#shining comics

[thinkingalexis]

Shining Web Comics: Rock and Riot Vol 1

It’s time to talk about webcomics, web comics don’t get nearly enough love and normally they are just like a normal comic once they are all wrapped up. Some webcomics innovate taking advantage of the medium but others are more simple. This one is one of the simpler ones but simplicity is allowing it to be printed physically so I am going to review everything that is going to be contained in the release of Rock and Riot Volume one.  After you read this if you want to buy it you can click https://www.createspace.com/5636959 to where you can buy it physically or http://rockandriotcomic.tumblr.com/ to read the comic.

Rock and Riot’s story is centered on romance and two greaser day gangs.  The comic is created by Chelsey also know as cheriiart http://cheriiart.tumblr.com/ and it’s insanely crazy that just one person does all this work. It’s the 1950′s and the first volume was totally focused on establishing romantic dynamics for characters and a bit of their establishing that they aren’t really out to their teams. The second volume as of now has been about a date and seems to plant the seeds for future issues.

Connie the leader of the Jaquettes  who is a cool lesbian leader.  Carla the girl who caught Connie’s eye that happens to be asexual (although we haven’t got into this in the comic proper).  Clyde and Gene are members of the rival gang the Rollers and also into each other. All the characters are super cute and looking at their cast page their is a bunch of diverse facts about characters that the creator hasn’t got into. I’m excited to hear more about all the people in this book and we have a lot of exciting representation on every end of LGBT+ community.

The art in this comic is just fantastic, the colors, the character design, the everything here is done with some real master crafting. So much of the story is told through facial expressions, body gestures, and other subtle things that most comics are afraid to do. The story started and made me think it was going to be a silent comic because it was displayed so effectively without speech that I could picture it. Then we got some dialogue and I was impressed at the great voice each character had for themselves.  

This book doesn’t have any real flaws inside it. It does everything pretty well but I imagine it won’t be for everyone. Right now there isn’t any action or anything like that but not every comic is action. This is a brilliant and effective piece of romance writing so far that I love every page released of. The fact that it updates twice a week at the quality levels it does blows my mind. Right now the plot is very much establishing where we are and who we are with but it does it in a very fun way. Check out Rock and Riot it’s free unless you want to pay.

If you enjoyed this post you can check  out THIS link for the rest of the shining comics series. You can also check back with my blog every week where I intend to keep doing this until I come up with something better. Also every single day I talk about things in nerdy culture mostly addressing issues in comics but also other things and video games. Thank you so much for reading  this and have a great day.

[thinkingalexis]

Shinning Comic: Princeless Vol 2 and 3.

It’s that time of week again for another shining comic. This time I’m talking about two volumes of a series instead of just one. I wanted to cover as much as possible here rather than make so much of this series dedicated to Princeless. I was debating putting this post up because I don’t think it’s up the quality I want it to be but I figured I already wrote it let’s just put it out there but in the future I may not be doing volumes beyond the first set I cover in a shining comics so I can avoid spoilers and recommend starting points for people.

Princeless Volume 2 and 3 focus on the further adventures of our princess protagonist. The first volume focus on the pretty older sister of our hero and the second volume focus on Raven the pirate princess. Volume 2 does a really good job of showing a classically girly character but not shaming her despite the nature of the character. They made her funny and while maybe not someone you love someone you can respect. Raven manages to bring Raven to life who is a mind blowing character (Stay tuned to shining comics for her spin off series). Raven is a really awesome with really cool history that you want to dive into. Both are solid with characters but volume three does ignore the side characters and plot to build up Raven. The creative team on both books do a brilliant job displaying the characters and colors and even do some really cool with with the layouts on the book. 

Speaking on plot both of them work with the confines of their stories. Volume 2 has a good amounts of twists and fantastic moments to highlight the characters and set up more growth.  It manages to handle it’s story arc rather well and set up seeds for a lot of conflict in the future as well. Volume three manages to set up the tension of “can we trust Raven” for the crew. It also gets you invested in all the actions with them consonantly moving at a fast pace. It doesn’t really touch on what happened in volume two you could pretty much read it before the second or hell just reading my first shinning comics post will give you enough to go on with in this story. If that’s good or bad that’s up to you but I really enjoyed that story.

I think you need to read the first Princeless volume to enjoy these two volumes but if you read the first one and liked it at all these step up the stakes. These stories get better and better and I totally recommend you check out my previous post on the previous Princeless volume if you want more details on everything the series has to offer. The writer of this series growth as a writer can be seen in these books and it’s a really brilliant series that really doesn’t have nearly enough love.  

[thinkingalexis]

Shining Comics: Hexed  The Harlot & The Thief

Hexed The Harlot & The Thief  is a short series  published by boom that chronicles Lucifer's second major journey. Readers need not have read the first volume in order to read this my girlfriend didn’t and totally followed the series and I read it in the middle of reading the second volume. Lucifer steals from a museum issue one and from there everything spirals. I’ll be reviewing this full series and Volume one is on amazon for preorder although I am not too sure how many issues of the run this book will cover. Given the price likely 5 (Super professional journalism here yall).

This is one of the amazing adventures that I do feel like spoilers actually matter. I mean you get plot twist after plot twist after plot twist and it all leads to the very end. What I can say is we see amazing magical action in this book, tons of “Oh gee how will Lucifer get out of this one”, and get a lot of drama too. The basic premise is that Lucifer is a thief who steals magical things for Val the owner of an art gallery. She collects them to keep people safe and sometimes people want these powerful objects that she collects. So when Lucifer takes something that is very important to several characters she finds herself and everyone who is around her in massive danger.

What I can talk about is the characters because this book is AMAZING when it comes to characters. Lucifer is pretty high up there when it comes to my favorite comic book characters now she is this badass person with confidence but understands she isn’t all powerful We get to see her at her lowest here and we get to see her happy here. Lucifer gets great character development in this book and it ties up her arc very nicely. The intern in this book is cool she starts out pretty annoying but I feel like as Lucifer starts caring for her the story does a good job at getting you to care too.  Val is fantastic and feels like the heart of the book the whole time. Bob (I think that’s his name) is actually a pretty cool character as well. This cast also has some fantastically scary villains with The Harlot being this wild card that stands in the way the whole time.  Madame Cymbaline is another force that the whole comic is shifting in positions and keeps the readers on their toes.

Can’t talk about comics without talking about the art the colors and general art in this book are for the most part amazing. I do have to complain a bit about Dan Mora’s body shapes not really feeling diverse for the human woman they all are pretty similar and I even got a late game character confused with Lucifer in a few panels when reading because how similar they look. It’s one of the situations where it’s more about what cloths is the character wearing and their hair then how their body separates from others. All that said we have amazing scenes that are feats of arts like Lucifer running through art in a fight. Also we get some nice creepy images and nice backgrounds. If body shapes were a bit more well rounded I think this could have been a 10/10 art wise. The colors bring everything to life and the art really does make me feel like i’m in the universe.

This book isn’t for everyone it has come more extreme violence but if sex is the thing that scares you away there isn’t really any of that here. The story is all about woman and doesn’t ever sexualize them at least  in any moments I can remember.  I think if you can handle some blood you should really give Hexed a go. It balances drama and moments of life very well. Check this series out it might be harder to do physically especially the second half but I really recommend this title. Dan Mora’s art is great, Michael Alan Nelson’s writing as at his very best, Ed Dukeshire’s lettering is actually really great, and Gabrie Icassata knocked it out of the park with the colors. It’s a fantastic indie book that I feel got overlooked during it’s run.

For other entries in shining comics click here because there are tons of fantastic comics that are overlooked that I want to highlight. I try to do this weekly and the next one should be Princeless Vol 2 and 3 unless some other book really inspires me.