Post by Decoy Elite on Jan 13, 2012 17:53:54 GMT -5
FreakAngels.(Available here www.freakangels.com/, recommended for mature audiences)
A group of kids with mental powers decide to use their abilities to their full potential and end up dooming Earth. Now they must group together in order to try and revive the now flooded world they destroyed.
Oh boy FreakAngels, I've been dreading this one. First let me put a little disclaimer here: unlike most of my webcomic reviews I did not get current with FreakAngels before reviewing it. So for arguments sake it's possible that once you get past the point I got to, the comic suddenly changes drastically for better or worse.
Right then, before we get to review proper let's talk about the first way FreakAngels is "special" among webomics. It's written by a pro, and I don't mean just any pro I mean a pro with a history of great comics(that I've never read). That's right it's written by Warren Ellis. Now the reason I bring this up is because as a professional writer I couldn't help but hold up Mr.Ellis to a higher standard than most webcomic authors. After all he's a professional, and thus I felt that he should already know what he's doing and thus get past the usual bumps that new webcomic authors suffer from. Not to mention this would be my first time reading anything by Ellis and probably the same for many who haven't read his stuff, thus I expect him to bring his A game. So what did he bring? Well let's get to the actual review and find out.
Art
The art for FreakAngels is great. Paul Duffield is a great artist and his art is the best thing about this webcomic. It matches the tone and adds a(much needed) bit of life to the comic and when he gets a little leeway in some crazier bits it looks nice and trippy. No real complaints on the art front in other words, this stuff is the pro level I expected.
Characters
Say hello to the biggest failing of FreakAngels. There's a ton of problems with the characters and I found actually caring about them to be a chore. It boils down to 3 major problems
1. There's too many characters.
2. Most of said characters are dull.
3. Any characters that seem interesting don't get focused on enough.
Seriously these characters have the barest of character traits and really don't support a character driven story well. Which this basically is, so you have dull characters that ruin the flow of the comic and are most likely to kill any interest in you might have after a while reading.
Story
So how's the story of FreakAngels? Slightly better than the characters? *Shrug* It really is not anything impressive. The premise is nice enough, and it does have some potential, but it's bogged down by slow pacing and dull characters, a combination that caused me to quit reading before things might have gotten interesting. It doesn't help that a lot of the main plot is often hinted at, but doesn't really come up for a while, with the comic instead focusing on random character, which would be fine if the characters were dull as heck.
Recommendations
Overall I can't really recommend FreakAngels with much enthusiasm, I sure as heck didn't enjoy it. If you're looking to try and get into Warren Ellis stuff, I'd argue to stay away. I might recommend this comic for fans of Ellis work, but a friend of mine who did like Ellis stuff had similar issues so keep that in mind.
So all in all the only people who should check this out are Ellis fans who don't trust my opinion, or anyone who's good with slow pacing and is interested in the premise.
A group of kids with mental powers decide to use their abilities to their full potential and end up dooming Earth. Now they must group together in order to try and revive the now flooded world they destroyed.
Oh boy FreakAngels, I've been dreading this one. First let me put a little disclaimer here: unlike most of my webcomic reviews I did not get current with FreakAngels before reviewing it. So for arguments sake it's possible that once you get past the point I got to, the comic suddenly changes drastically for better or worse.
Right then, before we get to review proper let's talk about the first way FreakAngels is "special" among webomics. It's written by a pro, and I don't mean just any pro I mean a pro with a history of great comics(that I've never read). That's right it's written by Warren Ellis. Now the reason I bring this up is because as a professional writer I couldn't help but hold up Mr.Ellis to a higher standard than most webcomic authors. After all he's a professional, and thus I felt that he should already know what he's doing and thus get past the usual bumps that new webcomic authors suffer from. Not to mention this would be my first time reading anything by Ellis and probably the same for many who haven't read his stuff, thus I expect him to bring his A game. So what did he bring? Well let's get to the actual review and find out.
Art
The art for FreakAngels is great. Paul Duffield is a great artist and his art is the best thing about this webcomic. It matches the tone and adds a(much needed) bit of life to the comic and when he gets a little leeway in some crazier bits it looks nice and trippy. No real complaints on the art front in other words, this stuff is the pro level I expected.
Characters
Say hello to the biggest failing of FreakAngels. There's a ton of problems with the characters and I found actually caring about them to be a chore. It boils down to 3 major problems
1. There's too many characters.
2. Most of said characters are dull.
3. Any characters that seem interesting don't get focused on enough.
Seriously these characters have the barest of character traits and really don't support a character driven story well. Which this basically is, so you have dull characters that ruin the flow of the comic and are most likely to kill any interest in you might have after a while reading.
Story
So how's the story of FreakAngels? Slightly better than the characters? *Shrug* It really is not anything impressive. The premise is nice enough, and it does have some potential, but it's bogged down by slow pacing and dull characters, a combination that caused me to quit reading before things might have gotten interesting. It doesn't help that a lot of the main plot is often hinted at, but doesn't really come up for a while, with the comic instead focusing on random character, which would be fine if the characters were dull as heck.
Recommendations
Overall I can't really recommend FreakAngels with much enthusiasm, I sure as heck didn't enjoy it. If you're looking to try and get into Warren Ellis stuff, I'd argue to stay away. I might recommend this comic for fans of Ellis work, but a friend of mine who did like Ellis stuff had similar issues so keep that in mind.
So all in all the only people who should check this out are Ellis fans who don't trust my opinion, or anyone who's good with slow pacing and is interested in the premise.
