URL: http://www.kahmith.com
Author: Christine Dufour
Genre: Sci-fi, Romance, Slice of Life
Updates: Sporadic
Section: 1-294
Writing negative reviews is fun. We as humans are naturally geared to focusing on the negative and taking the positive for granted. But like Narwhal Knight, there's content in here that I like, but I just can't bring myself to. Viewing the site, you can tell that there's a lot of world building and planning that has gone into this comic as well as vastly improving art over it's eight year run, but the slow pacing and missteps in the writing make it hard to recommend.
Writing
The story is about a race of aliens
called kilm training their soldiers for war. The main focus of the
story is Ten, a recent enlistee at Altair academy who wants to become
a pilot. He has a condition called Stritor's Syndrome, which boosts
his intelligence but makes him pale, less fit, bruise easily, and
gives him a weak heart, though long term leads to a rapid degradation
of his memory. His friends include the violent Jael and the
flamboyant Jovi, who has a crush on Ten. Jael helps Ten get into the
exclusive pilot program, but gets saddled with Kiva, who openly hates
Ten. Besides studying for the pilot program, Ten smuggles goods into
base to give as gifts, acts as an informant for the faculty, gets
involved in a love triangle between Jovi and Jana, and throws a party
for the whole school by raiding the contraband room.
Based on the About/FAQ
page, it's obvious that this project wasn't just something slapped
together at random. There are pages of content devoted to the
aliens, the training facility, the language and number system, and
aspects of the culture through the use of ear modification. Some of
it is conveyed in the comic itself and the rest is more of an Easter
egg for readers who feel like decrypting some of the writing featured
in the comic. Like I said in my article on cast
pages last week, this can be troublesome as it can result in
covering up for forgetting to mention important details. At least
for me, the difference between female and male kilm should have been
somehow made clear in the story since it is difficult to tell unless
you read the FAQ page first (females have less dots over their eyes
and are taller. Males have elbow spurs).
What kills this comic for me though is
the pace. According to the FAQ page, cadets undergo five years of
training. It takes the comic fifty
pages just to get to the first official day of school and we
haven't even gotten through the first year yet. At this rate, the
comic will be at least 1000 pages before we actually get out of
training. And within the current 300 pages, the subplots either drag
on for a long time with no build or sense of payoff. For example,
there's
some
mysterious
silhouettes
and
black
fog
that
show
up
in the
background
that
never get
properly
explained
in the comic and just keep showing up without any sense of going
anywhere. Or Jovi's
crush on Ten that goes on for 200 pages and then when Jovi
finally
acts on it, Ten announces that he's
asexual with little in the story to hint at it (unless being
completely
oblivious
counts
as a sign).
Speaking of Ten, as friendly as a
character as he is, it's hard to root for him when everything seems
to fall in his lap and never face any sense of struggle or
consequence. He breezes
the
entry
exam
with
ease and while the Stritor's Syndrome puts him at a disadvantage
physically, the coordinator just makes him run laps and his fitness
isn't that
important. Also, while the comic does make a point of saying
that Stritor's isn't
a medical disqualifier, I have a hard time believing that a
future military wouldn't disqualify a student who has to undergo a
required five years training when they only have ten
good years before rapidly degrading (especially considering most
modern
miltaries
will disqualify people for far less). There are few people in the
school who dislike him, and Kiva, the only one who openly hates him
is hated
by
everyone
else because she doesn't like him. And despite his smuggling,
medical condition, and other
infractions, the faculty have made it so it's next
near impossible to kick him out. The only personality flaw he
has is that he wants to be everything
to everyone. It could be an interesting flaw, showing Ten trying
to push himself too hard doing well in school, getting in the favor
of his classmates, teachers, and more until it all falls apart around
him and he has to grow from the experience. Though that has yet to
happen.
At appears to be mostly digital. And
reading through the archives proves that if you work at drawing long
enough, you're bound to get better. The first
page features shaky, thin lineart, unshaded and simplistic
characters, and the background is just a bunch of black smudges. Not
to mention the Times New Roman font for dialogue, which looks awful
for a comic. At page
19, when we finally see the base, the author starts to step it up
and make halfway decent backgrounds. At this point, the lines are
still shaky and the line weight doesn't do much to imply distance or
lighting, but it's a start. In terms of font choice, the author
eventually shifts to Ariel, which still isn't a good comic font but
san serif font reads better on digital displays than a serifed font
like Times, so it's an improvement. At page
45, we start seeing the sex markers that are mentioned in the FAQ
besides height (which considering how short Ten is even for his sex,
makes it hard to gauge) and later get more
defined forms to their face besides pointy blobs. When we
finally get to the final pages, you can see how far the author has
come. The characters are inked with confident, tapered lines.
There's shading and backgrounds that look good.
That said, there could still be some
improvements. The interior scenes lack
contrast in the shading and the lineart could still use some
variance in weight to suggest the effect of lighting and proximity.
And like I said, Ariel is still not an optimal font for a comic. I'd
recommend either finding a free font that looks handwritten, making a
custom handwriting font,
or just lettering by hand.
Shades of Gray is
an ambitious comic with a lot of work put into the world building and
continually improving art. However, the writing needs work as the
main character is practically untouchable and the plot moves far too
slow. Maybe in the next four years of Ten's training at Altair
academy there will be a greater sense of conflict, but the first
chapter doesn't get a passing grade from me.
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