Two fantasy webcomics: Unsounded and The Meek
It’s once again time for our most popular blog feature, other good webcomics. This time I want to present two fantasy webcomics with particular nice artwork and solid storylines.
Unsounded by Ashley Cope is one of the comics with the prettiest color artwork I’ve ever seen, including print comics such as Blacksad. That it updates three times a week with pages that are as detailed as the covers of professional comic books is absolutely astonishing. The story is also well done, but it might not be everybody’s piece of cake. The female lead character, the foul-mouthed 12-ish rogue Sette, is one of the most obnoxious brats in the history of storytelling, surpassing even Dakota Fanning’s character in War of the Worlds. Together with the loyal lich Duane, whom she teases endlessly, Sette is on a mission to find the cousin on behalf of her father who is a thief lord in Sharteshane. Of course there are more than enough monsters and villains who get in their way.
The pacing and dialog is quite good and there are some nice ideas here and there, but it remains to be seen if the main story will offer something unique in the end. Unsounded is definitely not suitable for children, the PG-13 icon on the page should be replaced with an R rating. Not only do the characters cuss like sailors, there is also lots of graphic violence with bad things happening to little girls and whatnot. My biggest issue with Unsounded is the heavy accent of most characters and the large amount of uncommon words they use, making the comic very hard to understand for non-native speakers.
The Meek by Der-shing Helmer consists of three chapters so far which only seem to be loosely related to each other at the moment. The colored artwork is also top-notch, but I wish the pages were bigger to be able to really appreciate it. The first chapter centers on the (completely naked) young woman Angora who has been sent by her “grandpa” on a dangerous mission, the second chapter is showing a key day in the life of the emperor Luca DeSadar. The dialog in The Meek is significantly easier to understand with fewer strange words and place names as in Unsounded, and I also think that the main story looks slightly more promising. However, The Meek’s biggest problems is its erratic update schedule with only one new page per week in average. Just like Unsounded, The Meek is made for an adult audience with a naked main character; the violence is less drastic, though.
Why are these almost all the interesting scenarios that are rated R? Me’s crying.
Oh, after all, I have Sandra and Woo ♥ (PG, huh? :/ )