Full Reviews of The Suburban Jungle

of The Suburban Jungle by John "the Gneech" Robey

Suburban Jungle is a strip that I've followed for a while, like Salen. However, I'm not as enthusiastic about it, especially after the rereading I did for this review.

Art: The art is one of the stronger points of Suburban Jungle. While it took some time to lock in the forms, you can see traces from the beginning. And once they are locked in, they're a nice compromise between simplicity and realism-I can almost imagine seeing anthropomorphic characters like Tiffany and Leonard walking down the street. Almost. Backrounds are sometimes neglected, but they look realistic when they're put in.

Characters: I like most of the characters in Suburban Jungle. Tiffany and Leonard are definitely nice, especially as their most recent plot arc develops. Conrad and Drezzer are also interesting, though not as much. While Dover's speech pattern is strange enough to catch your eye (and not too hard to discern, since it's in text format), it becomes a distraction later on. And the pacing between him and Comfort is far too quick, in my opinion. I also had problems with Yin, on the whole-she was an unwelcome distraction outside of single jokes, to me. I'd like to see more development to Eddie, Wesley and Ramses, as well. I get the distinct feeling that they could be interesting, but for now they don't appear in many continuous strips.

Plot: The plot for Suburban Jungle is pretty simple-Tiffany Tiger's current life. The strip doesn't try to hide it, and for the most part it works. Her dreams of being a model seem realistic but hard, and her love life is...well, rocky. But it's a testament to the characters that it rarely seems forced when there's trouble.

Writing: Not as strong as I'd like, but the writing for SJ is adequate. I had a lot of problems with pacing and timing for the strips and their different stories...especially with Dover and Comfort's relationship. I did, however, like the fact that species are separate in their tastes, and each have a stereotype to deal with-stereotypes with at least a grain of truth. Predation has not been explored that much, but it hasn't been neglected-we are dealing with carnivores, after all, and they need to eat meat. While having it thrust in our faces would turn me off, I want to see it happen a little more, and with a better explanation of how it works.

Overall: The Suburban Jungle could be better, to me...but it seems rather stunted. It might have been the preponderance of guest strips or "hiatus" pieces of art, that would kill the momentum which had been building. But while I want to keep up with SJ, for now it's more of a passing interest. I give it 6 out of 10.

Review by Benor Sun Oct 05 2003 11:06 AM

A review of The Suburban Jungle
by Kajamir the Giant

Gneech's The Suburban Jungle is a pleasant little comic about a tigress model's life with goofy friends and smirk worthy mishaps. It's a fun read, but nothing truly challenging to the reader. Jokes are reused continuously and there's some very strange reality quirks I don't understand about this world, yet which suggests to me there isn't something to be understood in this case.

The Gneech's art is alright. A bit crude and smudgy at the start, it improves a little bit over time. Expect simple but serviceable colors, and reasonable anthromorphic imagery. I feel Gneech does cats better than dogs, and both more than other things, but that's a small concern.

I generally like the stories in The Suburban Jungle. They're quaint, usually a bit humorous. I just wish jokes weren't repeated so often like overplayed running gags. That "What, are you crazy?" line was a serious violator of this. The humor usually isn't too high grade stuff; mild jokes at best, really. But maybe that's why the comic seems pleasant enough. There's a distinctive lack of an attitude that was nice, as opposed to the in your face style of many others. I think The Suburban Jungle isn't quite a syndicateable comic for some occasional mature themes, but it's otherwise usually tepid enough.

I thought the characters were nice. A bit one dimensional in the beginning. Some seem to stay that way mainly. I like Drezzer, Leonard, Dover, and Tiffany mostly. I've got to imagine writing for Dover must be quite difficult too. It's an admirable thing to work a harder character.

Somethings really bothered me though. There's things that just aren't explained in the Suburban Jungle world. A big one, is how in any shape or form, does their society even function? There's a very quick and brutal prey/predator system, both consisting of normal people doing things for both sides. But when the predators feel like it, it's perfectly ok to go out and start killing your local taxi driver (who'd be a herbivore) for dinner? It seems to me that anyone considered prey in this comic, no matter how sentient or useful, was a second class citizen sometimes, and other times, in positions of inexplicable power. The latter notion didn't feel funny at all, but like some warped 1950's racism in America situation repeating itself. It was impossible to understand how anyone without fangs existed on the social ladder here. And why would 'prey' keep walking in such easily stalked areas, let alone be able to develop their own passable civil rights? This is never acknowledged in The Suburban Jungle... murder is very acceptable and overlooked in an otherwise cute comic. It's like seeing Ash, Brock and Misty start eating their pokemon whenever they want. Truly, it's a very creepy sort of thing. I would have deeply preferred it was addressed in some rational way instead of simply favoring the main characters.

The Suburban Jungle is otherwise a fair comic. In limited capacity, I met The Gneech and he seemed a nice guy. But, this is really just a fair quality comic. Not overly good or bad. In a place of highs and lows, I guess someone has to be more grounded. I give The Suburban Jungle a 6 out of 10 stars. Addressing some of those issues would have been a boon for the score, but I'll continue to read on.

Review by Kajamir the Giant Sat Oct 04 2003 10:01 PM

"And now its time for Salen's totally non-objective review. Its important to remember Salen and his PG have been reading Suburban Jungle for a VERY long time and is probably the last person you'd want to give you an objective review."

Art: The art's gotten better over the years. Yes, The Gneech actually admits that fact. Then again, as artists, most people who continue to work on their art get better over time. Personally, I like the style. Its not a style I could draw, but I like it anyways. I can tell who's who, whats what, and its all good.

Story: Its silly. Its serious. Its sad. But mostly its silly. And I like silly comics. Having a good laugh is important. Personally I enjoy most of the geeky humor Dover brings to the comic, but Drezzer does make me laugh quite a bit as well.

Characters: All the characters have their own quirks and problems, and what they're trying to do is just make the best of a life for themselves. Nothing really complex, but sometimes just having a life, or trying to anyways, is about as complex as life needs to be, right? Plus speaking in code is silly.

I originally read the comic because Dover reminded me of myself. I stayed for the rest of the comic though.

Overall: I like this comic. Its not epic like some comics. Its just your standard comic with furries just trying to live their lives. And you know what... its not angsty. Oh sure its got its moments, where characters are down or depressed, but it doesn't STAY depressing. And thats why I like this comic. It makes me laugh and doesn't stay depressing long enough to make me depressed. Its good. And you should read good comics. So you should read this comic because I like it. I won't rank it, because to me it deserves a 10, but thats because I'm a rabid fan.

Review by Salen Stormwing Fri Oct 03 2003 07:40 PM

Art: Well, what can we say? The art did the job, though it wasn't particularly dazzling, either. Early in the beginning, there were quite a number of small mistakes, but the artist has been improving. Overall, the art is good, but not particularly impressive.

Story: The story doesn't really stand out to me in any way. It's consistent, and it has a few moments, but overall, it's not dazzling. There are very few twists and turns, and while it served to hold my attention, it certainly didn't spark my interest.

Characters: The characters, just like the art and the story, don't particularly stand out to me. Oh, they're solid, fairly well-rounded characters, but they fail to entertain me.

Overall: This is an average webcomic. It's not a bad webcomic, per se, but it's just not all that interesting. There's no big mysteries, perhaps a few clever witticisms, and a dearth of great insight. This webcomic may spark some people's interest, but for me, it was drearily average. 6/10

Review by Luthorne Fri Oct 03 2003 04:02 PM

"The comic's storylines are usually of the 'slice-of-life' variety and are centred around model Tiffany Tiger, her friends and her relatives. The comic chronicles Tiffany's ventures into the world of fashion and entertainment as well as her love life and the life of those she knows. The writing style combines light humour, mostly appropriate for all ages, with romance and sometimes even adventure. The world of The Suburban Jungle is like our own reality but it is solely populated by anthropomorhpic animals." more...

Read Full Review by Wikipedia contributors at Wikipedia Mon Nov 29 2004

I've always been a bit ambivalent about this one. In one way, its quite entertaining in its soap-operatic fashion. There's something guiltily attractive about the who's-gonna-date-who sort of plot. On the other hand, I have an immense and unshakeable grudge against fictional supermodels named Tiffany. No, seriously. See, it's this childhood trauma thing. I had this cousin that was waaay more extraverted than I was, and everytime we would play house-type games, we were always these orphaned-but-inexplicably-wealthy supermodels, and her name was always Tiffany... *shudder*

But seriously, I don't know that I've ever been able to get over that aspect of the main character, what the idea of "supermodel named Tiffany" means to me. Yeah, she doesn't get everything she wants, but there is some connotation to me that she's achieving that enviable position that my stereotype of little girls is always running after, and I've developed too much contempt for that for it not to carry over to her. I don't get it. Why a *supermodel*?

To the Gneech's credit, Tiffany is far from perfect, and the fact that she annoys the heck out of me may be due only to a unique childhood trauma on my part. The other characters aren't anything all that special, but they're entertaining. I'm not sure why Yin gets so much flack though. Every now and then you run into another 'Lets laugh at the new-age chick' strip, and it just seems kind of rude and cruel. Yeah, she's kind of silly, but she deserves a *few* redeeming moments, doesn't she? Couldn't she provide *something* to their world other than the comic relief every time we need to laugh at conspiracy theorists? On the other hand, I do like Leonard-- he's really what saves the strip for me. Without being anything to write home about from a character-development point of view, he's... i don't know. He's *nice*. One of those self-effacing, quietly heroic characters that are admirable, without wandering very far off the beaten track.

Overall, it's entertaining and fun, and I'll continue to read it pretty regularly.

Review by Noel Mon Apr 18 2005 02:32 PM

Summary Reviews for this title | Submit a title for review | Title Index