Hard Underbelly  

The official news spot for Hard Underbelly.


 
MAKING YOU MY BRIDE AND SLOWLY GROWING OLD TOGETHER

Mood: Good, but kinda bored
Music: You Are Invited; by the Dismemberment Plan

I saw Hellboy last night. I liked it. It was very entertaing. Hellboy's make-up was the most natural seeming prosthetic I've ever seen in a movie. The only problem with it may be it's accessibility. I'm a huge fan of the comics, so I already knew the whole backstory and whatnot. It was hard for me to seperate them in my mind (as this is one of the most faithful comic-book adaptions I've ever seen), and I kind of wonder if people who don't know the comic already would have trouble with the plot. Eh, whatever.

I've removed a couple of comics from my list of links, for various reasons. Under Power got axed due to general never-ever updating syndrom, coupled with an extremely slow pacing and obtuse story structure that's beginning to piss me off.

Fans got cut for different reasons. The first is what I find to be the increasingly convoluted nature of it. It seems that every other chapter, T Campbell is rehashing and explaining character backstory that really should have been established earlier or not at all. Also, in his most recent chapter, which was a short story about a character who's already dead, they used computer-generated graphics ripped directly from Poser, and it's absolutely hideous. I mean, Poser is not the wunder-program people seem to think it is. All of the characters are wearing skin-tight clothing, because Poser can't do clothes, and so they look painted on, which, I guess, they are. Also, the new business model they've adopted at Graphic Smash, T Campbell's webcomicy project thingy, is absolutely stupid. You can always read the new comic for that day, but you have to pay to read the archives. This is a problem further compounded by the increasingly random and non-linear style of Campbell's writing, which basically requires you to be able to look at the backstory for reference. Frankly, reading any one page of Fans these days is certainly not enough to get people to want to pay for more. I can see this being a good model with a gag-a-day kind of comic, like, say the Farside. But if your comic is continuity heavy, the average joe schmo will stop by some day, see some random introspection on the deeper meaning of Star Trek in relation to one particular character's hamfisted background, and the first thing that pops into their mind will not be "Hey! I'd pay for more of this!" For the same reasons I've cut out the webcomics.org stuff, like Mnemesis. Actually, Sylvan Migdal's story-telling skills are much crisper than Campbell's, it's still a plot based story with the wrong kind of business model.

Also, as I predicted earlier, Wonderfalls has apparently been cancelled by Fox. Go figure.

Ending Music: Space Oddity; by David Bowie

-----------------Over, Out--------------------

  posted by Tristan @ 1:21 PM


Sunday, April 04, 2004  

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