Webcomic Review: Wasted Talent

Funny enough, this is a Webcomic Thursday instead of a Webcomic Wednesday because I finally got a new computer and spent an hour transferring over my webcomics! The bookmarks came over as part of Chrome but I didn't realize the RSS feeds for my add-on wouldn't, it wasn't the most tedious task ever but that's because I have done the most tedious tasks in the world recently so the bar is pretty high for me. 

Wasted Talent by Angela Melick

Comic Review: Mercury

As a heads up, starting tomorrow I'm going to be out of town for a week and while I should still have wifi allowing me to post regular updates if they don't go up, well, assume that that didn't work out the way I had hoped. In any case, this was yet another grab from the not-so-local library, I think at this rate I'm going to achieve my goal of having read everything that interests me in their comic section by the end of summer after all!

Mercury by Hope Larson

Summary: In 2009 Tara is living with extended family after her and her mother's ancestral home burned down. In 1859 Josey is living in said home and her family is being tempted with the promise of a gold mine on their property. Since if there's one thing this family needs, and wants, in both time periods it's money yet this gold may bring more problems than it solves. 

The Good: While The Sight (not that the book ever explicitly names it as much) feels a bit gimmicky in Tara's story I liked how it was integrated into Josey's, actually I liked Josey's story more than Tara's in the end since it felt a little more complete and the character's seemed a tad more fleshed out. Although I do wish the story had been able to expand on the other supernatural elements that popped up later, they're so brief that I do wish the story had either expanded on them or just left them out all together (which would have been worse since they then pop up again in Tara's story).

The Bad: Both of the halves in this book, the past and the present are perfectly fine stories  with beginnings, middles, and ends yet I just don't think they work that well together. Either story could have easily stood on it's own yet putting them together hasn't given Mercury any deeper meaning or made it structurally any better. In the end I wish that the story had chosen to focus on just one story instead and gone a bit deeper, such as Tara's relationship with her mother which I felt was so superficial that I had a hard time believing it was even causing conflict. Finally, I found it rather odd that the story needed to have so many asterisks for Canadian slang instead of just putting them in a glossary or simply taking them out. Just about all of them I would have been able to figure out through the dialogue anyway and it was more distracting than useful to see "loonie* *a one dollar coin is called a loonie for the loon on the back" instead of just "dollar" or even "loonie, you can pay me back". 

The Art: I'm starting to realize that I'm just not as fond of the stark, black and white only with thick outlines style of art I've been coming across a lot lately since I just find it a little boring and, well, I don't want to read boring looking comic books. That aside, I also found the paneling layout a bit boring as well since it only uses rectangles and squares and I don't recall it even making the squares larger or smaller for dramatic effect. I read a lot of manga and webcomics where the creators go wild and try all kinds of layouts to get the look they want and while not everyone does that I seem to find more people in those two mediums than I do in US/Canadian produced comics which puzzles me since plenty of those webcomic artists are in the US/Canada. So in the end, while the art was solid and I could certainly follow the flow of the story it just didn't interest me and that's bad when something that's literally half of the story bores me.


In the end I can only give this 2.5 out of 5 stars and raised eyebrows over the fact that the cover proclaims that this was an Eisner Award Winner. While certainly not terrible I just didn't see anything in the story that I thought would elevate it up to what I would expect out of an Eisner winner, makes me wonder what the other nominees were that year (2010 I believe).

Book Review: The Way We Fall

And I couldn't even manage a week straight of constant updates, sorry guys I really don't know why it's been so hard for me to be consistent lately. I will try to get today's (actual) review up later as well, might be a bit shorter but that review was going to be a bit shorter regardless.

Moving along, this is another book I got from the Enchanted Inkpot giveaway and was one I put off for a while since it was a "what if this disaster happened and everyone the main character cared for started dieing?" which just isn't a genre that I particularly like. I wasn't so worried about whether or not the book would be good, I had seen enough people on the internet praise it so I was sure it was going to be well-written, I was just wondering if I would need something extra fluffy to cheer myself up with afterwards.

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

The cover certainly stands out here, I'm sure if I was to pull up one of those charts that note how many books have these things/this color on the cover that there wouldn't be many other yellow books and it's a little unusual to use the title to create the imagery as well. Very eye-catching so I think it works quite well.

Summary: Kaelyn lives on a small island on the coast of Canada and only recently moved back after living in Toronto for several years which has helped create a rift between her and her old neighbors. She's trying to repair this crack when an even bigger disaster strikes in the form of a mysterious disease that sweeps the island, killing all whom it infects. Quarantined from the rest of the world the island slowly sinks into a panic where all semblance of normal life vanishes and Kaelyn and her family must try to cope and stay alive until this nightmare ends.  

The Good: While it can't strictly be called a zombie book, people don't come back after they're dead and such, Kaelyn does have a very good line about how this virus is a much smarter one because it doesn't make it's victims turn crazy and cannibalistic but rather crave attention and physical contact so that the disease spreads even faster and that was a really smart idea on Crewe's part and helps keep the story realistic. In nearly every zombie story a character will get infected for a really dumb reason and, while I'm not saying that didn't happen here as well, with that explanation of how the virus spreads it was a lot easier to take the characters actions seriously and the whole story felt stronger. There was some romance that came about very naturally that I liked and I liked how there was a prominent, female supporting character (which, as odd as it sounds, I've noticed lately I'm not seeing a lot of them in books that are single point of view, most often the biggest supporting character seems to be of the opposite gender*).

The Bad: The progression of the story is very predictable (infection starts, characters are told there is no hope for outside help and must wait it out, after some time has passed and the characters/reader feel it's safe someone becomes sick and dies, main character goes through tough situation but because of plot armor remains mostly safe, etc) and, while the story is well-written and doesn't feel constrained by it's genre, I do wish that someday I come across a book that does one of those parts very differently. And that was another reason I was hesitant to read the book, I had correctly guessed that this story wasn't going to do anything that I hadn't seen before and I prefer to read books that promise a new concept. Finally, I was a bit frustrated at how vague the ending is (I almost feel like the author was torn on having a happy or sad ending) but it wrapped up as well as I expected (because again, there's a "usual" way these stories end, it was something I had guessed before the book started, not because of how the story progressed).


Despite my criticisms this is a good, solid book, just not the book for me. As such I'll be donating it to the local library when I get a chance and I'm sure there will be plenty of people there who'll enjoy it much more. Heck, I think that many people who've enjoyed zombie stories in the past will enjoy this one (as long as they're not in it for zombie-killing-gore which doesn't really happen here) so I do hope the book finds it's audience and does well.


*which seems to be that way for (straight) romance purposes frustratingly enough.  

Comic Review: Friends with Boys

No I didn't run out of movies/tv shows to review again, I decided the circumstances were right to break with my normal schedule for today. Starting Thursday the 1st I'm going to keep my normal Sunday, Monday, Friday, Saturday update schedule but, like last March, I'm going to spend the entire month reviewing webcomics instead and initially this comic was going to be talked about then. Then I found out this was less of a webcomic and more of a graphic novel that was being put online in it's entirety as a preview and that all but the first 16 pages were going to be taken down in a week and a half so I really couldn't wait until April to actually review this. So in light of all of that, plus my next tv review was going to be the first season of Life on Mars and really didn't want a month plus gap in the reviews between seasons, I'm just going to be different today and talk about Friends with Boys.

As mentioned above, the comic is actually a graphic novel that has just been put up online as a preview of sorts for the physical copy (which comes out any day now) and was done by Faith Erin Hicks whose works I've reviewed a few times before here. Unlike the last one I talked about, Brain Camp, she not only did all the artwork but also came up with the story much like her other work I've seen, The War at Ellsmere, and I was curious how that would work. I was a bit cautious about trying this one out because of the hype surrounding it (sadly I just don't seem to like a lot of webcomics that have a lot of hype surrounding them, not sure why but it just seems to be the case) but now I would like to add to the hype and say yes, this was really pretty good.

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

    
Summary: Maggie, like her three older brothers, has been home-schooled all her life and is now starting her freshman year in high school in the local public school system which makes it even more terrifying than high school normally is. But while it was her parent's and her brothers' decision to go to a public high school instead of continuing with home-schooling Maggie doesn't have that choice, her mother has recently left (it's implied that it's partially the stress of having to home-school four kids) which has left an understandably big gap in her life. So Maggie must deal with all of this, make friends with the people whom her family doesn't like and figure out what the deal is with a local ghost that likes to haunt her. 

The Good: Ever since my parents separated when I was 16 I've been keeping a close eye out for books that deal well with that wonderful situation and Friends with Boys does a better job than most stories I've seen. My situation and Maggie's are really different but that raw feeling of unhappiness that sometimes seems like it's consuming your entire life is pretty accurate and I wasn't surprised to see that Hicks based quite a few things in the story off of her own life. Some of the high school bits seemed a bit off to me but since I went to a small, private high school and I didn't see anyone else complaining about that I think that's just me and that the setting also holds up well. Maggie was a fun main character, her brothers felt like brothers, and the story also felt like it was paced just right.  

The Bad: I was hoping for a slightly more substantial ending but, since life sometimes doesn't exactly resolve itself but rather simply continues, it works (and it helps that Hicks herself said she was expecting a different resolution as well and was surprised that this was what fit the best). It was rather frustrating that Maggie's father, who seemed like a sane, reasonable parent in his initial appearances, seems to be suddenly grasping the idiot ball at the climax where he refuses to listen her and judges others on their looks, especially since in his initial scene he was having to change his appearance because of how other would judge the new sheriff if he had long hair. That little bit ended up bothering me a lot more than the entire climax (since I can at least sympathize that when your world is that that confusing that you are going to do stupid stuff, although Maggie's actions were pushing that a bit). 

The Art: It's interesting to compare the art here to the art in her currently on-going webcomic, The Adventures of Superhero Girl, since it's clear from the character designs that this is the same artist but there's a lot more detail work, the backgrounds are more complex and there's a lot more shading. I like how her style looks here*, the character designs are distinctive and a little quirky looking, as I said there's a lot of nice details everywhere you look, and in general I prefer pen and ink shading to using a lot of screen tones**. It looks cartoony but in a very natural-ish way, not as if Hicks set out to draw things in a "cartoon style" but that this is her normal style which is simply cartoon influenced. I do think the drawing of Maggie on the cover looks a bit odd, probably because an upward looking angle on most people simply isn't flattering, but other than that I didn't have any problems with the art at all.

So, my favorite work by Faith Erin Hicks and I'll be sure to grab a physical copy sometime. Like I said, for the next week and a half it's still up online and I would really encourage everyone to check it out and see how you like it. Oh and if you do check it out make sure to look at the author's comments under the pages, Hicks has a lot of great blog posts about working in comics, why Fullmetal Alchemist is an awesome manga, and on homeschooling. I believe those blog posts will stay up after the rest of the comic goes down and I really encourage people to look at those as well. 




*and in ASG but that's for later in the week
** I blame reading too much shojo for that one, I've just seen so many series that abuse the screentones that it often comes out looking cheap to me.