ZUDA:AUGUST2009

Guess who is (trying to) going back to school? That's right, it's a-me, Mario! Yes, I'm still running on that high. Been three years since I've done any real essay or exam work, I'm rusty. Going to take lots of work.

Turning 27 in 17 days. Jeepers. Time flies incredibly, unbelievably fast when you get older.


Cards Kill by Jason Chiu and Leah Liu

It starts out very strong, the exposition being very effective and yet nothing more than a page and a half. We feel like we know this world. It's solid. The art is a bit jarring, I would of liked to see a change between the Netherworld and the Human World. Dialogue is a bit wonky at parts, and the script seems to be putting out filler for at least a page before the Stuff happens. Our hero, Kain (okay, just because it's a comic does not mean the characters have to be called this), gets into a tiff with a bigger card player, and it just feels excessive. The ending page does not seem to tie back into this moment at all, so it left me wondering why it was even there. I do highly like the character designs.

GRADE: C+


Octane Jungle by Morgan Luthi & Mike L. Kinshella

The swearing in this one is not too much, but the black bars are. Symbols would fit the speech balloons - as well as the text - better and feel less obtrusive. It threw me out of the comic, and in a story where This Much swearing goes on, that's not good. Thankfully, the story is wonderful and the art goes along right with it. Both are original and edgy, all while feeling classic and nostalgic. Imagine Firefly mixed with (a good version of) The Fast and the Furious (wait, I think I just described The Fast and the Furious). The character design is killer. The character of Granny, a cuss-filled midget who is the top runner for our main character's illegal-goods-brought-to-you-by-fast-frickin'-cars company, is particularly well designed and written. When asked to drive a highly dangerous and risky route, she pulls out a gun and threatens to kill everyone in the room. The final page in itself is a big pile of random awesomeness: a homicidal pizza delivery guy sent to kill our heroes for delivering pizza. Clearly, the bad guys have a wicked sense of humor. So do the writers.

GRADE: B+


If You See The Hills by Sal Field

It's just honest. That's what this comic is. Unfiltered honesty. That and meticulously drawn. Seriously, Sal Field's lines are nigh perfect. His city looks ungodly good. You get the characters right off the bat, you feel for them. So what if nothing happens? Does anything happen in Our Cancer Year, or True Story Swear to God? The hook here is that Sasha and Kat are YOU and ME. The "drama" - the "action" - lies in the fact that the banality of what is being written about is just written so well. It engages on a level that is very unique, very special. Who doesn't have a phone that acts shady?

GRADE: A+


Rogue Royal by Chris Garrett

By all accounts, Royal should just be another run-of-the-mill space spoof. It's not, is the thing. It's not TRYING to make fun of the genre. It just has a lot of contextual jokes that just work. The final gag is both social commentary and hilarious (Royal is mad because her space suit got all ripped up, and it is implied that a man sold it to her). The art works incredibly well, as it is drawn in such a way that gives off the impression of a gag strip tucked away behind the mask of an actual storyline. The storyline in itself is fun: royalty is rebelling against royalty's family and in turn going out and doing things like fighting evil spider-like aliens. Spider-like aliens that shoot their babies at you.

GRADE: A+


Physikon by Alexander Drummond Diochon

Normally, the synopsis problem is not a problem for Alex Diochon. This is not the case for Physikon, a tale about a nomadic and solitary group of people (wonderfully labeled "Us") who are carriers of death itself. Unfortunately, most of the story is given to us in the synopsis, while the eight pages themselves - while glorious in storytelling - fall upon the half-way point. It would of been fine if the story started with our five children meeting the "Us" with no real explanation as to why, but apparently, that is not the case. The "Us" could of just been a stranger walking along, do we really need to know how they all met? I can't fault the rest of the comic, though, as it is all very impressive, which is a natural for Mr. Diochon.

GRADE: B


A Stinking Corpse by Furman

Beautiful art can't save this webcomic from its obvious and treacherous flaw: the synopsis gives away why this man is a corpse, but the comic itself does not. It even says that the hero's body is "new", and yet we never know WHY. The comic could of easily redeemed itself, but it doesn't anywhere in the pitch. No explanation, especially after such an absolute phrasing. I also found the dead naked bodies to be a bit much. No in the sense that they were dead and bloody, but in the sense that it just felt gratuitous in how much nakedness we saw, and how the breasts were "covered up". I did enjoy the fact that our hero, after being bound by a magical summoning, tells his captor and "master" to eff off. But I just didn't see an over-arching story.

GRADE: D


Antique Books by Scott Boyce

Art is way too inconsistent. Short faces are drawn long in close-ups and thin in profile shots. Pacing is all off. I'm all for shots where nothing happens - as long as they serve the story. As long as they show something. As long as they tell. But here, it's just a waste of space and story, to say nothing of the synopsis problem. This comic probably has the biggest synopsis problem of any I've read on Zuda. Yes, we do see demons and monsters, but none of that is followed up. Does she know or is she oblivious? The old man screaming in French at her is interesting, but never given any context other than... she is just there. I like a good supernatural mystery, but not like this.

GRADE: F


Bow & Arrow Detective Agency by George Gousis & Antonis Vavagiannis

There is simply no reason for the two main characters to be working together as PIs. At least, no given reason. One is a bumbling slacker, one is old fashioned and quirky in how old fashioned he is. If given a reason as to why they work together, I could of accepted it. I can't do Laurel and Hardy in a serious professional capacity. But the ink is great.

GRADE: D-


Arctic by Ghost

The concept is old but the script is fresh. Not new, just fresh. The dialogue, both internal and external, is not pretentious for the type of story this is at all. All except for the final page - a spread of the title and the author's name - it used its space wisely. I liked how it gradually built up to reveals instead of giving you a bunch of strange happenings all at once (if that is applicable to an 8-pager). The character designs were great, especially the main bad guy at the end. There is one panel in particular that conveys the sense of how exactly f**ked this guy is in relation to his enemy's skill. I like that there color scheme, too.

GRADE: B+


Absolute Magnitude by Robert Burke Richardson & Martin Morazzo

This must be Firefly Month or something. Holy cr*p, I cannot express enough how I like the concepts in this one. Using prisoners as live engines for your ships? That's incredible. But it feels WAY too much like EarthBuilders, which is coming online shortly. I know, I know, I didn't exactly VOTE for 'Builders, but it's still a complaint. Hopefully, though, the creativity can keep itself standing straight. The art is clean, and the character relationships are all clearly defined ("... always hated you" was brilliant albeit too hard to not see the Joss Whedon influence). It could be a very good comic if it stayed far enough away from the Firefly influence. But right now, it just feels like a lot of things jumbled together in too tight a space.

GRADE: B-