Pink Pandas
Staff: Dave Farmer
Overview:
Dave… we need to talk.
Review:
So this is from author/artist Dave Farmer. Which… confuses me. It seems like it is written by and for girls. I mean it’s called “Pink Pandas” and is covered in more sticky sweep pinkness than a 5 year old girl’s room. I’m not judging, but somewhere between impressed and confused. Let’s dive in and see what this has to offer!
So right off the bad my heart sinks. The artwork is grainy, low resolution, stock images or something with text superimposed over it. Letting is solid and readable, but the stock photography is… atrocious. When Brian Vaughan and Tony Harris did their award winning Ex Machina comic, they used staged pictures for the basis of their images and drew over them. No such inspiration here. Just low rez images put into panels.
Once we get to the ACTUAL art, it’s slightly styalized but mostly just bad. They look very realistic but often times the backgrounds suffer immensely from a lack of attention. Then there are some REALLY terrible gun effects on page 9 that make me just want to cry. This guy honestly has some talent burred under there, but he takes the lazy way out and just uses what look like MS paint effects to show us some gunshots. I… I really don’t know what was going though his head at that moment. “Man, I have this gorgeously detailed piece, Better throw some low transparency grey over it and some black blobs.” Come on Dave!
It’s pretty clear off the bat that I am not the intended demographic. I’m not going to judge the plot harshly because it does what it sets out to do. It creates the image of two idealized rock star teenagers (or early 20s?) who are doing the girly girl thing. Then the main characters start swearing (“Crap!”) and start pulling out shotguns and pumping bad guys full of led. Disconnect much? Who is this comic being written for? The little girl appeal of the premise is destroyed by the few swears and blood and gore that comes later. Anyone who would be able to enjoy the violent aspects of this comic would be totally turned off by the kid friendly premise.
At first I gave this book 6/10 for lettering… but then I got to page 5. From then on non-dialogue text starts showing up and I cringed. It’s pretty bad. Red stroked black text in some san-serif stock font really just manages to hurt the eyes rather than impress.
Metrics
Art: 1/10 (Stock photos and sloppy backgrounds)
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