Monday, December 10, 2012

It's A Crime

I'm not a big fan of crime comics, normally.

Broadly, the crime and law enforcement supergenre tends to focus more on the workings of plot than character (like all the CSIs), and when character does make it to the fore, more often than not it feels contrived or soap operatic (again CSI for the former, and the insanely overrated Sopranos -- after the brilliant first season, anyway).

I liked the new Italian Job, I love NCIS (which packs an enormous amount of character work around its procedural workings), I loved Ed Brubaker's Criminal before it immediately went off the rails as of issue #2... and I adore Casket.

Casket, written and drawn by Fangdangler, is one of the best webcomics I've encountered -- cinematic visuals, fluid art, engaging characters, realistic-esque dialogue, and just more plain energy and verve than most other comics can begin to muster, without ever feeling self-consciously frenetic (like some terrible webcomics do).

The introduction is a great wordless scene, drawing the reader in immediately with a gorgeously realizes sense of space. The action kicks in almost immediately, and puzzle pieces keep getting revealed and assembled. Waiting for the answers is always rewarding and never frustrating here.

One nit: the lettering is kinda terrible, from the choice of typeface to the inconsistent to annoyingly art overlapping balloons. They sometimes feel crowded and are not always well-placed. And there are typos. More than a few.

I can easily get past this sort of thing, but more professional lettering would help open this comic up to the wider audience it very richly deserves.

One other nit: the real paper money looks jarringly photo-realistic compared to EVERYTHING else.

Other than those nits, I love literally everything about this comic. The art looks far more effortless then it surely is, and the characters hook immediately. I give this comic eleventy stars. I promise it's better than many comics you're paying for, especially if DC is currently publishing them.

Frog pancakes galore, -Caley Tibbittz

P.S. Casket has been on hiatus since Sept.; please leave comments bugging the author to make more.

P.P.S. My own webcomic Eternal Knights has been on an extended hiatus; I was very sick all of November, and now am catching up on commissions, which I'm posting as placeholders. There may be one new page this month, and then the normal bi-weekly updates should resume in early January. Sorry about the delay. "Like" for commission updates and update updates:

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