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Lucid Comics – October 7th

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Wednesday, 07 October 2009 10:04

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The Web Comics Questionnaire – Elliot Dombo (Strawberry Death Cake)

1) Why web comics?

I find that web comics are the best medium to tell an actively running story while making it accessible to almost anyone in the world who has access to the web.

2) Who are your influences?

Artists like Joe Madureira and Pat Lee who created an amazing fusion of western style comics with an anime look and feel, but perhaps my biggest influence in comics is the amazing horror comic artist Jason Flowers. His dark gritty black and white style is something I’ve always admired and influenced the look of some my comics.

3) If I wasn’t making comics, I’d be…?

If I wasn’t making comics I’d be making video games or at least trying to. I love the appeal of being able to craft an interactive storyline and experience that immerses people in a world of your own creation.

4) What’s the best comment about your work you’ve ever received?

Whenever someone’s said that my comic is their favourite comic. That always gets me all excited and motivated to create more work.

5) Reversely, what’s the worst criticism you’ve ever received?

Probably someone telling me that my work is completely unoriginal and any trace story. I often take heed to criticisms that are constructive that way I can try and polish up the areas that may be lacking in. I really hate listening to people babble about how much my comic is like the anime show Bleach since it deals with spirits and demons like my comic, but there’s a cornucopia of comics that deal with the very same subjects.

6) What inspires you?

My inspiration comes from various places movies to video games to reading a story with great characters. Anything that is creative in birth will tend to inspire me consciously or sub-consciously. There’s so much it’s hard to keep track of.


7) What are some of the challenges that you face in getting out your comic?

Writing scripts has been something I’m learning to get better at. I see myself as an artist first and writer second, so my art usually gets all my attention while I should be spending just as much time writing out the story. A lot of times I’ll already have several scenes or events laid out in my head and won’t bother to script them. I’ll jump right into drawing and only later on find out I created some pretty annoying plot holes and some missed opportunities for some great foreshadowing.

Staying on schedule with updates is another challenge that I’m sure a lot of comic artist are familiar with. The real enemy here is staying motivated, while some professional comic artist are motivated by getting paid to complete their work, web comic artists tend to make little to no money with their comic so their motivation sometimes comes from something as simple as “Hey look at what I can do!”

8) How did you get into comics to begin with?

I started drawing at an early age of 7, though my drawings looked liked crude cave paintings with crayons I gradually improved and fell in love with drawing. By the time I was in high school I was drawing Dragonball Z fan comics with my best friend (yes I was one of those crazy fanatical Dragonball Z fan boys). While I was attending some local comic conventions, I got lots of great advice about self-publishing and starting web comics from the pros like Greg Carter. Made my first mini-comic, got it online and pretty much been doing the same thing to this day.

9) What’s worse: an irate fan boy or a bear with a thorn stuck in its paw?

I’ll take my chances with the irate fan boy ‘cause the bear will probably jump after me and maul me for literally LOLing at its unfortunate situation.

10) Anything you want to plug?

I’d like to shamelessly promote my web comic Strawberry Death Cake, its dark humour comic about demon hunting team fending off demons from the Underworld. It’s got an odd ball cast of weird characters and villains, from gothic girls with a giant scissors as weapon to demented evil Nazi Bunnies.

You can read Strawberry Death Cake every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at http://rainchildstudios.com/strawberry/

Reviews

Superman: Secret Origins #1 of 6
Geoff Johns and Gary Frank
DC Comics

For the umpteenth time, Superman’s beginnings are retold for the two or three people on the planet that may not know how The Man of Steel came to be. I read the preview that was featured a couple of months ago in the back of some DC Comics and it was nothing new under the sun: a teenaged Clark honks off a teenaged Lex Luthor and saves Lana Lang from a tornado. Big whoop. Of course, Johns could probably make the phone book read like a decent superhero comic script, so I’m content to reserve judgment till I see where this is going, at the very least there’s some need for house cleaning because writers and artists just can’t seem to not want to stop tinkering with Superman’s Smallville days. Ah well, let this be the last time then. It’s well written and well drawn, so as long as the yarn is good, let it be spun.

Spider-Man: Clone Saga
Tom DeFalco & Howard Mackie and Todd Nauck
Marvel Comics

Why are we living through this again? Isn’t it bad enough that Chris Claremont is inflicting his vision of where the X-Men went off the rails back in the 90s to somewhat limited success? DeFalco and Mackie, two of the architects of the spectacular failure that was the Clone storyline that ran through Spider-Man in the 90s, are trying to retcon their side of the story. “[T]he original Clone Saga was a storyline designed to last a few months, but – for various reasons – kept getting extended and extended and extended,” writes DeFalco on page one. Come on, who is he kidding? It was part of an overall trend at Marvel at the time to copy DC in the removal and replacement of the men behind the masks of their most popular characters for new, grittier (read: darker) versions of the heroes. (See also: US Agent, Thuderstrike, and War Machine.) This book reads like it was made in the 90s and that’s not a complement. Whatever DeFalco’s trying to prove, he’s not doing a very good job of it.

The Web #1
Angela Robinson and Roger Robinson
DC Comics

What is The Web? I didn’t know when I picked up this first issue based on one of the Red Circle characters acquired by DC, but the cover by Alex Ross intrigued me even though The Web seemed like one of those “of the moment” superheroes. He’s based on the internet, see? Okay, so that’s one strike: the concept is really, really hokey. Strike two is that there’s really no hook to this, just kind of a standard, pulpy crime story about a man trying to avenge his brother by taking down drug dealer after drug dealer, and working his way to the mastermind at the top to get revenge for his brother’s death. How dull, how utterly predictable. The comic’s not half bad, but it’s not half good either.

Dark Reign: The List – X-Men #1
Matt Fraction and Alan Davis
Marvel Comics

The madness of Norman Osborn marches on unabated as this issue sees him try and get some sweet payback on the X-Men though he ends up failing miserably. I missed the Daredevil edition of The List, so I thought there was going to be some kind of continuing thread throughout. What happened to the whole Ronin getting smacked down and being in Norman’s custody, now he’s on to this? Okay, so this is what we get: standalones, and that’s fine. This one’s well built, I have to say. Fraction’s words and Davis’ art are a good combination, but the story’s kind of the middle of the road, but overall enjoyable. Plus it’s always fun to see Osborn foiled with a two tonne fish.