What Did I Learn?

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Copper by Kazu Kibuishi

Copper is a comic that I look to as an inspiration. Each comic is a self contained concept and full story in it own right. The inspiration for each strip is interesting on its own, like the one entitled Storm. I don't want to spoil it by explaining it, so read it and just think about how close it is to your experience. In particular, the feel you get from it is exactly the same.

The characters are well designed and the backgrounds are always interesting. In particular, Mr. Kibuishi can really paint water well. It's quite a technical feat and there is a lot there I can personally learn from. It's also nice to see a comic done with an actual nib pen that creates an interesting line.

Look at the process used to create Copper. Look at how the color scheme for each comic promotes a certain feel. Look at the storytelling and how every panel advances the story in some way. See how your eye automatically goes to the proper panel in sequence, which is not as easy to do as it might appear. Finally, see how easy Mr. Kibuishi makes it look to focus on an idea and tie it up nicely, without ever explicitly stating what the idea is?

What did I learn?
I've learned that you can create work that has emotional impact even with simple line and colors. Further, you can always improve each little thing you do to create a much stronger work.

I'm going to take a little vacation from reviewing next week. Of course, then I'll owe you two makeup reviews, won't I? You may amuse yourself with some of my other reviews at PopSyndicate.

Previous Reviews

Battlegate| Butterfly| Good Ship Chronicles| Evil, Inc.| Madscott| Jefbot| Chronicle| Sheldon| Stardrop| Theater Hopper| Knave| Lullaby| High Moon| Metadawn| Dead Days| PC Weenies| Ask Maridee | Tiny Folk | Gordian Algebra | Starslip Crisis | The Front | Coffee Time Comics | Patches | Little Creature | The Horrible Pirates | Serenity Tales | Crashlander | Girl Genius | This Is Me | Handle With Care | SuperFogeys | Copper | Eskimo Dave | Real Life | Chateau Wonderful | Count Your Sheep | Breakpoint City | Eeekeemo | Boxcar Astronaut | Zip and Li'l Bit | Wally & Osborne | Jump Leads | Dr. Sheep and the Aardvark | Station V3 | Dresden Codak | Lab Ratz | Toyzville | The Boids | Cow and Buffalo | Casey and Scotty | Just Outside | The Pretentious History of Everything | Tia's World | Quirks | Patrick Grey | For What It's Worth | The Sixth Dimension | Max and the Gorilla Goon Squad | Rainbow Orchid | Neko and Neko | Lions, Tigers and Bears | Spacequint | Lessons In Fire Safety | Corrupt Hardware | Enker's Tale | The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo | A Rusty Life | You'll Have That | From the Margin | Jitterati

About These Reviews

I love comics and I'm always looking at how I can improve my own work by examining other creators' works. It's such a wildly diverse field that it's not advisable to make sweeping generalizations and ignore special circumstances and subjects.

There's a lot we can learn from one another. And while there are many forums where you might discuss this, I haven't found any lengthy discussion on what we can do to make our comics more successful. There are a few good books on the subject but the aspiring webcomic creator is forced to learn by sheer brute force practice how to adapt his/her personal style to the medium. This is not as efficient as it could be.

Also, there are literally thousands of webcomics but only a handful of places where you can find decent, regular reviews. The focus of my reviews will be on trying to determine what is positive, successful and worth emulating about each comic. You might even get hooked on a given comic you read about here.

You may also wonder where the 'criticism' is and where the negative things about the comics are pointed out. As a matter of fact, I did mention some dissappointing issues with layout and such in my initial reviews. I quickly came to the realization that it's easy for any viewer to know what they like and what they don't. I don't need to call extra attention to the negative. I have, on a few occasions, emailed a webcomic author with a few ideas for improvements but there's no need to make that information public.

I'm not trying to sugarcoat anything, mind you. I just wish to have an open discussion about what good comics do. Hopefully, more voices will join in.