the descriptions were often tedious. She did this, then she did that and then she did this. It read more like dry stage directions, overly obsessed with articulating the mechanics of physical actions. Most of them could have been eliminated completely. Readers are very willing to fill in the gaps of things left unsaid.
The Story in Conjunction with the Images
Like most illustrated books, the story could have stood alone without the pictures (though some, like "Alice In Wonderland" are almost unthinkable now without the pictures). But as I said earlier, the pictures made the reading experience on the web much more enjoyable. A lot of people would just never read a big text story on the Internet that didn't have something extra like this (heck, this group wouldn't have).
It was disappointing that the pictures often contradicted the text, especially given that the author and artist are the same (at least that's what I assume). For example, in the first pic in Chapter One, Steve is supposed to be carrying two brooms at that moment, not one. In Chapter 6, the text clearly describes Kathy as looking out her window with the lights off, but in the pic, her room is glaringly the only light on in the entire building.
It would have been nice if the text and images worked in greater conjunction and relied on each other, each giving us details that the other didn't without repeating information unnecessarily.
The Images Themselves
There was one absolutely terrific dream image that I stared at for a long time because I though it was just such a cool visual concept and well executed:
http://amazingmontage.tripod.com/trespassers/rem3a1.jpg
But for the most part, I didn't care for the imagery. While it was better than most of the Poser work I've seen, the characters still looked like mannequins with painfully awkward and unconvincing expressions. As is often the case with CGI imagery, the backgrounds were far more effective.
Theme
I love the topic of cults and how they operate and why people join them and greater psychological themes associated with them. REM was more of a suspense thriller, so it didn't delve too deeply into these issues, but was still an interesting take on the subject. This story had a particularly nice twist that prompted the most speculation.
Perhaps the stiffness in the characters (both as written and visualized) was all completely intentional to emphasize certain thematic or narrative aspects (which I don't wish to spoil) but the critic in me is not prepared to be quite that generous.
Overall
I think if Mr. Zabel summarized his plot in the form of a 1-2 page treatment and had the right connections, he could sell this as a Hollywood movie. It really is a terrific premise, but REM in its current form needs descriptive refinement, more fleshed-out characters and better text/image integration.
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