What Did I Learn?

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New reviews are posted weekly on the blog page. These reviews are being slightyl updated and ported over to that blog to be republished every Wednesday. They are all scheduled to post and this page will remain until October 2009. You may wish to change your bookmarks.

This is a review of Corrupt Hardware by Tom Potter. 'Cause Robots are Neat.'

Robots are neat! There's quite a few places that robots can take you, humor-wise. No matter what, they are alien to us and you expect them to behave like ... well, robots. With well-written robots, you never know when they will stick to archetype or break it. Always entertaining.

The humor has a nice touch of the wacky. The thinking is outside of the box just enough for the humor to be refreshing. I was thinking that the comic reminded me, in some ways, of the ever mysterious Invader Zim. And then it just so happened that the day I was writing this review, it featured this comic. I applaud the influence of Zim on the creator, but he's got his own take on robots that exceeds the tv cartoon. Very well done and not the easiest thing to do.

The art has an elegantly simple quality to it. The characters have good size and personality contrast. Notice that the robots aren't just stacked boxes but they really have a unique look. Again, well done.

What did I learn? Well designed characters and a unique hook can work wonders. Good writing and character driven dialogue go a long way. I can only assume that you'll enjoy the antics of Bit, Eli, Prob, and Ittybit just like I have.

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.