Whenever I look through the list of webcomics I read I always think that they show really well what my reading tastes are. There's fantasy, slice of life, journal comics, adventure, science fiction and some really weird historical series. Actually, this isn't technically a historical series, it's slice of life following several characters who do Civil War reenactments with chapter arcs but no overarching storyarch. I have no idea where the creators even got this idea but it's brillant and I hate waiting for updates here.
The Battle of Dovecote Crest
Summary: Charlie may want to be a historian but she is less than enthusiastic about participating in the Civil War re-enactments that her muesuem puts on, she'd rather be doing "real" history work. So she leaps at the chance of a muesuem job in another city but she finds herself more attached to little Dovecot Crest than she expected.
The Good: After the first arc I really ended up sympathizing with all the characters, from the serious Charlie and Jeremy and the sillier Ben and Tess. Each of them has gotten enough screen time to flesh themselves out and all of them are likable and understandable characters, some of them like Jeremy, just took a little longer to open up. Ben even mad what would've been a sad arc about a ghost more amusing with his antics and I like how the characters are mature enough to know who they would do well with in a relationship and who they wouldn't.
The Bad: I think school killed off the artist and writer recently since the comic hasn't updated in over a month (and if someone is that swamped that early in the semester that's not a good thing*) so I'm having a bit of a hard time remembering what just happened last time. Also, I'm not quite sure where the story is going. Clearly we're focusing on the lives of several of the re-enactors (the four I mentioned above primarily) but is there going to be a more central plot line? When/where will the story end? It's just too soon to tell and I hope that gets addressed soon, it sounds like the story has all been roughly planned out so far so I want to see more of it!
The Art: Gets a lot better over the course of the comic (I had actually forgotten just how plain the early pages looked, the newer ones feel much fuller with more tones) and I feel like it's going to keep getting better the longer the series runs. Lots of sepia tones and subdued colors (which works for blending the historical and current day events), it's a full color comic, and my only real complaint is that some of the pages are bigger than others and I prefer comics that have a set size for their pages/strip sizes.
Not a big update tomorrow either since apparently I only follow two webcomics that start with a C (oh great, and now I'm thinking about the upcoming noitaminA series instead...)
*one of the bad things about having a lot of webcomics drawn by art students, they are prone to being killed off by their workload on a regular basis and having very limited posting time for years. Yes I must sympathize with them but there gets to be a point when you wonder if they should even be doing a webcomic if they, you know, have absolutely no time for it. And this isn't directed at Dovecot but really at most webcomics done by students in general, part of the reason I love twitter is so I can follow them and they'll post links when the story actually goes up.
