The upcoming Into The Vast Review has been cancelled due to that webcomic’s untimely conclusion and removal from the Internet. Instead, I am publishing a postponed review of Demon Archives. The Zukahnaut review will be postponed until later in June due to circumstances beyond my control.
Critical Synopsis
Overall, the Demon Archives webcomic is action-packed and entertaining enough for the average young man looking for cool robots that blow up shit. Its pages are attractive and competently rendered by a team of excellent illustrators, and are worth a look on that merit alone. However, if Dan Sharp and the Demon Archives team wish to reach beyond the target demographic and tap into the full potential of this story’s impressive world architecture, they need to move beyond tropes and focus more on character development.
In Depth
Website
Interface and Technical Stuff
Simplicity and excellent organization exemplify the best attributes of the Demon Archives website. The top navigation bar provides an intuitive interface for readers to consume the content and find important features such as the archives and RSS feed. While not innovative on any level, the webcomic navigation feels familiar and easy to use.
The front page flouts the webcomic convention of providing the latest update immediately upon arrival. While inconvenient for bouncing return visitors who quickly wish to look at the latest update, this portal format provides a reader-friendly and visually appealing way to quickly access the latest update, first page, and archives. The small introduction beneath the entry images, strikes me as useful for new readers. The about page provides relevant information about the creative team, a story synopsis, navigation instruction and other content that is neither too unwieldy, nor bogged down by trite “clever” text that adds nothing to the experience. Explanations are delivered with concise clarity.
The well-organized site archives please the eye and make it relatively easy to find specific pages. Thumbnails in the comic archives above each description are especially appreciated. Unfortunately, the search feature is absolutely useless for finding anything that isn’t a blog entry, and that greatly detracts from an otherwise user-friendly experience. Thankfully, there is a very easy way to discuss this issue, as well as others that may prove problematic for mobile device users.
Creating a fully mobilized site with webcomic transcripts for smaller screens where text is difficult to read, might be wise solution for this issue. Adding transcripts and a better engine, might also be helpful in terms of addressing the website’s lack of accessibility for the visually impaired, and its abysmal search feature.
Although the Demon Archives website template seems to be responsive and effective for smartphones, it could use a lot of work in terms of being truly mobile-friendly. This is particularly true in instances where images are not automatically resizing outside of the webcomic archives.
Site aesthetics
The Demon Archives website’s clinical white and gray sterility does nothing to enhance the webcomic’s palette of warm earth tones, rust, vibrant blood and pure black. While showing a work of art against neutral colors exemplifies tasteful presentation principles, going neutral to the point of boredom does no favors for a webcomic. If this were a medical information website or just a collection of scholarly articles, the color scheme might be appropriate. However, this is a blood and testosterone-soaked story full of robotic suits, explosions and excitement. If this isn’t communicated right away, the target audience might simply turn away before bothering to look at the webcomic.
A frame can often make or break the presentation of a painting. Webcomic creators and web designers, often underestimate how much a website can function like one. While I think that webmaster, Nick Sharp, did an amazing job constructing the site from a practical perspective, I feel that the stage for this production could use more of a visual punch. Just for fun, here are some ideas on how I would accomplish that with minimal effort.
Adorning the website with black or at least darker gray background, instead light gray, would be a simple solution that would work towards creating a much more compelling presentation. A bolder solution would be to create a subtle textured background that draws from the art’s general color schemes, or even just the Keleres themselves. Extending the color scheme of the webcomic, particularly the shades of cream and tans to the content boxes, might offer an extra visual punch to the commentary and comments sections, though I would try to keep with the actual comic box presentation area all white. Experimenting with fonts could also be useful for adding more visual excitement to the website.
Extras
The Demon Archives team delivers with an impressive collection of extras that go far beyond what most webcomics give. The fan art gallery is diverse and attractively displayed. The lore and science world-building bonuses are extensive and well-researched. The site blog is a delight to read and the Wednesday Spotlights are a wonderful show of commitment to the online comics community’s growth.
Art
Sebastian “Seba” Piriz, Matias Basla and Nico Leon, are technically capable artists who do an amazing job rendering the world of Demon Archives while capturing a full range of emotions. Though superficially similar and aesthetically compatible, their approaches are vastly different. I really don’t have much to critique with the artistic team’s highly competent work, but there are some minor things to note.
Seba
Seba’s coloring has a painterly quality that provides The Demon Archives with lush textures and added realism, even in his most minimalist pages. His attention to anatomy and technical draftsmanship is outstanding, especially since he’s tasked with drawing multiple mechanical suits and weaponry. Seba mercifully avoids the common temptation of drowning his pages in obsessive detail that turn far too many beautiful robotic comic renderings into busy messes. Instead, he focuses on keeping his compositions relatively simple with an emphasis on mood, and not minutiae.
Seba’s generally handles his workload elegantly, save for a few minor inconsistencies in the mechanical suits towards the beginning and some awkwardly arranged story progression frames. Although Seba’s biggest weakness is generally overshadowed by the glorious colors, his inking seems insecure and too delicate at times. Compared to most people’s inking, it’s far above average, but it does have room for improvement. If I were him, I would either go bolder and more meticulous, or make the inking less prominent with an even more painterly approach.
Matias
Matias Basla is by no means the draftsman that Seba is, and his sometimes awkward anatomical construction can be jarring. However, the same can be said of Peter Chung, whose stylistic approach I see as a strong influence in Matias’s work. As with Chung, Matias’s ballsy risk taking when it comes to composition, movement and color often leaves me in awe. Sometimes his experiments fall flat, yet I can’t help but admire the fact that he audaciously attempts to tackle them. Nothing Matias draws is ever boring. His inking is equally confident, though possibly a bit too chunky for some people’s tastes. I love it, because his sensibility greatly appeals to my love for the avant-garde and graphic design meshing with illustration.
Nico
Nico Leon’s work has a strong manga flavor to it. Mercifully, it avoid the genre’s huge glassy-eyed conventions that most western audiences come to expect, but aren’t truly representative of the genre’s full aesthetic range. Out of the three primary artists mentioned in this review, Nico has the best inking and anatomical construction. The character designs are pure eye candy. The ink line weights skate from from delicate to bold, effortlessly. Nico’s inking is so technically adept, that his pages would generally look better in black and white, than they do in color.
I absolutely adore Nico’s somewhat limited palette. His very deliberate color choices boldly recall the pulp comics of my childhood, while still acknowledging the Tibetan Buddhist culture of the characters that he’s working with. Nico’s colors work best when he uses gradients sparingly or keeps his hues flat.
Nico’s frequent use of photographic or computer-generated effects, unnecessarily distracts from his otherwise stunning art, and creates a false impression of creative laziness. I am guessing that there is some influence from manga masters like Masamune Shirow. Unfortunately, combining Shirow’s coloring approach paired with pulp comic approach to color doesn’t work for me. But, the combination can display surprisingly effective results when Mr. Leon manages to pull it off.
Lettering
There are rare moments when the word balloon placing is awkward and confusing, but for the most part, everything seems readable. The lettering is competent, but the font choices seem less consistent. The sound effect fonts are fantastic. The speech bubble fonts are proper though nothing exciting. The narration box fonts strikes me as downright sleep inducing in comparison to the subject. Demon Archive‘s lettering is adequate, but really not noteworthy.
Story
(Spoilers galore.)
Dan Sharp’s world-building skills are outstanding. His future worlds seem plausible and grounded in present day issues such as the potential for singularity, autonomous weaponry proliferation and societal collapse precipitated by financial interest. Whether as part of the webcomic or the supplementary material, Dan’s vision captivates. His canonical collaborations with Sarah Driffill, Josh Connor and Johnathan Richards for the lore section of the site, provides hours of fascinating reading. Without a doubt this is where Mr. Sharp’s greatest strengths lie. Another strength is Dan’s striking symbolic language, as well as his attention to historical and folkloric detail.
The Demon Archive’s mechanical suit clad vigilante troop, or more accurately, citizen militia, is derived from Romulus’s knightly bodyguard troop of the Celeres (Keleres). I find this to be particularly tantalizing morsel of potential foreshadowing, given the role of Romulus in the mythological foundation of Rome. I don’t want to say too much, but that detail alone, paired with the opening quote by A.J.P. Taylor, raises the possibility that the role of these protectors of the oppressed may not exist solely for the purpose of well-intentioned militarized peacekeeping. I assume that protagonist’s name comes from Tibetan activist, Tenzin Tsundue, and the ceremonial dorje which represents the power of thunder and a diamond’s indestructibility provides his common Tibetan surname. The full name perhaps offers a glimpse into Tenzin’s future character development. At least, it seems that way, thus far.
The visual symbolism is just as compelling. Some of the motifs are easy to see and understand, like Indira’s flowers. Other symbols are far more subtle and completely unexpected. For example, I found it strange that the Keleres battle suits were all covered in orange camo, since it didn’t seem like a logical for desert warfare. However, later in the story I saw Tenzin and Indira living in a Buddhist monastery, where monks were forced to battle violent raiders. The ironic and dark comedy of battle machines dressed in metaphorical ceremonial robes belonging to members a peace-loving religion was not lost on me.
The actual narrative seems less impressive than its commentary or foundations. The character conversations can get verbose. Thankfully, I’ve noticed that as the webcomic progresses Dan has become more economical with text. More strikingly, Dan’s best pages seem to be the ones where there is no text at all. These pages tend to be steeped in powerful emotion, or sheer excitement.
The story itself is a classic blood-soaked pulp fiction with a surprising amount of depth. Without falling into the trap using excessive gore in lieu of telling a story, Dan tells a compelling story of war as hell. Unfortunately, he does fall into the trap of tired post-apocalyptic clichés like trapped-in-the-eighties Mad Max villains, the little girl in distress that reminds the protagonist of his own family member, and a band of vigilantes led by a cocky future Robocop. It’s a bit frustrating, since the narrative scaffolding begs to offer so much more.
I wanted to like Tenzin, the protagonist. Unfortunately, that gigantic ball of sexism and bravado-soaked hubris act grated on me, for most of the story. When Professor Bellami confronted Tenzin, I secretly hoped that she would kick him in the balls. This made him a frustrating for me as a reader, because I actually liked most of the cast. On the positive end, Tenzin’s dumb pissed-off jock antics subverts the stereotype of the peaceful and all-wise of a Tibetan man; even when he lived in Buddhist monastery as a boy. On the negative end, Tenzin’s leadership skills, emotional baggage and questionable strategic decisions eventually lead to the death of just about every character worth caring about in the first few chapters. Even worse, it wasn’t hard to see it coming most the time. I do hope that Tenzin will be further developed into someone worth caring about. As far as audiences go, he seems familiar and he blows up stuff. For some people, that’s all they really ask for.
Cast development for the most part, seemed far too rushed yet overly spread out. I almost wish that Dan would’ve picked one character to serve as Tenzin’s best buddy and really focus establishing that relationship (preferably with Jorge or Jane,) if speedy story progression was the primary goal. Thankfully, Dan finally seems to have learned this lesson on Chapter 4, when he explored Tenzin’s relationship with his sister Indira without becoming too bogged down in particulars. My one hope for the future of the story is that Professor Bellami does not follow her trope fate as the feisty woman who becomes a potential love interest, and that Dan untangles himself from the shackles of the genre.
The one character that stood out above the rest was Jane. Her wry humor and nuanced development captivated me, in spite of her being Tenzin’s virtual conscience and a visual avatar for a semi-autonomous weapon. Her interactions with Tenzin are fascinating and refreshingly free of romantic tension of any sort. Jorge was also likable. Yet some respects, I felt like his goody-too-shoes persona only served as a tool to extract sympathy and force character development out of Tenzin, post-mortem. This is unfortunate, because Jorge had so much potential.
This deficiency with character development in Mr. Sharp’s storytelling frustrates me, because I can see that he is capable of so much more. One of the most haunting yet effective examples of character development, take place in Chapter 4, when Tenzin’s father murders his wife, rather than risking her getting raped by marauders. In a single page, we learn more about Tenzin’s motivations behind his hubris, his moral code, appalling sexism and dangerously impulsive heroics, than we do in the first three chapters. Additionally, we get to the core of who his father is as a person without the need for a sprawling back story. While this is impressive, I shouldn’t care more about a morally problematic character with minimal dialogue that existed for a mere six pages, than I do for the protagonist of four chapters. If Dan Sharp can pull this kind of feat off more often, the Demon Archives will become something truly exceptional.
Final Thoughts
In all frankness, this review is actually more nitpicking than it needs to be. However, high-standards of production demand high-standards of observation. The art alone is worth the visit.
Overall, Demon Archives strikes me a solid graphic novel that speaks effectively to its target audience and has enough supplemental materials to keep die-hard fans and research freaks alike, very happy. However, in order for Demon Archives to reach its full potential, the narrative needs to pay much closer attention to its character interactions with their world and its inhabitants. Even if one does not like a character, one needs to care about a character, and that’s the carrot that author Dan Sharp needs to chase.