Screw Phillips

Staff: Jake Estrada

Overview:

Bad tracing, half way decent story

Review:

The tagline of this comic explains that this comic is about an agent who got greedy and locked up. Now he’s out and working the system. Fair warning, this is not a kid friendly read.

Now the art in this one is a bit off putting. It looks like tracing, though it kind of fits. Like tracing always done, it gives us these WEIRD facial expression (see the bottom of 4 for what I’m talking about). Tracing always carries this bizarrely off putting appearance where some things are detailed and TOO perfect while other things are sloppy (example: See page 5 and look at Screw’s neck vs his thumb in his pocket). People are also always posing because that tends to be the way a lot of stock pictures are.

The dialogue seems like something out of a porno and matters about as much (“Hey, foxy mamma…” “wanna go for a walk?” “sure”). It doesn’t seem like this real people would say. This clashes with the realism they are going for in the art. Sometimes it’s obvious when they used two different images (see Screw’s head on page 13) and it really just looks sloppy. Also, tracing has this habit of not always syncing expressions with the scene they are in. I’m not saying tracing can’t be done effectively, but you really need to take your own pictures to trace from or something.

The letting is actually very solid. However, the issue is that sometimes the dialogue continues to another panel with no indication. This makes for a very awkward read sometimes. The few uses of onomatopoeias don’t mesh with the rest of the comic.

Something weird about this comic is that only 17/30 pages are dedicated to the Screw Philips comic. The other are two other comic intros (which I will not be reviewing here).

Overall, despite the jarring art, it’s not a bad comic. The plot makes sense and is actually even engaging at time.Though they give you a little tease at the end, they plot doesn’t really grab me. It’s not a bad story, it just isn’t a good story. A lot of it feels rush or contrived for some set pieces he wanted to put in. Anyway, give it a read if guns & hookers are your thing.

Metrics

Art: 2/10 (Tracing and not the good kind)

Lettering: 5/10 (Good but some sloppy edits and onomatopoeias)

Plot: 5/10 (Decent but forgettable)

Novelty: 4/10 (I haven’t read another comic like it but not new)

Overall: 4/10

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