WJC Comics No 3

By Warwick Johnson Cadwell
warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com

Cadwell's comics shouldn't really work. His artstyle seems to ignore so many things that I think should be present in "good" comic art. The characters' proportions don't make sense, the panel to panel consistency is weak, and characters warp and change.

And yet I love his style. There's something about the way he draws weird looking creatures, robots, and even humans that really appeals to me. His work has energy, dynamism, and an appeal I find hard to pin down.

Of course it's not all perfect, the reproduction on this is kind of terrible. Greys come out so dark it's hard to make out any detail, and I just know we're missing out on certain aspects of the art. Storywise it's just a chase scene, but it's effective at what it does, and as part of a longer narrative it would work really well.

Cadwell has a book coming out from Blank Slate Books later this year, but until then I'll just have to keep looking at his blog so I can discover awesome drawings like this one of Batgirl vs. Killer Croc.

WJC Comic No. 2: Kani

By Warwick Johnson Cadwell
warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com

Underwater samurai! In Victorian diving costumes! It’s like if Lone Wolf and Cub had been created by Jules Verne! Three samurai descend to the depths of the ocean and encounter a lone guardian, the Red Demon. A fight ensues, with the added difficulty of each participant having to protect their own air supply.

The mostly silent comic doesn’t give any explanations for why these samurai are underwater, or what they’re trying to achieve. Why are they fighting? I don’t know, nor do I care. Rather Cadwell’s comic grabs me with its ridiculous premise, style, and distinctive art.

Cadwell’s art is not the heavily researched realism you might find in other samurai comics. Instead it’s a rough sketchy style filled with strange proportions and lacking almost entirely in straight lines. While you might think that the hard shells of diving suits wouldn’t work well in his organic style it somehow does. Perhaps the changing proportions, when combined with the heavy use of zipatoned backgrounds, helps to create an underwater feel to the whole comic, where the movement of the water affects how you view things. At times the action in Cadwell’s art seems almost slowed down, as though the water was making movement harder for the participants.

Needless to say I’m looking forward to his (seemingly full colour!) book Gungle coming out from Blank Slate Books next year.

Text Message Minicomic

By Dan Berry
www.flickr.com/groups/textmessagecomics/

People send ridiculous txt msgs, a visit to Texts From Last Night will teach you that. But people also send incredibly boring text messages: “What time will you arrive?” “Your dinner is getting cold.” “Can you get some milk please?” These are hardly pieces of dialogue that will get you excited about reading comics.

But what if cats are saying them? Instant hilarity! Or if it’s some ghosts threateningly asking someone what they want for dinner. Or a guy singing a song to a bear about how he should give him a ride to shops because his car is broken. Or monsters that eat hats! Then the comics become amazing.

Sure some of the comics Berry has drawn are just two people talking to each other, but even then Berry’s sort of weird looking people are fairly amusing, and the text messages degenerate into people talking about lazers and punching cats. Are these real text messages Berry has sent and received? If so those ones are far more interesting than mine (most recent: “I will be late tonight”).

It’s a super cute idea, so congrats to Warwick Johnson who apparently came up with it. I want to read his next!

WJC Comic No 1

By WJC
warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com

Urgh. Writing this stuff on a computer in Sweden that is underlining almost every word I type is frustrating. I predict this will be my most spelling-mistake filled review ever. Plus I am tired.

So! WJC! I read one of his comics in the 2000AD fanzine I reviewed a little while ago, and it's good suff. The comic here has absolutely nothing to do with the cover, but is about a helicopter getting shot down, and the pilot trying to escape from some strange, unstoppable soldiers who are chasing him. It's almost entirely silent apart from sound effects, but you don't really need dalogue to understand what's going on here.

At the end of the story there's some ultra violence that kind of comes out of nowhere, but it all looks pretty good, even if the reproduction on my copy isn't the best. The artwork inside is a lot "cleaner" than on the cover in that the lines are more solid and less messy, but the same sense of design can be seen. Plus there is a weird squid-armed monster with a knife and a meat cleaver on the back cover. Result.

I'm really curious as to if this is part of some longer story or world, as there are questions raised here that I want to know the answers to!