No Need for Bushido

The story of No Need for Bushido starts with the daughter of a Feudal Japanese Lord running away rather than being forced into marriage. After an incident with several bandits, she finds herself in the company of a Samurai. A seemingly incompetent one. After several inn's and ninja attacks later, they've found themselves in the company of a blind Taoist Monk who speaks slightly garbled sayings, and a drunken Ronin.

While the art starts out a bit rough and contains a few small mistakes (I believe), as the story progresses, so does the art. It eventually becomes a manga-esque design, while still clearly being unique both to the form and artist (my lack of artistic knowledge is really killing me here, pointers, anyone?).

What starts off as a semi-silly comic featuring a Samurai, a Ronin, a Monk and a Princess eventually evolves into an intricate story line with an excellent mix of action, adventure, comedy, and even a splash of romance. I recommend this to anyone new to web comics, or anyone who enjoys a good manga.

Tuesday

So, after much consideration, I've decided to make this a weekly update, and do so on Thursday. Mainly because that gives me more time to flip through the archives of the comic I'm posting about, and write a detailed review.

Penny & Aggie

So, to start the revamp off, I'm going to start with Penny & Aggie. Aggie is a hippie at heart, a bit of a rebel, though one with a concious. Penny is more-or-less her precise opposite: a girl who considers her popularity to trump all else, and is proudly fashion centric. What starts out as a girl vs. girl rivalry escalates into a school wide battle, and beyond.

This series caught and kept my attention for it's honesty. While it occasionally goes over-the-top with things, it's decidedly candid about high school. Through the course of the comic, it touches on a great many issues that are historically shied away from with mainstream publications. It does remain a coming-of-age story, but it doesn't feel like everything is definitely going to work out perfectly for everyone (stories that, from the get go, feel like everything will be okay in the end aren't interesting to me).

The artwork is clean, and almost always black and white (some pages/covers are done in color). This can occasionally make it difficult to identify the multitude of different female characters, but they distinct personality each possesses usually gives, quite quickly, away who they are. The layout varies noticeably (though not intrusively) with this series, with the size of each page being the only true constant. Art is done in a simple style, with vague backgrounds and clean lines giving detail without being overly detailed.

Alright, so, here's the first of many posts, I imagine. I'm aiming to update twice a week, possibly three times. The artistic half of the review needs a lot of work, as I'm not very artistically inclined, and so describing it as much more than "the art is clean and simple" takes a lot of work for me. I would love to hear feedback, comments, input, and series you'd like me to review. =]

Resurrection

So, I think I'm going to try and revamp this blog... and rather than the format I was doing them in, I'm going to slowly repopulate this, with reviews of webcomics as I stumble across them, and read my way through the archives.