Full Reviews of Nearly Forgotten

of Nearly Forgotten by Tobie Abad

"This week, Salen gets to review a comic about God, sort of, and also ponders other things. This week is 'Nearly Forgotten'. Its the comic that I'm trying to figure out. So lets go straight into the review."

"When is a comic not a comic? Well, this is probably as close to Not-A-Comic as comics can get. Why? I'll discuss that in a bit. First, the comic is about God coming down to Earth and deciding to spend time as a human. Or its just a deeply introspective crazy guy with a camera. Take your pick."

Artwork: "Uh, dook? There is no artwork, only Zuul... err.. I mean photographs. Yes, the comic is told by real-life photographs, arranged in such a way that you have to scroll around the whole screen to get to other parts of it."

"Needless to say, its not really a comic in that sense and its annoying how you have to move around the comic when you do. And did I mention the overly painful use of repeating pictures? Uh..."

Characters: "Everything passes through this comic like a stranger on the street. You meet someone, and then they're gone, except for that narrator, who like I said, is either God, or a crazy person who likes to ponder things a bit too much."

Writing & Plot: "There is no plot... only another bad joke about there being a person wandering around aimlessly while trying to think deep thoughts. I wasn't really awed by any of those deep thoughts. I was more awed by how painful trying to get to different parts of the comic was, because of the layout. Its hard to enjoy the flow of the writing when you have to scroll around to the next part to think more deeply on other thoughts, while inwardly cursing at having to move around the layout."

Overall: "Uh, this isn't a comic. Not to me anyways. I'm sure to someone else it might. But to me, this is a piece of Art. Art is meant to be experienced. I know that because that's what my Abstract art teacher seemed to believe, or something like that. Needless to say, this isn't really a comic. Comics should be... drawn. I don't care if it was badly drawn with a pencil and on lined paper, as long as it was drawn... I'd have no problem with the comic being what it is. This doesn't seem like a comic to me."

"Even as Art though, I'm not really compelled by it. So, anyways, I'm sure if your curious about this not-a-comic, then check it out. Just don't expect a lot from the comic."

Score: 1 out of 10.

Review by Salen Stormwing Sun Mar 28 2004 02:36 PM

I'm not sure that "Nearly Forgotten" even counts as a webcomic. Sure, it has imagery and it tells a story, but it still feels a little weird to be calling it that. It seems less... personal than others. Photographs are nice, but they are images of extant scene, not the creation of such scenes. In my opinion, a webcomic should have something of the author in it, and it's just really hard to do that with what amounts to 'stock footage'.

Come to think of it, there wasn't much in the way of story, either. There were words, and they were pseudo-intellectual, but not really thought-provoking. At times, it seemed as if the author was trying to impress me with their ability to think through their own statements. I ended up letting the text fade into the background by the third or fourth page. Hrm... I did the same with the pictures, too... Nothing really jumped out at me and said, "Hey! I'm important! Look at me!" Rather blasé.

The navigation was irksome, mostly because the pictures would sometimes be scattered all over the page; I wouldn't know which way to go. I'm slightly biased against comics where things are all stretched out and wander aimlessly across the page, and while some can be very effective, others just flop. This would be one of those flops.

Nearly Forgotten gets a nice One out of Ten. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, and the only saving grace is that it ended quickly.

Review by Xenix Tue Mar 23 2004 10:33 AM

A review of 'Nearly Forgotten'
by Kajamir the Giant

Nearly Forgotten in a nutshell is a grouping of photos with the occasional bit of text about god becoming a human to see how we see things. It is not in the truest sense a webcomic, and not much of a story either. In any event, I was far less than impressed by this piece of creation.

God wakes up in bed one day, feeling tired and achey, walks around town, takes a taxi, and thinks about random people on the street. This is the text anyway. Photographically, someone walked from their apparent dorm room and milled about the city, taking pictures of this and that. It's not very interesting. The photos seem to be taken haphazardly, more akin to someone looking about a room with no sense of direction. Realistic, maybe, but again not interesting in the least.

There was also something very cornball about all of this. If you've ever see the Saturday Night Live skits involving goths interviewing each other, there's one skit where they greet 'The Beholder' or something to that effect, whose a goth who made a movie. Watching it, they find he's just running around a public park with gimmicks set around him, trying vainly to hold some cool sense of darkness to him. It doesn't go over well.

Nearly Forgotten has a very similar feel. Someone walking around assigning a scenario intended to be impressive to the everyday, looking like they spent a whole five dollars on the project. There's something very pretentious if not lame about that kind of direction, and I can't overlook it here. Not for a second could I suspend the disbelief necessary to think God was walking around a city. The 'God' demonstrated here seems more limited and ignorant than he should be. It wasn't god to me, but a human trying to act as god pretending to be a human. While the idea of the Almighty walking around seeing man's troubles has a good dramatic sounding premise, the execution here is just terrible.

About the layout, yes, it's pretty bad. Picture after repeated picture, images set up in erratically, most of them containing no words but the same images... I can't compliment something like this. The repetition lacks any other quality beyond being monotonous. I don't have a problem with layouts being non-traditional, but there seemed to be no point to this whatsoever. It was very non-aesthetic and sub-amateur in design.

Nearly Forgotten is a complete thumbs down. It's not entertaining, it's corny, and most important, it's completely without an interest factor. Maybe first year college students can get away with this for an art project or something, but it's just so badly done that I can't see anything better in it. I give Nearly Forgotten a generous 1 of 10 stars. It's not worth recommending. If it's seriously constructed or not, it doesn't change my opinion here.

Review by Kajamir the Giant Tue Mar 23 2004 09:04 AM

"Nearly Forgotten" is a series of sequential photographs with text, and thus I suppose, loosely qualifies as a webcomic that somehow wound up on our roster to review. I haven't quite decided whether this "comic" is intended as a parody of bad artsy websites or is actually meant to be taken seriously. But with pretentious lines like "The concept of dressing intrigues me. The need for clothes makes me curious," I can't help but find it a bit of a hoot. I kept picturing the guy who does the Jack Handley "Deep Thoughts" quotes on "Saturday Night Live" narrating this thing.

It turns out we aren't just eavesdropping on some liberal arts college student goofing off, but God Himself, who apparently has a passion for bad infinite canvas layouts and pop-up ads for rapper albums.

The use of sequential photographs for a narrative, artistic presentation is perfectly valid, but the psuedo-deep observations of daily life presented here were just too facile to be moving or thought-provoking. The photography itself was okay, but nothing special. Of course, I can't comment on the photography in the handful of broken links on page 10.

[EDIT: Broken links fixed on last viewing]

Review by The Phantom Critic Mon Mar 22 2004 06:15 PM

You know there's a problem when it takes longer to read the review than to read the comic, so I'll avert that problem.

Nearly Forgotten is a 10-part comic composed of repeated photographs with captions that are supposed to sound quasi-philosophical but come off more like bad stand-up comedy material. The layout gets increasingly confusing with the changing directions of panel progression and the many repeat panels without any narrative. I did not derive any enjoyment from reading the comic, but at least it didn't make me want to claw my eyeballs out like other comics did.

If you want to read page 10, you have to go to the index and click on it, since you can't access it from page 9. Also, the Yahoo! pop-up in the corner is teh evul.

Review by Cobra Mon Mar 22 2004 08:14 AM

I love this work. It's so different than anything else out there, and as a creator, I know how difficult and inventive this is to do. I read through the previous reviews. In defense to this comic and others that the previous reviewers butcher, these reviewers tend to reject anything that differs from what their definition of a webcomic is. I feel sorry for these people and challenge them to read the work again, this time with an open mind that a webcomic can be anything. Nearly Forgotten is literature. It uses photographt, collage, and graphic design to communicate its feelings to the reader. It's advanced. It's also a look into a different culture (the Philipines, for those who have never seen these streets). I highly recommend this story to anyone with a heart.

Review by Michael Goodman Sun Apr 18 2004 11:10 PM

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