Comics Aficionado

9th Elsewhere

Read this comic.
The premise is that it is about a young girl who gets swept away in to her unconscious by an immature muse. It is a whimisical coming-of-age story for both of the main characters.

The art is heavily manga-influenced with a great deal of pencil technique (smudging) used for shading and effects. Don't be totally fooled by the banner (which seems to have had a lot more technological effort put into it). This really is a labor of love. When I compared the site graphics to the early pages of the story I felt as if I were looking at someone's personal sketch book. That just adds to the charm of the site. It is a very personal story which is about personal growth and the creators are doing just the same as the tell their story. composition and perspective are excellent.

This Web Comic is developing it's own unique style and emotion as it progresses along. The pencilled art really tightens up as you move into the middle of the third chapter. The addition of Flash animation in the later part of the fourth chapter is cute, however a couple issues keep it from being deluged with hits.

A distraction is the fabulous color site graphics when compared to the grey tones of the pencil art. It seems to be begging for novice readers to complain about it not being a color strip. Still the as the pencils tighten up, as more grey-scale backgrounds are used and when you continually get a full color cover to each chapter then the message of this being a non-color strip get reinforced.

Another issue I have is about archive navigation. I find that when I am in the middle of a chapter in the archives, I have no way to navigate back more than one page without re-entering the archives main page and selecting the page from the Chapter drop down.

Issues (real or imaginary) aside, this is a faboo site. I recommend it to readers. The only thing I can suggest to the creators is a sparing use of Flash animation. Sparse Flash use avoids cheapening it by making it commonplace during the story.

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