Holy Moly! Two reviews in two days! I slave away for a year in obscurity with no recognition. Then I go on hiatus and then the reviews pour in.
This one comes from
Webcomicker and confirms what I've been feeling about changes I need to make to the series.
"In classic 32 page serial comic books, the typical execution is to build each issue to a climax and end on some sort of cliffhanger up until the last issue in the current storyline. It keeps the reader coming back for more issues. In a graphic novel, on the other hand, the entire story is contained in a single volume, so it tends to be paced more like a typical novel with exposition, rising actions, climax and denouement. But in long form webcomics, you get a little bit from both camps, plus the expectation that each page of the story be able to stand alone, because typically the readers are reading the story one page at a time. So what you get is an author who wants to tell a novel-style plot but has to throw in occasional cliffhangers to keep the audience interested while at the same time writing each page so that it can stand alone. And that push and pull of dynamics is very evident in My Life in Records. . .
When you’re reading a webcomic you expect a somewhat disjointed feel, either because you’ve got to keep clicking to the next page and waiting for it to load, or because you’re actually waiting for the next update. But pick up that same webcomic in book form and you find that often it feels more like a collection of strips than one continuous story. That’s just one of the downsides of the medium, I suppose."
I've been working on a new model of presenting the comic and what I've decided to do is release each chapter in one block rather than one page at a time. I'm working on a non-My Life in Records comic right now that I'll release in one big 16 page chunk. You can check out a few pencil previews
here.
