Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by vimcenzo
Formera: Volume 1 by Andrew Dobson
2.0
Speaking completely divorced from knowing anything about Andrew Dobson, I think this book's perfectly fine. I think there's a need to say something sucks just because the Internet clown's done something objectionable or tweeted something people hated. Divorced from any of that, I seriously don't think this will ruin some kid's life if they pick it up in the kids section of their library, read it, maybe even love it passively, and just kinda forget about it as they get older.
I'm not an artist, but the drawings aren't too bad. There is one instance in the early panel where a woman's eyebrows fly off her face and it's a bit silly. They're simple enough to where I think that same hypothetical kid would read this and make some facsimile fanart in a notebook or on their desk or something. It's honestly charming. The standouts are the two leads, who can be expressive and even though the circumstances and dialogue aren't all there or fully developed to support it, you want them to be romantically entangled or friends at least.
The world is weirdly empty. I am not sure if this is by design, because it seems like a semi-primitive society, but the impression I get is that the only inhabited zones are Keisha's village and the Master Roshi ripoff character. By the end of the book I'm still unclear on what the world's deal is other than that Mezteck has mastered something arcane to dominate it, and that on some level what you take into it is what you take out of it.
On that note, Darian's mystical jacket just holds whatever it needs to for a cheap gag. The bad guy asks for something precious of his and he produces his iPod, har dee har har. To lure in a mysterious masked stalker, he produces a heretofore unseen chocolate bar, and not only does the stalker understand what chocolate is but knows how to unwrap it and leave it behind. On its own, this really doesn't raise any red flags, except Darian doesn't seem to question it like he did with the Master Roshi ripoff character's solar panels and engineering.
The emptiness and lack of definition to the world seems as though it can be populated with whatever the plot will need at a given moment, which is often the case with books and comics and publishers who ask for changes, but it doesn't holistically give the impression that this is fully planned out. That's fine though; assuming this is just a character study, the world can shift to fit them, but there's not much to go off of just yet and I think they need to be a bit more characterized to have it work. For example: Darian comes in and hates Mezteck because he's mean and wants to marry Keisha against her will and he's weird and uses what looks like dark magic. For a kid's book, that's more than enough, I guess. But why is Darian hellbent on treating him like a comic book villain, obvious meta context notwithstanding, when he doesn't really have any impression of the status quo? Mezteck hasn't really done much to show off his goals; he hasn't even done something all that evil yet. More suspicious, certainly, and certainly evil on a personal level, but what's Mezteck's tax policy? What's his long-term goal?
And yes--this is all the first book, so much of this has to be established. But as a comic, these kinds of things should be established visually. Mezteck looks like a villain, but we don't know why he wears a shawl, or if his garb helps with magic. There is a hippie transported from the 60's but maybe his clothes should be tighter on him from outgrowing it, or faded or smelly or ripped. You can tell us a lot about a character just from appearances, but it's just not realized.
Anyways, these are just me being a couch quarterback. Oh, boohoo, a joke about A.D.D. didn't land for me, oh, this character isn't written with Oscar Wilde level complexity. These are things I can't do even if I tried. But there are things I wouldn't do even if I could. The most offensive thing about this whole thing is a character who is a whole ripoff of Master Roshi from Dragonball. There is no line to be blurred between homage and ripoff, it's just Master Roshi and it is embarrassing to look at. His actual literal name is Hippie Young Man and by God I really hope we learn that wasn't always his name or we see a flashback in future volumes to a youthful design that is less derivative because dear God it was loathsome to look at.
I'm not an artist, but the drawings aren't too bad. There is one instance in the early panel where a woman's eyebrows fly off her face and it's a bit silly. They're simple enough to where I think that same hypothetical kid would read this and make some facsimile fanart in a notebook or on their desk or something. It's honestly charming. The standouts are the two leads, who can be expressive and even though the circumstances and dialogue aren't all there or fully developed to support it, you want them to be romantically entangled or friends at least.
The world is weirdly empty. I am not sure if this is by design, because it seems like a semi-primitive society, but the impression I get is that the only inhabited zones are Keisha's village and the Master Roshi ripoff character. By the end of the book I'm still unclear on what the world's deal is other than that Mezteck has mastered something arcane to dominate it, and that on some level what you take into it is what you take out of it.
On that note, Darian's mystical jacket just holds whatever it needs to for a cheap gag. The bad guy asks for something precious of his and he produces his iPod, har dee har har. To lure in a mysterious masked stalker, he produces a heretofore unseen chocolate bar, and not only does the stalker understand what chocolate is but knows how to unwrap it and leave it behind. On its own, this really doesn't raise any red flags, except Darian doesn't seem to question it like he did with the Master Roshi ripoff character's solar panels and engineering.
The emptiness and lack of definition to the world seems as though it can be populated with whatever the plot will need at a given moment, which is often the case with books and comics and publishers who ask for changes, but it doesn't holistically give the impression that this is fully planned out. That's fine though; assuming this is just a character study, the world can shift to fit them, but there's not much to go off of just yet and I think they need to be a bit more characterized to have it work. For example: Darian comes in and hates Mezteck because he's mean and wants to marry Keisha against her will and he's weird and uses what looks like dark magic. For a kid's book, that's more than enough, I guess. But why is Darian hellbent on treating him like a comic book villain, obvious meta context notwithstanding, when he doesn't really have any impression of the status quo? Mezteck hasn't really done much to show off his goals; he hasn't even done something all that evil yet. More suspicious, certainly, and certainly evil on a personal level, but what's Mezteck's tax policy? What's his long-term goal?
And yes--this is all the first book, so much of this has to be established. But as a comic, these kinds of things should be established visually. Mezteck looks like a villain, but we don't know why he wears a shawl, or if his garb helps with magic. There is a hippie transported from the 60's but maybe his clothes should be tighter on him from outgrowing it, or faded or smelly or ripped. You can tell us a lot about a character just from appearances, but it's just not realized.
Anyways, these are just me being a couch quarterback. Oh, boohoo, a joke about A.D.D. didn't land for me, oh, this character isn't written with Oscar Wilde level complexity. These are things I can't do even if I tried. But there are things I wouldn't do even if I could. The most offensive thing about this whole thing is a character who is a whole ripoff of Master Roshi from Dragonball. There is no line to be blurred between homage and ripoff, it's just Master Roshi and it is embarrassing to look at. His actual literal name is Hippie Young Man and by God I really hope we learn that wasn't always his name or we see a flashback in future volumes to a youthful design that is less derivative because dear God it was loathsome to look at.