You know what's my favourite thing at the moment? Walking. Although I've been a member of the uni gym for years, I've felt recently that going to the gym is to exercise what faddy diets are to eating - dull, repetitive, and very easy to cheat on. When I'm out walking, on the other hand, I always see something new - whether it's a man in a kilt and a leopard-print sporran, a narrowboat on the canal that somehow contains more books than my flat and my room back at my parents' house, or a guy busking with beer bottles filled up with water at different levels and the sign "Please give me money so I can buy a real instrument". It's magic.
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Okay over at Palace in the Sky our comic network and it's adjoining blog We've set up a comic reading group. Every 3 weeks a group of our members will be reading a different comic and reviewing it for you. If you want to join and read along with us, We'll be announcing our assignments in the blog and you can read our thoughts, or post your own! This fortnight's Comic is Cyboar by Lou Graziani
I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy reading this comic, it wouldn't have been my usual choice of genre or subject (which I'll admit usually only runs as far as 'paranormal' or 'romance' because I'm pretty girly in my comic choices) but the more I read Cy-boar, the more into it I got. The subject matter of enhanced/augmented animals called up nostalgia of the kind of cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid, where anthropomorphic animals went around fighting badguys and righting wrongs, you know, stuff liike Biker Mice from Mars or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Lou's art and writing ties into this nicely as well in my opinion, the style, colours and even the dialogue remind me of comics of the late 80s/early 90's. It's a refreshing change to see a webcomic in this style- everything about it is old school.
The art has an obvious hand drawn quality that I really like- especially in the earlier episodes where it seems almost like an etching or a monoprint because of it's grainy quality, the newest pages are more slickly drawn (digitally?) but I actually prefer the older ones. The colouring is usually flat, Lou lets heavy black shadows do the work of making his comic look 3D rather than lots of highlights and shadows- another aspect that reminds me of classic comics. He obviously has an excellent grasp of anatomy and perspective- any comic that features super-hero esque characters and animals with human-like physiology would have to, but his drawings of muscles and fight scenes is really gripping and easy to read.
The down side to this comic is that when people *aren't* fighting, or in action, I find their emotions and body language a lot harder to read, especially the human characters- I feel like the characters are lacking in the kind of small facial movements and postures that we use in day to day conversation, and to me this makes them harder to identify with. They come across as a bit wooden and bland when they're talking or telling their back stories, which is a shame compared to how awesome they look kicking ass.
Next time we'll be reading 'Messenger' by Bug. |
