Wednesday, January 13, 2010

"Breathe" comic review

Sup Readers!? Cody here with a review of a graphic novel called "Breathe" by John Sheridan and Kit Wallis.

I picked this one up the other day at atomic comic's in the "Danger zone" for a mere $2 dollars. I thought it would be nice to review it due to the fact that the price being so low would mean it would be a horrible comic. So I dropped two bucks(normal price was $20) on it and also picked up 100 plastic covers for my unprotected comics. Anyways lets start this review.

Wow, I'm honestly surprised about the quality of this comic. The art in "Breathe" is so interesting to my eyes. The colors in the comic are a muted green with grey. The style of the comic is a mixture of "Samurai Jack" and "Avatar: the last air bender". The style really brought my eyes to the page and made me love the colors, but something stood out to me that you don't see to often in comics, that being the art of motion blur and depth of field. Nothing makes you feel like they are really running as fast as they possibly can like motion blur. The art was nearly perfect but lost a point for being unsure of itself. At times where you read the words you get a sense of them being worried or rushed, yet on the page the person speaking would seem sort of 'Blah' or even happy.

The writing in the comic flows rather well and brings in feelings of rush, worries, sorrow and excitement. The comic takes place in old china and holds tight to traditional terms of speech, making you part of the time with only a 1 or 2 out~of~place lines on one or two pages. The writer knew the story he wanted to tell to us and never wanted to let go but instead lost his touch in the very end. On the cover we see a young girl covered in blood(Honestly she reminds me of a anime version of Left 4 dead's Witch) and the subtext saying "tread softly in the bulrushes, lest you wake the dragon" which felt a tad bit misleading, the girl "Mi Ling" never really gets any blood on her other than her own and is never really violent at all. Though I enjoyed the comic I must admit I feel like the writer was unsure if he wanted to make the female the lead or the male, making the first half of the comic all about her and then the second half about the boy. The comic Ended with a sudden halt smacking us in the face with a "Really? Did he just do that to her?"

The only other thing that I can't leave out of this is, Why? Why the two page curve ball of our underage female lead getting nude to take a bath in the lake and then pointing out that she is becoming a adult(Psh, adult. Yeah, ok. O_o) by being on her first period. Where is the point in this? Why did this make it into the comic? My only guess is, they must of really wanted to draw a nude girl. Do us a favor next time, keep those drawing to yourself, unless it serves a purpose.

My final say on the comic is, 3 outa 5 stars. If you see the comic for a few bucks, please by all means, pick it up. If you can't find it for under five dollars, pass it up. Great comic for a low on cash, kinda buy, but nothing else.

I'll be reviewing "Haunt" issue #2 and "The Perhapanauts" within the week.

Okay Cody~Out!

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