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Servant #1
by Scotty G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/07/2013 14:17:24

Servant Staff: Geoffrey Borgonia, Gilbert Monsanto

Overview: Inoffensive, but offensively inoffensive.

Review: The art is...well… more poser 3D art (I see a lot of this on DriveThruComics). However, I will give more credit to this team. They don’t make the same mistake that every other comic I’ve reviewed with poser art has made. The scenes are full of characters and “things” rather than taking place in ghost towns where only the characters exist. My fingers keep freezing up as I try to type these words, but… I’m actually ok with them using poser art. Like this is how it SHOULD be used. I’m not saying I love it or that it really brings anything other than having visuals to the comic, but I don’t spontaneously vomit when I see it. It could probably benefit from some actual artwork (something hand drawn or digitally made) but it’s passable. They use dynamic poses, have decent compositions, and I do like that there was a bit of post processing on the images and that all the models are not the same base male/female model with a few characteristics switched up. The massive chest of the protagonist is a bit much, but they play that for laughs a few times so it doesn’t really detract. There is this weird effect where you can always see the ripped abs of the protagonist through his shirt and it looks like they are vacuum formed to him chest.

Gerry Alanguilan did a pinup of the main character and it is at the end of the PDF and… wow. It is downright gorgeous! It just stands in stark contrast to the rest of the artwork in this book. With THAT sort of artwork this book would have knock it out of the park rather than just being average. It seems like this book being “average” is a recurring thing with Servant #1.

Lettering is nothing special, but it fits the vibe of the comic and I can read it without having to zoom in. It gets close to the edge every now and again, but it doesn’t ever tread close to being “bad”. A few times letters were oddly clipped (see page 12, last speech balloon) but it never made it unreadable.

The dialogue is a bit cheeky, which is a nice turn. It does this thing where the narration comments on what is happening (“Oh look, that comic store is having a sale! I’ll have to go check that out later.”) and it is a little out of place at times. A few times the author uses to describe what the acronyms being used mean and that would be fine but does three on the same page (so we have , **, and *** all in 2 speech bubbles). It kind of broke the flow a bit.

Once we hit about page 10 we get introduced to the villains and oh boy does their dialogue get bad. We had some decent lines before that felt like we had a human narrator, but now we get the most chalky, dry, genetic, villain dialogue I've had to swallow in a while.

Issue #1, like a lot of the series I read, is an origin story (for new readers: I only review the 1st issue of comics). A lot of times I feel like I’m a bit too hard on the amount of exposition crammed into 1st issues, but then I remember comics like “Slave” and I feel secure in my knowledge that people can inform the reader without cramming exposition down our throat. In this one, it almost lampshades other origin stories, but it feels a lot like a superman pastiche (last son of a dying world and all that) so it doesn’t gain any points for originality in that department. Then again, his name is even Gal Ang... which is totally not Kal El or anything close...

To be honest, it doesn’t jump out and grab me. The story is predictable and while sometimes that doesn’t detract from it (see Pacific Rim for example) this time it does. It’s a bland origin story about a guy who is a mash up of a few different origin stories that doesn’t really feel unique or interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, nothing really is wrong with it, but nothing really jumps out. As a medium, storytelling doesn’t need to be sensationalist but it does need to convey something that we haven’t seen before. The morals are drawn from things like the most recent Superman, Batman, and Spiderman movies (you can becomes a symbol, serving a greater good, etc), the origin is all but borrowed, the main character is pretty genetic (geek, family values), and even the powers lack a creative “umph”.

A cool little thing this comic did that I would like to see more do is offer multiple forms for download. They had the standard .PDF (which I normally read), but they also had a Comic Book Reader and E-book format that people could take advantage of. That’s how you do it!

There is a lot to like here but most of that is just because it does the bare minimum to get by. It feels like this is the kind of comic that, if it were an employee, would be the sort of employee that goes to a 9-5 job and just clocks in and clocks out. There is nothing really special or unique about this comic other than not really being “bad”.

Hey, it's free. Give it a read.

Metrics Art: 5/10 (Decent. Bonus for Gerry Alanguilan's pin up) Lettering: 4/10 (Few errors. Good overall.) Plot: 4/10 (Predictable but fine) Novelty: 3/10 (Been done but not in this particular way. Bonus for extra file types) Overall: 4/10

Review From: http://indycomicreview.wordpress.com/



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Servant #1
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for the honest and in-depth review, Scotty! I apologize if it took so long to respond as I've been caught up with other matters (which is also why the third issue is massively delayed). Just to respond to clarify a few things: yes, the story and overall plot is relatively cliche, but that is intentional. Embracing the tropes rather than "reinventing the wheel", so to speak, is a key element in this romp. That includes the cheesy dialogue when it comes to the villains (note how the scenes with the "Mighty Ruler" and his cronies in silhouette is rather cartoonish compared to the proportions of the rest of the book). While there will be some seriousness, this book will never take itself too seriously but nor will it be too comedic (though truthfully, that's difficult to pull off in any stretch). Regardless, we really appreciate the feedback, and thank you for pointing out the strengths and weaknesses. Hopefully, we can improve on them as time goes by! ^_^ ~ Borgy
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