Monty and Woolley, created by James Douglas, brings subtle humor to the well-worn dinosaur genre of webcomics. Wait, there isn't a dinosaur genre of webcomics? Okay, scratch that. The comic features a slightly sarcastic brontosaurus named Monty and a free spirited mammoth hatched from an egg(?) named Woolley. Updates are every Friday.
James has a good handle on drawing his main characters, but backgrounds and any other details are sparse. It's hard to believe that they are in a jurassic world on the brink of an ice age when there is no landscape to establish it. I would love to see ancient ferns and other vegetation from the era, as well as mountains, volcanoes, other dinos, etc. It may be expecting too much from a comic of this nature, but it would still be nice to see a little more effort put into this area. The comic starts off in black and white but eventually graduates to color, which helps to fill in some of the blank areas left by the lack of backgrounds. One last thing. I think that the comic should be a bit larger as there is a lot of wasted space on the site and the title of the comic is almost the same size as the comic itself.
I've always liked comics aimed at a nicer friendlier more innocent crowd, and Monty and Woolley feels like one of those to me. The jokes are simple and smile inducing although not laugh out loud funny. I also welcome the fact that there are no sex jokes of any kind, as those have been done to death everywhere else. I did take offense to the use of the phrase "what the hell?" in one strip. It just felt totally out of place here, and it's the only time it's been used. Apart from that the characters are established quickly and what seems like a story is starting to hatch. I really feel that having a loose story, such as the ice age beginning and Monty and Woolley trekking to safety, will benefit the comic by opening up a huge variety of mischievous situations for them to get into. If James can do this while keeping the lighthearted and one shot jokes coming, he'll have a winner. Oh, one thing that I found a bit distracting was the lack of character speech bubbles. The only thing that tells you who is speaking and when are the different colors of the text. Sometimes all of the text is over one of the characters heads, and that makes it hard to distinguish who is saying what. Maybe trying a few different bubbles, or even a small line to the character, would help.
If light and airy comics kids young and old alike can enjoy are your thing, check out Monty and Woolley. I can truthfully say that I enjoyed this comic. It was like a small breath of fresh air. A few minor tweaks here and there and this comic will undoubtedly gain an audience. Careful though, your eyes might end up dinoSORE from not being able to stop reading! Haha...ha....ahem. Yeah, that sucked.
I give this comic...
Why do I give it eight out of 12 chimps? Because I liked it! That's why!
1 comment:
Funny, I've never found it hard to keep track of who's speaking.
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