Review: Hatpire...

When I think of vampires, I tend to go with Dracula, Anne Rice books, goths, and heck, even the Blade movies. Well, now we have a new vamp on the block, and this one is a big fan of tophats. So big, in fact, that he's named after them. Hatpire, created by one Becky Turpin, follows the oddball life of the title character as he does all sorts of cutesy stuff. This one updates three times a week, to fulfill all of your vampire needs. Onward!

Hatpire is the Hello Kitty of vampire comics. Why do I say that? Because it's squishy Chibi-ish characters and really bright colors remind me of what a day in Japan must be like. Everyone walking around throwing peace signs and winking at each other. Nevermind that. A very cute and simple art style that would fit in perfectly mashed between Pokemon and Spongebob.

I can't really tear apart the writing and pick out anything that bothers me other than that there is pretty much no dialogue. Lots of symbols and exclamation points are used to convey emotions or actions, and while it's cute, it makes for a really simple comic. I take it that's what Becky is going for, but after a while it might get tough to figure out how to keep things going without words. Just sayin'. Apart from that, Hatpire himself sure is nice. I mean, he has to be the nicest vampire ever, because he doesn't suck blood(maybe offscreen?), and at one point he finds a coin, only to give it back to the guy who lost it. How kind. How un-vamp like. But, this is a truly different take on bloodsuckers, so don't come in here looking for a way to bring your goth side out. You're more likely to put on a pink sweater and hug someone.

Hatpire is a comic for fans of light hearted fluff, and while it's not my cup of green tea, it might be yours. It's cute family fun, and perfect for young girls looking for the next Care Bears, or whatever else is in with them these days. Sink your teeth(heh) into Hatpire and decide for yourself.
I give Hatpire...

(For cute and colorful art, but too simple for my tastes)

Ahem....

Hey everyone. Now, before you bite my head off for being gone again, lemme just say things are tough in the Land of ole' Jack. I won't get into details, but I'll just hint by saying my interests have been lying in my family life and Christmasy stuff, and trying to fix things with my girlfriend of almost four years....okay, so that was a bit more than a hint. Anyway, I didn't mean to stay away so long, but things are what they are. I just put up a new poll, and you can also marvel at my awesome photoshopped new Christmas themed logo for the site. Drop me a line if you need some photoshop tutorials, as I'm always just an email away. And yes, I'm totally kidding about my photoshop skills. I pretty much suck. Okay, you may be wondering when you're going to get a new review. Well, let me just say that tomorrow, God willing, and if things don't continue to go even more sour than sucking on a lollipop that looks like Carrot Top(my arch-nemesis), there will be a review up, in the evening. But don't hold me to that, because my life has a tendency to get kicked in the balls repeatedly. Okay, with all that said, let me take a second to thank all of those that are still checking out the site. Later!-Jack

Hey, take a look!

Sorry about the lack of updates last week, but I've been working on my new comic site, Gothy! You probably don't know, but I used to do a comic called Gothy Mcgee(then changed the name to Tilly)but Comic Genesis crashed and I gave up on it. I had a substantial archive, and I've still been drawing the comic since then, but had no site to put them on, until now. I'm going back and pulling out the best ones from the old site and putting them on the new one as well. I'll probably color them all eventually too. So, go on over and check it out and let me know what you think. It's just a silly little three panel strip, but I hope you like it. Later!

I hope this never happens again...

After reading the comments about my Power Up Comics review, I did a little digging, and boy, do I feel like a dumbass. I did note that this comic couldn't possibly be this bad and be serious, but now I know the truth. Click to see what I'm referring to. From now on I'm going to make sure a comic is real and deserving of a review before doing so. But that's not going to stop me from reviewing bad comics. I will say this though. They sure as hell did what they set out to do!

Oops!

I was going through my archives and noticed that I missed putting up in the "links to comic reviews" section about ten links to comic reviews! I don't know how I could have made that big of a flub, but anyway, it's fixed now, and if you've never gone through the older posts, you can now see ten reviews you probably didn't even know were on here! Sorry bout that!

Review: Power Up Comics...

I know some webcomic reviewers say things to the effect that they will only review comics that they can give a meaty, lengthy wall o' text of, or comics that they like right from the beginning, or won't even give a gag strip a second look. If you're going to review, I would think that you should take a look at any and all types of strips, good and bad, otherwise you're biased, and you should probably be doing something else. I don't think Siskel and Ebert(or Ebert and Roeper)skipped movies just because they didn't like comedies, or knew ahead of time that Fly Me To The Moon was a pile of chimp nuggets. Of course, you could also say that this is just a hobby and you just want to say what you want about whatever you want, so hey, I suppose that's okay too. Anyway, this is all going someplace, if you thought I was just rambling like Quentin Tarantino talking about crappy blaxploitation cinema from the seventies. Review? Okay, okay, here it is...

Power Up Comics is a(shudder)webcomic about..wait for it...gamers on a couch! Yeah, I know. Wait a minute though, could it have some originality? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The comic revolves around a couple of shmoes with names like Turdburger and..oh, no, that's not right...okay, Dorkwinkle *cough* and Shadow(cool huh)talking games and game systems, and even talking TO the game systems themselves. Shadow and Chug(the creators of this opus)have given us a traditional gamer comic to gander at. Should we gander at it? Oh man...keep reading..

I'm just going to go ahead and get it right out. Good Lord the art is atrocious. The character designs themselves aren't so bad, except that they use the SAME DRAWINGS IN EVERY SINGLE STRIP! What the hell? Here are a couple of examples: This one, and this one. Or hey, how about this one, and this one. I could go on and on and on....I have NEVER seen this amount of reuse in a comic. It's almost as if it's being done with a purpose other than being lazy or having no artistic skills. Maybe he's just out to make a horrible experience? I don't know, but at any rate, it's bad, the art is just flipped around at different angles at times, cut and pasted to oblivion, and the colors are of the blindingly bright variety, but the same art over and over. Look at this one! It's just Dorkwinkle with long hair! Disgusting.

Story and writing! Wheee! Okay, the characters go on wacky adventures, such as ending up at the Hardon Hotel to have sex with an obese woman, or, well, that's about it. Other than that it's just sitting or standing around the couch saying things like "you're gay" or "you're really gay". Terrible jokes, or no jokes at all, infect you like a bad case of gout or something. I can't find anything positive because it's just not funny. They don't even make funny or interesting observations about games, the whole POINT of this comic. AAAAAGH!!!

Okay, let's just end this disaster right now. I actually found it more fun reading the reader comments making fun of the comic than the comic itself. But I found that there were regulars that came to the comic. Why? Maybe I have an answer to that. I read the entire archive. Because it was so bad that I found myself laughing at this abortion. But not because it was good, no no. This has to be the worst webcomic I've ever seen. It was kind of like a car wreck. Couldn't look away. What does that say about me? I think I need therapy after this. I'm going to go cover up in my bed and cry myself to sleep after this one. Avoid it unless you're the kind of person that would watch Faces of Death. If that's the case enjoy! How was that for a review?

I give Power Up Comics...this video.

The Webcomic Beacon!

I'll be the first to admit I've never listened to a podcast before today. Ahem. I'm a little bit embarrassed about that actually. BUT, after listening to The Webcomic Beacon #43-Placing Ad Space, I'm sold on the idea that this is a GOOD THING. I recommend you go on over and browse through all 43 topics(which is a large number of podcasts for the time the site has been up), and I'm sure you'll find one that will help you in whatever problem you may be having, or you can just enjoy the back and forth between the hosts, Fes, Tanya, and Aaron. They even mention me! I've GOT to get back to them about being on the show....Click the link!