Jack here, with another review session for all who want another webcomic lover and creators opinion. This week we’re taking a look at some Zuda competitors to see which is worthy of becoming an ongoing series, at least in our eyes. The first thing I should say is we’re not here to critique Zuda and their awkwardly and slow loading interface, but I just thought I would mention that. Anyway, we have two comics with eight pages each up so far to offer our illustrious opinions of Action, Ohio and Hannibal Goes To Rome. Onward!

Action, Ohio, written by Neil Kleid and illustrated by Paul Salvi, gives us the story of a town filled with super people, and two comic book creators who, years ago, decided to help cover up their existence by creating the Silver Age of comics as a distraction of sorts. Who would ever believe that they could be real, right?

Ohio delivers an original story sort of akin to Astro City and The X-Files, but completely new in it’s own right. I was very interested after these eight pages to find out what could happen next, as the possiblities are endless. There is a whole heap of potential brewing, and Neil and Paul seem very well equipped to handle the task. On the art side of things, I loved the classic style that actually did remind me of silver age comics. You don’t need big ole splash pages and crazy dynamic poses to get your point across. Understated works great here. I think from the above that you already know what I think of the writing. Excellent so far. Now can they ramp up the story from here? For this wonderful prologue, and this is just the rating for the prologue, I’ll give it 4 and a half stars. Rating:

Now, going from superhero mystery to a whole other genre, we have Hannibal Goes To Rome, by writer Bankshot(oookay..) and illustrator Vragas(oookay again…), a historical comic, giving lots of detailed info on Roman affairs, battles waged, and the title character, all with a comedic style reminiscent of, and I’ve mentioned them before, the Paradox Press line of Big Books. While I enjoyed the art with it’s cartoony style, from the pic presented with the comic(the close up of a rain drenched warrior’s face) I was expecting a story more akin to the graphic novel and movie 300 than “Hagar The Horrible“. Okay, maybe more like Astrix in style. What I’m getting at is I think I would have enjoyed it more had it been given a serious tone and action instead of making light of war and the brutality of the politics surrounding it. While the art was very good(I’m a sucker for black and white. It still has a place!) I just wasn’t feeling the wordy hohum adventures of these characters. Maybe if the characters themselves were telling the story in a more comic book story format instead of the narrator, it would have been more entertaining. As is it’s more of an illustrated history lesson than a comic. Rating? 3 stars. Rating:

Just remember that these are really just 8 page intros to these stories, and there is always room for improvement. Good day!