The Ciderview Project
A review by Kajamir the Giant
Coming off of the innovative style and eye candy of last week's selection, we review The Ciderview Project this time around, a dark sort of story but in a much different vein.
The Ciderview Project is written as a collective documentary of several fictional individuals and the human condition. While that's a fair assessment, in reality it's about the conditions of people with dooming problems, mainly of a nature they can do discernably little about. Autism, personality disorders, a deeply malignant brain tumor... I wouldn't call this everyday fare of the human condition. More like the ongoing suffering of doomed unfortunates. I say it like that because The Ciderview Project is as a rainstorm that goes on for several days. Heavy in content with no sign of light in the coming horizon.
The Ciderview Project revolves around several troubled people, suffering from various amounts of the aforementioned ailments. They seem to live their lives in abject misery and repetitive depression. And that comes down very thickly, just sad depressing content. While a story can be made from that, there exists several problems. First off, the characters just aren't terribly interesting (although I somewhat liked Allan). No one wants to pay much attention to someone who broods all day. Not only that, but there's a certain lack of depth amongst them. I feel this is complicated by the number of characters, to whom the story sporadically jumps back and forth too, not to mention the simple fact that The Ciderview Project is fairly short in content as of this time. So, I can only judge it on what exists. Secondly, I don't find the general atmosphere believable. The drama had become melodramatic quickly. What was the point of announcing one of the characters was a lesbian when it's completely irrelevant? The creator wrote that gay people have more than average troubling lives. Be that as it may, it was like a needless detail to highlight her other seemingly unrelated issues, as well as never played up. And the whole sequence of meeting the dying brain tumor victim? It was over too quickly. I couldn't feel anything for his plight, despite dour feeling people went to his funeral. He just seemed shoved in there for more a misery factor, something TCP does not need any more of. This is one of those webcomics that comes off like a soap opera. Heavy handed, cliched, and a little sappy.
And while I like black and white art, I don't care for what's here. The grey water paint-like style mixed in with rather unbecoming images of people, increased the dullness of my experience. It's far too drab to be appealing, and the indistinct images of people are frankly ugly or fish-like in many places. I think the art as a whole is over detailed while poorly proportioned, which gives it that cringe factor. In particular, the lips and eyes are just terrible. The cover art is nice, but that's an entirely different artist.
I didn't like this one much at all. It's just so... blah. Bad visuals, heavy handed wobbling storyline, poor characterization, overly melodramatic, etc. The site says to recommend comic to friends. I'm sorry, but I can't. If The Ciderview Project was a product in the supermarket, it would be stuffed away in the corner behind the No-Frills government cheese and white bread. It's just that uninteresting. I'm not sure who exactly would be intrigued to read it compared to other webcomics available. Sixteeth century existential monks with stoic masochistic leanings? I just don't know.
Seriously, a story can be crafted quite well from a gloomy subject matter, but this approach is all wrong. The Ciderview Project lacks an enticing, involving, or competive edge to it. This giant gives the drab Project a thumbs down, and a 2 of 10 stars. A webcomic should not garner the opinion of 'egh' or 'blah' when one is done reading it. |
