Review: Bullet

With this review taking place around St. Valentine's Day, it would probably be appropriate for me to review a romance webcomic (It would have been even more appropriate if the review were actually out on the weekend like it was supposed to be, I suppose). Anyway, I now bring you Bullet, a webcomic written and illustrated by Juli Shvets.

Bullet is a manga-esque webcomic hosted on Smackjeeves, and I mean that in every sense of the word (mostly). Most of the time, the webcomics you see that are drawn in the style of manga will use an artistic style remniscent of manga, which will be either left uncoloured or coloured into greyscale or full-colour. Shvets takes it a step further, using actual screentones (or at least duplicating the effect digitally) and creating strips that are read from right to left (my apologies to anybody who took the link in the first paragraph and tried to read the pages normally).

As far as the actual quality of the art, Bullet is decent. The characters are consistant and have enough uniqueness in their designs that they can be told apart easily, but there's just something a little off about them. Female characters seem a little thin, noses in profile seem rather large, perspectives of the characters and backgrounds don't always match up... basically, the artwork is solid and consistant, but a few things can occasionally be a little distracting. The backgrounds are put together well, panel layout makes sense (well, once you get used to it).

The comic itself is about a girl, Nikita Katayanara. Nikita is a bit of an outcast at school, lives alone with her alcoholic mother in constant poverty, has to work to support to the two of them, etc. The story can be a bit confusing at times (Bullet was actually created over two years ago, but Ms. Shvets recently made the decision to restart the comic from the beginning due to pacing issues with the original, which can be found here). The new version of the comic is much better, and has almost caught up in terms of the current point of the story (although there are some additional things revealed in flashbacks during the original which have yet to be completely reintroduced). The characterization is not spectacular, but neither is it bad.


I'm afraid that I haven't really done the comic justice in this review, if only because the comic is still in its early stages and has yet to get into the main plot (which was only just starting in the original, if I interpreted it correctly). The comic is rather serious in tone (I can't recall any usage of the more light-hearted visual styles that were present in in Shvet's other webcomic, Himawari).

The comic can be found here.

--------------------------------------

Art: C+. A few things that are off just enough to push the characters towards Uncanny Valley.
Writing: B. The improvement in pacing between the original and the current version is noticeable and appreciated.
Humour: N/A.
Characterization: C. A few general ideas, but not much time yet has been devoted to showing what kind of people these characters are.
Story: B. Has solid foundations set, and is probably the most promising aspect of the comic

Arbitrary Overall Rating: C+. I look forward to future updates of this comic. Recommended for anybody who likes a serious story with romantic elements.

Review: Addanac City

Today's webcomic is Addanac City, a daily comic strip by George Ford. Addanac City follows the everyday adventures of Hank Addanac, a seven-year-old boy with a bit of a behavioral problem. Of course, when I say "a bit", I mean it in the same sense that Ebola Zaire is "a bit" deadly. If we knew him in real life, even the most hardened adult would find themselves at wit's end, but since we don't have to directly deal with that it's comedy gold just waiting to happen.

I mentioned in my review of Four Days that many humour-driven strips take their inspiration from newspaper comics, and such a thing has never been more apparent than while reading Addanac City. The comic is composed of one-shot comics that use the same characters, but otherwise rarely make reference to past events. As a result, you can start reading the comic from any point and not miss out on anything, and the strips themselves are able to stay current with whatever season it currently is.

The style of humour in AC is reminiscent of newspaper comics as well (think Calvin and Hobbes cranked up to eleven). As with all comic strips, there are places where it could be better, but these are few and far between, and even such lulls are usually the result of a joke being too similar to another rather than the joke not being funny. Addanac City is probably one of those comic strips that is best when it's not being read all in one sitting, whereas I by necessity have to read through the entire archives and cannot afford such a luxury. Still, the comic got a few laughs out of me and triggered a refreshing wave of nostalgia.

The art is art. I realize that tautologies aren't particularly helpful in a review (not to mention the subjective nature of the word "art"), but there's really not much I can say about it. The character designs are solid and accomplish what they need to do, which is convey the joke. There's really nothing lacking in the style that Mr. Ford utilizes, nor can I think of anything specific that would be worth improving.

Characterization The single most challenging thing about writing child characters is probably that writers are not children. As a result, there is a wide range of unrealistic characterizations ranging from Ichigo Marshmallow at one end of the scale to Hank Addanac on the other extreme (of those two, Hank is probably much closer what one could expect in real life). Hank's friends, Christie and Tim, sometimes seem to be more rational than one would expect of second graders (or of children ranging all the way into their late teens, for that matter), but some of this may just be that everybody seems rational next to Hank. The characters keep their characterizations consistant, which is always a good thing.

Addanac City is a comic which I would definitely recommend to everybody, at least to try it out. You can find it at this site here.

---------------------------------

Art: B. No doubt it could be improved upon, but there's really no problem with the current art.
Story: N/A
Characterization: C+. Hank sometimes seems a little one-dimensional and the others sometimes seem a little vaguely-defined, but existing characterizations are always consistant.
Writing: B. The coloured words in each comic strip are a bit of an interesting touch (personally, they conjure memories of playing Ocarina of Time, but that's quite beside the point). I've seen webcomicists use bold font to achieve the same effect, but for some reason this method seems more natural for Addanac City (possibly due to the the amount of colour already present in the comic... the speech feels like it's actually part of the image rather than something that got added on top of it)
Humour: B+. Some good humour that everybody can relate to.

Arbitrary Overall Rating: B+. A good humour-comic that is safe for all ages and should hold appeal for everybody.

Announcement: No review last week

Y'all have probably figured this out by now, but there was no review posted last week. Since it's already halfway through the week, the review will be posted as normal on Friday. Sorry.