The Man in the Moon
Staff: Alden Leeke
Overview:
A fun little Cthulhu romp.
Review:
Ok so I gotta say, this comic does not have professional grade artwork. No where near it. I mean it conveys what is going on pretty well, but it doesn’t really do it any favors. Christ, they even life-traced some images (example: Page 8) and attempted to draw over it.
I did like how the comic used a novel approach to dialogue bubbles thought. Each image is flanked by “torn off” pieces of paper with the dialogue written on them. Unfortunately, it is all very roughly done and doesn’t look very realistic (even within the context of the medium). Furthermore, the lettering gets very close to the edge and has relative inconsistent placement in regards to the piece of paper it’s written on.
The plot is pretty simplistic but it seems like there was a lot of love in its inception. It’s a kind of apocalypse story that involves some Lovecraftian elements. It feels a bit rushed and the pacing doesn’t really work. It’s kind of cranked up to 11 the entire way though so it all feels very boring (“It’s a tsunami!” “Then Religious War”!). It all smells of a very green writing staff. While they really want to incorporate elements of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s mythos- they fail spectacularly to grasp the tone that made his works so phenomenal. Tossing a few tentacles in a story doesn’t make it Lovecraftian. It’s about suspense, horror, mystery, and twists- not blunt set pieces of world destruction.
Indie Comic Review 