Let's Talk Business

Edmond Sigmond is just an adverage guy with dubious morals trying to run an advertising company with Satan for a best friend and a mad scientist in his basement.

Artwork:

MSPaint quality copy/paste in all it's glory. The only major improvement visible from day 1 is the removal of those annoying white outlines you get when you use the paintbucket tool. Other than that, it's the same throughout. Characters rarely change expression in a single strip, let alone the comic itself. The style fits the boring setting.

If you want to improve your art skills (and I'm assuming you do), I would suggest at least attempting to redraw the characters once in a while. Even if you're just using line/shape/paintbucket tools and a mouse. You'll get better practice that way, and may find yourself settling on better looking character models later on.

Now the artwork could be excused, if it wasn't for the

Story/Characters:

Normally, comics like these compliment their copy/paste art quality with witty one-liner dialogue and engaging irreverent story. Given the setting, a typical business man who made a deal with Satan, has a mad scientist in his basement, and loses his memory for 6 months, you would think this is the case. However, most of the strips are hard pressed to find anything really witty that hasn't already been seen outside of a sunday strip.

The characters drive the story forward by stating the obvious and inserting crude humor where necessary. They have about as much depth as a canceled Adult Swim cartoon. In fact, much of the setting, character personalities, and design reminds me of the animated show, "Lucy: Daughter of the Devil," which also suffered from blasée hit-or-miss writing.

Maybe I'm just yearning for more religious and political commentary. Like when Edmond loses his memory to months of alcoholism, instead of depicting an in depth comical critique of what it's like to live with a recovering alcoholic, we get a few strips that simply restate the same thing to different characters, "Hey (insert relation here), I just lost my memory. Isn't that hilarious?" Take each strip by itself, and you'll find that it stands out well enough. But strung together, it's fairly tedious to read through.

Layout:

At the start, it was slightly difficult to tell what was going on, whether someone was moving, who was talking, and what order they were talking in. But those issues have been since dealt with and improved upon.

I'd say something about the plain font and claustrophobic use of speech bubbles, but it fits the style of what's been given. Were the author to increase the page size and resort to something other than copy/paste as the main means of illustration, I would suggest upgrading the font and speech bubbles to something more enjoyable. But for now, it's fine.

Humor:

When it comes to humor, I'm a tough critic, and I have my own preferences, so don't take it to heart. Like I said before, if you were to take certain comics by themselves and show them to someone, you would probably generate a chuckle out of the bizarreness of the situations being portrayed. But it's when you continuously try to generate humor from those same situations over a story arc that you lose your audience. Overall I could see this comic ending up in the Sunday paper if the author keeps at it. But who knows, maybe he'll surprise us ;)

Not being an office cubical dweller like Edward Sigmund of "Let's Talk Businness" I've never been much interesting in comic strips like Dilbert. And as no wife and daughter either I wouldn't expect "Let's Talk Businness" to provide the gut-wrenching jolt of recognition that Sag's first couple comic strip arcs deliver.

Of course this may be partly because I'm a fan of Satan. My current favorite show on DVD is "God, the Devil and Bob." Always uplifting viewing at the end of the day. And Bob's Devil has issues just like you and me and Sah's Satan http://www.drunkduck.com/Lets_Talk_Business/index.php?p=283928

Plus it's nice to see current issues like immigration and/or war being deal with in the usual real world fashion: http://www.drunkduck.com/Lets_Talk_Business/index.php?p=289817

As for the art
I must admit initially I thought, "Geez, another smiley face artist." But as the strip progressed I began to appreciate how well designed the characters are and how fast the read is. Teenager all in black, a redfaced Satan give the reader instantly recognizable icons and save us having to work figuring out who is who. Still it is likely that readers who recognize how difficult it is to design a strong logo or icon have a better shot at "getting" Sah's style.

As for the dialog
Some of lines/jokes whizzed past me, e.g., no idea who/what Danny Phantom is: http://www.drunkduck.com/Lets_Talk_Business/index.php?p=294343

Dad dying arc didn't work for me until I reached to the murder attempt to inherit money.

How to make it better
I'd lose the swearing. It is difficult to do well unless you have an incredible ear for dialog. Though writers often think that swearing ads the cool factor, it doesn't. http://www.drunkduck.com/Lets_Talk_Business/index.php?p=296176

Shorten long, wordy dialog. It is hard to read and keeps folks from paying attention—you have a mustache? http://www.drunkduck.com/Lets_Talk_Business/index.php?p=299964

And for those of us on macs, Safari 4 comments end up in the strip area on most pages. If you writing your own code take a look at how Safari reads your pages.

I'm not a fan of MS Paint comics, but Let's Talk Business is at least a decent attempt at a good one.

The artwork is mostly copy and paste images, but at least they're designed well, and not just thrown together. I particularly like the design for the Grandfather character, especially with the guitar.

Unfortuantly, that's all this comic has going for it. The setting in mundane meets hell. None of the storylines really interested me as a reader, and the characters didn't seem interesting to me at all.

I would rate this comic as a 5/10.