Sunday, March 30, 2008
Two More Reviews
At IndieReviews...
Chickenheads
and
Jack in the Box
Chickenheads was well received, apart from a few niggles which we both agree with. Jack in the Box wasn't as warmly welcomed, with its storyline not appealing to the reviewer. While the art gets good praise, the story is considered weak because of the following flaw: "Jack in the Box puts the phrase "Men are products of their environment" to the test. While people may be divided as to the phrase being fact or not, Jack in the Box doesn't even question it."
While not one to quibble negative criticism (in fact Martin and I welcome it 100%) the phrase 'men are products' etc etc, is from the C2D4 website and isn't part of the comic's prose or included in any press release associated with the comic, so doesn't really represent JITB as anything other than a punchy teaser. Even if the phrase was the crux of the entire series' story, we also clearly say it's a theory and experiment, and so by definition it cannot be a fact.
Possibly my fault for the (in retrospect) glib/ snappy precis, but the story is definitely alot deeper and bigger in scope than that phrase suggests. I feel particularly bad for Martin, that his work may have been judged on the basis of an advert -- if indeed this is what happened. I hope this wasn't the case, as JITB has alot of surprises up its sleeve.
Damn...guess I'm going to have to squeeze JITB # 2 out quick-like, to prove it :)
Chickenheads
and
Jack in the Box
Chickenheads was well received, apart from a few niggles which we both agree with. Jack in the Box wasn't as warmly welcomed, with its storyline not appealing to the reviewer. While the art gets good praise, the story is considered weak because of the following flaw: "Jack in the Box puts the phrase "Men are products of their environment" to the test. While people may be divided as to the phrase being fact or not, Jack in the Box doesn't even question it."
While not one to quibble negative criticism (in fact Martin and I welcome it 100%) the phrase 'men are products' etc etc, is from the C2D4 website and isn't part of the comic's prose or included in any press release associated with the comic, so doesn't really represent JITB as anything other than a punchy teaser. Even if the phrase was the crux of the entire series' story, we also clearly say it's a theory and experiment, and so by definition it cannot be a fact.
Possibly my fault for the (in retrospect) glib/ snappy precis, but the story is definitely alot deeper and bigger in scope than that phrase suggests. I feel particularly bad for Martin, that his work may have been judged on the basis of an advert -- if indeed this is what happened. I hope this wasn't the case, as JITB has alot of surprises up its sleeve.
Damn...guess I'm going to have to squeeze JITB # 2 out quick-like, to prove it :)
posted by Tony at
5:21 PM
2 Comments:
Hey Tony,
While it was that line you added on the website, I also felt the story just wasn't captivating enough for a first issue. I was reading this back to back with Chickenheads, and Jack just didn't seem to compare at all against it. The story seemed a little bland and formulaic, which was my main problem. It's the first issue, so things could change, but you also want to set up more questions in that first issue, it just seemed the good vs the evil, and the boy raised by evil will probably be turned by the good. Because of lack of character development, there was nothing else much to guess at.
I hope the second issue helps expand on it!
Cheers for the comment hass. You make fair points, although Jack is never portrayed as evil, just dreadfully confused by his upbringing and total lack of any moral input. The story arc definitely moves completely away from anything so obvious...we look forward to (eventually) getting it out there, so you can have a good look :)
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