What Did I Learn?

Please note: This page is no longer updated.

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.

From The Margin

This time, I'll be reviewing From The Margin, by Name Unknown

My first impression is that I really enjoy the witty dialogue and the wonderful contrast in the images. It took me a little reading to catch on to the currently ongoing storyline, but I'm really enjoying it. There's a definite sense of each character in their actions and speaking.

The art has a certain sketch feel to it and it has some great layout ideas that I also enjoy. The backgrounds include some unusual pure blacks, brushed metal and starfields. There's also some fun (what I call cgi) images of starcraft and planets. Some of the early ones were even cgi rendered in color too. There's really some nice variation to the look and feel.

The writing has a smooth feel once you've read two or three strips and get a sense of what's going on. The moments that the artist chooses to show provide not only a little drama but some nice subtle humor. It's almost like you can sense the creator's amusement as he worked on the comic.

The site colors fit the comic and the navigation is clear. On his comicspace site, the author mentions that he welcomes ideas for the strip, character concepts and fanart.

What did I learn? Open up to the concept of not using every bit of the standard comic box. Looser line can be appealing and interesting character interplay is really fun.

See From The Margin for yourself. I welcome your thoughts on this review in the FrogPond ComicSpace comment box.

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.