Normally, I read a comic partway through, do something else and come back and read some more. Rinse and repeat and at some point in my browsing, I start writing my impressions. But not this time.

Kukuburi is different. I read the whole thing (about ninety six pages so far) in one sitting. As soon as I finished, I wanted to read it again. Why?

Part of it is the art. I love the sketchy, spontaneous feel of the linework. It even has a great deal of (what I call) shorthand detail. That’s where the artist draws just enough detail that your mind fills in the rest. Just a few lines give you the shape, texture and perceived weight of the subject of the drawing. For a specific example: just one little line tells you that the record player works, even if you’ve never used a record player in your life.

I really dig the character designs, special effects and colors too. I’m not talking about just the bright foregrounds and the muted backgrounds. You can see where the shadows and colors don’t always match the contours of the objects they are showing. That’s a style that lends itself to the medium but also strengthens the story of the comic, as well.

As usual, no spoilers from me on how the story is panning out. There is this young woman has a job that she can barely get to. She’s a pawn, sent here and there to accomplish menial tasks like package delivery. You don’t even know her name because her boss simply snarls at her. But all that changes. What she can do and what she chooses to do takes on more meaning. Even what she ignorantly causes to happen gets increasingly more important. Well, one thing doesn’t change - even in her wildest dreams she’s still a pawn.

As an aside, I can’t help thinking that this is where the Doctor or El Santo will have some smart comment about the story progress in Kukuburi. They’re better at embellishing than I am, but I can imagine them saying “Just when you think you’ve got one more chance to set things right, your last whiskey shot kicks in and you wake up suddenly, damp and disheveled on a city street corner outside a bar you don’t recognize.”

I’d say it another way. The story in Kukuburi lets you follow along but then you realize you aren’t going to the destination that you thought you were. At times, it drags just a little but there’s always another surprising turn waiting and so you keep reading. I found the story very engaging. It has some light fluff in the dialog and yet some fun, deeper things to ponder. It reminds me of the storytelling style that I recall seeing long ago in Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser.

It’s at this point where I can mention a few other things. I really, really liked how it was never obviously pointed out who was doing the narrating at the start of the comic. Also, the way those black and red mantas go after their victim is very cool and I want to know more about their commander. He’s got a great costume and look. His expressions are masterfully done, especially once you realize he has no eyes or face to emote to the reader with. That’s a nice trick, done consistently well. There’s more that I liked but to talk about it would require me to do more of my patented spoiler-avoid dance, which no one wants to see. Read Kukuburi for yourself and then we’ll talk. (I’d actually enjoy hearing what moments you enjoyed in the comments, so please share them there.

I don’t think it’ll surprise you that I gave Kukuburi five stars. Rating: It normally updates two pages a week on Tuesdays. I like it when there are three page update weeks, but that’s just me. I’m going to go back and read Kukuburi again, if you’ll excuse me.

Kukuburi
http://www.kukuburi.com/2007/08/09/one/
by Ramon Perez
review by Delos Woodruff
(5 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)

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So let’s see:  young woman falls through random hole in space-time and finds herself in a strange new world, where unusual creatures inform her she’s now possessed of great power and perhaps a mysterious destiny.  Sounds like we’ve reviewed this one before, when you boil it down to the basics.  “Antics” had a similar premise (only with two young women instead of one), but the execution of the concept in Kukuburi is vastly different.

The art is cleaner and more distinct, for instance. Ramon Perez has a clean, playful style – not ultra-realistic(the real world at the beginning of the story is absolutely exaggerated) but also not the stereotypical manga-ness we’ve recently been reviewing.  In fact, Perez’s style really feels like a breath of fresh air.  The vibrant colors don’t hurt either.  Of course, the style really kicks into high gear when the story moves from the real world to the strange dimension, The Inbetween, the main character finds herself tossed into. The colors, if anything, get more vibrant, and shucked of the restraints of the real world, Perez’ sense of wonder breaks through – in the Inbetween there pretty much is endless horizon and no real up or down.  He gets the chance to go wild with giant orange whales, deep red-and-black manta rays, and all manner of outlandish creature, including a valley full of sleeping giants.

Our main character, Nadia, is non-plussed – she assumes the giant orange space-whales, talking chameleon named Mr. Bojangles and little fuzzy “Meep” character are all something she’s dreaming.  She learns quickly enough that it is not a dream, and that although she understands little of where she is, the threat against her is real and potent.

One of the things I enjoyed about Kukuburi is that Perez is crafting a novel, and to do that he occasionally has to pull focus away from Nadia and give it to seemingly secondary characters (L’Academie des Chapeaux on their battlewhale) and even tertiary characters (the Tillywump). Perez apologizes profusely in the author’s notes for the length of time in which Nadia’s fate is unknown, but he needn’t.  Her absence builds a bit of suspense (she’s the lead character and we’re not really that many pages into the story, so there’s little doubt she’s alive) and allows other characters to grow (and allows for a bit of slapstick comic relief as well)

The art is wonderful, the story is just really ramping up into “exciting” territory.  So like Delos usually does, I decided to take a trip into the cast and “about” pages to see what else I could learn.  Not looking for spoilers but perhaps for fun background facts.  This is the only place that my enthusiasm failed.  On  text heavy pages, Perez’ lack of an editor shows.  There are lots of punctuation errors – every page has at least one instance of “it’s” being used where “its” should be, for instance.  It made reading what should have been fun cast bios a bit of a chore.  Perez’ author notes say he’s been busy lately with lots of personal stuff, but at some point I hope he gets a good grammar/punctuation editor to look those pages over and fix those little oversights.

Overall, Kukuburi gets 4 stars.

“Kukuburi”

http://www.kukuburi.com

by Ramon Perez

reviewed by Anthony R. Cardno

(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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I don’t really have a lot to say about this comic in particular, and so wisely, I won’t. Surprised? Get used to it. The art was decent, and the detail in it was good. The storyline was ok (if a bit overused in concept), if you like surreal comics that look like you’re watching someone’s acid induced dream with no sense of coherence or logical design.

These things don’t make it a bad comic; it makes it a comic that isn’t one I’d really enjoy simply because it’s very disorienting to me to read it. I spent so much time trying to understand where things were coming from, and why, that I missed a lot of what the comic probably has to offer. (The girl, in particular, looks like she dresses with clothes found in a dumpster somewhere and could use a good shower, or at least a mirror) Also, the “my life is dull and drab but I can escape to this incredible world where I’ll be SOMETHING” types of stories don’t appeal to me. Escapism is ok to a point - somehow this went past this point.

Based on its merits rather than my opinion, I give it 2 1/2 stars. All I can say is, read it yourself and decide.

The Doctor

Rating:

Kukuburi
http://www.kukuburi.com
by Ramón Pérez

Reviewed by The Doctor

(3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)

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Colorful.

Surreal.

Intentionally vague and symbolic, yet grounded in a gritty sense of reality.

When all is said and done, there’s something very serene and Zen about this series. Look at some of the dialogue. “He who conquers the left side conquers the world.” “Never knows best.” “Nothing can happen until you swing the bat.” “Swing the bat, Tak-kun.”

…

Wait, what?

We’re not reviewing Furi Kuri? My bad. I got completely thrown off by the Kanji-esque quadro-syllabic title and the presence of a yellow Vespa scooter. And the fiesty girl wearing the goggles. And, well, the fact that crazy bizarre things seem to happen for no reason.

Cripes, I can almost hear The Pillows providing the soundtrack.

So Ramón Pérez’s Kukuburi — that the name, isn’t it? — starts off with Nadia, a delivery girl making her way in the big city, suddenly finding herself in The Maxx’s Outback. OK, that’s not what Ramón call it. It does have giant floating whales, though. In fact, everything in this crowded world floats. Otters. Manta rays. Land masses. Giant ticks. It’s a Kukuburi dream thing! The place is crawling with large bugs that chomp on furniture and squids that pilot those big floaty whales. It’s almost as if the world itself was a living organism, and the inhabitants are unaware microbes.

Faced with a world of Technicolor glory, Nadia finds a helpful friend in the form of her pet Chameleon, the sensibly named Mr. Bojangles. It isn’t long, though, before she’s whisked away to meet a dapper gentlemen with a pair of snazzy rose-tinted glasses. He also happens to be a skeleton who may or may not be the Grim Reaper. He sits Nadia down and engages her in a high-stakes game. Instead of something classic like chess or dice, though, he gets all Milton Bradley in her grill and plops down a game of Battleship. Aw, man. I was jonesin’ for some Scrabble, at least.

The game is appropriate, though. Deadly appropriate. As Nightclubbin’ Action Ghost Rider plops down his pieces, bombs rain from the skies onto Nadia’s hapless friends. When Nadia does the same, beautiful things happen. Flowers appear. And, in one instance, she creates something not seen for eons: a bluebird of happiness.

Bluebird of friendliness, like guardian angels it’s always near! Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you? Make a little birdhouse in your soul…

Whoo, almost went on a They Might Be Giants fugue there! Back to the webcomic. It turns out that the world is strongly tied to Nadia, the “Kukuburi.” This place and its inhabitants are tied to her psyche, and it has something to do with her tragic childhood. Standard fantasy dream world stuff, since … well, since before American McGee decided that Alice went all Goth and created the imaginary world of Wonderland in a bloody fit of psychosis, that’s when!

Kukuburi is easily one of the most gorgeous webcomics I have ever had the pleasure of reading. If Pixar was ever to sign up one webcomic for their next movie, this is the one I want them to do. Like one of their recent offerings, Kukuburi gets away with long stretches with no dialogue. Yet Ramón Pérez’s art is so well done that it speaks for itself. It’s crisp and dynamic, implementing bold colors, clean lines, and perspective to great effect.

Pérez set out to create the physical manifestation of a dream that you never want to wake from. He succeeds at this better than anyone else in the business. Even The Maxx didn’t craft a world so enticing as the one in Kukuburi. But don’t take my word for it. Nothing can happen until you swing the bat.

Swing the bat, Tak-kun.

Rating:

Kukuburi
http://www.kukuburi.com
by Ramón Pérez

Reviewed by Larry “El Santo” Cruz

(5 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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