One of the things I think can consistently be said about the webcomics world (as well as television, movie, novel, short story, print comics … well, you get the point) is that it is hard to be stunningly original. A particular art-style breaks ground and suddenly every new comic features that style; amongst writers dark-and-gritty becomes de riguer until noble and heroic takes over; a new fantasy series takes the world by storm and suddenly every protagonist is a teen wizard, or a vampire, or both.

Sometimes, it’s okay to be a part of the pack, put your own personal spin on a set of characters or a setting, and just plug away contentedly. Be consistent enough, and you build a fan base. I think that’s what Bongoteez does with Superteam, hosted on the Drunk Duck web comics network.

The art is nice and simple: essentially stick-figures with capes. Just enough detail to tell one from another. For a parody strip about super-heroes, the simplicity works.

The jokes are mostly retreads – nothing incredibly original here. Early on, we get a standard Aquaman joke (anyone ever notice that Marvel also has a water-based King of Altantis character, but whenever a joke about a lame aquatic hero is needed, it’s the more recognizable DC character who gets the nod?). In the second storyline, after the introduction of the sidekicks, we get a standard joke about why kid sidekicks actually matter to adult heroes.

I didn’t find myself laughing out loud, but as an avowed super-team fan of long standing (I’ve been part of the Super-Team Amateur Press Alliance aka STAPA, for over twenty years now), I did find myself chuckling and nodding my head at having written stories like the ones presented here.

I’m giving Superteam 3.5 stars. It’s steady, reliable, consistent … nothing amazing but certainly not horrible. Rating:

Bongoteez’ Amazing Superteam
Reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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Better late than never.  Sorry I’m a few days behind posting this.  The usual poor hotel internet connections and a few other personal issues (it’s amazing how much time advertising your new novel takes up!) slowed down my process of reading through this comic’s archive, which as others have noted is quite lengthy.

First of all, congrats to John Rios on keeping this strip going in one form or another since 2001.  I know plenty of cartoonists who juggle a full time job, family life, owning a house and doing a classic three-panel gag comic (not me personally, mind you, because I can’t draw to save my life) and they find it hard to maintain a consistent update schedule for the strip when the rest of life presses in.  There is something to be said for bullish commitment.  And Rios obviously likes the fan base (“really cool indie readership,” he calls it in the FAQ) he’s developed over the years, another important trait in a creator of any kind of art.  I’m much more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to an creator who likes and respects his fans.

What do I like about Dead Days?  The art, especially as it has developed in the last year or so of the strip.  The hard angles and somewhat vague backgrounds give this strip a bit of a distinctive look from what we’ve been reviewing here.

I also think it’s a little creative (even if that creativity was born out of the author’s sort-of laziness) that the two main characters do not have names.  There’s the brown-haired one and the blond haired one, two “typical college guys” — not fratsters, not jocks, not nerds, just average guys.  Okay, maybe a little less than average, considering how long they’ve been in college and they’ve only just discovered how stoves work.

What don’t I like about Dead Days?  It’s a gag strip, but I’m not laughing.  I tried, honestly.  I think I did smile a few times (once, towards the end of the archive, when the characters once again show how aware they are of being in a comic, could just as easily have been a shot at certain genre television shows in which the characters go seven seasons without doing much more than changing their uniforms or the length of their hair).  Maybe a slight chuckle.  Now, I will admit that while Dead Days doesn’t work for me, it will probably be hysterical to many of you.  I base this partially on the truth that my sense of humor tends more to the punny than to the potty, and being a college comic there is plenty of potty humor.  I also asked a couple of the college students I know to take a look at the comic, and they found it far funnier and more “real” than I did.

So I’m going to give the strip 3.5 stars … for the art (which I liked) and for the fact that at least two other people I know liked it more than I did. Rating:

Dead Days
http://www.deaddays.net
by John Rios
reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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DEAD DAYS by John Rios is a black and white college newspaper strip - slice of college life, sometimes featuring the cartoonist as a cartoon himself. This sort of comic (the newspaper strip in general, but also the college newspaper strip) is never funny and is always less amusing than not reading the comic. Thats the trouble with strips and newspaper strips - they are just kind of cute at their best, at their worse they are boring, not funny, and they try too hard to be as generic as possible. So John Rios followed the formula perfectly.

I read page one through page thirty. Page one begins cutely with John Rios’s brain apologizing for a crudely drawn comic… that sucks. Those are the artists words. I agree, the comic in its earlier days did suck, it was amateur, it read like every other college strip about college I’ve ever groaned at for its awfulness. The artwork was crude, generic, no style. The only thing it had going for it were the greytones. And the comic itself did suck, too much exposition for instance. In strip number eight, for example, a character talks about falling down an escalator that was going up for a number of hours. The artist could have shown us this cartoony scenario with his pencil as a drawing, instead he penned it as dialogue. In strip number nine, a rapist and a superhero college undergrad get into a fight, but rather than show us the fight, we get a text box that makes fun of itself for not showing us the fight. This sort of amateur exposition in a visual comic is annoying.

The strip established within its first thirty pages a pattern of showcasing the character based on John Rios as a homophobic biggot. Just thought I’d throw that into the review for kicks, but its true. He goes out of his way in one strip to disavow his first gig as a cartoonist, which was drawing gay pornography for the first John who came along and asked him to draw something for him. Check it out, strip number 15. Way to burn your bridges John Rios, you’ll never work in the gay pornography business again.

So I decided i didn’t care about the cute observations John Rios was making about his college, about the different kinds of soft drinks or liquours that different majors sucked on. I moved on, i skipped to the very last strip. And it was very different. Not good or anything, as this kind of strip can only be horrible in my opinion. But it was better. The artist from strip 30 to strip four hundred and whatever it seemed, had improved.

First of all the drawings were refined, had a unique professional feel to their style. The backgrounds were soft, blurred and exhibited sophisticated atmostpheric perspective. Even the word baloons had style with their thick outlines. and sometimes two word baloons were connected at the hip, not seperated by borders. and the artist pulled off two characters having dialogue with each other within the same baloon, and it made sense. that is a feat that has merit in itself. And rather than general slice of college life garbage so generic that who cares - the final strips focused on greek life. maybe the greek system cared. the later comics read more like a formulaic sorority sit com web comic than they do like a college comic strip. so for the artists character arch from generic amateur to polished professional (in the dumb field of strip comics), I game him a few stars just for improving.

I read backwards, strip by strip, until I came to strip that was basically the same lame joke as one of the first thirty that i read, the title character in the comic based on John Rio mistaking a college student for the wrong gender. and then I realised I still didn’t care about the comic. I had been tricking myself into giving it a shot merely because it was better than it was ten years ago or whatever. too bad it was the same thing, just drawn with a little more style.

Altogether I read a sampling of about 45 of the strips out of 400. I never would have read that many of this strip just for fun, but I’m reviewing it, so i forced myself too. of course I’m terribly biased against strips. It has to be a pretty phenomenal strip to make me laugh or to amuse me or whatever a newspaper strip’s supposed function is supposed to be. But I bet nobody ever laughed at DEAD DAYS by John Rio. I bet everybody just kind of fake laughed or whatever. Thats the function of newspaper strips, i just decided, to help the readers practice their fake laughing.

Two thumbs down. And three stars, because I’m in a good mood.

It should also be noted that I’m mad that Mike Perridge doesn’t review on comic fencing anymore, and I’m taking it out on John Rios.

Rating:

comic title DEAD DAYS
www.deaddays.net
by John Rios
review by Rudy Guara
(4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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I’m learning, albeit slowly and in staggering steps. Sometimes we’ve reviewed a comic that I’ve already reviewed somewhere else. I’ve previously chosen not to mention it but that was a mistake. You just end up with half a review just because I’m trying to avoid repeating myself.

Let me take a paragraph or so and summarize that earlier review of Dead Days. There is no set cast but there are two main characters. Storylines are kept short and while many of them revolve around the extremes of the college lifestyle, there are other stories you may enjoy. We get to see the dangers of shopping with your girlfriend and being a tortured artist, among other things.

I also liked about the angular and stylized art. Dead Days is done in toned black and white with suggestions of backgrounds. There are some visual perspective tricks and the art style is very unique in many little ways. I like the chunky fingers, square elbows and the expressive eyes of the characters. Some comics are mainly talking heads but Dead Days offers little details that change from panel to panel. Not every comic artist thinks it is important (or remembers) to include things like one character holding a sandwich and taking a bite while the other one talks. Also, the heavy outline around the joined word balloons also forces you to focus on the text first rather than the characters. That’s a little switchup from the norm, as well.

While I like the art quite a bit and the comic is amusing, I will disclose that I’m not a big fan of the cussing or the latest storyline. I don’t see an obvious lack of technique or quality so I’m chalking it up to my total lack of enthusiasm for college frats and the expected hazing. You could very well find this storyline more enjoyable than I do.

Something I really like about Dead Days is the conversations the characters have. The dialog is always very natural sounding, even when it is about an odd topic. It adds something to the snarky humor and the situations they characters find themselves in. I also can’t recall another comic that refuses to name its main characters. That’s unique, especially with over four hundred comics.

There are a many, many comics about a couple of friends in college - so much so that some consider it to be its own genre or archetype. I found Dead Days to have its own twist on the type in a number of ways and overall it is an amusing read. Rating:

Dead Days
http://www.deaddays.net
by John Rios
review by Delos
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in lately, but my first reaction to “Cottonfluff Hollow” was … how cute! Adorable little (and not so little) purple dragons, floppy-eared rabbits, and a teddy bear with a Snake Plissken complex. Done up in bright colors, in easy-to-follow panel breakdowns, with clear dialogue and captions. A nice way for me to return to the fold of Comic Fencing.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that. These aren’t discarded stuffed animals (like those poor denizens of the Island of Forgotten Toys in the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer cartoon), nor are they outgrown imaginary friends (like the insanely antic denizens of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). As forgotten dreams, they fall somewhere in the middle: they have the cuddliness of old beloved toys, but the rough edges of well-worn recurring dream characters.

The chapter one storyline progresses nicely. Cuddles (the bear with the Plissken eyepatch) is the newest arrival in Cottonfluff Hollow, but he cannot accept that he is forgotten. He is determined to “go away” (but not “far away,” which we’re told is very difficult to get to at this time of year) and some of the other lead characters try various things to delay his departure. The individuality of the characters comes out in the second half of the chapter.

Chapter two takes a complete turn. None of the established main characters appear; the new characters (mostly unnamed) seem to be more nightmarish (authors notes bear this out). Where the art of chapter one was airy and open, the art for chapter two feels to me claustrophobic. Of course, it probably helps that the focal point of chapter two seems to be a mime that the worst of the nightmares implies is much worse a thing to fear than the worst nightmare himself.

I personally think mimes are freakier than just about anything out there. And I’m the guy who had recurring nightmares as a kid about having to escape from the clutches of KISS by trying to fly. (Yes, I was afraid of KISS. And yet I owned all of their action figures. Gene Simmons should be proud on both counts.) So this chapter, with it’s long dark spaces, Lovecraftian mega-nightmares, and mimes … it feels completely discordant with what chapter one established. Will that be a benefit or a detriment in the long run? I can’t tell yet. It could swing either way.

Still, I’m open to the possibility that these two wildly different feels can be incorporated into one overall arc, and I’ll be checking back to see how things go.

Three point five stars for this one; intriguing enough that I’ll add it to the bookmarks and give it more of a trial run.Rating:

Phillipe St. Gerard’s “Cottonfluff Hollow”
reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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That’s Cuddles - the bear with the eyepatch. What’s more, he knows he isn’t real and he has been through some tough times. He used to guard a little girl from all the monsters under her bed, in her closet…everywhere. They were absolutely everywhere. I love the concept of a cuddly teddy bear bodyguard.

But now he’s been forgotten. And he needs to get way from Cottonfluff Hollow. That’s right. He wants to go away, not far away. I love that map - so many interesting places for the comic to take us. Cuddles is a very conflicted bear. He gave his all to protect that little girl so being forgotten is quite a blow to take. Months of rest have not allowed him to heal. Perhaps that is what going away will help him do.

I’ve already mentioned the basic storyline so far, so forgive me for not going into great depth about it. There are a few surprises in there that you should discover for yourself as a reader. I won’t spoil them for you. The story, for me, dragged somewhat during the get-going-away phase. There’s probably a good reason for that as I can see some foreshadowing and hints placed during that span. I just haven’t seen the payoff that makes it all worth the wait yet. It’ll come, I’m sure.

The art is full of large shapes and is fun to look at with some unexpected details. So much so that when something not like the rest appears, it is very unnerving. It’s a great style for this kind of comic. I would probably rank Cottonfluff Hollow higher if the story was further along, but for now it’s three stars.

Rating:
The World of Cottonfluff Hollow
http://www.sapoentertainment.com/comics/cottonfluff/
by Phillipe St. Gerard
review by Delos
(2 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)

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