Synthetic Life...

Synthetic Life, created by Eve Z., stars an android girl named Michelle who was created by a young scientist named Sean, who fails to tell her that she's not human. His reasons for creating her vary from using her to rescue his father to trying to create a robot with emotions, especially love. There is action, romance, and a little dose of humor. I'm not too sure what the update schedule is but as of the time of this writing there are 5 chapters with between 14-30 comics in each.

To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the anime style. I did like Vampire Hunter D, and I dug the Street Fighter 2 movie, but the big eyes and way out there expressions kinda bug me. Synthetic Life isn't totally in anime style, but does flirt with it heavily. I like the art here for the most part, but Sean just looks odd, like he's wearing a beard that he drew on with eyeliner or something. Maybe he would look better without it. I would like to see Eve Z. slowly find her own style and start to steer away from the leanings toward anime, as she has real potential. Anyway, the backgrounds are well drawn and plentiful, and the characters all have their own style and distinguished looks unlike a lot of comics where the characters all look alike except for a different hairstyle. Also the coloring job looks great with lots of shading and blending. The later comics look quite professional and improve greatly from the earliest offerings.

The story here can be kind of hard to follow at times, with the mad scientist villain seeming more like a senile non threat than a true bad guy. At one point, angry at one of his two girl androids, he tells her he's going to call around and punish her by making her babysit kids. Not very evil. Also, the writing can sometimes be awkward, like it's an English language translation of Japanese anime. For instance, panel 8 of this page. A little more time taken on proper sentences and wordplay will make all the difference in the world. However, I like the characterization of Michelle. Her wide-eyed innocence of the world around her is written well enough and you will come to sympathize with her and want to know what happens next.

The site has a nice selection of extras, such as a story page, which tells you how the characters were created and what the basic story is; a characters page; fanart; and a nice drawing tutorial. We all need as much practice as we can get!

Synthetic Life has an interesting story and some very nice art which is constantly improving going for it. There are some things that need to be worked on, but I doubt you would be disappointed by giving it a quick read. If anything, it may better help you cope with the fact that lifelike robots are getting closer and closer to reality....

I give this comic...