Introduction
“A Guy, a Girl, and an Island” is a comic about exactly that. No
further setup is given, and no more is really needed. With the
exception of a talking crab and some sharks, there have been no other
characters, and, though they have changed, the islands themselves are
pretty self-explanatory. The guy's name is Steve, and he is your
average laid-back kind of guy. The girl's name is Tina, and she is
the less typical of the two, both in her ability to realize
impossible plans as well as her skill at engineering complex voodoo
rituals. The comic is quite short (at the time of this writing
clocking in at exactly 25 pages) which does impair the review somewhat.
The Positive Aspects
The strongest part of this comic is the author's own willingness to experiment. He is attempting to create a series of comics, which,
while featuring a multi-issue plot, have few other unifying
characteristics. The point of view changes from the two humans to a
crab to a shark and back again, often cutting away when something
important is about to happen. The art is decent, clean and generally
quite professional looking, and the characters are rife with personality. There are enough hooks to keep me interested (what is with that balloon?)
The Criticisms
The biggest complaint I have with the comic is the total lack of
introduction. The first page consists of the two characters finding a
map and deciding to follow it. The reader doesn't really know who
they are, where they are from, or really anything about them. It
might be a good idea if the author Vitotamito at some point goes back
and does an introduction, answering the basic questions such as who
Your browser may not support display of this image.the characters are, where they are from, how they ended up on an
island, how long they have been there, and their relationship to one
another. The other complaint arises as a direct result of the lack of
unity. While I said the style changes with some regularity, it
generally snaps back to what it was originally, with the images on
top and the text on bottom. This would be fine if the tale were
narrative in nature, but with the dialogue appearing down there, it's
often unclear who is talking. Speech bubbles, as annoying as they can
be, work much better and exponentially increase clarity. It would
serve Vito well to go check out other comics that use the text on the
bottom to see how they resolve the problem, such as
www.irregularwebomic.com The length of each comic could also stand to
be longer. Many comedic series use a general "comic-page" length,
with multiple panels to tell its story. This would prevent Vito from
having to spend multiple pages on the same few incidences, as he
doesn't have much time for summaries.
The Conclusion
Give Vitotamito time for another 25 pages to develop the plot and
characters, as well as tweaking the style somewhat, and you'll find
this to be well worth reading.
- Joe
