Review: Psychic Soldier Kai

Today's comic has a little bit of a special meaning for me. A few months back, I was eating up some leisure time by reading webcomics. During this period of time, I found several comics that caught my attention for various reasons and wondered why I'd never heard of them before. In part, that formed the inspiration for me to go and create this review blog, and so I suppose I owe those comics a bit of a thanks. For those of you who have not yet figured it out, Psychic Soldier Kai was one of those comics.

Psychic Soldier Kai is a comic that is artisticly inspired by manga. While this could probably be said about a decently large number of webcomics, it's a bit of a refreshing sight to see that Mason Easley isn't content to simply throw together some generic character designs and call it a day. The characters are realistically proportioned, the eyes are the size you'd expect them to be on an actual person, and the series is devoid of characters whose hair exceeds the volume of their head. Shading in the comic is done in varying levels of grey with a good degree of success.

The storyline of the comic can get a little confusing at times, if only because Easley is in the habit of throwing out terms or dialogue and expecting us to run with it. As opposed to the other extreme, the infodump, this one tends to be preferable in webcomics because it doesn't require that the story be put on pause for weeks as the audience recieves background information. It does mean that readers should probably take the time to read each comic rather than skimming through them (as I myself have been prone to do). It's probably a good thing that the main character of the story knows as little as we do, and as such gives Easley the room to put explainations in his comics without destroying the sense of realism. Once the meaning of the dialogue becomes clear, the story is actually quite straightforward, at least so far. As an additional bonus, the title of the strip, "Psychic Soldier Kai", is actually a fairly good descriptor of the strip, as opposed to so many other webcomics which have only a very loose connection to their own title.

Since I have yet to actually talk about the story, the gist of it is that there is this guy named Walter. There's part of a secret organization of psychics who want him dead, but another part wants him to stay alive, while yet a third part wants his help, but don't particularly care about his well-being once he's no longer of use to them. Above all that, theres the actual villain of the story. This probably isn't a very specific description, but the story is mostly still in the beginnings, and just now seems to be heading into the story proper.

If you like humour comics, then you'll probably want to skip out on this one. Psychic Soldier Kai utilizes dramatic storytelling and has little room for making jokes. If you can appreciate a story for the sake of being a story, then Psychic Soldier Kai is definitely worth taking your time to check it out. Next week, I'll return with a funny comic, I promise.

The comic can be found through this link

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Art: B+. Very consistent. Characters actually have their own facial structures, rather than being distinctive hairstyles placed on top of the same six cut-and-paste faces.
Story: B+. The story proper has yet to kick off, but the first chapter serves as a good hook, and the rest of what is up so far is engaging.
Characterization: C. Other than a few things that have happened to the main character, we don't really know much about any of these people. Probably unavoidable this early in the run of the comic.
Writing: C+. I'm torn between praising the comic for mentioning some things and leaving the reader in suspense about what exactly they're talking about until later, or being frustrated that webcomics tend to be a slow medium that doesn't work well with long-term revelations.
Humour: N/A.

Arbitrary Overall Rating: B, with extreme potential to improve as we get more into the comic.

Review: Stoopitz

I have a text file stored on my computer. It contains a list of webcomics that I have considered posting a review for, although I sometimes wonder why I even bother keeping the list, since I don't see myself doing anything with it in the near future. The major factor in this is probably laziness, since reviewing a comic from the list would require me to actually keep reading all of those comics so that I could note which of them have built up enough of an archive that I can actually review them, rather than making a few comments about the art. Instead, I end up trawling through the usual places every week, looking for a new comic to review.

This past week, the comic I came accross was Stoopitz, a webcomic by Brian Gibson which was a pleasure to find in more ways than one. Yeah, it meant that I would be able to get a review done that week, but there's also the fact that Stoopitz is quite possibly better than some of the big-name comics out there. In fact, I had to constantly check to ensure that this comic was, in fact, a newer comic and not something that was read by approximately half of the webcomics community.

Okay, I'm exaggerating a little up there... sort of. Stoopitz isn't a shining utopian vision (which is what it'd take to get such a large reaction from webcomicers, since in my experience there are only a few titles out there that would be universally recognized, and that doesn't necessarily mean that everybody has actually read them). The comic is, however, very well-done and professional looking, and I have no doubt that Mr. Gibson can be a force to be reckoned with amongst webcomicists a few years from now.

One of the things that makes Stoopitz good is that it's fairly easy to relate to. It's a slice of life comic revolving around Tim, a young man living in a big city. There's no suspension of disbelief required, and for the most part things he experiences are things that we can understand, probably because the comic is loosely based around experiences that Gibson himself had while living in New York. Things are mostly humourous, and the comics that I didn't find funny can probably be chalked up to my having a sense of humour roughly equivalent to that of a birch tree. At any rate, the humour is more or less always present without being completely over the top or tacked-on, which is certainly a good thing.

The other thing that grabbed my attention in Stoopitz was the artwork. The art is completely in black and white at the beginning of the archive, then switches to greyscale after a few strips, while a single comic to date has been posted in colour. No matter what the palette is, Gibson's panels have an immersive feel to them that I wouldn't expect from anybody less than Makoto Shinkai. It was this kind of thing that made me wonder how I'd never heard of this comic before every time I loaded a page. If you don't believe me, then see for yourself.

Beyond that, Stoopitz is solid but not exceptional in other areas. The story is solid in the sense that you can't really assign a plot to somebody who is simply living out their life, and the characters are likewise just as balanced and realistic as you'd expect from your next door neighbor.

Now, as I look back on my review I notice that there's a severe lack of criticism in there. Since I'm usually all for the idea that no work is either the shining example of it's genre and medium nor a complete and utter piece of crap that the world would be better off without that particular artist, I feel a little hypocritical in the fact that I can't think of any honest criticism for this comic, and if I weren't running a day late on this review I'd go back and scour the archives until I notice a glaring flaw that I somehow forgot about in the week that passed between when I read the comic and when I actually sat down to write this review, or I'd go through and nitpick the comic to death about things such as the art being "Great, but not Excellent". Since I haven't got the time to do so at the moment, I'll instead look to the future.

Usually, I keep a positive mind when I look to the future. In terms of the quality of the work, it usually tends to be accurate, since few artists actively try to produce work of lower quality as they continue with a project. There are, however, a few things that can be seen as a step backwards by some people simply because those people are not part of the group of people who see the change as a step forward. In this case, I am talking about Cerebus Syndrome.

Cerebus Syndrome is the trend of serial works that originally dealt in comedy to slide towards drama the longer they run. This is usually because nobody, no matter how talented, can continue to think of jokes at a constant rate for an indefinite period of time. Since a joke usually will only work for one comic while a dramatic story can be dragged out indefinitely, this can be an attractive action once it gets harder to stay funny. In comics where things are based on real life events, it can be even worse, since the writer can run out of experiences and suddenly realize that they themselves have absolutely no talent for writing humour. Since Stoopitz is lightly based off of real occurrances, it's a prime candidate for the Syndrome to set in.

This isn't a given, of course, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. Dramatic storylines can be just as good as comedy, and the two can even be worked together without sacrificing story integrity. Still, such a change should have forethought put into it, and it should happen because the writer wants for it to happen, not because it's the only option left to them.

Once again, though, this is all just what could happen, and I think that even if it's inevitable for all works, it'll be a long time before Cerebus Syndrome takes over Stoopitz.

The comic can be reached here.

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Art: A-. In my eyes, there's really nothing that needs improving with the artwork in this comic. More colour strips would be nice, if such a thing is practical.
Story: C. There's not much that can be done with this one, unless one is willing to sacrifice a bit of the realism in favor of establishing an overriding purpose to the lives of the characters
Writing: B. Well presented and clear.
Characterization: C+. As with story, not much is possible with this, unless the comic were to take a serious turn and start delving into the character's psychology
Humour: B+. Not overly hilarious, but enough that I keep coming back day after day.

Arbitrary Overall Rating: B+. I was extremely tempted to give this comic an A, but was wary of setting the extremes of my standards so early after establishing this blog. A comic that will be checked weekly for updates, at any rate.

Review: Four Days

Well, it's come time to post the first entry on this site that I've actually been able to devote a full week to. As such, it'll be clear, concise, and thoroughly checked against the source material, right? Unfortunately, it won't be like that, because despite having a week to work on it, I procrastinated until the last few days. For those of you whose cursors are drifting up towards the "back" button on your browsers, I promise that I actually have a point here.

Anyway, procrastination is something that isn't really unheard of in webcomic artists, but we don't have to worry about that in today's pre-review rant, because the webcomic of the week, Four Days by Thomas Henriksson, is mostly above such things. Four Days is, for the most part, a webcomic that I would classify as a "gag-a-day" comic. These kinds of comics were mostly modeled after newspaper comics, where comicists would have to make sure that audiences would enjoy their comic. Since it's rather hard to cram in enough plot into two lines of panels on a newspaper page, these comics tend to eschew plot and an ongoing story in favour of telling a single joke. The format isn't as necessary with webcomics, since a webcomicist can cram as much content as they want into each update, but it remains a good idea for most comics to try to include humour in most updates.

(Since I'm a sucker for a good story comic, I'll point out to aspiring comic writers that it's better to leave out the joke than to shoehorn it into place. It's not funny if it has to be forced)

Speaking of story, Four Days doesn't really have much of a story, which is good because it doesn't get in the way of the jokes. That's all I really have to say on the subject, so let us skip this and move on to characterization and art. I talk about these two together because, in the case of this comic, I have a complaint that affects both areas: namely that I can't tell who's who.

To clarify the above statement, the comic utilizes a stylized kind of art where all of the characters have pencil-thin bodies and limbs, large heads, and even larger eyes. It's rather refreshing, because the artist doesn't aspire to anything beyond his ability, but on the other hand it's harder to tell the characters apart from each other, which puts a bit of a damper on the humour. A good amount of the jokes rely on character-based humour, in which a character does something we might not expect from our own experiences in life, but we accept it as realistic because it fits in with what we know of the character (somewhere out there, somebody with a Doctorate's degree in psychology has probably written a thesis on why something like this is funny). It's a bit of a problem when you can't tell whether the girl who just delivered the punchline of today's comic is the stereotyped tree-hugger or the stereotyped airhead.

I would like to point out that the wonk listed above does not apply to new comics, as the comics are now coloured and the character designs are easier to differentiate. The only place in which this applies are the comics posted before the author went on hiatus (referred to as "act one").

The characterizations themselves sometimes seem a little two-dimensional, as mentioned above. Far more distracting than the characters being flanderised stereotypes of an environmentalist, a cheerleader, and some kind of emo/goth hybrid is the fact that you have no idea why these characters even like each other. They seem to regard each other with utter hatred for the most part, unless of course this comic takes place in some dystopian American future in which people refer to each other as "you fucking bitch" with a smile on their face. I don't think it's possible for somebody to be that cheerfully insulting.

Looking back at this review, I can't see very many good things, so I suppose that I'll list a few here for the benefit of you readers. Aside from a several-month hiatus, Mr. Henriksson rarely (if ever) misses his updates, has consistant artwork, and every so often creates flash animations based on the comic that are worth checking out. This comic wasn't really my cup of tea, but I suppose that it's only my opinion on the matter.

Since there weren't any banners on the site, you can reach it through this link, or the potholed link at the top of the page.

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Art: C+. Hard-to-recognize characters during the first stretch of comics can make this webcomic a little harder to get into, but things have improved since.

Story: C. Basically nonexistant, doesn't get in the way of the humour.

Writing: C-. Punctuation in the comics is frequently a little off, which makes things a little weird.

Characterization: D+. The personalities of the characters are consistant, but can be more or less summed up in single word stereotypes. Characters are static and show no developement or depth.

Humour: B-. Does okay with this. If you decide to read the comic, chances are that you're going to read it for this.


Arbitrary Overall Rating: C. As with last week's comic, I didn't really find anything in this comic to be funny, but things were amusing enough that reading it wasn't a total waste of my time. Decent enough to stay on my watch list.

Review: Windmill

Sitting in front of my computer yesterday, I began to give some serious thought into what the first webcomic that I should review would be. After all, the first review of the site will set a tone that will be followed for years to come. It's not a decision to be made lightly.

Several seconds later, I hit myself upside the head and told myself to just get on with it, and so today I bring you this review of "Windmill". To start off, I will point out that Windmill is not exactly new. The comic itself was started over two years ago, but has been on hiatus for the past year. As such, it is "new" enough for me.

Windmill is one of the many comics hosted at Smackjeeves. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the site, it has a bit of a reputation for hosting a large number of comics of questionable quality, most likely due to the fact that there is no investment cost required to start up a comic there. I've heard multiple times that a comic will not get taken seriously unless it has its own domain, signifying that the artist is willing to invest more in their comic than the bare minimum. I agree that it is nice to see a comic artist who is willing to actually put money into their comic (not that I really have a right to complain if they don't), but as with all things, it is not a sure indicator as to the quality of the site. I've read comics that have their own web domain that are utter garbage, and there are at least two long-running strips that I read regularly that still use Comicgenesis subdomains, despite being fairly well known. Windmill is a comic that has the potential to become one of the latter category.


Windmill is a soft science fiction story revolving around Dexter Barton, a formerly deceased former police officer. In the world of Windmill, the dead are reanimated as Dead-Walkers, mindless slaves who are used to work in conditions too hazardous for humans to handle. Dexter, however, was somehow reanimated with all of his memories, personality, and free will that he had prior to his death. He is then taken home by Eva Sphinx, a nurse who was present at the time of his resurrection. A little bit of poking around on the site indicated that the story is expected to last for roughly eight chapters, with the story currently being in the middle of the second.

One of the wonderful things about Windmill is that the artist, Charcoal-Grey, has the experience necessary to create some fairly decent art. The comic is drawn in a manga style that is well suited to the tone set in the early comics (rather, the only comics at the time). The only artistic complaints I would bring up are the fact that some of the post-hiatus comics are rough and sketchy, as opposed to the clean lines from when the comic first started. The strip makes occasional use of a chibi-art style as well, although for the most part the current, lighthearted tone of the comic makes such things forgiving.

Things don't look like they might stay that way, though. Sure, at the present time the comic looks like it could just turn out to be a cliched romantic comedy where one of the characters just so happens to have died, but I highly doubt that romance will be the primary focus of the plot by the time the end comes around. The second chapter opens with a good-sized infodump regarding the setting of the story (as a side note, I must admit that I am glad not to have been reading the comic as this was occurring. One of the greatest problems with webcomics has always been that overly wordy segments of exposition do not work well with the medium, since they can take weeks to complete. Unfortunately, there is not always an alternative, and so they remain a necessary evil). Ignoring the exposition, one could concievably believe that it takes place in the present world, with the exception that certain sciences have developed. We are informed, however, that the world of Windmill is bleaker than we have seen so far. A not-so-benevolent ruler is in control of the city (which is incidentally named Windmill Hill, if I recall correctly. This would normally be checked with the comic, but the site is responding slowly at this time, so don't take my words at absolute truth). Chekhov's Gun would indicate that these things were mentioned for a reason, and even the most recent comics have started to indicate that the authorities of the city are not very pleased with the fact that an abnormal Dead-Walker seemingly disappeared from their control.

The fact that the comic seems to be making a slide towards a more dramatic storyline is fairly evident, but whether it will keep it's comedic elements as it does so remains to be seen. To be prefectly honest as a reviewer, I must admit that nothing I have seen in Windmill so far has made me laugh, but I tend to be more appreciative of story- and character- driven comics, with humour being an added bonus. Since the story is just beginning to pick up and there hasn't really been time for much characterization beyond a few generalizations, that really leaves humour to be the main attraction, and Windmill just has the misfortune of belonging to a brand of comedy that doesn't really hold much appeal to me. Still, it seems to be making an effort to keep the readers engaged while later events are being set up.

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Well, that's all I can think of for now, so I'll leave you with some arbitrary ratings in various categorys... but don't take my word for it, go check out the comic yourself! You can reach the site by clicking on the banner at the top of this post, or by following this link here.

Art: B-. Clean and mainly consistant, but is done completely in black and white (not in itself a bad thing) and rarely features backgrounds. Can be occasionally sketchy.
Story: B+. I originally intended for there to be two story ratings (current story and future potential), but there's really no good way to do that. Despite the Romantic-Comedy look that the comic has at first glance, the seeds of the current plot were planted just as early.
Writing: C+. This rating is a little shakier than the rest, because I forgot to consider it when reading through the comic. It would have been nice to be introduced to the setting with something other than an infodump, but the way the plot is being eased into rather than dumped on our heads makes up for it.
Characterization: C. I can tell you general things about the various characters, but can't get much real depth out of them at the moment. This seems to be one of those things that results from reading the comic so early in its run.
Humor: C+. I think a genuine attempt is being made, but it just isn't the kind of thing I like. Make a decision for yourself.

Arbitrary Overall Rating: B. A good read for now, and definitely something to keep an eye on.

Mission Statement

It's a brand new day in a brand new year, and there's one question on my mind. "Why start a webcomic blog?"

Alright, I lied. That question isn't on my mind at all, but it's one of those things that needs to be written in this blog, despite the fact that very few people will probably read this blog, much less this first post. So, what does this blog offer that the dozens of other webcomic review blogs in existance right now don't have?

Nothing.

That was a lie too, in a certain manner. This blog is intended to offer my own opinion, which is no more valuable than that of any of the other reviewers out there. It is different, though, in the sense that no two people have the same thoughts on everything.

Getting along to a slightly more focused tone, this post is going to tell you (the readers) what you can expect from this blog. If you've figured out by the title of the blog and the past few sentences that I intend to put up reviews of webcomics, congratulations. More specifically, I intend to review new webcomics. Not things that have been running strong for the past decade, because those have been reviewed time and time again, and there's really no point in placing another review for the giants of the medium.

In this blog, reviews are intended to accomplish two objectives. First, they bring attention to something and tell people unfamiliar with the "product" what they could expect. A sort of recommendation, if you will. Even if I personally don't enjoy reading a comic, a review should at least contain enough information that the reader should be able to make a preliminary decision on their own. Secondly, a review inevitably contains critisism that the authors/artists of the comic can put to good use in improving themselves and their comics (or mock and ignore, continuing in their own manner. After all, it's their project).

The big webcomics don't need either of these things. While webcomics have only a few titles that can be recognized by anybody who is generally familiar with the medium, the big titles really don't need to have a backwater blogger handing out recommendations, when in reality nine out of the ten people reading this blog have probably already heard of it. Similarily, I highly doubt that one more person saying that Megatokyo needs to go back to how it was under Caston will make any change. It's nothing against the writers, but anybody who has run a successful webcomic for a few years has probably figured out what works, and any percieved 'flaws' are probably in the process of being fixed, or are kept that way for a reason. Starting webcomicers, however, would benefit most from a boost in traffic (however small) and an honest outside opinion.

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Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we will commence next week with our regularly scheduled programming. If you've got a webcomic that you'd like reviewed, send it in, regardless of whether you're the writer, friend of the writer, or just a fan. Don't worry about whether or not the comic is 'new' or not, because I'll arbitrarily assign that distinction when I read through it. At the same time, if there isn't enough in the comic to create a full review, I may simply read it now and wait until there's enough to give a solid opinion on.