Dresden Codak review by Anthony Cardno
I don’t know, maybe I’m not intellectual enough.
“Dresden Codak” just doesn’t work for me. At first, I thought I’d be intrigued by the “Little Nemo in Slumberland” style to the art, the little non-sequiturs and absurd looking characters. On most pages the art has excellent detail. But after about 12 pages, I realized that I hadn’t really processed anything I was seeing. Nothing was making me laugh, nothing was making me go “hmmm — that’s food for thought.”
It’s not that I don’t like intellectual humor – I can usually find something to chuckle at most days of the week in “xkcd” and that’s a pretty intelligent strip. And it’s not that I don’t like absurd strips that you have to read twice or three times to get – I’m a fan of the aforementioned “Little Nemo” and one of my favorite webcomics is the often-absurd “Applied Living.” Somehow, the combination here, even with the very good art, is just not clicking with me.
The cast page lists a small group of recurring characters, and I read enough pages to see most of them in action … but for the most part they seem to be names in service to whatever point the author is trying to make, rather than characters making a point.
I have to give “Dresden Codak” only one star. Just not my type of strip I guess. Rating: 
Dresden Codak
by Aaron Diaz
Review by Anthony Cardno
(7 votes, average: 4.57 out of 5)
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June 7th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I’m gonna have to agree with your review. Codak is dang pretty to look at, but that’s about it. I am by no means an idiot, and all I got out of that comic was someone trying desperately to tell us how smart he is; entertaining a readership was seemingly a secondary consideration. I’ll pass, thanks.
June 7th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I always wait to read my fellow reviewers’ comments until after my review has posted, because I don’t want to be influenced. It was interesting to see that pretty much the other reviewers agreed with me in this instance.
I also try hard not to judge what I think the author’s reasoning is behind the strip — while it is possible that he’s just trying to show us how much he knows, it’s also possible that he just finds this stuff far more amusing in his own head than he’s managing to get across to us on the page. Like I said, I love both “xkcd” and “wondermark” and both of those are pretty intelligent strips that play on big topics but still manage to be humorous to the general public.
Thanks for agreeing with me, Nick!
June 26th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Even though DC is probably my favorite comic, I must agree with the review. It just isn’t for everyone. It takes a certain amount of tenacity to read the strip, and wanting to understand why Aaron Diaz is so excited. I found myself going to wikipedia a lot to figure out what the hell he was going on about (Especially with Dungeons & Discourse and the Zhuangzi one).
But the thing is, the strip got me fascinated with science and philosophy, and the beautiful artwork and page design only served to increase my interest. The self contained comics are incredible to look at, and it isn’t like any other comic I know of. Plus, the HOB storyline is amazing.