Webcomic Book Club Reviews by Kajamir the Giant

(No, I'm not back. I read this two months ago on a lark and I post this out of free time and a sense of hypocritical disgust in that I think something needs to be said out of review here.) (Cobra? Rant, cry, and whine on your LJ or diary. It doesn't belong here. I don't know where you got the idea otherwise, but you don't have to like the reviewers or their reviews. You don't even need to respect their opinions. Because they're just opinions, neither right nor wrong. Your not even remotely better for yours, so keep them to yourself if you can't control yourself. Same goes for all the anonymous people recommending these and those off NCD making 'reviews'.) (The rest of you as well? Saying what kind of person would enjoy this isn't help you any. No one here is saint above others. Not me, not you, not anyone.) A review of Buttlord GT by Kajamir the Giant Okay, let's start it off. This comic is incredibly juvenile. It's a vulgar satire of Dragonball Z. It has some rather nice art, and it mocks the DBZ imagery appropriately. Also, Buttlord GT is stupid. It's funny on a certain level, perhaps mostly if you sat through all of the DBZ series. It's also mindnumbingly stupid for the various reasons the other club members have mentioned. Well, what did you expect? The name alone should have tipped you off. I laughed hard during this as much as I looked at some scenes with loathing and a thought of 'Give it a rest'. So, two seperate considerations here. Why did I like this? Out of boredom, I've seen about 98% of the DBZ episodes. So, I can relate the material well enough to the series. Said series isn't really that good at all. It's a blackhole of writing and creativity. Shows are monotonous, lack progression, and pretty much is the same thing in each 'saga'. There's a few impressive scenes, but more or less it's the viewer waiting for the hero to explode with righteous rage and do something flashy that changes things, even if just slightly. The animation is crummy but the art to the show is at least stylized. Buttlord GT does well on the satire. The endless training, pointless drawn out fights, insipid realizations, one dimensional characters... In this sense, it's amusing. I'm not totally above bathroom humor in some cases. Why be so sophisticated that you can't laugh about things? It's not even remotely highbrow, but makes for a few guilty pleasures. The art is really nice. The artists capture the DBZ style really well. As an homage in imagery, it succeeds. Adapting the characters to look differently but within the Akira Toriyama style is nice. They could be rendered in a different style altogether and be recognizable, but it's like sprinkles on the ice cream here that it's reasonably similar. What should I be overlooking here? Plot. Don't acknowledge it, it's not supposed to be there. Buttlord GT seems to be intended to be more or less stupid, and considering it's based on DBZ? Know the territory, in this case. Further, this is a parody. It's stupid funny sometimes, and just stupid and nothing but othertimes. It succeeds based on how much it works within the genre, not so much what it is. Don't look for characterization, depth, or anything meaningful. Wrong place. Why didn't I like it? Buttlord GT is like a teenager making jokes, seeing a reaction from his peers, and increasing the intensity of his jokes to keep it going. Unfortunately, he doesn't know when enough is enough. The gay jokes in Buttlord are just tasteless rather than funny. They don't serve anything other than to mock people having a difficult time right now. Now, I suppose a few are fine, realistically, but Buttlord GT just goes on and on with it. It doesn't have anything to do with a DBZ parody in this sense. I don't count attempts to be 'shocking' or 'offensive' as definitive humor. Even such concepts are tiring by this day. This is where stupid remains nothing else but stupid, and not stupidly funny. As a parody, this could have been written better. Even stupid humor can be finely crafted. Aye, but this is such a middle school effort for which I can't manage much but a dull expression at times. The writers don't seem to realize their own ironic monotony reflects that of the actual DBZ series. The jokes are really hit/miss, again, particularly with the eye rolling worthy gay humor. Why they thought it was that funny, who knows. It's incredibly inappropriate by civilized standards at this time though. We can appreciate base humor, but this crosses a somewhat fine line into garbage. Buttlord GT is a decent parody with too much juvenile and tired content for it's own good. Had they nixed the stupid gay jokes, I probably would have rated it higher. It is funny, yes. It is also mind numbingly stupid too. Take what you can from it, but leave all you take. I give Buttlord GT a 3 of 10 stars. Do I recommend it? Well... if you've seen the DBZ series in relative entirety and came away with a so-so opinion or at least retained your ability to think, a look here couldn't hurt. Those definitively not interested in the series at all have no business looking at this for the most part. Also, if you replace everytime I write 'but' in this review with 'butt', and it gives you a chuckle, you might want to check it out then. Tue May 11 2004 02:21 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Desert Rocks by Kajamir the Giant Desert Rocks is a very laid back little comic concerning an adventure of several people wandering a foreign land in search of what to do in their lives and political justice. There's no strong direction or goal it's taking along the way, but seems to do well enough at it's own pace, coupled with decent smudgy art. This webcomic (like everything else about it) was slow to grow on me. At first, I was of the mind that it wasn't particularly interesting. It was too lethargic. However, after things get moving from the unremarkable beginning, you'll get a feel for the pacing of this comic, which is more relaxed than lazy. It doesn't always work, and it doesn't exactly stand out, but again, functions well enough for what it is. The characterization is here and though reasonably defined, the political refugees of Desert Rocks are of decidedly low interest. I could tell there was a nice amount of definition given to this world, a mix of reality and fantasy, but aside from the male lead's plight in the jail cell, I didn't really care too much what happened. Again, perhaps the speed of things matters here, or it's just a situation where the characters aren't as emotive and individualized as I'd like. Fortunately, said characters are all mainly distinct enough to be recognized at least superficially. The art here feels reminiscent of the smudgy pug nosed Demonology 101 style, but much brighter. The characters look maybe a bit too mellow for me to want to root for them, but it feels pretty in tune with everything else here. I eventually thought well enough of this webcomic, but it's wandering quality gets kind of sleepy if just dull at times. It's a strange thing to see things happening yet get the impression not much actually is. The slumbering progression of things is a bit hit and miss, unfortunately. I liked the background given for the world they inhabit, but what's going on within it currently doesn't do it as much justice. So for me, Desert Rocks seems above ho-hum, but not by much. If a webcomic could have a classifiable personality, Desert Rocks is a Type B. You learn about the underlying story and situation, which is fine, but I don't think anything here is terribly memorable so much as decent for what it is. It makes for languid reading. I give Desert Rocks a 6 of 10 stars. Not bad, but far too slow to really interest me. Someone who could appreciate a fictional real world politicial/magic understory and the smooth sailing pace could probably appreciate it more, and to them I would recommend it. Sun Apr 18 2004 07:19 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of The Jerk by Kajamir the Giant I'll level with you. I didn't understand a thing about this one page comic. Maybe it's just so avante garde it's over my head or it's as artsy fartsy as it appears, I really can't say for sure. All I can say is I just don't get it and wasn't impressed. The Jerk is extremely short, about some cylindrical biped looking at uninteresting art in a gallery with comments scattered around. There's some ambigious thing about him losing his heart because of something traumatic, then getting it back, but finding it was little else than a dream to him. Que? The art for the Jerk himself isn't so bad. It's kind of scratchy yet ominous and makes the weird looking Jerk a bit eye catching, but that's hardly enough to call a merit given the lack of everything else. Maybe The Jerk is a joke to someone or about something I couldn't figure out. Maybe it's trying to say something profound. Maybe it's something intended to spark a discussion. To me, it's a pile of yet unexplained confusion. I've got nothing worth commenting on here. I can't like what doesn't make any sense to me. There's nothing humorous, too serious, meaningful, or anything otherwise that I can discern. I might as well be reading the Dead Sea Scrolls. On this basis, I give The Jerk a complete 0 of 10 stars. I look readily for another reviewer to break the idea of The Jerk down to a level where someone passing by is going to grasp it. Thu Apr 08 2004 12:20 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Kid Radd by Kajamir the Giant This one has a nostalgic glance to my childhood; a fondly misspent youth in front of a Nintendo entering the Konami cheat code. Graphically, I'm reasonably inclined to 8 bit sprite comics as a whole, such as the well known one bearing that moniker. Kid Radd has that old sprite look, save it's entirely original, animated, and loads very quick! Further, it's flourished occasionally with 80's speak. This adds up to a positive review from this godzilla smurf. Quite gnarly indeed. Kid Radd is just a fun little comic in every way. No ads, no long loads, no cynical Gen-X roommates sitting on a couch... from the animation to the writing content, I had a smile on my face all throughout. I never thought about what would happen if my old video game heros were real and lived to be played, but Kid Radd gives a quirky exploration into this, mixing in light drama elements and fairly crafted humor. That's the idea in a nutshell. Character development isn't too defined, but workable. Yet, that level works for Kid Radd. It could go further in this respect if it wanted, but perhaps only as a spin-off at this time. Kid Radd falls under that 'If'n it ain't broke...' category. Though not something I'd call perfect, I have no outstanding qualms about it either. It rates high in the entertainment versus time spent equation. In video game terms, it has good gameplay even if the graphics are two decades old. Kid Radd is extremely easy to get into. It moves the plot along faster and at a fresher rate than 8-Bit Theater does. It's got a lot of nice features for something looking for a quick enjoyable comic with a little bit of depth, humor, and story all in one. I give Kid Radd an 8 out of 10. Tue Mar 30 2004 02:47 PM | Read All Reviews for this title 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. Tue Mar 23 2004 06:04 AM | Read All Reviews for this title 'Deeply weird.' Two words to describe this webcomic. You could also toss in 'lurid', 'bizarre', and 'humorous'. Yet I don't think I can settle on any single way to define this creation beyond it's just very, very strange. It occurs to me this is a comic of many themes. Amongst them, balance, comeuppance, and humility. So amidst the weirdness, there is an underlying story. It's just difficult to casually label it in a review. When I Am King has no text whatsoever and as a result, everyone is quite nameless. It's a straight forward story possessed of about sixty entries, give or take a few extra mini panels for the hallucination sequence. You can read it roughly in an hour or so. The layout varies in direction of the panels, or how they're arranged, but it's nothing too different, particularly if you've read The Spiders or Morning Improv. There's an occasional use of Flash near the latter half of the story which works nicely enough in context. The art... well, it's not supposed to impress you. It consists of rounded geometric shapes forged into sprite like images, with perhaps a healthy dose of mouse work put in. Don't come here to be impressed with art. It's to show images, and nothing more. In a sense, I can respect that. It tries to tell a story without the fluff of talented imagery. Colors are mainly earth tone and set the background for the apparent egyptian setting. What does work well within this is the expressions and reactions the characters have. It's all implied obviously, but it comes off clearly. Visual artists could take a hint from the simple functionality of this webcomic's graphic presentation. I've seen plenty of trendy art that's too ambigious looking to discern what someone is expressing, let alone what their gender is supposed to be. When I Am King succeeds on the K.I.S.S. ideal. Concerning the plot, I can't really do justice to it. The story is indeed very linear, poking in numerous comedic or embarassing situations. This isn't really a deep tale from what I gathered, although there's a degree of symbology involved. More, it's just a very bizarre single shot of one king's day of having his sense of humility crushed to pieces (amongst things) while side characters engage in their own mini-storylines with various prat falls. There's a psychotic camel (a real scene stealer), maniacal children, guards with issues, two women who have nothing better to do than get laid each day... it's a very strange stew cooked up here. In some ways, When I Am King is like a car wreck. You can't easily look away from it. One of the things I didn't like here is how the humor gets very juvenile in short order. This webcomic loves gross out humor and 'Home Alone' painful groin shots, not to mention immasculation. This kind of takes away my liking of the design for it a lot. I would liken the comic's protagonist to being related to Tom Green, if that make's any sense. Or at least, the direction of the comic seems it would be sponsored by him. When I Am King gets ridiculously crude too much for my tastes. Given, such moments can be quite funny. But there's just an excess of them. The ending parts with the camel... I could rather do without them. The homophobic humor/insults in the beginning also occur as being pretty tired by this day. Originally, I wasn't going to give this comic a very kind score. It just didn't sit well with me after I finished it. But thinking about it as a whole, I've lightened a bit on it. When I Am King is a comic that is not easily compared to much else. I think if I did read anything similar to it beyond this point, or it continued further, I wouldn't like such subsequent pieces. As a stand alone, it was interesting. I give When I Am King a 4 of 10 stars. It's a strange mix of avant garde juvenile Ren and Stimpy style content. Again, very strange this one. I don't outright recommend it, but if the idea of lurid oddness possibly appeals to you, go for it. Again, it only takes about an hour to sit through. Sat Mar 13 2004 09:26 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Gene Catlow by Kajamir the Giant I'd heard of this webcomic several times. Seems like Gene Catlow is a bit better advertised compared to others or I've been running into all the right places. My first real taste of Gene Catlow was a thankfully soft and cuter cameo in the Jack comic, but I see this comic holds it's own pretty well too. I was kind of partial to the art here. While the characters are sort of squishy faced, that's the style. And no, I don't think they look remiscent of Looney Tunes characters since those were also rubbery bodied. Gene Catlow characters are kind of cute looking, sort of holding their visual characterizations well in their world. Not everything has to be realistic or edgy looking, just so long as it works within itself. It was kind of nice to see characters, even evil ones, who didn't scream OMG I HAVE KEWL ATTITUDE upon first glance. This is reflected in the more diplomatic nature of the characters too. They actually talk things out. However, the artist is less proficient when it comes to humans. Something about them does have a passable Elmer Fudd quality around the face at least. They're suitably cute looking as well, but a bit more awkward in graphic execution. I like the background story Gene Catlow had concerning humans and anthros. If you've ever read Suburban Jungle, there's a variant going on there (concerning Carnivores and Herbivores), but not nearly so well defined. Catlow's explanation is simple, but at least it was there, so it feels like there's some justification for the segregation between the furries and humans. I'm not sure I'd call it realistic, but it more or less works. Cohesive fantasy, perhaps. Something I don't get here is the comic's name. Despite being called Gene Catlow, from what I've read, Gene's mainly a secondary character in his own comic! The lead seems entirely focused for the first two years (at least) around his friend, Cotton Taylor, with brief scenes of Gene at the most. I can only shrug unknowingly at this. Maybe a long time fan would know why this is. Characterization... I'm kind of varied here. Cotton Taylor is nicely defined. However, I say this because he essentially gets nearly all the page time. Other characters like Gene, we only get a general feel for how they are, and others like Catwhisker, could blend in a crowd. In truth, from the part I read, Gene didn't have much more definition than the security dog or the lunchlady Taylor associated with. I think the comic could have shortened it's focus a little in this respect. Instead of involving every small bit character in some known definition, focus more on the common side characters like Gene himself. What I know of his life could fit a thimble. Well, let me say this comic does not as Cobra so eloquently put it, suck. It's not the best webcomic I've read nor one of the ones high on my list, but it's pretty good, and comparitively, better than The Gneech's Suburban Jungle. I give Gene Catlow a 8 out of 10. Characterizations a bit weak, but it's a nice execution. I imagine I'll follow it in my spare time. Fri Mar 12 2004 09:38 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Catharsis by Kajamir the Giant I don't have much to comment on concerning this webcomic. I left it after a short time feeling it was rather unremarkable in any manner, and there was no compulsion to read the breadth of it. Catharsis is sort of cute and soft, but isn't too interesting. It has a superficial resemblance to Shaw Island in design, but without the ersatz wit. The art isn't anything to celebrate here. While it tightens up a bit and gets colored in later, it seemed lifeless (by watercolors, I assume). The designs fit the style well enough, but failed to stand out short of the cuter things. The set up in general seems formulaic too. While Gwen's a little different than most character leads by design, her dragon and squirrel were nothing memorable. Read: Doofus comedic sidekick and foul natured short critter. I think it would have occured better to me if the dragon and squirrel were absent, and the comic had more to do with Gwen's self of regression. As a comedy based webcomic, Catharsis didn't evoke a single chuckle. It does have that newspaper syndication blandness to it. In general, I couldn't find anything worthwhile to get into here. It's not my particular taste of a comic, although I don't think it's necessarily bad, just unamazing. If someone's looking for a non-edgy or soft natured comic, you might like this. But as a whole, it's too dull for me to recommend otherwise. I give Catharsis a 3 of 10 stars. Fri Feb 27 2004 06:11 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Unicorn Jelly By Kajamir the Giant I checked out Unicorn Jelly lil over a year ago; followed it for a few strips and then never bothered to read it further until now. It struck me as more hyped than it really should've been even then. In time, I forget I ever read the thing at all. Now, I've been thrust with the opportunity to look at it more in detail, and I can't say I'm terribly moved by this piece of fiction upon further study. I was informed by several fans this comic was on league with the sophistication and thought of 1/0. While Unicorn Jelly has more intelligence than the average webcomic, it's not particularly involving or interesting. It does not compare to 1/0 in the least, nor arise much sense of fascination. Unicorn Jelly suffers greatly from the 'back seat driver' syndrome several webcomics have, a condition I've mentioned in previous reviews. You just don't really feel any reason to care much about the ongoings of the character's and their lives. It's more like reading a dry account read by someone else who skips the details and mentions things of little import with the occasional bit of something fantastical added in for spice. As such, a focus within the writing and direction feels labored, maybe trying to be more than it claimed. I don't know so much that bad design is behind this, as much as bland execution. Things feel rushed and the development that exists, formulaic. Tedious comes to mind. I really didn't find much enjoyment here. Now, I haven't checked out the bigger lay out that Phantom Critic mentioned, nor the Alternate Universe links (whatever those were... a more immediate guide within the comic would have been nice), but it occurs to me a lot of this outside the comic material is just thorough layering to hide something less inviting inside. I didn't look at the supposed encyclopedic background on Unicorn Jelly because that's a poor way to illuminate the story. If I can't find the information that's relevant within the comic itself, why would I care to leave the comic and make a college semester of studying this thing? For purposes of casual reading and in my instance, reviewing, this is not a plus at all. I don't mind it otherwise but it feels, hmm, a bit much here to warrant having it. I think the art was passably nice. The characters are, for better or worse, cute and cuddly. By the same point however, they're rather bland looking, all of them overshadowed by a much more thorough and defined background. That's all well and good, I suppose, but I'm here to read about the characters. Cardboard cute images seem right in step with Unicorn Jelly. Characterization is a bit weak. The characters, maybe by the seemingly rushed pace of the story, occur as dull and poorly defined of themselves. That is to say, while you do get to know the basics of them, they don't strike much a chord, lacking a spark of life. I think the only scene I can recall that felt intriguing in regards to a character's development was the young witch's tale of having her idea crushed by the magecratic system already in place. But to mention the character as only 'the witch' and not by name, shows rather well the generally forgettable characterization. There are so few instances or reasons to care about anything here, well, it's truly disappointing. I also have a bone to pick with the layout within the comic's. The small boxes allowed only a pittance of writing space, and too often, a sentence was hyphenated and running into the next panel with no other distinctive breaks. I had trouble several times telling who was talking or if a sentence had ended. Unicorn Jelly is a sizable let down, but I postulate this is much from the sheer amount of hype I've seen for it in recent times, as much as how honestly dull it is. That anyone compared this to the simple genius of 1/0 seems unfathomable to me. Unicorn Jelly simply fails to deliver on multiple levels. It attempts to be deep without being particularly thought provoking or interesting. I sadly give it a 3 of 10 stars. Disappointing, and little else. Wed Feb 18 2004 02:19 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of The Morning Improv by Kajamir the Giant By my standards, I'm not particularly a fan of Scott McCloud. I think he's insightful concerning the medium of comics and people's prespectives on them, but I don't necessarily agree with him, or find his reputation as overrated. However, I welcome the experiment of The Morning Improv as at least being interesting. It's a mix of inspiration, technique, content, and randomness. Sometimes it works well, others, not really at all, in regards to it's consistent appeal to be interesting/amusing. The idea behind the comics seems interpretive, so you can't quite read it straight and say "Here is the plot, here are the people, here is the church, here is the steeple..." Rather, take each comic as it is and think about how it works for you or not. Because it changes itself up in every new improvisation he makes, it lacks the shallowness and monotony of other one shot based webcomics. Though I had to root around a little to see the apparent idea behind this, Scott is given a list of titles by his readers and goes to work from that, making a short comic pretty much as he sees fit. Some of these comics have continuations in them, but nothing that requires anything more than the slightest committment to read. Improvisation is an amusing thing, one I know better from my old days in drama class. Doing it in comic form was rather intriguing. Alas, there are exceedingly few comics to read in The Morning Improv, so it must certainly take Mr. McCloud a lot of effort and time from his schedule. Two comics in particular stand out to me; Meadow of the Damned and A Bucket Full O' Kittens. I liked how they presented an underlying message without seeming too trite or typical. A lot of what the reader gets from The Morning Improv is implied and again, interpreted. You can read them straight on, but the experience would likely be rather lacking, I think. The Morning Improv offers the reader a little more in terms of something to think about if he chooses to pursue it. There's a lot of other good comics on here too. Uninformed Bob uses repetition, experimentation, and ultimately, existentialism. It's a mix of creepy and humorous. Junk Bar is patently ridiculous yet shows a viewpoint of the changing times. Somnivore is unsettling by concept. And while I didn't like looking at the basic imagery in The Parallelogram's Revenge, I guess it goes to show a story can be told with very little visual effort. This is a feat of design, considering there is no text whatsoever and only geometric shapes to look at. While there's mostly good comics here, some don't do much to prove interesting. I would probably estimate my dislike of these was I felt they were too random even while they contained an underlying meaning. No One Tells Interesting Jeff What To Do!, Robots Love to Dance!, and I am The Most Beautiful Dog in The World, occured to me as being kind of weak. Monkey Town was a mix of amusing and annoying in and of itself. I couldn't help but think Dragonball Z looking at it. Maybe that was the idea, but it was kind of cliche if that was the statement. I imagine it's intended to be predictable, but it's important for something to be interesting to read too. The art was at least, decent. The Morning Improv is extremely short. Really, you could go read all of them in about a half hour's time, so it's easy for anyone to check it out. Further, the comic's seem to load fairly quickly, perhaps thanks to the quirky layout? So, while I'm not by rule a fan of Mr. McCloud's work as a whole, The Morning Improv proved to be a pleasant experience. I give this slice of experimentation an 8.5 out of 10 stars. Not bad, not bad at all. Sun Feb 08 2004 11:14 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of The Japanese Beetle by Kajamir the Giant The Japanese Beetle a comedic webcomic true to Phantom Critic's analogy of 'The Tick' series. Weekly silly enemies, plenty satire, and a hero of questionable competence greet the reader who explores this superhero. This webcomic features some fun styled black and white art, breathing life into all the character's rendered. Befitting the nature of the comic, anything superhero comic related here is pretty silly; half reveling in it's own absurdity while the other half pays homages. The art is probably good enough on it's own merit to attract readers. With the comic being rather short as of this review, the plot follows a formula of the latest silly badguy who gets trounced or manages to run, and then scenes of the hero trying halfheartedly to live like other people, ala paying rent and dating. Verse, chorus, verse. I really wasn't too engaged by how the formula works. While the villains were interesting to look at, there was no reason to care what was going on. The fights are more an excuse to see something comical happen than for anyone to feel involved. As a comparison, even The Tick had adventures befitting a hero. The Japanese Beetle skirmishes and calls it a day, maybe a little too limited by the idea it's only a job for him. Tied in with this is the characterization. Some, like the Commissioner and what little are given to the villains, are amusing. The Japanese Beetle and his friends, however, don't quite compare. In particular, the hero is surprisingly unlikable. Vain, ignorant, snide... he occurs to me as a high school jock or an arrogant version Fry from Futurama with superpowers. I'm not really sure why he's set up to be so thoroughly annoying as opposed to cartoonishly amusing. It certainly doesn't help the comic's case for appealing new readers. Lastly, there are several moments in the comic where the transition of speech or action just doesn't seem to sync up very well. I would best liken it to a record that skips for a moment but keeps playing past it. The Japanese Beetle is alright, but missing several things to make it good. By itself, it would constitute a decent humorous superhero parody, in need of only better overall writing and a hero worth reading about. If you can look mainly at the art and comedic homages, you'll probably enjoy it. I give The Japanese Beetle a 5 of 10 stars. Tue Feb 03 2004 07:01 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of 'Flipside' by Kajamir the Giant Flipside is an evolving and rather well illustrated strip featuring a split personality jester girl with a surprising amount of social experience under her cap (and tights) with the time spent with several medieval themed companions. Flipside looks really nice in terms of an anime style after several chapters, but it feels kind of directionless in a way. I would say it's less a story and more like an account of Maytag the jester's day to day experiences. The end result is decent, but feels lacking. To mention it again, the best trait about Flipside is the art. In the first several chapters, well, don't take those parts for the overrall effect. The creator quickly gets a lot better, and the imagery is often very interesting, save for the usually sparse backgrounds. Characters look pretty good here, but there's an occasional strange bit. I originally thought Moss was a woman, and after Maytag survived the Maw monster, it looked like she'd suffered a certain unsightly damage to the chest area. The creator includes side notes which often speak about rushed work and uncertainties in what to do. You can really see Flipside as a growing thing of the creator's artistic talent. Quite remarkable, really. Story wise, it doesn't do so well. Things are, well, too unexplained at times and characterizations is very weak. You don't get to learn much about the characters save on a basic level (though more is hinted) and their mission seems kind of ho hum given the genre. Really, there's not much to hook a reader in here concerning the plot and story. You have to mainly like Flipside based on the art quality. As a neat touch, the author includes many side notes. They help explain things without getting too much in the way, but certain sidenotes just don't seem really worth mentioning, such as the description for each spell being cast. Really, you could imply what's going on just as easily and the idea behind the magic doesn't seem terribly interesting in the first place. I would have liked to seen something more in depth, like Rules of Make Believe's Gorge System descriptions. Flipside oft does descriptions as though trying to market it for some basic RPG game. I'm about little over halfway through Flipside at this time, and I'm thinking I'll probably continue reading it, but maybe on a lazy day. Flipside needs a lot of work in the plot and general characterization department, as if it's not really being all it can be. The overall effect, despite the really nice art, is essentially middle ground in terms of an opinion. I give Flipside a 5.5 of 10 stars. Sun Feb 01 2004 12:53 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Return to Sender by Kajamir the Giant To chime in with the others, this webcomic is a little too young in it's existence to review adequately. Just not much has been written and what does exist, seems only vaguely following a storyline. Most of what's currently in Return to Sender is a nearly random cartoonish exchange that doesn't equate to anything worth the time it takes to read it. As a lead in for what is assumably a much longer story yet to be shown, I'm not terribly excited by it. Return to Sender spends too much time being zany for the hell of it. It has two main characters: one, a copy editor who behaves as a straight laced guy to, second, Collete, an age indeterminate figurative walking cartoon of a woman and reason why sugar should be exempt to the american diet. The story has some focus on the editor's new house which apparently attracts demons who can't enter it and meanwhile sends him letters for some reason. Later, he begins spontaneously having a nosebleed and the two of them go to the bad part of town, eventually following a hobo 'just because'. At this time, there doesn't seem much reason for anything. However, given the zany random nature of Return to Sender, I don't imagine such things will wind up in a well tied and interesting manner unless the comic shifts gears hard from being as cartoonish as it is. I regard the writing going off in a flaccid starting direction. Return to Sender does a bit better with the art. Characters are drawn in a style that's an appealing mix of sharp lined manga and Jhonen Vasquez. A frequent and pleasant use of light blue is liberally implemented, making it easy on the eyes. Characters are fairly interesting looking for being what they are. However, it's not enough to save this comic unless you can appreciate it only for a superficial and zany basis. Return to Sender is again, probably too short for a proper review, but where it appears to be going, I wouldn't recommend it all. Seemingly aimless, it doesn't hold any direction well enough for me to follow what happens to the characters. I give Return to Sender a 2 of 10 stars. Thu Jan 22 2004 07:28 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Jack by Kajamir the Giant Jack is one of the more contextually stand out webcomics I've gotten to read since I joined the webcomic book club. By some facet Jack will leave you with some amount of thought though, either about how you feel, how you feel about the comic itself, or something in between. Jack is like cleaning residue in a way. Grimy, dark, vile, and leaving you needing to take a break from it before you attack it again. Flatly, once Jack is read, you can't easily leave it without some form of impression, be it good or bad. Jack is a truly dark themed webcomic. Blackhearted and negative for about ninety five percent of the material. You've heard the other reviewers say it, but this is not a comic for the young crowd or anyone with a weak heart. Though slow about it initially, it winds up being extremely violent, grotesquely sexual, and the depictions of suffering are through the roof. But hey, maybe that's a good thing to some others, eh? Oh yes, and there's some vivid depictions of hell imagery and evil. Now as a reviewer, I neither found Jack to be emotionally difficult or too graphic. I have several reasons for this, both personal and solely review oriented. I'll focus on the latter since that's all that's particularly relevant. However, I love tragedy and blackhearted content. As a person, I get very weary of seeing the same boring ho hum humor comics and predictable real life situations. As such, I can muster a level of appreciation for this kind of material in a webcomic. It's not something you'll see much particularly on American shores (at least in a well known sense), and it goes into all manner of unpleasant things that most people would rather not think about it. Now despite all this, Jack doesn't really surprise me any, just it was a nice change of pace. Better than seeing something with cornball roommates sitting around a couch making snappy comments. Jack is about an anthromorphic rabbit who apparently goes off the deep end in his real life and somehow winds up as both the grim reaper and the symbolic sin of wrath. Now, unlike his more base relations, the other sins, Jack is practically a saint. Jack feels genuine sadness for the plights of mortals and the damned alike under his gruff harsh exterior. Jack does his duties, sometimes quite grudgingly, and plays the universe's fly on the wall, watching suffering of incredible magnitude. He somehow manages through with a sense of metaphysical professionalism and his 'blessing' that he can't fully recall why he sinned. As it stands, Jack himself is a wonderfully deep and tragic character, one both worthy of pity, compassion, and spite. He's not really a hero or antagonist, but maybe closer to an anti-hero. The other characters from what I've seen don't quite get the same level of creative interest, but they manage to fit in their own way. Things are fairly deeper than typical for a webcomic here, so even these side characters are decent. Fnar is a real winner. He's got an interesting background, and is a welcome relief of simple comedy. Even a comic like this needs to come up to breathe on occasion. Fnar is such a device. Lesser entities like the sins are fairly one dimensional from what I've read. They lack depth and pretty much do their actions in a mechanical lock and step. Like Benor says though, they're largely intended to be just symbolic, not leads of their own. All of them seem quite unpleasant and befitting their place in hell. Those suffering in hell suffer horribly, emotionally, or by the occasional absurd fate (see Phantom Critic's mention about the dolphins). I like the general mood and depiction level of Jack. It doesn't wow me, but it's considerably fresher than most other webcomics in what it's willing to portray. Yet, it's got problems. The heaven and hell situation in Jack, while blissfully not an arrogant bible quoting world (that automatically would nosedive it with me), unfortunately is like a universe more run by an anal retentive lawyer than a compassionate god. I can't honestly discern where the fault lines of determination lay here, but it seems remarkably simple to get into hell and the higher up angels fly around with poles up their arses. As one example went, a woman was sent to hell after being tortured sexually for days. She goes to hell because she kills herself, unable to escape her captor. The rapist winds up there too, but he's given a position of power because of how loathesome he is. Rules (and there's a lot) dictate he can't touch her again unless she gives of herself willingly to him. As part of her punishment, she's given the ability to predict the future, which unfortunately is useless to her in hell. Now, Lust wants her and a deal is made. She gets to return to the real world, power intact. From here on, she begins using her power for wholly good deeds until one time where she changes the preordained deaths of some people with it. Jack comes along because of this and is forced to take her away to hell again. As an angel says, despite her years of good deeds, because she made a deal with a Sin, she's condemned regardless and anything good she did is 'forfeit'. This sort of anal retentive lawyerism in heaven strikes me as incredibly predictable and unimaginative, not to mention unreasonable. It's the kind of trite interpretation you'll see in a movie like Dogma, where pointlessly abstract and dramatic laws govern everything. It's a plot device used to accentuate tragedy by hitting upon certain feelings in the human psyche. And from the vantage point of the world of Jack, hell is nigh inescapable. Small misdeeds (there are other examples, mind you) seem to land you in a bad spot, ignoring anything good you've done in life. End result is I'm not buying it. It's too much a blatant device meant to drag out feelings of the reader than anything depicting a world of the afterlife and genuine sentiments. Which leads me to my second complaint about Jack. It focuses enormously on the suffering of the people about to die or near death. Just about every panel was filled with wide eyed anthromorphic people leaking incredible amounts of saline from their eyes like the Niagaras. The design in Jack's aesthetics ill me here. That sense that everything is being played out as harshly as possible seems repetitive and attention mongering. After a while, I was pretty sick of seeing goopy eyed couples profess their love for one another as they undergo unpleasant fate, weeping profusely all the while. Jack's writing, while a good tragedy in some places, is ridiculously melodramatic, to the point of being saccharhine. It detracts from the believability of his world and the quality of the creator's work. Getting to the art and font, it's a mixed bag. In the beginning it's pretty sloppy, with moments of being utterly unreadable from being too dark or scrawled. It levels out later, but Jack never really quite looks too sharp. Rather, it's one of those things better deemed as working it's own style. All the same, the highly cartoonish look of Jack's world plays both a paradoxical role, making it look both interestingly lurid due to the content to just out of theme. Largely though, I wasn't too enthused about the style here. It too closely resembles a variant of Sonic the Hedgehog (small bodies, bizarrely large headed anthros), a style I never considered really all that good for showing off things. Jack is a pretty big archive, and I frankly don't have the time to read all of it, partly compounded by how slow it loads on dial-up. It's got good and bad qualities to it, but I'm not bothered by the theme and imagery. I like that kind of thing, honestly. It's a brave mark when someone has the guts to draw genital imagery on both males and females without looking ridiculous, and can write in the 9/11 tragedy into his own world only a few months after it happen. I can imagine people at the time could have given it a look of 'too soon', but it's nice to see someone not working palatably on the wave length of others while doing his own creation. I appreciate the level of seriousness and vile qualities in Jack, but the pandering melodrama and stereotypical media afterlife annoys me. I would also dare say the plot is rather sluggish in pace because of the former. Jack is definitely not for everyone and it's a hard thing to recommend. But if you've liked what I liked about it (which is to say, what most everyone else didn't), I'd say read several months of it and then make an opinion. Jacks gets a lot of pros and cons, but as mentioned before, it'll give you an opinion about itself, compared to more generic webcomics around. I'm not entirely sure Jack is interesting enough to keep following, but like a vacation, it was nice to visit. It suffers from predictability and inadequacy, despite my interests in the direction it went. I'd like to see things more of a similar vein to Jack in some webcomics, but executed much better than this. Jack has too many moments of sophmoric design. I give Jack a 6 of 10 stars. Ten horrific, gore dripping, soul screaming, fallen blacker than black stars. Sat Jan 17 2004 08:39 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Wish3 by Kajamir the Giant Wish3 strikes me as one of those comics that seems like it should be better than it is. Wish3 has a gloomy story line and somewhat pale b/w art... these really aren't selling points. In honesty, I'm not clear what is here. Wish3 seems alright, but falls short of expectations built up at the beginning. I liked the starting premise of Wish3. The lead in story about the young man with the hereditary family curse seemed interesting. But from there, it continues to explore the storyline yet in a somewhat less interesting course of writing. I wonder if this meant the inspiration was limited or too gimmicky to run a distance. In either case, the writing while reasonably put together, seemed ultimately lifeless as a whole effort. The art is, like many things in Wish3, passable but unable to really pull a reader in. I wouldn't describe it as manga or american manga, though. If anything, it reminds me a bit more of a cleaner line version of what's being done in Demonology 101. The characters don't have a very intriguing design either (I don't consider kitsune to be terribly original at this time). Just adds to the lack of gripping factor here. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's really just the drab overall quality Wish3 has. As I've said before, there's a lot of webcomics out there. To be of interest to a larger crowd, they need to stand out. Wish3 seemed by storyline at the beginning it could do that. But the progression indicated otherwise. Lastly, I have to complain about the navigational layout. It's very irritating to read a chapter and then have to back out to the main page to read the other. If chapters must be arranged this way, then it's probably better they not be used to begin with. If the comic ran continuously and thusly lost the covers, I don't imagine anyone would mind the loss in exchange for the smoother transitions. Wish3 gets a 4 of 10 stars from me, partially for it's drab execution and for it's failure to live up to expectations. I can't particularly recommend it. Tue Jan 13 2004 05:18 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire by Kajamir the Giant Compared to the other reviewers, I wasn't overly impressed with Dominic Deegan. It's not bad and the premise is kind of interesting, but the writing felt rather typical and the american manga style wasn't winning it many favors from me. While the situation theme seems unique enough by design, it doesn't strike me as something I'd go out of my way to read unless maybe I was recently introduced to webcomics. Perhaps reading many webcomics has done this to me, but I feel there's a lack of a gripping factor here. As a comic, it's serviceable entertainment, but I need a little something more to be truly interested in following a new webcomic. The jokes in Dominic are passable. Sometimes fairly amusing, othertimes kind of shrug worthy. The writing too can be quite cute, but other moments seem lifeless or generic. This is a shame because Dominic is a fairly nifty character. I can't recall a time I've seen a seer as a lead character, and I must admit that such a power must be exceedingly difficult to write for if used too liberally. However, those he associates don't quite stand out as much. I've seen the semi cute smart ass pet idea before. The big intimidating knight? The bumbling larcenous types? Again, feels like I've seen this all before. The characters just don't strike me as anywhere near unique as Dominic. Concerning art, while it's done quite cleanly, I just don't like straight americanized manga as a style. It's for the same reasons I hold to the writing. In general, the characters look pleasant, but their designs (again, aside from Dominic) seem unremarkable. I would have greatly preferred if the artist could have used a different look somehow. American manga is so homogenized and common at this point that I can't applaud it for much. I have mixed opinions on Dominic Deegan. By most standards, it's crafted firmly together, but it could certainly stand to improve. The overrall effect I get is simply it's an adequate work that needs more of a unique flavor that the creator has given to Dominic himself. So while done well within it's parameters, the design lacks much intrigue. I give Dominic Deegan a 6 of 10 stars. It's decent, but I don't see myself following this one. Sun Jan 04 2004 07:51 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Sketchbook by Kajamir the Giant Our final Modern Tales selection is a tale of a small teen who enters a fantasy world based on the writings of his grandfather. He seeks to help restore good to the world and make sense of the questions posed to him by visions which parallel the grandfather's acquaintances and characters within the world he developed. Sketchbook is generally a story about the fantastic but with down time elements concerning the real world. Sketchbook is very stylish indeed, both in design and art. Closest comparisons I can surmise are Creed and The Maxx. Style rules the day for Sketchbook. It just seems really inspired, particularly in designs. While the real world people are rather unexceptional looking including our hero (Abe), the fantasy world denizens are like nothing I can compare to. The soldier, the keymaster, even the king, are all rather eye catching. The author's particular art style is an interesting mix of graffiti, sketching, and a touch of anime, with over sized hands being a trademark. Style wise, I loved Sketchbook in every way. Creatively constructed images that worked very well as characterizations. Expressions also get big points from me this time. Abe's facial reactions give him a lot of life. Writing gets a little shakier here. While I thought it was nicely put together in terms of a story that both reveals and gives tingles of suspense, I must say the real world instances within the comic are just not very interesting compared to the fictional world. Furthermore, characters seem conveniently unreasonable or confrontational, more than I would find plausible. This is further confounded that the kids/teens don't particularly seem like actual teenagers, but intrepid experienced adults. That rather bugged me about Abe and his friend. You'd see them in their daily paces, but Abe's way too self assured when confronted by the dumb jocks. Even when he gets pounded, he doesn't seem affected personality wise. That sense of untouchability didn't sync with how weaker teenagers behave. Despite the lacking in the real world elements of Sketchbook (with the exception of the dad and grandfather conflict... nicely put together, I might add), Sketchbook was a lot of fun in the fictional world, as well as outright eye candy. I could even see this being animated and quite popular for late night viewing. I grant Sketchbook a 9 out of 10 stars. Had the plausibility problems not jarred me a bit, I might've given it a full ten point rating. Sketchbook is a real treat. Sun Dec 14 2003 07:45 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Teaching Baby Paranoia by Kajamir the Giant Teaching Baby Paranoia was a pretty interesting webcomic, I think. Rather than get a purely fictional gag strip offered up, we're reminded that the truth is stranger. Even more so then, when that truth is given the Baron Munchhausen work over. I found Teaching Baby Paranoia damnably interesting. The author embellishes unusual and disturbing tales of humanity's often lurid deeds, which creates something I couldn't look easily away from. There was only one problem with this method. He doesn't explain what exactly is fact and fiction which could prove to be very frustrating. Say what you will though, he makes a good story at least. Teaching Baby Paranoia plays through this idea for some time, though more in the beginning you'll find more purely fictional pieces that were kind of aimless as the author seemed to be experimenting what was comfortable for him. After a few sort of do-nothing strips like the sailor supposedly making an analogy about Microsoft, the real meat of this strip is the scandalous stories of our world with the author's peculiar sense of exaggeration. Some pieces are darkly humorous and others are simply disturbing on an intellectual and moral level. Mainly, I was glued to reading these bastardizations. Eventually, the author adds in footnotes to each comic explaining the background of what's being read, not to mention an occasional slip of what's been changed. The author also argues with an editor. Whether real or not, that's how this entire comic works. It's a good show one way or another. The art isn't the greatest, per se. I'm inclined to like the uniquely scruffy looks and dour character designs, but after a while, a lot of them pretty much blend together and you'd swear you were looking at a world whose ancestors were all salty pirates. The coloring is pretty drab to the point things would be fine without it. Aside from the hit and miss complications of the Munchausen syndrome being interjected, my only main beef was the text for this strip. In the beginning? Nigh impossible to read from being so small and squished. But like any good improving comic, it alleviates later on. This webcomic feels like it's in a niche of it's own. Sometimes rambling, sometimes informative, but usually quite interesting. I would actually like to read more of this webcomic based on it's morbid fascination factor. I give Teaching Baby Paranoia an 8.5 of 10 stars. I don't imagine it's everyone's flavor since it's a bit unconventional by content, but it stands pretty well by itself. Wed Dec 10 2003 02:24 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Tween by Kajamir the Giant Tween, thus far, is easily the best of the Modern Tales comic batch I've seen yet. While very short like the others, I could actually see Tween being a real asset to a pay site. It looks damn good, harkening me back to beloved days of watching Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, which wouldn't suprise me as being a strong inspiration. Tween's art reminds me of mish mash of several things such as Wizards and Snarf Quest, though no singular instance. It's a nice mix of bright cartoonish fantasy that I haven't seen in a while, and certainly not online. I think the characters are quite appealing, and it's nice to see them not holding to simply a modern look in medievil garb. The inclusion of an ugly hero is applaudable, since it forces people to accept him how he is and like him for reasons of writing. The writing looks pretty traditional as far as a fantasy story goes, and I think that's the idea. There's some low key humor in it, but it's more the kind to make you smile than laugh. I particularly like how the evil monster tries to convince an ally to help him rule the world, but the ally boredly rejects the idea and insists on painting a watercolor than wielding great power. The only part I didn't like is the female co -star. As was mentioned in another review, she's a little too obnoxious in her characterization. I'd recommend that her valley girl snob personality be toned down a bit since she seems to like saying nothing inspired in particular at every moment. Short, sweet, and pretty eye catching, I give Tween an 8 of 10 stars based on what I've seen. Certainly a nice little creation as a first impression. Sat Dec 06 2003 08:05 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of American Born Chinese By Kajamir the Giant Our fourth selection from Modern Tales greets me a bit better than the previous ones. Although it's really quite short, I thought the writing and the illustrations were on the good side of things; both pleasant to behold and reasonably drawing the reader in. I'm not truly clear what the general premise of American Born Chinese is thus far. It featured three seperate characters... one, a young Chinese boy growing up in America, the second being a nifty tale about the Monkey King, and the third is about an awful but admittedly humorous stereotype about a chinese immigrant. All three of these characters exploits are enjoyable in some fashion, yet they all feature very different settings and themes. The comic header shows them seemingly as main attractions, but I wonder if there will be more things shown later on. I get the feeling something ties them together, but it escapes me currently. I didn't have any problems with the writing or art here. That's not to say they're superior, but they come across pretty good. I particularly liked the smooth linework of the b/w art. It's eye candy for me. For a review, I'd prefer a slight bit more material to read over, but I'm content with what I see so far. If anything, I'd prefer a more apparent direction with the strip manifest soon, but that's about it. I give American Born Chinese a 7 of 10 stars. Looks like a bright future from this perspective. Mon Nov 24 2003 11:37 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of The New Adventures of Death by Kajamir the Giant Our third selection from Modern Tales is a colorful comedic strip about a wimpy down-on-his-luck skeleton, and just about anything else. The New Adventures of Death has but one real focus aside from it's perpetually unfortunate pile of bones protagonist. It's near entirely random. As a personal taste, if there's something I don't like beyond clip art in comics, it's randomness. It feels incredibly lazy. So, perhaps someone who enjoys the concept of randomness might like this more. I can but roll my eyes and groan tiredly. The layout seems to follow suit with the randomness well. There's panels that just seem to be made to be as pointless as possible. This felt somewhat unsatisfying, and several times I wondered if I was supposed to read the panels in a different order. Maybe a little more substance would have been nicer. Things are usually set up with some idea of a story, but it just veers where it wants to from there. As such, I can't really comment on anything concerning plot or what not. And since I don't care for random content, there's a large gap here that can't appeal to me. This reminds me of Commander Kitty's overwhelming attempts at being cute. If it can't get you with it's one shot hook, there isn't much else to have it stand out as a desirable recreation. While I didn't care for the theme or writing within, I thought the art was rather cute. Ares has got to be the most adorable war god I've ever seen. Colors are bright and cheerful, pleasant to behold. The images are mainly PG in nature, like grown up Weebles. If there's anything I thought could be helped here, it's that more expression could be used. However, in the case of Death, a simplified skeleton head would indeed be hard to give emotion to. The New Adventures of Death isn't the most random webcomic I've had the dubious pleasure to read in my time. In some obscure corner of the 'net, there's an Earthbound themed sprite comic called Chicanery that dwarves this selection in sheer random insanity. To be my usual blunt self, I don't like randomness for the same reason I don't usually care for unoriginal image clip art comics. It just looks like you could put up anything and no one could tell the difference. I can't get a feel of talent in things like this. And in the case of randomness, the stories might as well be written by sugared up preadolescents. I don't understand why the young crowd finds things like this humorous. Maybe because some people aren't too inspired, other people expect something similar. I don't know, it's just an theory. My sentiments made clear on this 'style', I give The New Adventures of Death a 2 of 10 stars. Again, not quite a feather in the cap for Modern Tales, sadly. I had expected something a bit more discerning in what they were to feature. Maybe we're just touching the bottom of the barrel thus far. Wed Nov 19 2003 01:52 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Hutch Owen - Public Relations! by Kajamir the Giant For the most part, I'm siding with Salen and Phantom Critic on this one. Hutch Owen, or at least this instance of him, is very short and doesn't offer very much. Upon hearing there's apparently more Hutch Owen strips out there, I can't help but think there's a lot missing here considering I've never heard of this cartoon strip. Hutch Owen isn't particularly explained, it just exists as what it is in this strip with little of anything offered beyond social system commentary/'rants'. By itself and under these considerations, this webcomic was very unenjoyable. Not abhorrent as Get Your War On, but just boring and non-engaging. Based on that, I can only say with certainty is Hutch Owen does nothing at all to grab new readers to it's side. Certainly not a plus from the vantage point of promoting Modern Tales as a pay site. Or at least by a review here. The story... well, what is there? There's a backdrop about bums being used for a marketing scheme and something about ghosts... I think. With less than a hundred pages and very little explained thus far, I can't reliably comment on much in accuracy. Basically, there's a strange bit going on with emotive ghosts seeming to arise when they suffer according to the social system at hand, and everything else is the main character 'ranting' about social injustices while employed as a shill by a exploitive company he despises. There's nothing really new offered thus far in the dialogue. Hutch holds to the stereotypical idealism against injustice and argues with people who don't really seem to care what he thinks. Further, that he argues with his boss rather arrogantly, one must wonder why he's still held in employment. The art is pretty weak. It just looks disenchanting. Maybe it's just how the style is, but it's rather unaesthetically pleasing. Chances are the creator doesn't see himself as a visual artist. If that's the case, I can forgive this, but I don't know many who hold such an opinion and keep drawing for any length. There's so little to say here. I don't hate this comic. But it lacks any sort of edge or attempt to make me feel strongly about it. Given what I have to work with here, it's just so very dull and uninteresting. There's nothing to grab a new reader at all. Maybe it has something more to offer someone already familiar with Hutch Owen. In any event, I give Hutch Owen a mere .5 of 10 stars. Sat Nov 15 2003 06:19 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Vicious Souvenirs by Kajamir the Giant Vicious Souvenirs is the first targeted review of Modern Tales, a subscription based webcomic site. I've often wondered what comics are grabbing enough to be warranted on those things. I wonder if others are of a similar strain to Vicious? The story world seems an underplayed superhero variant of our own. I say underplayed because superhero comics are often rather superficial and goofy, while Vicious Souvenirs is more about vast intrigue and misleads that would make Keyser Söze blush. Get ready to do some mental sifting when you read this one. I can sort of get into the story. Wikkid's narrations are a very nice, if a needed organizing touch to things. The world and situations seem interesting. However, I found it all to be generally difficult to follow. There's so much side stepping and jumping around along the way of what seems to be the plot, it was like reading Stephen King's manner of writing. All over the place and needlessly meticulous. This hindered my ability to enjoy Vicious Souvenirs. A lack of focus. It seemed to me that things had to be written down and compared to be followed. Too many characters kept popping to mind, while Dorian seemed the only one beyond Wikkid with particular depth. Everyone else... there was either too much typical mystery about them or they didn't seem engaging. The catfish anthromorph; Cowboy, however, was a real gem to see. The art was suitably comicbook-like. However, it's a different style than something you might find in a Marvel book, but more unto old pulp fiction using comic book conventions. Linework and colors didn't seem very crisp at all, though use of the latter was rather good at times. Brightness was particularly poor, though sometimes it was obviously intentional. Designs varied, but were generally nice. I think I liked Wikkid better with the punky blond hair though. He looked too much like a generic burn-out later. The layout... it's interesting, I give it that. In the beginning, there's instances of words being repeated for dramatic effect, but it didn't work well. Later, that doesn't occur and the clicking based layout uses less stacking of images atop one another. The comic loads ala flash, and the reader clicks to progress the action. Sometimes there's mild transitional animation. Panels can come in at any angle, so there's a lot of convention thrown out the door. In some ways, I liked Vicious Souvenirs. Others leave me thinking there's more appealing ways to show it. I can feel this is a good work, but I didn't particularly care for the presentation. Because it's so very stylized, I can't say I'd know if Vicious is going to change in some way towards a common direction. There's only so many comics of it up, so anything's possibly technically. I think it would be a plus in particular if they just cut down on the constant new characters who come and go, rather, just sticking with the core group and show some actual relation with Wikkid and Diesel beyond the beginning. I don't understand why they're both posed on the main page when they don't really interact, particularly since Diesel doesn't really rate as a co-star either. Vicious Souvenirs is different. That's about the best sum I can make of it. It wasn't really good or bad, though better than average by a little. It feels ambitious, but not quite there either. That's ambigious, but it's hard to sum up something that felt this disorganized and yet vast. If this was like The Usual Suspects, then I'd just prefer to sit it through than try to reason out the dead ends and vagueness. I give Vicious Souvenirs a 6 of 10. It's good, but not quite the sort of thing I'd pay to read. Due to the load times, it's likely not very friendly for dial up users. Be prepared to look at something else while you wait. Wed Nov 05 2003 10:51 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Elf Only Inn by Kajamir the Giant Elf Only Inn is one of the few webcomics out there that actually makes me laugh out loud. Despite the seeming simplicity of it, the writing is something most experienced participants on chats and roleplays will come to recognize as true to the subject. Elf Only Inn is a hilarious take on our favored online RP subcultures. There's not really anything I didn't like about Elf Only Inn. The writing is wonderfully satirical, the layout is befitting, and the art which starts as minimalist modified copy/pastes of the author's own pleasant images, later shifts to nicely drawn original cartoons of the characters with scenery. As such, this is a pretty short review for me. I don't have anything particularly critical to say about Elf Only Inn. I feel it's done it's job as a humorous satire of roleplaying rather well. If I must gripe about anything, it's only that Elf Only Inn ended eventually. I would love to continue reading this webcomic. Though it might not be as polished looking as other webcomics we've reviewed, there's a large fun factor here that often goes missing in other online strips, which can make me feel like a backseat reader as opposed to feeling halfway involved. I recommend Elf Only Inn to anyone who can appreciate the foibles and situations that arise from online roleplaying. Heck, it should be mandatory reading. I give Elf Only Inn a 10 of 10 stars. I highly approve. Mon Oct 20 2003 09:59 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Kagerou (an electric manga) by Kajamir the Giant Starting to read this webcomic, I initially was not very impressed. In fact, my first thought concerning it was, 'oh no, not another Space Opera!'. In any case, I followed it through and my opinion did indeed become better about Kagerou. So right off the bat, for those looking to read Kagerou; just sit it out for a few chapters since the beginning is very weak to the point where it might otherwise deter people. I'll get to that soon enough. However, I need to wade through the issues that plagued a bit too much along the way. A very noticeable aspect about Kagerou is the art. It's, well, really colorful. Sometimes these schemes are nice enough. Others, just gaudy. It's a mixed bag of nuts here. I would actually wager to say things are maybe too colorful to the point of being distracting, more often than not. A large nuisance for those just jumping into the comic at the start, will find the reader struggling to discern whose colored word bubble is whose. Eventually, some directional tags are added to those word bubbles, but not when they were needed most. I think the amount of colored detail can be admired here, but it's not as effective as it should be. Brights, mottleds, designs, monotones... it's pretty varied, but the placement occurs as lacking aesthetics or practicality in several places. Getting to the linework itself, I sort of debate how much of a true manga this is. To be blunt, if you compare this to the previous selection, The Rules of Make Believe, this doesn't seem a very authentic manga style at all, just the americanized version of it. You can see the influence although it's not terribly noticeable at all in the beginning. Furthermore, because the colors are distracting, it can be difficult to see what lays underneath. However, I will vouch there is significant improvement and sharpness later on. As an example, Kano's overwhelming physical effemininity isn't so excrutiating later. It made him hard to take seriously at the start. Writing wise, again, just get past the first several chapters. While answers come later than they should, we get to see some real depth here. The star of the show is clearly Kano and his MPD. Little else than a gimmick at the start, Kano's psychosis is damnably interesting by end. His personality switches at perhaps the most dramatic times as if in a movie, but there's a sense of fun in that. Red's amoral personality is very good in particular. He's a rather thorough and graphic evil, not usually touched upon by level in other webcomics. The side characters I've found to be less intriguing however. I mean once you've got a crazed champion with conflicting personalities; he's going to be a tough act to follow. The co-star, Cho, is mainly just annoyingly trite at first, but like all things in this comic, she's more palatable later on. Less obnoxious and contradictory to her own apparent behavior. I found Kagerou to be a mixed bag of results, but with signs pointing to a more positive direction. I'm not sure where it's going to go from here, but I'm sure it'll be an interesting trip. I give Kagerou a 5.5 of 10 stars. I'd give it a higher score if about the first existing half of the webcomic didn't disappoint me so much. I also feel there's probably more this comic could be doing in terms of characters... but Kagerou is certainly shaping up to something nice. I imagine I'll continue to follow it, but I don't think I'll be checking it as religiously as other webcomics I read. Kagerou is largely inappropriate for young audiences due to gore, graphic violence, language, and graphic demonstrations of especially vile evil. By the same measure, that can be a plus for older audiences. Fri Oct 17 2003 03:14 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of PartiallyClips by Kajamir the Giant Ah, clip art. An entire comic of it no less. Is there an antithesis to the word, 'huzzah'? When I first saw this, I groaned in irritation. Having read the entire content of Get Your War On in a previous review, an abominable static clip art based comic that appears regularly in Rollingstone, I was not looking forward to this. Entering with a downward cast look, I found it wasn't as bad as the sensational tripe that was Get Your War On. However, it's still a clip art toon, and not really an impressive foundation to speak about. I'm afraid I have to disagree with Xenix about the potential of this medium. Seriously, how much can anyone say complimentary about this genre? It's very lazy looking (one would not think it could get worse than a sprite comic, but here we are), not at all interesting to behold, and from what I've seen so far, relies on black humor and/or attitude. You couldn't really tell a story from borrowed clip art like this, so you get an endless blast of dull images with snappy words tagged on. Not a huge selling point, particularly in the creativity department. While PartiallyClips is slightly better than the previous clip comic review, the very idea of it has little mileage beyond a quick smirk. Again, what is there to say? PartiallyClips uses a different clip art piece for each three panel comic and runs a black humor joke from it. So that alone, gives it the tiniest boost over Get Your War On. What we've got here is generally repetitive, but not half as monotonous as the comparitive piece. The jokes are alright, here and there. Like Luthorne says, there's a few moments of amusement to be found. However, some are just more sick than anything. Clip art featuring innocent happier scenes are made depressive and borderline vulgar by content. I would not mind that much if it was a concentrated effort to feature something like that as a theme, but PartiallyClips is a different animal each day, sometimes from the same species. So, there's no logic to anything. Just slap whatever on there and hope people give donations, eh? End result: better than Get Your War On. However, it's still rather inane and clip art comics are just not worthwhile experiences from what I can determine. Inspiration is bleak at best, and talent apparently can't show in something like this. Nor can I get over how incredibly slovenly this whole genre is. I guess if it gets the author some donations from people with a dollar burning a hole in their pocket, great. But if you're looking for something satisfying, don't make this detour. Drive the scenic route for another exit. I give PartiallyClips a 2 of 10 stars, due to the immense con vs pro nature of this medium. I probably won't bother to continue reading it. And preferably, no other webcomic that's clip art based. Or with this punny of a title. Wed Oct 08 2003 12:27 AM | Read All Reviews for this title 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. Sat Oct 04 2003 07:01 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of 1/0 by Kajamir the Giant Thanks to the provided mirror site, I was able to view this rather interesting piece of work. What begins as a crudely drawn comic about nothing in particular becomes an engaging look into just about everything one can think of, albeit still crudely drawn. 1/0 is a beautifully cerebral webcomic, intellectual and creatively involving. As a self reflective creation, this is what Checkerboard Nightmare should've been. 1/0 is a success in my eyes. Whether it was an experiment or truly some strange effort to get girls, it was a long enjoyable journey. Despite a slow beginning, which I thought wasn't as uncertain as the others have mention, we see the beginnings of something great. Steadily, a sparse world is created by Tailsteak the author, wherein he speaks to the little inhabitants he creates. He talks to them and we watch as their world is manifested in a way one might look upon a god. The people gain higher sentience while the land grows grass and later, develops rain. For both man and god, it is a growing experience. There isn't so much a single plotline as a setting where these little people live and develop. We watch them create a structure, life, inter-relations, feel love/hate, and later, debate the existence of god and their own fates. This is immense stuff. While some parts of fairly dry as the strip grows very exposition heavy or even trite in some places (the 600-700 strips didn't enthuse me much) the total intellectual nature of 1/0 as a whole is immense. A genius work even. This is no mere webcomic. This is like a highly involved Maxis series game. This would be SimExistence. I'm simply impressed with the breadth and depth of 1/0. It's hardly perfect but it's incredible for what little it appears to be. The end is a real kicker too, one I dare not reveal and should not be jumped to early. 1/0 is simply a comic I can't begin to praise enough for it's cleverness. If there's anything wrong with 1/0, it's the author's interjected heavy handed of opinions, sometimes very biased or ill informed. However, this is tempered by the possibility of simply showing that while he was a god to his creations, he too was very imperfect and possibly unmoral as well. As such, 1/0 can be looked upon as a very neutral but well expressed creation. I highly commend 1/0. It's interesting, it's smart, and it's clever. I give 1/0 a 9 of 10 stars. I could only wish... well, you'll just have to read it to know what I mean. I recommend you too, begin the 1/0 journey. For anyone looking to write, this webcomic really should be experienced. Tue Sep 23 2003 08:55 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Same Difference by Kajamir the Giant Same Difference is a fun short story comic, possessed of about seventeen seperate loadings for the entire story. SD deals with entirely plausible non-fantastical events with two young Korean Americans as they embark on a rather cruel exploration trip to find out the truth behind someone else's sad life. Along the way, they happen to learn about themselves before all is said and done. Same Difference has some fairly excellent art done in b/w, and if my eyes aren't fully deceiving me, shades of brown. Characters are very eye catching, a mix of cartoonish and realistic. Their expressions are maybe a little innocent for what they're actually doing, but that could be attributed to style. Grounded, realistic, shows how normal people can be cruel or foolish, but capable of change or understanding too. The characters embark on a rite of passage that I found welcoming, if not fresh. Reading about the female character was a kick. She had this quality that made me both embarrassed and eager to see what would happen next. Same Difference was a nice short read, easy to jump into. I'd recommend it for those who'd who can appreciate a bright tale combining both humor and serious matters of the heart. I give Same Difference an 8 of 10 stars. Sun Sep 14 2003 10:29 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theatre by Kajamir the Giant Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theatre is an unconventional comic featuring snippets of original poetry and basic wisdom as it's consecutive filler. The author claims it as an experiment inspired by Scott McCloud... but it's really up to the individual reader how well the experiment is, succeeding or flopping. Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theatre presents it's moments of thought through a uninspired looking character called Dingbat the Cat. Past him and occasionally a mouse who appears to play off, each new addition to the comic has relatively nothing to do with the previous one. As such, you can't read this straight on for a story like most of our previous selections but must take each strip as it is, like a new day of unexpected possibilities. The very feel of this comic harkens me back to memories of things I've seen from my mother's collection of yesteryear. The art is kinda of variable, but largely seems reminiscent of the old newspaper comic, Krazy Kat. Meanwhile, the dispensements of written emotion felt more like something you might see in the 70's, alongside Zippy comics, Love Is, and Keep on Truckin' stickers. Seeing these things as somewhat familiar, but not specifically part of any fond experience of my own, I wasn't too enthused about the general style of things here. I also don't particularly care for personal poetry and the dreamy generic sounding wisdom. This content might be of more interest to those who can appreciate such. Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theatre isn't really my thing, truth be told. I didn't feel it had much to express to me at my age, nor was I caught up in the attempted beauty of the experiment. I leave with the impression it was probably trying too hard for the most part. I give Magic Inkwell Comic Strip Theatre a 4 of 10 stars. It's not bad per se, but I didn't see much of anything to appreciate about it. I don't particularly recommend it therefore. The experiment is a little too pretenious for it's own good. Fri Sep 12 2003 01:44 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Ghost Cat By Kajamir the Giant Our selection this week is a rather simplistic webcomic featuring three young people, their zany stereotype pirate/landlord, and a cute floating dead cat which does little else than... float around and look cute. Really, that's all there is to this comic. It aims for humor, but I didn't feel too inclined to even make a chuckle reading it. It's like a soda that's been left sitting open too long. Sugary, but flat and unsatisfying. There's discernably little to no story in Ghost Cat. Just weak gags with the occasional bit of romping around by the kids. A setting like this could work for syndication (a haven of canned laughter) or with actual funny jokes. But Ghost Cat just doesn't manage it. It's rather dull really. There's little action, and when there is, it feels abridged. (You'd think a sequence with zombies vs rednecks would've been more fun.) The characters are equally empty feeling. Each of them has one defining gimmick and no background whatsover. The naggish female dealing with guys she can be mean to without concern, the tech head, and the goofy idiot. All of them, rather forgettable. Mr Shingles actually might be a show stealer if there was something to take, since he has a strangeness inherent to him that makes him at least amusing. Ghost Cat is, well... I wrote in a previous review (Commander Kitty) that comics that use cute characters need to have more to said characters. Because if the character is not judged cute enough by others, it's a waste to use it. Ghost Cat is cute, but completely boring as well. He doesn't get any funny jokes, he doesn't really speak, and he just floats there in each scene looking mindless, usually doing little to nothing. He's a true gimmick, and a poor symbolic bulwark for this comic as much as he's ironically befitting. The art is alright. Mostly clean looking. However, it's mainly just a lot of talking scenes and very little action. I feel cut and pasting might have actually worked just as well here. I also couldn't shake that the goofball friend of the trio looked like Brock from Pokemon. The anime-ish look is tired here, but servicable. There's not much to comment on Ghost Cat. It's about a two hour read from the start at this time, so it's easy to look through, but it feels very bare bones. The characters page isn't even up yet, if ever. Ghost Cat needs one thing above all else. Actual content. It's about as interesting as eating plain potato chips or wheat flavored oatmeal. Palatable, and that's it. I can't recommend it unless you're looking for something that lacks edge and has all the originality of a midseason replacement sitcom. While it doesn't do things in a way to say to me 'eye sore!', it fails to prove itself exciting for the reader. I'm giving Ghost Cat a 4 out of 10 stars. There needs to be some actual material here. And sometimes being adequate isn't enough. Tue Sep 02 2003 11:47 AM | Read All Reviews for this title 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. Fri Aug 29 2003 07:10 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Zebra Girl By Kajamir the Giant This week's selection is a 100% b/w webcomic updated every Friday. It features an evolving storyline that begins at awkward attempts at humor usually of a slapstick nature, and then becomes a dark perhaps gothic tale of becoming a monster. Needless to say, I loved it. First off, Zebra Girl has some excellent art. It's sort of a cartoonish Gigeresque. The latter portion of that mix doesn't become more apparent until the storyline becomes more dire, but the artist improves overrall by that time. Zebra Girl's design is simply phenomenal. She's highly complex in appearance, and for her to be rendered continuously as the main character must certainly be a lot of effort, which I find impressive. I see a lot of creators nowadays simply adopt whatever is quick, cute, and easy to render, and they make characters based from that. Zebra Girl herself lacks much any notion of this. Rather, she becomes more detailed as time goes on. I can appreciate the strain that must be in this artist's hand. The rest of the character's generally remain very cartoonish looking, but as the storyline turns a deeper shade of black, they befitting look more grim. Sam, and eventually Jack, are good examples of this. And some characters are simply otherworldly, particularly the raving insane tyrant, Tool. Zebra Girl does an excellent job when it comes to stylish appearance. The story is a bit more variable. While I grew to really like how things turned out, Zebra Girl didn't capture me in the beginning. It was more goofy for the sake of being goofy than anything terribly humorous. But as Sandra transforms irreversibly into Zebra Girl, the kid gloves come off. The humor strains away into all consuming darkness, a serious tale in a strange secondary world. Think the Napping Cat's Dream minus the superpowers, and a whole lot more blackhearted. The story has a strong modern day gritty fantasy flavor to it. Maybe a touch goofy by setting, but again, dark in content. As such, Zebra Girl grew on me. The characters are interesting enough. Aside from Jack's ditzy and deeply in denial sister who doesn't seem to expand much beyond her starting parameters, the rest of them either grow or maintain themselves in a way where they simply are interesting (Tool and Prof Broadshoulders). But really, the comic is about Sandra and she doesn't disappoint. There's nothing too trite about her existence into a monster. A little cliche' here and there, but that's expected. If I have any issues about Zebra Girl, it's just two. First off, the text is just painful to read. Tightly squished together is not kind on the eyes. Second, I could do without the creator's lethargic anthromorphic self appearances in the comic. I find them kind of detracting, sort of a call back to the inconsistent humor in the beginning, and more a nod to his own insecurities and foibles, which I don't feel at all belong in a publically enjoyed comic. It could be considered cute, but it's somewhat lame too. I've just seen it too many times. Please, creators, artists, etc... keep the self depreciation and pointless bits of sidetracking randomness out of your comics! Save it for your friends, Deadjournals, or diaries. You're only shooting yourself in the foot creatively otherwise. As a whole, I do like Zebra Girl quite a bit. It's of a subject matter that appeals to me and the art is pure sour candy. I'd recommend it to anyone with an attention span (since it only updates weekly). Zebra Girls gets my thumbs up, garnering 9 out of 10 stars. Ignoring the few detractors it has, creatively, this is a great work of design. Sun Aug 24 2003 08:04 AM | Read All Reviews for this title Nodwick is a very lovable light hearted humor based comic set in a Dungeons and Dragons type world of magic and mischief. The creator's mix of enjoyable bright art and playful writing is a real treat, sort of like Escher's qualities with a funny bone. Nodwick is about the world's most pathetic schlep. He's a henchman to a motley group consisting of Piffany: a passive/aggressive priest with a 'traumatically positive upbringing', Yeagar: a lunk of a swordsman who uses poor Nodwick as an all purpose implement, and Artax: a rascal of a wizard who typically enables Yeagar's lack of concern for Nodwick for fun and profit. Nodwick, as a henchman, is under a contract that makes working in the slums of a third world country look nice. He's got to carry an obscene amount of loot to being a makeshift grappling hook, amongst things. He dies time and time again in the line of loyal hauling and schlepping, yet is forever brought back to his humorous walking nightmare by the overly good natured and gullible Piffany. The group dynamics make this comic what it is. The entire group is fun to read about. While the online version is mainly short run or one shot adventures, the comics go a little more in depth of epic adventure as well as character depth. I highly recommend getting them. I don't have anything bad to say about Nodwick. It's a real pleasure to read (alas, updating only every Thursday on the website due to the creator's busy schedule), a welcome bit of variety to today's modern violence and anguish scenarios set in medievil times. Case in point, Nodwick points the comical back in comic. I give Nodwick a snazzy 10 of 10 stars. It's just that good and I'd recommend it to most anyone who can at least appreciate a lil gaming humor or cartoonish comedy in general. Sun Aug 10 2003 07:54 PM | Read All Reviews for this title The Spiders is rather colorful by both art and scenario. Although at times I'm not entirely clear on things in situation, I found a topical background made fairly interesting. Where else might you find a comic that features a forbidden romance concerning a Taliban? The Spiders, flat out looks pretty sharp for a webcomic. My mind often lurked back to childhood images of GI Joe. The reminiscent cel-like art of The Spiders looks great. Bright expressive colors, nice visual design, it's a good thing. I respect how things are delivered by presentation too. It takes work for anyone on this side of the coast to make a Taliban into an engaging figure of both doctrination and tormented ideals. Neither the Americans, anyone controlling the spiders, or the Taliban themselves, are made to look more glorious than another. So far, it's a story in a political world background, without heavily pushing one country's dogma over on the reader. That sort of neutrality is fragile ground for presentation, but I think The Spiders does it successfully. While I really liked the ongoing small stories amongst the Taliban, I wasn't clear why The Spiders is the title. The Spiders are these disguised mobile crawling cameras that resemble rocks, while others simply hover around. They're controlled by a relatively faceless multinational contigent of civilians, usually trying to talk to the Taliban and those involved, for varying reasons. While they spy and show the scene, they're seemingly a bit ineffectual for the most part, and work best as simply an information/spy network. My point is, they seem more like an associated aspect to the story than anything too forefront. You see them around, but they don't have a great deal impact in the current three existing chapters. I feel another title might have worked better, or simply there is just so much more to explain their purpose in things. There's no singular character to talk about for The Spiders, thanks to a somewhat impersonal but intrusive perspective in the story run. It's more about a certain scene put to fiction. I can't say the Taliban would really act like they do, but there was enough variations to them to show they, while zealots, were people too. I think The Spiders, while maybe a little unclear in some parts, is a pretty good work. I'd recommend it to anyone who could appreciate the artistic or detached yet emotional perspective on the story. I give The Spiders an 8 out of 10 stars. Good read, this. Sun Aug 03 2003 03:37 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Traced by Kajamir the Giant Father Magnus is fairly on the ball when he says Traced is something of a difficult comic to review. Really, it's not a webcomic so much as a series of autobiographical comics that are on the web. So you could say it's one, but it lacks the feel and delivery of it. The content is enormously neutral, spoken from the experiences of the creator. As such, there's no plot, characters, or other similar things to discuss. Just one woman's early life. It's easier and maybe more sensical to discuss perhaps the presentation of this selection as opposed to saying much in regards to her demonstrated experiences. A reader, even at a fair pace, could probably knock off Traced in a comfortable hour and a half. It's short and loads fast, sometimes with only a few needless words. Rather than reading a straight on comic, you click on panels, and within those, a small anecdote takes place in the creator's life. Typically, you click on those images to progress things, which don't tend to run too long. As such, Traced is easy to pick up at a later time when one is busy. The art is entirely made of black and white outlines, most of it with small repeating animations, sometimes featuring text. All of this is nothing to write home about, but it can be pretty cute sometimes. That's about the extent of it. Textual, there's a few mistakes here and there. How much that bothers you depends on your politics of grammar. Concerning the content... it's hard to judge it in this format. Really, it isn't presented or suitable for our purposes unless you're willing to comment on the creator's life. I'm under the impression the anecdotes shown might be construed by some as perhaps empowering for young females, but it seemed more often to be something more along the lines of public commiseration. There's often no particular moral or apparent success from these anecdotes, such as the drinking and smoking stories. With this, there's a lack of direction, like we're reading a dramaticized version of someone's diary. And quite probable from the context, a good chunk is based from such recordings. I couldn't relate to most of the stories. Maybe this is because it's intended for someone other than my gender (as an example, males are not prone to anorexia or bulimia). Or maybe I was just never so overly neurotic and foolish as to the extent of her. There were some moments I found close to home, such as the Grandfather story, but mainly I couldn't picture myself even in reversed roles with the creator's ordeals. Because I'm not really willing to bash her life, my criticism on it ends largely there. I have to wonder though, if there were perhaps better stories she could have told? Maybe something more universal? I just didn't care much for the selection's content. A less aimless anecdotal theme would have been preferable, because as of this time I'm not terribly compelled to feel for her past rites of passage or neuroticisms. Reading some of these was cute in some places, but mainly dry as Jack Webb from the old Dragnet series. Given the sheer awkwardness and neutrality of this selection for review purposes, I'm leaving it with a very middle ground score. 4.5 of 10 stars. I think something a little closer than 5% fiction is required for reviewing here. I took away a .5 due to the sheer gimmicky irritation of the 'Loser' comic, which makes no abject navigational sense in presentation for the reader. I don't think Traced is bad, but it seems out of place for reviewal here. Lacking a daughter, or having been a young girl at any point, I wouldn't know if this is any good to recommend. Mon Jul 28 2003 02:56 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Strings of Fate by Kajamir the Giant Strings of Fate is a decent comic with the theme concerned around the twelve animals of the chinese zodiac chart. The animals are represented in human form, treated as divine entities existing in the modern day with the bulk of the existing plot existing around the mysterious relation of the Rat and Cat. There is both humor and background intrigue featured for Strings of Fate. I find the story in SoF palatable. I think the background of it is fairly unique and enjoyable. Nothing terribly mindblowing, but it seems able to hold it's own. I think that's the best I can mention about the content. Not bad, but not all that eye catching either, short of the premise. Perhaps one of the hinderances is characterization. Several animal manifestations are shown, given names, but little is done with them. They seem to pop in only for a bit, and given their number, this can be distracting. Further, from what I gathered, no one was particularly deep. The personages are set up as a personality theme (Kuang comes to mind), but with only so much else about them. I think the protangonist, Tony, was at least made well enough. If the main character was any less, this all would have been a larger deal to me. But he's fairly likable and maybe a bit unpredictable. The art is generally good. Some parts don't quite do it for me, say the usage of overly large heads in the beginning. The style of sharp hawkish noses also was an acquired flavor, but I grew to appreciate it. In terms of how to describe the appearance of things, quote me as comparing it to the previous selections: Demonology 101 and Rules of Make Believe. I didn't have any particular trouble discerning most of the characters. Although sharp chins/noses are apparently all the rage in this world, I think appearances generally seemed distinct enough to each character. If there's any confusion, it might simply come from the aforementioned numerous background characters. However, if there's anything done particularly well in this comic, it's got to be humor. I mean this both in terms of writing and visual presentation. The deadpan look of Tiger and Mao to Tony's 'You have each other's smile.' comment is priceless. The intense cuteness of the kittens in the beginning meeting their spiritual guru, to Mao getting stoned on catnip is great. Humor isn't the main thing here, but little gems like this caught my eye. Getting to a point much ballyhooed by the other reviewers: the page select. Now, I found SoF to load fairly quick. Pages are uncomplicated so they arise quickly, even on a slow comp like mine. While there is an understandable annoyance factor accompanied with having to change the number in the URL repeatedly, there's the benefit that the page does not need to spend time loading the script for the buttons. This is sort of a trade off. I didn't feel it was that difficult to punch in the numbers, but it would have proven useful if for each chapter, a continuous page total was listed, as opposed to hitting the 404 at the end, or simply remembering count. Still, considering the 'page next' option featured in the first two textual chapters, maybe it would not have been so bad to have it featured, since scripting usage is pretty low in general on SoF. I'm generally out to sea concerning this aspect of the comic, but I can imagine worse. Argon Zark, anyone? Overall, I'm pleased with Strings of Fate. I feel it has more pros than cons and things generally work for it. I'm giving Strings of Fate a 6 of 10 stars. Sun Jul 27 2003 11:17 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Something Positive by Kajamir the Giant I became aware of this particular webcomic about a year ago, when it was noticed and ran in vogue with several friends of mine. I decided to see what the story with it was and after about a hundred comics or so, stopped reading, departing with a negative impression. I like black humor actually. Some of my favorite films are by Oliver Stone. But I like it sophisticated and capable of being clever. I don't think I'd deem SP's version being that way. Rather, as Catty mentioned, it seems more bent on being inflammatory, and in my belief, spiteful. One of the reasons I think I couldn't get into this, is because I could see my world around me being not unlike Something Positive. Cynical sarcastic young people, stuck in their own misery and spewing bile at each other in frustration. Humor comes from the hurting of others, and the threats are readily spoken, but empty promises. Poetic as that might be for a modern day tragedy, it doesn't amuse me. The level of hate and cruelty in Something Positive is a turn off for me. I personally know some people that enjoy the melo/drama others bring. To my ears, a broken record plays over and over. SP seems like a sign of the times, but not something terribly imaginative. I'll give this. The art for SP isn't too shabby. Fair color usage is apparent, women can be made to look sexy while cartoonish, it's usually apparent who's who. Choo Choo Bear is undeniably adorable too. I can't really fault the designs either. They work for what they represent. Other webcomics we've reviewed have much better art, but again, it's adequate here. If anything, it reminds me a bit of and seems similar to Penny Arcade's appearance. However, reading about the whiny main male character, his bitchy worthless female friends, the assorted ho-hum side characters, I just couldn't care. They're so incredibly obnoxious and spiteful, I couldn't and didn't want to connect with them. I recall mentioning to my friends it would have been more interesting to watch a sniper go at them after a while. By their constant attitude problems, I'm surprised each of them didn't have more enemies. The depressing complaints of the main character, the male bashing from the girls, was a large turn off. SP seems to be a comic about the most annoying of people. Short and to the point, I give a Something Positive a 3.5 of 10 stars. I don't care for this kind of content. If I want it, I'll listen to the people around me. Seeing it in comic form doesn't do anything for this giant. It's a popular comic, so it must hold appeal to others for some reason, but I can't personally recommend it. Maybe it's more of interest to people who don't live around these characterizations in real life. Mon Jul 14 2003 06:36 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Faans by Kajamir the Giant This week's selection is a rather lengthy archive. In particular, I bring this up because I haven't had the time to read the entire thing, but went up to about mid 2001 from what I could tell. Since Faans tends to involve in storyline several times, try not to hold me to things that occur later. Faans, in most accurate description, evolves several times. Art, story, characters, presentation, content, everything at some point, changes. For the most part, this is a good thing since Faans is not overly impressive at the start. However, where evolutions occur, so does the opposite. Starting with the art, it's decent. A clean, sort of cutesy without being sugar laden style is used, alongside several guest artists who do the characters justice. The main style, while acceptable, didn't appeal to me. I could never shake the feeling that everyone looked like misfits from the Archie Comics universe, most notably the faces of Riik and his girlfriend. The style is largely simple with minimal backgrounds, doing it's job but earning no particular accolades from me, despite being black and white. The writing is a little strange here. At the start, things are kind of soft hearted. Later on, however, the plot becomes obsessively enmeshed in exploration of dominatory issues for some reason, ranging from government mind control to semi-explicit bondage scenes. I would liken the effect of Alvin and the Chipmunks going to GTA's Vice City. After a while, I started finding the control themes boring. The comic had become a mild intrigue/persecution based thing, the changed feeling maybe too radical for my tastes. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that a group of fantasy/sci fans cohesively becomes a self contained and effective, para-military group and then joins up with everything they opposed for a long time. The plot line is all over the place and usually absurd as a soap opera. The story shift to this new theme didn't work with me, but made me wonder if the creator just got bored with what the original premise seemed to be concerning. Although in all fairness, the fighting against the government was at the start, it just seemed more innocent in content. There were some good places in the story, but as such, I didn't like what Faans became. Faans runs heavily on its characters, like a tank's treads. In this case, even with all the governmental manipulations being traded back and forth, it's very much integrated with the characters themselves. And if you can judge what I thought of the story to correlate here, you've got my opinion spelled out on the Faans. I never entirely bought the whole deal of this group, with the aforementioned mentioning of the sci fi club becoming paramilitary and so on. Rather than have very expressive personalites, in my opinion, these people had maybe one or two characteristics, which were submerged to show off their talents. It was more like looking at a dossier of a special forces team. 'This one is a fighter, this one knows how to hack computers, this one does espionage, etc'. Now, they do have their moments where there's no content other than interpersonal interaction, but I didn't like it at all. The conclusions characters came to made little sense. Believability, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't exist here. 1. A straight laced religious goody two-shoes marries in relatively short order, a crazed excitement junky who talks like a turn of the century Boston street urchin, whose going to die in four years of a blood disease. Their first meeting? Him bleeding on the floor of a convention, while the chick looks at his open wounds and gets physically excited. Very romantic. The two later spend large amounts of inappropriate time dealing with a love/hate relation with BD/SM. Huh? 2. The romance manga loving character falls instantly in love with an alien who can't communicate beyond pictographs in thought balloons and looks like nothing more than a red floating square with eyes. She immediately falls in love with the thing for some reason, gets impregnated in the brain and gives birth just as quick, and soon is dragged off into outer space. Finding she can't breathe, the alien sets her back down to the planet allowing her to live, and she becomes angry about it. I suppose dying in the frigid vacuum of stars next to a loved one is better. 3. The renn faire enthusiast tells her 'best friend' how she's so used to being the 'strong' one in character. Past history shows, she's anything but. She's the first to become mind controlled, as a result of her out of control ego and need to be popular. She gleefully manipulates her boyfriend whom treats her chivalrously. She has a weight problem she never entirely deals with. She loses control as leader to the group. The creator has her say this with no implication that her friend or anything would think otherwise, which leaves me wondering if the past simply never existed for this character. The list goes on with such problems. They really took away my attempts to enjoy Faans' writing. What the others saw in this webcomic, I didn't so much. Faans, as far as I'm concerned, has immense writing problems. The active use of X-files characters as notable side characters, the constant O. Henry twists, the rationales/conclusions that don't add up, the total lack of realism while enforcing a semi-serious tone... I can't look around this sort of thing. Faans has its moments, but I can't get past the important content issues. I'm giving Faans a four of ten stars at the very most. Chances are on a dull day online, I'll possibly go to read some more, but that's about it. Fri Jul 11 2003 03:07 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Gravedigger by Kajamir the Giant Gravedigger is a short story that features a not too common center. Your average yarn usually deals with a conflict centered around a struggling hero ending in a fortuitous conclusion. Gravedigger is about an utterly amoral and aging ex-con who is not seeking redemption, but the final big score so he may retire and live the life of Riley. There is no decency or even a nod towards real kindness. In that world, he lives amongst others with similar sentiments as the final big score takes a violent end. While the end of the plot might be predictable, it's fascinating to read in a mere thirty pages of crime drama. The consistency and cleverness of the 'protagonist' adds a lot of flavor to a short meal. Starting with the art, there's a gritty pulp fiction/Grand Theft Auto resemblance. I think it suits things rather nicely. The characters are realistically noir detailed and not necessarily very pretty or handsome looking. It makes them suitably more villainous without going so far as to have a Snidley Whiplash style of evil appearance. Rather, they bear a hard visage but could look like anyone else in real life. Gritty would describe them. I really liked the story here. Often, you don't get to see an evil natured individual run through his paces as the main character. When there is, he's almost comical or unbelievable. The ex-con, while skilled, is entirely a normal man with a personal code of conduct. He bears enormous amounts of pride but doesn't let it slip to others. We are privy to hear his thoughts and musings about situations and of himself, allowing us to see how the machine works. While effective, he's not entirely perfect either, but interestingly enough he seems to acknowledge this of himself. He's a sinner and very open to himself about it. If there's problems with the story, I'll say the extra characters introduced as his associates, several have no real bearing on anything. Why they're given characterization, I can only guess is to keep us in the dark about the conclusion. Still, it feels a little off in an otherwise good story run. Second, how the ex-con begins to meet his end seemed oddly out of character for him. He goes around planning and suspecting things correctly, but a very obvious opportunity he passes up, and winds up with a mortal penalty as a result. It's not clear to me why he didn't make use of said time to finish the job. I would also say he could use a bit more characterization, but he works as who he is in the limited room. All the same, I thought the story in the context of 30 pages was very enjoyable, and would have liked to have read more. It's a pity how things turned out, even if he is a villain, but I think that a story that can make one care for the criminal has done well. I'm giving Gravedigger an 8 out of 10 stars. It's short, but sophisticated and engaging. I'd recommend it if anything mentioned above sounds interesting, but it's not really appropriate for a young audience due to brief nudity, visual violence, and the amoral behavior. Sun Jun 29 2003 09:54 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Exile from Kiirs by Kajamir the Giant Exile is a short story of a mysterious young man of supernatural talent, being persecuted by the natives around him for suspected crimes against the world. The boy is in fact, more a hero than anything and despite his best efforts, is demonized by them regardlessly. Only by chance intervention of a more understanding prince with a job offer, does he get his freedom. Largely, that's Exile in a nutshell. Bearing only about 69 smallish pages, it's a quick read, with not much room for development. Or perhaps, not much attempt. To start, many of the panels are action based. There's little dialogue in the story. What there is, comes mostly from the villagers or prince, but the hero, Raed, says virtually nothing. He looks pouty, and when he's not being held back, fights monsters. He also apparently has a good heart, but there's not much you can say about anyone presented in this story. Characterization is implied, but hurting for more. Art wise, Exile is pretty nice. Crisp black and white lines define characters. There's some style in their modes of dress, but I think this may have taken away from making the people themselves look different. Aside from the interesting hair styles on their head, everyone's face (save maybe the prince?) is interchangable, with the other possible exception of Raed's eyes compared to the villagers. The uniform look is a mixed aspect to me. It suggests a style by the artist, but also comes across as looking uninspired or mechanical. Regardless, on the whole, I think the art works well for Exile. The monsters, called 'bios' are particularly neat too. There's a level of brevity in this review because there's just not much to comment on in Exile, compared to webcomics with a longer run. The story's ending felt abrupt and predictable, which translates as unsatisfying for a conclusion. The lack of characterization also hinders it. It's a stand alone story, what you see is what you get. It needs more to make the reader care about what's going on. Depth is the issue at hand. Exile is okay. And really, it's just that. EfK is not bad, but I can't see myself recommending it to anyone who wouldn't appreciate it for anything else but the art. I think it's a fair stand-alone story, but it's not a selling point for what the creator can do. Rather, just a no frills item on the shelf. You can get it, it functions, but it's not the most appealing thing to buy. The site seems it might go more into the background, as I understand, but I'm just here to review the webcomic itself, and it didn't compel me to look at the ill spoken of background world. I give Exile from Kiirs a 5 of 10 stars as an acceptable, but unexceptional short graphic story. I don't outright advocate it, but I don't condemn it either. Thu Jun 26 2003 10:21 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Get Your War On by Kajamir the Giant I first became aware of GYWO in the issues of Rolling Stone magazine that my roommate subscribes to. I'd read it as happenstance, but it was never very enjoyable. Bland repeating 'art', constant and rather obnoxious Gen-X rants about modern political turmoil, endless swearing giving rise that nothing worthwhile was being written... GYWO reminds of a radio shock jock. Trying to maybe say something, but having more attitude and vulgarity than he knows what to do with so the message is lost. Who is this comic appealing to? Zen L33t says the liberals. What about the masses of people who couldn't care less about politics as a whole? If the comic has a particular political bent, why is it featured in a major publication with no balancing counter commentary? Well, as was written by another reviewer, it's an editorial comic, at least somewhat. However, nothing this thing offers would ever convince me of something, let alone have me cheer out 'right on!'. It's more like the ranting of a foul mouthed teenager who can touch upon meaningful points, and then completely lose any sense of persuasiveness. I don't particularly care what's being written in this case. It's about as elegant as the nationalistic violence of Stickdeath.com. Rather, every panel is horrible eyesore. Not only must we contend with flat xerox art, but a total lack of cohesiveness, while bearing endless empty ranting, sarcasm, and cynicism, is just disgusting to what a publicized creation could be. Did Rolling Stone pick this up for it's ho-hum controversial value? I don't know. But I don't consider being irritating a selling point. But I guess it does give one the idea that if enough pages are collected, they would make a decent liner for a bird's cage. I'm going to step down a moment from politeness, and say I detest everything about this 'comic'. I see no reason to support or speak anything well of Get Your War On. It's a crude mess more befitting the pages of some dramatic teenager's notebook during biology class. I give this appalling monstrosity of obnoxious negativity a flat out 0 of 10 stars. Don't read, don't acknowledge it, just keep walking. Mon Jun 16 2003 11:07 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Soul Chaser Betty by Kajamir the Giant Here we have an instance of american manga drawn a bit above the norm. Soul Chaser Betty is a rather nice looking webcomic of black and white art in a style that usually doesn't come off too well. Soul Chaser is a pretty thing, rather professional looking once one gets past the start, and probably good enough to be published. I found the story decent too, but there's a few rough spots. Concerning conceptual design, characters are generally well off, while monsters get the real treatment. I think it would be a nice touch if the basic characters were maybe more expressive. I recall how often most characters beyond Betty have the same visage time and time again, Rolf and the Grandmother most notably. Still, if you can get past that, and occasional bit of strange proportioning (most early on), you'll probably find the style looks nice as a whole. The story was decent. Like the art, it's a little rough early on. I just wasn't compelled to care about the Soul Chasers or their limited characterization. However, when the cast shrunk and it didn't seem like a Power Ranger festival in a dreamscape, things got better. I was even won over by the Kayan monologue, which touches upon a tired religious origin bent. Once it gets past the traditional old bible babble, it enters something more creative. Actually, I found a lot of things in Soul Chaser were like that. Not the strongest first impression, but more fine tuned as time goes on. I think that's a good sign. Manga-wise, it doesn't drown itself in the usual parameters of that theme (asian culture and mysticism). For Soul Chaser, it's really more of an art style. Well, except the gratuitous panty shots of Betty. Your personal politics will determine if that's a good or bad thing but I'm sure there's a certain drooling fanboy factor to brings male readers to Betty. I found Soul Chaser to have a lot of cute moments. Most of them come from Betty herself, who's something of a tomboy, but occasionally you'll see other things where the strip breaks the fourth wall a bit more, refusing to take itself seriously. I thought Jim the Vagrant talking like Gollum, while a bit tired nowadays was sort of kitchsy, not to mention the cat who complains aloud that Betty took her bed. I think Betty as a webcomic is just playful enough without seeming saccharhine or numbingly serious. For a new reader, Soul Chaser is fairly short at this time. I was able to polish off the archive reading it at a fair pace over two hours. As such, it's at a good place to jump into. Maybe the weakest bit of SCB, is the characterization. Beyond Betty herself, it doesn't exist much in other characters. Grandmother is Grandmother, Rolf is unreactive, the Weaver is thoroughly esoteric, etc. Many of the side characters are also a bit too accepting of the weirdness manifesting around them, not to mention willing to get involved. I fear the webcomic might enter the realm of becoming a typical young hero(ine) grows immensely strong sort of thing later on. SCB as it stands now might not be entirely gripping to read. But SCB shows promise of being able to improve in other areas thus far, so it's worth keeping the hope for. SCB is a quirky lil action/light intrigue based webcomic. It's not a flawless gem, but not a crude stone either. I think I'll keep following this comic, should it update some more. I give Soul Chaser Betty a 7 out of 10 stars. It's a fun read. Wed Jun 11 2003 07:13 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Checkerboard Nightmare by Kajamir the Giant It's been said in the past that the popular television show, Seinfeld, was a comedy series about nothing in particular. I would liken that comparison unto Checkerboard Nightmare. It's a webcomic of discernably little inspired content and a lot of gimmick. The author has mentioned CN is about deconstructing, but instead of really showing us things we didn't realize, it wallows in cliche. Because of the purposely self annihilating nature of the comic, it's a little hard to say such a thing, but the author also has a responsibility of making it interesting. While the other reviewers seemed to have liked Checkerboard Nightmare, I found it an honestly tedious experience. To me, Checkerboard Nightmare died very fast. Within the first year, if not several months, actually. All the characters are established, and don't deviate whatsoever from their roles and personalities. Storylines last a week and have little continuity beyond that. Jokes are pretty weak (I ellicited a smirk maybe 20% of the time), and in several instances, it runs the unhallowed path of cheapness it claims to loathe. In this oxymoronic case, typical randomness for a gag which I've seen better written by just about anyone with a mind for it. (The Wendy series comes to mind) The self inflection nature of Checkerboard, which it itself espouses its own lack of content, beats itself into submission quickly. I often felt the comic was like an unpopular child making fun of itself to get attention. In other words, self degradation to appeal to others. The main character, Chex, is established as being utterly shallow and attention seeking. The strip follows his attempts to whore out his name in returns for adoration. Chex, like Commander Kitty, I would regard as one of the most irritating individuals in existence, if I ever could meet such a type in person. Chex's narcissistic self fascination and inability to learn anything worthwhile is just tiresome. He begins as a hollow idea, and remains that way the entire time. The same could effectively go for any of the extra characters. While not anywhere near as annoying mind you, there's no life in them. The robot is an unemotive one-shot choking gag, Lyle's the straight man to Chex's wackiness, and Dot, in the few appearances she makes, plays the typical overly inoffensive and sentimental female. Now, this all wouldn't be such a problem in theory, but Checkerboard Nightmare's endless lack of direction and material makes the comic like an incomplete whirlpool, forever spinning but lacking a center to define its conclusion. The art is so-so here, and that's putting it kindly. Black outlines show things well enough, but the overall appearance is rather bland. Chex himself looks like a modification of Sweet Tooth from the Twisted Metal game series, merged with an overly cheerful Super Saiya-jin. As lame as he is personality wise, he's probably the most eye catching of the bunch for his weird inexplicable harlequin appearance. Furthermore, backgrounds for CN are non-existent usually, giving an additional hollow feel to the comic while expressions are recycled, which just looks lazy when done often. Don't even get me started on the occasional touch of coloring, which I could best define as gaudy monotone color schemes. On an interesting note, the best art shown in the comic is the imitation renderings the author does of other webcomics who make cameos. These look particularly snazzy, given CN's own weak appearance. I can't help but liken it unto the comparable higher appeal factor other comics have on CN, an aspect that seems to drive Chex himself, to envious schemes. You might like Checkerboard Nightmare, or you might not. It may be an acquired taste for all I know. The bland repetitive drivel that makes up CN just leaves me day dreaming about anything more interesting. If I was in Tom Sawyer's town, and was given the choice to white wash a fence for 'fun' or read CN, that fence is going to look pretty well off in a few hours. If you want to get a feel for this comic, just read the first three or four months, and see what you think. The comic doesn't seem to deviate from the pattern you could glean from that time period whatsoever. The only signs CN shows in improving itself, is the slight art perk over course of time. All considering, it's not very much, and the style is almost like a minimalist theme even in cartooning. I give Checkerboard Nightmare a 2 of 10 stars. I don't intend to read it anymore and don't recommend it to anyone. It's trite, boring, and directionless, which does not equate quality or appeal to me. Sat Jun 07 2003 10:28 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Argon Zark by Kajamir the Giant This week's web selection is a quirky lil sci-fi/internet age comic that originated in 1995. Argon as a comic, is a decent if chaotic read, interspersed with numerous secrets for the discerning reader. While this can be a nice touch, such easter eggs can be a bit of a hassle for those with slower computers. Being one such, I mainly read the comic as is, and didn't find it too shabby. Argon is the sort of comic that moves very quickly. There's no real introspection of any sort, and it doesn't take itself at all seriously. It picks into the adventure pretty much on the second page and doesn't stop. Argon, Zeta, and Argon's hearing impaired robot go traveling about cyberspace in physical form, thanks to an experimental machine of his. Most of the adventure is pretty random in content, though not as extreme and absurdist as something like Chicanery or other erratic natured webcomics. AZ plays a fine line, dabbling between the inherently strange to clever references. In terms of overrall design, it feels a bit similar to Bret Ward's style on the NCD comic. The art are concise and well rendered, and really not ever shown as sloppy. Text is quite legible and there's no ready doubt about most obvious things. Zark looks like the geek he is, Zeta is mildly attractive and quirky, and the robot is just cute. It's a small cast, not really much character depth to them, but they work on the fast nature of the action, as identified singlular ideas interacting with other ideas. The only real thing I have to complain about, is the very non-user friendly set up that had to be used to read the majority of this comic. As Furilius mentioned, pages are missing, 'next' buttons don't always work, and you have to sift around to look at things. To be honest, if Furilius didn't detail how to navigate the site, I would have never gone beyond several pages. The creator details the comic as a thing he wants to instill with quality. In that case, the web design really needs a solid tune up, not to mention condensation. It's not the sort of thing that's going to encourage the unsure reader to bother with it amidst a sea of many other webcomics. Argon Zark was a pleasant read, though at times I didn't outright understand the lay out of progression. It's not as bad as Commander Kitty in that sense, but still a touch foggy. I say if you have the patience to give it a little time on a rainy day, give Argon at least a once over. I don't think AZ, content wise, is bad, but it's not my exact liking either so chances are I won't be following it further. Still, Argon Zark at least warrants a 7.5 of 10 stars from me. Putting my tastes of theme aside, it's a decent read, hindered only by the notable scattered and broken condensation of pages. Sun Jun 01 2003 11:26 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Angst Technology by Kajamir the Giant AT's one of my favorite webcomics around nowadays. It reminds me somewhat of PvP, but with a more friendly, less saccharine feel. The setting too, is similar to the aforementioned, with several co-workers in a video game related business. However, Angst Technology is not a clone by any means. Its style is its own, by art and writ. Angst tends to remain more true to its concept that PvP is. When was the last time you've seen the members of PvP actually going through their paces at work? Angst occasionally goes on a fourth wall breaking plotline, but doesn't make it a common occurance. Effectively, you see game making employees, doing their jobs, such as sales and concept. However, their work is tempered by fun and comraderie, the result which after the sizable run of the comic, doesn't feel forced or tired. While AT, again, goes onto a fantastical bend here and there (they have a monkey for a web site designer), there's a stronger level of believability that some of these people could exist, compared to other comics of its genre. AT's black and white art is pretty clean in the current run, quite a bit of improvement from the earliest content. There's no moments of doubt concerning who or what, is supposed to look like. The characters are drawn rather uniquely (just try to find a character that resembles Dante), yet not so eye catching as to be distracting. I would best describe the art as pleasant looking, many steps higher than just adequate, but not outright mindblowing. Really, it does its job and then some. The writing, which I feel is usually the living core of any webcomic, is what most appeals to me. Some webcomics you read to see what happens next, if by plot device of cliff hangers or unethusiastic. Some webcomics have jokes, but aren't particularly funny, sort of like a newspaper syndicated run. AT is pretty consistent on what it can do. I find it an enjoyable experience, and perhaps a little something to look forward to each day when I go online. The characters are defined well, by job, tastes, and so on. However, in terms of progression, or character development, things are on the slow side. Things like Dante getting twins or Yaz's father coming over for a visit, are nice gems, but not too common. It would probably add some depth if the character's personal lives were more ongoing or reactive, but things are fine as they are. On a slightly different note than I usually comment on, the author's little notes are enjoyable. Typically, most author's use such space as a place to rant about how miserable/self-depreciative they are, who/what's annoying them now, or post some dubious sounding opinions. What the author is percieved to be, can cast a shadow on the comic (PvP, the Wendy series, & Megatokyo being great examples of this). The author of AT comes off as being friendly, helpful, and playful. You can see it not only in his posts, but the various other nifty things he hosts, such as a humorous picture of the week, his call to arms in a lowkey online war game he participates in, and the site of the week. The image he shows of himself to his readers, can have a friendly effect to one's overrall experience on his site. It would be a credit of other creator's to understand this, and leave their heavier baggage elsewhere. I don't have much in demerit to speak of concerning Angst Technology beyond the chance it might improve still with more character progression. The art, styling, and writing is pretty much where I like it, capable of being both straight and goofy. I give Angst Technology a 9 of 10 stars. I will definitely continue to follow it. Thu Apr 24 2003 11:39 AM | Read All Reviews for this title The Life of Riley A review by Kajamir the Giant After sitting through a majority of LOR's archive, I'm afraid I must be much less kind in review than those who have already given their opinions. I found LOR to be an overly hyped, juvenile, and confusing comic with horrendous writing and uneven art. I don't understand at all, the appeal this comic has. If I could say what this comic is about, that might be a plus, because I can't. Rather, it's more a collection of sequences, vaguely connected. The first seventy comics or so concern with a basic non-story based run of tech/game geek 'jokes'. Then there's a short Stubble-like strife filled end-of-romance period between a previously little mentioned vampire roommate, an angel in disguise as a raver, and an obnoxious succubus, which at some point, translates into a ridiculous and long winded end-of-the-world plot, involving a monotonous paint ball war on a floating island, alongside a pretentious battle with demons being not unlike DBZ in admitted style, but less interesting. It just boggles the mind how this comes to be, and I don't mean in the way that I'm impressed with the execution. The comic is just non-sensical in overrall run. It either tries to impress the reader with unfunny punch lines/sequences or with shows of power/weak plot twists (the battle scene). The dialogue is nothing to write home about. There's nothing of any particular thought being discussed, the characters are shallow, and there's a distinct lack much way to identify them with a personality with maybe the exception of two. There are way too many characters in this, most notable during the BOBS sequence which, as I understand it, brought in a number of fans of the comic as cameos, who were little else than a collection of images with nothing very distinctive to know about them. Time and time again, LOR repeats these mistakes. It is more fanboyish and unpracticed than anything noteworthy. LOR's art is variable as well. The baby faced characters didn't do anything for me, though I could recognize this person and that, by gender. During the war sequence, it gets literally laughable. There's a scene that was intended to be impressive, when the Arch Succubus Jezebel is seen for the first time. Instead, I'm just thinking how ridiculous it all was. The proportions were bad, and the censor flames were corny. It seems like the artist knew this, and limits a great deal of the interactions were head shots in the darkness, which in of itself, was tiresome. Of that constant darkness, it seems more like cutting corners than showing a grim scene. After the war scene, the art changed at least twice, going to a kawaii style, and then something actually decently rendered. However, by that time, I had my fill of LOR. Of The Life of Riley, I literally found it unpleasant at every page, enough so that I'd regard it, at least by my own perspective, as a chore. LOR needs a huge amount of work, but I suspect given the inexplicable legions of fans it has (it was even applauded on PvP as of this writing on the front page), it will not develop what it needs to be something better. I give LOR a 1 out of 10. LOR is a complete thumbs down from this giant. Sat Apr 19 2003 08:58 PM | Read All Reviews for this title I'm going to be backing out of reviewing this week's selection (Rapid Eye Movement) on the basis it doesn't seem to be a webcomic at all. It is also described by the author as a graphic novel, which in my mind and from what I see in execution here, is very different. Unfortunately, it is not within my general interest to take the time to review this sort of medium. While I have read a little bit, it is not enough to provide any passable review here, sorry. Wed Apr 09 2003 07:03 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of A Drug War Carol by Kajamir the Giant When it came time to reviewing this 'webcomic', I came across an impasse about whether to judge it for what it possessed as a comic, or simply write it off as propaganda. With a bit of deliberation, I've decided ADWC will be treated as a typical comic on the basis that more or less all current webcomics that have little points to bring across (Shaw Island, Ozy & Millie), that are inherently attempting to bring the reader to their own side of an idea in an often fairly one sided manner, sometimes subtlety mixed in with humor. That by itself could be construed as manipulative end, not terribly dissimiliar to propaganda itself. So while ADWC might be more blatant and single minded in its aim, I'm going to treat it much like anything else. Starting with the art, ADWC is fairly good. I don't know how else to describe it other than it reminds me a lot of Ward's work on the MZDM comic, which I'm rather favorable to. The other half of the style presented is something more akin of a real comic book, minus the old style bulkiness of body. As such, image wise, I liked what I was seeing. The last two ghosts are fairly described as appealing to the eye and the images of people from the early to mid century seem styled well enough for them to be believable. When it comes to the designs of those featured, they're fairly on the mark, although there's sort of an overplayed miscreant cartoonish villainy to some of those presented as being 'bad guys'. A lot of the content is generally on a serious mark, so it breaks the mood with corniness just a little. I would also question why the constant and sometimes pointless quote links exist only at the beginning (click the images). As effective propaganda, I wouldn't be impressed by this. The first ghost sequence lags badly in terms of explaining things. If I was the senator listening to him, I'd probably fall asleep or wander off. It's little else than long winded rambling, more something to describe an alleged history, than to convince anyone of anything. Only when things are more prone to heart tugging in the shorter second and third ghost sequences, does it seem more effective, although at this point in my life it has no real impact. I will admit a scene of powerful imagery comes in the future sequence with little Tim and his father hiding in the bathtub. But beyond this, I never felt particularly impassioned about any of this. As propaganda to convince of someone's interests, it does not work. As a comic by itself, it's not something people would buy anywhere. It's a somewhat palatable take-off of a Christmas Carol when it remembers that's the source material, but it lacks a power to be anything else than propaganda. To that end, I can't say really that this is entirely a thing worth reading since it serves a purpose, but fails at it. My own politics are generally for pot being legal. But I would have preferred a more honest and diversified approach to what was made, such as people using the drug for recreation, probably a lot more in use than people overrall need it for more medical purposes. It rather comes across as being ashamed that could be someone's motive, perhaps even the authors. In days like these where High Times magazines can fill every convenience store next to Archie comics and pot references in popular media are about as common as pennies in a bank vault, this sort of ashamed closet mentality seems unnecessary or even deceptive. But again, it is propaganda, and little else. Because this 'comic' fails its very singular purpose, I can't really recommend it to anyone. It looks nice though, so perhaps if the reader was interested in the art alone, a casual perusal might be alright. Still, to everyone else, I can only shrug. I give A Drug War Carol 3 of 10 stars. It's a one shot 'story' and has no real re-reading value. Thu Apr 03 2003 06:21 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Ozy & Millie by Kajamir the Giant O&M is a strip I would describe best as being 'quaint'. It's pleasant and nice to look at. The content is good, but not usually too reactive when read. The comic prides itself a bit on intellectualism, common wisdoms, and political mockery. It's good, but some of it has that 'been there, seen that' quality. In fact, I couldn't shake the sensation O&M is similar to Calvin and Hobbes. I wonder if the one picture of O&M dressed as Calvin and his tiger is more than coincidence. Plot wise, stories, perhaps better described as themes, typically run a week. You'll find them concerning simple conflicts from foolish administrators, schoolyard bullies, to the shallowness of people. O&M stories deal with a lot of common day problems presented in a formulaic humorous manner. I wouldn't doubt that O&M is well suited for newspaper syndication. Ozy and Millie themselves, while one is very calm and the other being random, respectively, they are a bit uneven in approach. Sometimes they behave very much as young children, playing with toys and so forth, while other times they're discussing things like adults several times their age. An instance when Millie is having a dream about a Newt Gingrich fairy strikes me as rather dated even from the year it was made, to just looking like a pointless reference now. Other characters are typically more believable as who they are. My favorite is Ozy's dad, a polite intellectual dragon anthro, whose milder quirker personality seems to easier befit his offbeat personality. Yet, I don't find it plausible an elementary school child would be jamming and singing Dylan, while the little girl fox yammers on about contemporary politics. Because they live in a slightly fantastical based world, watching them go on about real world issues with common humor strikes me as 'Do as I say, not as I do.' O&M has some nice art. It's crisp, cute without being naueseating, and concisive. I'm not left to wonder what any gender or object is. The text is clean, and rather error free. It looks like time was taken to make it look nice. It's possible the artist has reached a pinnacle of what can be achieved in that style, as I didn't pick up on any major art increases from the beginning to later. Again, this is a quaint little comic, one I'd expect to read in a newspaper. For the web, it lacks a certain edginess I've come to expect from comics online. The strips demonstrate seriousness while being basically a bit humorous, but this isn't so much the humor to make you laugh out loud. I would have really liked something stronger in the flavor that is O&M. I'll give this comic a 7 of 10. Originally, I planned to give it as high as 9.5, but as I read on, I felt like I was seeing the same things over and over by the second year. The strong comparitive feel didn't help out. Otherwise, Ozy & Millie is a pleasant little read, something enjoyable perhaps over morning breakfast spent online. Thu Mar 27 2003 06:38 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Commander Kitty by Kajamir the Giant Commander Kitty is a relatively short archived comic, easy for a first timer to jump in. The art is pleasant, concise while cartoonish, and looks like it could be a saturday morning animation. The characters are generally innocuous and befitting the light hearted genre. However, while this comic could be said to be produced well, I did not like it very much. It's not bad per se, but it's not my cup of tea, essentially. Generally, while the characters befit the situation, I don't like them. Commander Kitty is a mean spirited bi-polar personality jerk, too reminiscent of managers I've had to work with. As such, I'm not interested in reading about whatever ridiculous nuance plagues him. Fluffy is your typical innocent kawaii cutesy character, while the ferret is simply a non-speaking/cute sound uttering gimmick with really nothing to add to the story. Mittens is usually the straight man to Kitty's abuse, and he seems to be the only one given even the slightest touch of genuine internal dilemmas, as regarded by a recent conversation by some robotic mice. Mouse is the real show stealer, a variable wise cracking database. Because Mittens and Mouse are only side characters, and I have to put up with reading Kitty's arrogance and spite more than not, it's just not enough to save the interest for me. I find some parts of this comic confusing in set-up, particularly early on, when conclusions and transitions are very sudden, and seemingly delayed in meaning (ex. the bizarro version of the crew appearing and vanishing). The lack of flow this creates irks me, though it tones down later on. However, it was bad enough for me to see a shadow cast on my enjoyment. Some of the plot points are interesting and amusing however, such as the Pangolin telemarketers as well as the references to StarGate and Homestar Runner. But it seems to me Commander Kitty functions on one sole basis. It must win you over for being cute. This is not enough to stand on its own merit to my eyes. It's cutely drawn and mapped out, but not overwhelmingly so to me. As was brought up as a point in a recent webstrip of Shaw Island (not referring to this comic, but in general), CK is reminiscent of the content of sunday comics in the paper. They're supposed to be funny, but they don't really make you laugh. Commander Kitty just doesn't amuse me much. I'm sure others will like the light hearted content and characters, but I can't feign enjoying this one by personal tastes, and do not intend to read it further. I give Commander Kitty 3.5 out of 10 stars. Again, this is largely out of personal taste for what is presented, not that the comic was made all that poorly. Tue Mar 18 2003 08:00 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Stubble by Kajamir the Giant Stubble is a rather lengthy archived comic about a young semi-gothic man's life, mostly concerned around various times in school and love. I feel it's a decent comic, but suffers some outstanding problems. Starting with the characters, I think they're generally decent to read about. Clint is an enjoyable lead, more or less, and his friends are reasonably interesting to see in their paces. Yet, Stubble's cast is huge, and often filled with characters that sometimes have little reason to be around, or aren't showcased very much. The result is confusing, so readers might do well to stick to focusing on Clint and his more immediate friends, rather than those around him. Some of them, are introduced right out of the blue, and the immediate joining/opinionated relations between old person A, and new person B, don't usually mesh as to be believable, such as Roland and Clint's rocker friend. Also, many of the characters, while often zany in mannerism, can show instances of being very deep and emotional. This is a good thing, to possess range. But therein also lies a thorn with Stubble in general. Inconsistency. The storylines to Stubble are a little hard to work one's self around. They jump from goofy to dead serious in an instant sometimes. I recall a large note of distaste arrived from the serious storyline of Clint and Lindsey at the ice pond. It goes very well, until, and quite uncomfortably, it breaks into a guest artist intermission with no bearing on anything story based, totally ruining the mood. Stubble needs to just focus on something and run with it for a bit. Even the current storyline involves day by day alternating between the hapless relationships of two characters. Some parts work better than others. My blood did boil during the racism storyline, but things like the giant robot built in four minutes did not. Don't get me wrong, it's okay for a read, but as for mood/atmosphere, it wobbles all over the place. Artwise, I didn't like Stubble in the beginning. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I thought the art in the beginning was passable, but it didn't do anything for me. Later on, most visible by the second year, the creator starts doing more serious stylings of his characters which work better than the cartoonier ones before. The trend follows, and while the art quality remains maybe just a bit tightened but otherwise the same, his 'look' improves. But again, it jumps back and forth, in how that look is presented. I think Stubble is a decent comic. It's not outstanding, but a nice read for passing the time. And given the archive size, there will be a lot of time devoted to reading this. I'm giving Stubble 5 out of 10 stars. Decent comic, but the inconsistency issue really wears on it. If it was improved, I'd probably raise the score by about 2-2.5. Sat Mar 15 2003 10:36 PM | Read All Reviews for this title (To clarify a question posed by Phantom, Nowhere Girl is based on several people the author knew, not the author's self) A review of Rules Of Make Believe by Kajamir the Giant 'ROMB' is a currently short archived comic, concerned around two girls who meet at a bus stop, and in a mutual transaction, they venture to a seedy arcade, where young people engage in a game called Gorge, a VR based Streetfighter-like simulation game. Gorge has a surprisingly large fanbase, which leads many to make bets on the matches at hand, rousing yet further frenzied excitement in the crowd. That's about as much that has gone on in general, given the comic is currently short in content, but this won't be held against the creator's work. I found ROMB to be many positive things. Well drawn, distinct, more than adequately designed, and fairly intriguing. The style upholds like a true manga, with dashes of above average style added in. It reads right to left and carries the manga look without being generic. The art is generally defined and serious looking, with the occasional wild take. I'd prefer it didn't use any, but they're very infrequent. I love the design of ROMB, which I consider the biggest asset, perhaps more so than the wondeful art. I never felt I had to guess about a character's gender or indentity. Everyone looks suitably distinct. The Gorge game has fantastic small details added in, such as the tape over the eyes, and there's even a quasi intermission section during the comic, laboriously explaining how the VR set up works in believable detail, while rules of the game are expressed mainly during the comic's run. There's style even in the real and VR weapons used, from the unusual multi-pronged staff of Stack, to the look of the janitor's stun mace. ROMB shows a lot of thought, and I appreciate that. It certainly keeps things interesting and gives the quality of a more inspired than normal work. The story has a fair quantity of intrigue, background, and plenty of action. Because the content is yet low, I can't say much more about it, but I enjoyed it heartily for what it was. In the idea of criticism, I would have liked to have seen more character development through all the action, but perhaps there's designated time for that later. ROMB is a fairly detailed yet fun comic, and one certainly full of artistic talent. I would like to see more story content, but I don't have much of anything critical to say about ROMB. I look forward to seeing the continuation of it, and it will remain on my Favorites list. I rate ROMB as 8 out of 10 stars. Mon Mar 03 2003 01:23 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Nowhere Girl By Kajamir the Giant After reading through Nowhere Girl (which was pleasantly short compared to previous webcomics for this club), I leave it with a generally favorable impression, but not one too deeply set. It's good work, I feel sure of that, but it's not entirely of full appeal to me either. As a change, Nowhere Girl is a rather realism drama based comic, though the final cliff hanger looks to swerve a bit from this. There are, as time of this writing, two chapters, concerning different age experiences of a young mildly punkish and seemingly asian girl, named Jaime. The first one is very dark and is filled with the main character wallowing in a suicidal mindset. She is fairly realistic in terms of a dark teenage mindset, and I found her appropriate to her time in life. The writing includes the constant awkward nuances of speaking too, which enhanced the realism factor. I never doubted for a second she was her age. While it was realistic, it could also be construed as whiny and irritating, but perhaps a teenager running on a constant depressive diatribe would come off like that. Content wise, it wasn't my cup of tea. Again, its quite understandable, but it didn't compel me to want to read more because of it. It was more dour than Demonology 101's broodiness. The second chapter reflects a new spin on Jaime's life, where she learns to be a little more empowered and social. She shares an interesting thought process on the social structure of ants, and compares it on a human level. Perhaps it is just me, but I thought it was deep for the character, and made me think she really was starting to get a handle on her life, compared to chapter one's content of self hatred and destruction. I could have stood to felt more for the characters. Often, it just felt like I was overhearing them, but not really being drawn into their lives. A few characters are introduced that seemed almost unnecessary, or perhaps irrelevant to the flow of things. Still, the comic is young, and this could change. The art is very nice. Stylish definitely defines it, although chapter one has times (the teacher talking with Jaime) that I couldn't tell one person from another from all the black. I think a bit more definition could have been done gender wise. This was yet another comic I couldn't tell who was man and woman sometimes, so their relationships would come off confusing. Jaime is very androgynous in chapter one, but again, this is mainly due to the over use of black on black background. The writing for Nowhere Girl is sturdy, but in several ways like Demonology 101, it needs a bit more to hook me in. In particular, I give high points to the ant monologue and an intriguing cliff hanger. Until I read that 'ender', I wasn't too convinced I would be inclined to read this further. Now, I give doubt to that motive. Nowhere Girl shows some promise, at least in quality of the creators. The comic itself, is not really my thing, but I can feel things could go either way in this comic, once the next chapter begins. I give this webcomic 7 out of 10 stars. A short read, a bit of a shakey start, yet reasonably worth the time. Wed Feb 26 2003 11:13 PM | Read All Reviews for this title Well, this isn't too pleasing, particularly considering I picked this selection. Unfortunately, it seems something about Mac Hall's server finds occasional issues with my comp, freezing my computer almost randomly when I go to other pages. And sometimes the page refuses to load up entirely. I managed to reach about comic #70 or so, which isn't even half of this seemingly nifty little comic. Because I did want to read more, but am not willing to deal with the irritating freezes (takes several mins to fully get back online), I don't think I can give a just review for Mac Hall. From what I did see though, visually, it looked pretty sharp, almost like stills from an animation. I thought at times it could be kind of formulaic, sort of one-two punches, and I rather had hoped to see some aspect of depth to the characters or their environment, which was not present in my short run with this. I think that lack of content to the characters themselves was the only real issue I had. It looks like a decent comic otherwise though. From what I'd seen, I would give it about six of ten stars, but again, that's not a fully explored review from cirumstances. Fri Feb 21 2003 11:09 AM | Read All Reviews for this title I've pretty much spoken my peace about this whole subject of telling said author about said review. Again, from what I've seen, no one has any reason to appreciate this. While even Zach S. of Shaw Island got glowing reviews, it didn't seem he cared much, and the responses on his Livejournal were very lukewarm. And I won't even get into the semi-hypocritical and elitist nature of Space Opera's comments about this. There's also the possibility that the comics that we review that don't gain very good scores, this is since obscure or not mainstream comics... they're that way for a reason. All we've done is spoken through the silence. In ideal, if I must gain the enmity of many through speaking my mind honestly after thinking things through, then I will gladly meet that hate with a clean conscience. Basic concept here: If you present something publically, you better expect it will be judged on its merits, whether you like that or not. It doesn't matter if it's a work in progress, because you made it public to begin with. That's like saying, "Well, this bridge I made will be durable sometime later, even though you can drive on it now. You should ignore all the potholes too, despite I didn't take the time to hammer them out to a passable level in the first place." No offense, but tough. I honestly don't feel there's much else I can say beyond what I've spoken on my disclaimer post. I'm going to post my review regardlessly, and let the fate of this club and its methods be decided as desired by the powers that be. To quote a guy I knew at a factory when confronted with external nonsense/conflict directed at his way... "I just work here." * A brief review of Space Opera By Kajamir the Giant Much to the expected chagrin or indifference of the creators, I don't have much of anything nice to say about this comic. In fact, I'll admit this is the first I couldn't even sit entirely through. The art is colorful and relatively passable, but I don't find it very eye catching in any other manner. The alien designs can be kind of interesting (I thought the ferret girl and the electrical type alien were cool looking), and I didn't have any major issues with that. However, like in Demonology, I didn't find the ages presented, as too believable. Also that the co-star male character looks more woman than man, disappointed me. It didn't become more apparent til several pages through, that he, wasn't a she. The story was kind of slow, and I really don't mind that much, yet my main beef in general with it and the comic itself, is how difficult it is to tell what's going on. Things like the stripper suddenly joining up with a group of clueless kids, having little idea about the ship, and then giving a tour of it not long after, seemed unplausible. I remember the time when they leave the space station and the whole encounter with the rogue aliens (are they the Whispers, and was there two groups of them?), was seeming too vague. I feel there was a lot to be assumed in this comic, or things weren't clear enough. I eventually grew weary of the vagueness and lack of believability of everything being presented. Things often came across as rushed while the story didn't progress much, amazingly enough. I know if the creators read this or what have you, they will be angry or annoyed, but I do not think this is a good comic. It's a confusing effort, and that's all I can sum this up as. I give this 1.5 stars out of 10. Mon Feb 10 2003 07:02 PM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Demonology 101 by Kajamir the Giant Demonology 101 is a generally serious natured comic consisting of a small occult pertained family and their circle of friends. Demonology features some fairly stylish black and white art and solid writing. However, the nature of the comic is particularly dour and while the content is solid, it doesn't boast a great deal to grab out at the reader. In the long run, the comic plays out as a soap opera, with the car crashes and evil twins substituted by demon children and prophecy. First, let's talk about the art and imagery. Demonology has a fairly nice style, although the shading took some time to grow on me, as it could make things look confused. The characters themselves are generally believable in appearance (even the demons are pretty human looking) but they continue to run afoul of looking similar to one another. As mentioned by other reviewers, Gabe/John and Isaac/Lethe can be hard to tell apart at times. The characters look fairly good as they are, none of them seemingly made as eye candy, which makes you focus more on their personality. The rendering of the noses, facial expressions, and upper bodies also look great. However, this doesn't seem to go very with the leg portions of characters, as even adults look kiddie-ish in proportions. The pictures are best off above the waist in this case. That's relating to a large problem I had with this comic. The unseeming appearances. While they look good, at times the height, and especially the age of the characters, does not seem well expressed. While the John character changes appearance several times, the others seem to stagnate, even the youngest characters not looking very teenage, so must as just taller children. There's also an irksome problem with a character's eyes not seeming to 'sync' in the right direction, but this is uncommon. The kids in the comic are fairly cute. And there's a lot of them. Even a majority of the bad guys are just children demons for some reason, bearing as much power as the older 'mafioso types'. The author really does her best work on youthful character imagery, but the amount of children figuring into this story could be construed heavy handed, given how much seriousness and unrelenting demonic law keeps poking in. Backgrounds for this story are on the weak side. They're rendered pretty blurry in comparison to the characters own images, but they exist enough to be able to make them out usually. It's passable, but just barely. The plot is solid. And that's about the meat of it. It's so flat, it doesn't really stand out. I wasn't so much bothered by the semi-typical demons/highschool thing, but just that it didn't really grab me. It's a decent story, really, but an unremarkable one. Due to the dismal nature of the good characters, we rarely see them happy, ever. I think that's a large issue with the writing, as to why it might not grab a person to read. The story is depressing, the good guys are mainly just unempowered victims who wait around to be attacked, and the only thing that saves them in the long run is some irrational 'unexpected' variable. The main character, a little demon girl, spends a majority of the comic brooding about something or another. It's reasonably believable, but they should also have shown her with times when she enjoys herself, which seems little else than maybe once a month at this rate. This is not compelling to keep reading for the length. The general story flow is supernatural intrigue, and soap opera-ish interactions. These can be fairly good and believable. We read a lot about things not being said, obscure unspoken religious rules being insisted on (thankfully, only one biblical passage quote), and many, many origins, some less true than others. In essence, the meat for reading is here, but for the reasons already mentioned, it's unflavored. I want to like this comic, but the lack of anything to grab you factors in. I think the only part that really intrigued me was the romance between Isaac and the demon woman in chapter 5. It seemed more emotionally fresh than previous moments. Maybe more so, because we didn't expect it from an insane, rather evil sort like Isaac. This story needed more things like that. I would have also liked to have seen more focus on the Sachs character. Come on, an immortal man who exists as an heirloom to a family should be fascinating in his own right. Unfortunately, until Chapter 5, aside from mentionings of his interactions with the Jenners, we hear virtually nothing about him. I think Demonology 101 is a fair comic, but once again, that lack of a grasping element downplays my interest. The artistry, is generally good, with some passable flaws. There is very little action in the comic, which it could have stood more of, and I feel, it could stand to step away from the dreariness formula, which goes: Brooding weak heros, someone malevolent attacks them (Isaac or Lethe related), good guys get beat up, something outside their control comes into save them. I would like to see the good characters start holding their own and show some strength. One of them does, but he fails everytime. The main girl, Raven, is beginning to show that she can stand above this, but since my reading is ended at Chapter 5, I can't speak what the future holds. Finally, the issue of the servers. I didn't really pick up on it until Chapter 4, but Faith.Net is incredibly slow. I literally walked off for a minute at a time to do laundry tasks in between each page. It's too much. Demonology 101 shows definite potential, and I do get the impression, it could be something fairly excellent someday if the art is tightened up a bit, and the plot is made more intriguing, as opposed to simply being about intrigue. Demonology would play well as a graphic compedium novel, I believe. It has that element to be a sit down and read book. However, since the comic is updated only every other Sunday, I unfortunately, won't be following this one anymore. It lacks cliffhangers to make me want to wait two weeks at a time for a single page. It really is better shown as an entire set. I'm going to rate Demonology 101, 6 out 10 stars. It's a good framework for the author, even if she doesn't continue it later, but there is a very defined path to improvement on this one. Tue Feb 04 2003 06:19 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of Shaw Island by Kajamir the Giant Shaw Island is an addictive comic. There's something about it, like a fine pina colada, that brings you back again and again. I spent 2.5 days reading the entire archive on and on, and I must say, I do not consider it a waste of time. This comic is funny, cute, and lip biting. To start off, although there are several places bearing missing words and spelling mistakes, the writing quality is pretty powerful. The plethora of things the reader encounters is wonderful, from Gaming Jesus, to the Socialist Krab Party, to the simple conflicts of some ferryworkers, the design is fantastic. Writing content and wit is easily the most muscular part of this comic. I found myself at several times, relating to what the characters were saying, as well as seeing what was being played out, as modern situations. The comic starts out on an on going trend. Disassociative modern relations, and plays this through to the end. This would get a little heavy, and at the beginning, it is very preachy for several comics. However, this is broken up by seeing what other island natives are up to, including the sentient talking animals, which makes a lot of difference. Once you get past that hump, the comic does a spiralling motion, playing on more serious things, to funny, then back again. It is a sort of yin yang quality that makes this comic seem fresh, even when using material we may have heard. The art is nothing overtly amazing, but it can't be denied the artist does some really cute animals. In effect, it is acceptable imagery, but nothing too award winning. It is quite possible if it was more showy, it might feel a bit detracting from things. So as it is, it works. There are times, when the images shown are repeated too much and things get a static look. I could have done with more facial expressions, but again, the writing is the main aspect of this comic. And for that alone, you will likely come back for more. Aside from the often unchanging imagery of the human characters, there's several times I found myself wondering, 'Is that a man or a woman?'. Reading this comic, it's hard not to see something of yourself or your world in it. It plays along a lot of modern discontent; our relations with other people and the world itself. Shaw Island is its own little place and while fantastic in nature, there's also something quite real in it. I would find myself thinking 'I know what this guy is feeling' to 'I have a friend like this.'. I really recommend reading Shaw Island. If you start at the very beginning, give it a little time, because there's a heaviness that alleviates quite soon. It periodically crops up again, but it is in minority compared to the wonderful nature of the rest. You will be pleased you found a witty, urbane, and fun comic like this. This will definitely be on my favorites and I applaud the creator on the design and amusing content. I rate Shaw Island 8 out of 10. Go read. Hamster Gandhi commands it! Thu Jan 30 2003 02:25 AM | Read All Reviews for this title A review of 'Shifters' by Kajamir the Giant (review will contain spoilers) Where do I begin? Shifters is... a decent comic, but not anything better than that, sadly. I find I will continue to read it, but it won't be something I go out of my way for, in terms of what I will read first of my webcomic selections. It wobbingly follows the blatantly White Wolf derived plot of some zooanthropes, or wereshifters, told mainly through learning of their own natures and mythology, with a sprinkling of contemporary scenarios. The speed of this comic varies a bit, to being truly slow at the start, picking up speed, and then carrying a truly long battle sequence. This is not a bad thing, I think, but it does lend an uneven quality. This is supported by the odd facets of quirky humor, to total seriousness for great stretches of time. One cannot escape the copious amount of references being thrown at the reader. From the Team Rocket-like Vampire Squad with the leader of it being a Sephiroth knock-off in appearance, to the extensive use/fundamental basis of the White Wolf mythos, to the Kazuya (Tekken) hair styled bear shifter, it gets to be a little too much after a while. In some ways, it feels the comic caters more towards the anime-ish tastes of the creators, than a stand alone story and style. It's tolerable, but not something too admirable, like a chef putting too much pepper in a casserole. Enough, we can taste it already! The art is passable. For the most part, it's cute, clean, and reasonably well styled at times. However, it is clearly americanized manga, not so much directly emulated japanese manga, the former which in my mind, carries a rather inferior look to it. I would also state, the B/W art looks much better than the on/off mediocre coloring. When it becomes B/W, you can see more art technique applied and the quality seems to increase to regular manga at times. But alas, it is not maintained. I should also like to add, at the beginning, the art is particularly sloppy every two pages or so, but this vanishes after a chapter or two. The characters are fairly developed, though no award winners amongst them. Unfortunately, they do become confusing, at least at the beginning, to tell one from another. The anime styled hair and the jumping around of the plot, can make their stories, let alone identities, very difficult to follow. I'm all for many characters in a story, and while this doesn't touch anywhere near The Story of Genji, the characters that are presented here are simply not organized well at all. A final, and truly unacceptable flaw of this comic, is particularly towards the beginning, the lettering is a nightmare; dare I say it, unreadable. It's squished, it's dark, I couldn't make it out in general. The best part about Shifters, maybe even the only one, is the action scenes, which are pulled off very excitingly. From the whole train incident with the vandals and the otherwise ridiculous Vamp Squad, to the lengthy Were-vulpine battle, the comic particularly shows a little magic here. Neither scene is relegated to simple 1950's Batman styled punching and kicking. It is done a very fresh and exciting way, at least compared to the rest of the borrowed nature of the comic. Shifters, again, is passable, but there's a lot of clumsiness about its execution that I couldn't look around. The creators might look upon Shifters as a public work/experiment, but hopefully, not as their magnum opus. It shows it's youth in design, and I would say, too much so. I give Shifters a 3 out of 10. Shifters would have been much better, even with the many crude errors, if it was something more original. As it is, it's more like wearing hand me downs. Worn, mediocre, and over used. Sun Jan 19 2003 11:10 PM | Read All Reviews for this title

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