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Please note: This page is no longer updated.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.

Tiny Folk
by Michal Jedinak

Tiny Folk is the kind of comic that I always enjoy. It is wordless.

This poses some difficulties for the artist who tries it. While a character's facial expression and body language can communicate the emotions they are feeling, things like dialogue and explanations have to be implied. You can show what a character is doing but they can't show you what they plan to do. Sometimes subtleties are far easier brought out through dialogue than image.

There is something powerful going on when you have to search for meaning in a picture because no explanation is offered. I'm not going to try to justify some explanation about how dialogue activates the logical side of the brain while images fire up the other side, or anything like that. It's the difference between immediately understanding something when you first see it versus reading the contextual notes.

Tiny Folk mostly avoids these problems with single panels and almost no facial expressions, to boot. I like the snowmen attacking the snow cone merchant. It's clear, to the point and funny. There are a few other ones that I don't quite grasp, but that's the trouble with having no dialogue to provide context. It's going to happen sometimes.

Having said that, this is a recently posted comic which seems to be updating regularly so far. I'm sure time and experience will continue to improve Tiny Folk. It seems to cover topics that are self conflicting, so there's plenty more to see.

What did I learn?
I can't help but think that every comic would be improved if the action, theme and emotional content were clearly understood before a single word was read. Clearly, words and pictures combined can accomplish a great deal more than either alone, but it is good to examine the extreme cases sometimes. We should all keep our eye on comics like Tiny Folk and make sure we are making the most of the image side of our comics.

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.