A Loonatics Tale

This is a story of the ramblings of a madman. Despite the insanity of these tales, a comic that's basically about a crazy guy and the odd things he claims to do, everything he does is actually true, no matter how insane it sounds.

Well first things first. This was a enjoyable comic. Although it does have its stuttering moments and lack of deffinition that plagues me as well. The concept is as follows. Take a guy who is not insane and make him live through a seemingly endless amounts of insanity and impossible circumstances. The world seems to not be used to the insanity that fallows Zinc, Although they seem to perpetrate this cycle.

Characters:
The characters in this story are the main drives, The world seems to lack deffinition and we do not know any back story on any characters except for Flint and that was a one panel explenation. Reading this comic is actually some what akin to watching a episode of the original pokemon, the setups and events are similar. Adding on of characters is like Ash aquiring a new "Friend".
We never really know whether Twitchy, (Zinc's nickname) has a genetic disposition for his appearance and manner or wether that was based on the insanity around him. Original characters abound in this art. We have vampires with random weaknesses and strengths. Kings of cities. Evil children. and Short assassins. Most characters are well developed and the comic just hit its 100th page. Some of the characters even break the 4th wall on many occasions, but mostly zinc and Flint(the vampire with metal wings) are able to break this wall.

Age rating:
The Mature Rateing is not really needed here. I have yet to see anything except a sillohuette of a lung that wouldn't even cause this to be a teenager only comic. I am not even sure this comic would be as wonderful if it tried to amp up the gore and apply sex to this to earn the mature rating, the art style seems to forbid these two things. In my oppinion the rating needs to go down a notch, you are losing valuable readership from those younger and who would enjoy your comic. Well the honest kids, not the teens who fake ages on this site.

Art Style:
At first, I really hated the art style. It did not seem well done or even well implemented. But then It grew on me. And I could see how much effort went into it. I could see how the style was conducive to the story. How it complemented the characters. The comic has two major styles it switches between. Stylized black and white, and steady coloured. Personally I like both equally, not a huge fan of dots in comics but I can see how they are implemented in the comic. The colouring is way better than it started off as and is now really well done. The comic is a turning point in art style and art work for the creators. Which is amazing and precisely what I am doing with my comic. Although their storyline is more defined.


Story:
The story can be hit and miss at times. Some stuff seems shoved in there and some of the jokes just dont hit the mark. I wouldn't call it a comedy, but more of a adventure comic. I kept reading to see the adventure unfold. The story line has a deffinite directing, plot, and over all setting. The insanity in the plot is not really predictable most of the time, other times its a face slap moment where you saw the outcome 3 pages back. The Main characters are not truly tethered to the plot, most happenstances are random and inconclusive. Things happen for no reason and thats just part of the gold in this story. At times you may think you missed something, to find that you didn't because it just was there randomly. The art style does exceed the story though. At times it feels like a art study where there are trully amazing comic pages. http://www.drunkduck.com/A_Loonatics_Tale/index.php?p=509412 is a excellent example of breaking the forth wall and one of my fave pages. The lay out is amazing and the positive space and negative space perfectly describe the scene.


Overall:
Characters: Great! Enjoyable and well made with obvious characteristics.
Story: Well laid out but at times confusing, and not because of the insanity.
Art: REALLY REALLY well done art, keep on going and improving!
Effort: I can see alot of effort in this comic and that makes it very enjoyable!
Lettering: Well done and never confusing, I am envious.
Gimick: Fairly gimicky, which is not bad but it may play up the random and make certain events illegible.


Pro:
*Well thought out and well made comic with a high readabillity
*Amazing Art style that is improving with each page
*Interesting Characters
*Alot of effort put in

Con:
* The insanity doesn't really seem insane, more like bad luck on a epic scale.
* The story can be very confusing at times, (for example, Why did the Short guy give Zinc the staff?)
* Characters pop in to suddenly without any explenation nor knowledge of who or what they are and may never be explained for all we know.

Verdict:
A must read for those who enjoy some good artwork with their random story. It achieves what it set out to do and does it well.

Happy 100 pages Loonatics Tale!

Thanks for your review!

I changed the rating of it. I was really unsure about it because the scale says "cursing" is for M comics. Nevertheless, I've had a couple comments on that.

Also, staff will be explained by the end of Stone Cold Crazy. We're mostly showing what it does first.

The next comic is dedicated to character backstory, where they all talk to a shrink. Personally I wanna storm through Stone Cold Crazy (since it's two years old at this point) so I can get to the next one (hence the tons of updates it's getting).

Again, thank you very much for your review! It tells us exactly what's working and what we're missing.

A Loonatics Tale covers a two and a half year period of work. The comic written by Rebecca Burg and with art by Rebecca Burg. Their first two years are bright colorful, scanned marker comps or black and white pages. The story has a fun plot and likable characters like Dr. Riley Zinc who is accused of murdering a sleazy TV salesman and ends up in a Loony Bin. The sanitarium doctor thinks Riley is nuts after hearing about about Riley's cohort, metal winged vampire Flint.

The next two chapters continue to be bright, upbeat and funny though gradually the tone shifts into something darker. In chapter two and three new characters are introduced. The story is primarily character images with designy backgrounds.

The last section starting this year shifts into a full gear horror tale with eerie Alfred Hitchcock black and white visual. No more funny Riley and Flint buddy story, the characters are now leaner and more feral looking. The artist is to be commended for experimenting with the new dramatic style though the story shift is jarring after the lighter Riley and Flint buddy story.

The good stuff:
• The early colorful marker comps and black and white pages are well designed and have terrific cross hatching.
• Nice job on page four developing stap stick action.
• Page five introduces new characters using three long panels: one for the spy Polly, one for the dingbat Miya, one for the demolitions expert Laguna. The long panels provide a strong read on who is who.

A little confusing:
• Occasionally a Loonatics Tale is a difficult to follow and figure out who was who. For instance on page 10 when more characters were added there was a lot of information to assimilate with names and who is a vampire and who isn't.

Want more:
• Page 21 has a great bar scene. The cigarette smoking waitress and the drunk passed out on bar are gems.
• On page 25 the panorama gives a great sense of place.

An easy read, A Loonatics Tale is a good comic getting better.

As I review this, A Loonatic's Tale has reached 100 pages, so a big congratulations to the creators!

Art:
Over the course of the comic, the artist switches between vivid marker colors and black and white toning. From my understanding, the colored pages are older (from 2007), and the toned pages have more recent artwork. While I can definitely see the improvement in the artwork as far as character design, consistancy, and dynamic camera angles, I feel that something is lost without the color. Many of the characters are very black and white even in color, so they don't pop out as much in the new toned style. That being said, the last handful of pages took a less toned and more shaded approach to art that I do like quite a bit. If the artist chooses to stick with black and white, I highly recommend using this new style as it is clean, sharp, and still vivid without the color. With the colored pages, I really appreciate the different textures and patterns (King Malcolm's Hawaiian shirt is a winner).

Lettering:
I love the handwritten onomatopoeia! If this is a font, I've been fooled ^.^ Ultimately, the lettering is clean and pretty and matches perfectly with the characters and tone of the overall story.

Story:
The storywriting is witty and interesting, and each character has a solid personality that comes through in both mannerisms and dialogue. The concepts and plot are intriguing and silly. I'm happy to say that I was hooked by the end of the first chapter (though a little jarred by the redux of the same chapter). Laguna is my favorite character, I think. Ranidaphobic, kinda rugged and rough around the edges... but he has the happiest lab security ever!

Final Notes:
**Out of all of them, this page made me laugh the hardest:
http://www.drunkduck.com/A_Loonatics_Tale/index.php?p=505199
**I am very entertained by the most recent page. Miya's so cute!
**Nice work, overall!

Actually, yes, that is a font. It's a custom font of my own handwriting. Got it through fontifier. Looks terrible if blown up too big but looks great for the size I use it at.

Hmm... I'm not 100% on this comic. The storyline's a mixture of silly insane rambling mixed in with a (still developing) plotline that's interesting enough to keep my attention... but I'm not sure I'm sold on the artwork styling.

Artwork

The artwork for A Loonatics Tale is quite, quite dark, at least for the current pages. The earlier artwork tended to be quite crowded in each panel, something that was even mentioned *IN* the comic (though I don't remember which page). However, toward the later pages, this issue was resolved fairly well, and now there's usually more going on in a panel beyond as many people shoved into the scene as possible.

I honestly prefer the older styling over the current black on black styling, BUT.

When you mix the two styles, like on http://www.drunkduck.com/A_Loonatics_Tale/index.php?p=571364 it's VERY likable indeed. If you want my suggestion, I'd try to aim for work more like this current page from here on out. That page is the sharpest one in the lot. :)

I'm NOT a fan of the dot-fill you've used often. To be honest, most of the pages were so dark, I had to look at each panel carefully just to figure out what the hell was going on, which distracts from the story. It was easier to read when it was in color... but as above, mix the two and you're golden.

Writing

I like the writing in this so far. As someone mentioned earlier, it's a mix between a serial on-going story comic and a humorous comic, with insanity sprinkled liberally in between. I really enjoyed the fact that, after the body fell out of the ceiling... he stayed underneath the chair for at LEAST 2 or 3 pages.

That's honest emotion right there. :) On the same train of thought... http://www.drunkduck.com/A_Loonatics_Tale/index.php?p=563947 is perhaps the most disturbing image we've seen of the main character to date. The sheer murderous glee in his face in the middle panel... perfect. :D That's a guy about to not only step over the edge... he's about to jump as far off of it as he can, screaming "CANNONBALL!!!" as he goes.

Overall

I like the comic. I like the artwork more toward the front of the comic (though posting the first chapter twice was rather annoying, I'd remove one of em if I were you) and the storyline and plot more toward the current pages. Keep the artwork to this degree http://www.drunkduck.com/A_Loonatics_Tale/index.php?p=571364 and it'll mesh quite nicely with the plot you've got going.

>Net

Thanks for the reviews! Definitely made me consider some stuff, like using color in the future (probably after Stone Cold Crazy since it's kinda weird go to from color to no color to color again).

Again, very helpful. Thanks!

A Loonatic’s Tale Review

Writing: Your comic is funny—not laugh-out-loud funny, but sometimes it got a smile out of me (when the bird flew into the bug-zapper, for instance) and was interesting enough to keep me reading. This is meant to be a zany, silly comic, but even those kinds deserve character development and coherence. You threw us into a situation and never explained it: Zinc and Flint were hired by a king (?! And why was he in that scene in the first place?!) to be ‘valets’ but then they end up randomly investigating a house blowing up? I just don’t understand why any of this stuff happened. Also, with the newly-introduced characters, the girl and the boy look very similar. Both have long hair. Who are they, anyway?
I see that you’re planning on adding a backstory, which is good, but even coming up with really distinct personalities for your characters would be a good start. Right now, they all have very snappy, jokey, blown-up sort of personalities—which makes sense, since it’s a humor comic, but if you look at the best kinds of humor set-ups, there are different types of humorous personalities. Anyway, I think you may be focusing too much on getting a laugh. It’s a noble pursuit, but leave some room for your characters to flourish. Plus, the “Zinc’s insane” jokes got old after a while.
Who are Lynch and his sidekick anyway, other than the vampire who bit Flint? I like their character designs a lot, but their presence leaves me at a loss.
Oh btw I loved the breaking-the-fourth-wall jokes. When they were all squeezed into one panel, and were like, ‘gee this is uncomfortable’—lol! And when Flint escaped by jumping out of the panel he was in… very creative.

Art:
I liked the marker-colored comics in the first few stories quite a bit. Sometimes they looked a little sloppy, and sometimes the colors seemed chosen at random, but generally I loved your little swirlies and strange patterns. It helped me make sense of sometimes-confusing pages. You have a habit of overcrowding your panels (which you pointed out yourself to great comedic effect, as aforementioned) and sometimes it can make understanding what’s happening confusing. You seem to be getting better at this, but panel 1 on this page is one of the worst offenders of this, just so you can be wary in the future. When the comic transitioned from color to black and white, I was sad, but once you started using different shades of grey (I wasn’t a fan of the toning phase…) I got over it—it’s looking pretty good now, and your most recent page, 58, looks great.

*EDIT*
Character designs:
I love the design for Lynch; he looks very classy and cool, and I'd like to see more of him.
Flint's wings are awesome, and I have no problems with his design.
But there's something 'off' about Zinc's look- I don't like the jagged shoulders, and his hair just doesn't look right.

Overall:
I might check back from time to time, and if you really work at fixing up the holes in your plot and how the characters are related, I might stick around for a long time. It just depends on the trajectory of this comic’s improvement in the future.