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.

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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.

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: 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.