Saturday, August 28, 2010

Kick Drum Style Reviews: Wigu/Overcompensating Review

I have been reading a lot but I ned to force myself to get back to writing the review portions. This week features two comics by Jeff Rowland, webcomicer and creator of TopatoCo, the webcomic store.


Wigu by Jeff Rowland
Wigu is a webcomic about a boy named Wigu, his family and his more or less inter-dimensional guardians, Topato Potato and Sheriff Pony. The comic revolves around the adventures Wigu has with his family that typically result in Topato and Sheriff Pony rescuing them.
The art is simplistic and childlike but it works for the story. The writing itself is equal childlike with a good sense of wonder and magic staying prevalent in the story. Additionally the comic is tamer that Axe Cop for example with death and violence being a more frowned upon subject which I can actually appreciate even though I was fairly desensitized by violence when a kid.
The comic works best coming off as a spur of the moment wacky adventure strip and rarely gets bogged down with continuity or flashbacks. A highly recommended read. A-

Overcompensating by Jeff Rowland
Jeff Rowland stars as himself in his semi-real autobiographic webcomic Overcompensating along with a small number of fake characters and filled with additional cameos from real webcomic people.
Overcompensating took me a bit to get into which is understandable since writing comics somewhat based on your life can be a learning process. The writing eventually picks up and leads to arcs.
Personally I love the strips concerning God and Jesus, who live in a nearby trailer park, since Mr. Rowland feels at ease to confront religion and faith head on, on a personal level.
The art itself is simplistic but it works keeping everything feeling organic and personal. Another highly recommended read. A

Next week, two more comics for my Road to SPX Road.

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