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Broken Things

Broken Things would be well suited to life as a daily serial, at least in its current form.

The plot is still in its infancy, following the life of a teenager named (or at least nick-named) Steely Dan. Steely Dan has problems, but who doesn't, right? Well in this case his father might have murdered his wife and Steely fears for his and his sister's safety. Though as of yet little has been said about the circumstances of his mother's demise, the drama is already in full swing.

The artwork in Broken Things is excellent, giving it the feel of a proper graphic novel (a descriptor I use sparingly as it conveys too much snobbery to me). The detail is great, showcasing little touches that make the whole scene stand-out. The black and white also adds to the atmosphere of a Southern Gothic (or so I feel). The characters look real, and not just someone's idea of reality. There is no perfection in them, and that fits beautifully with the story.

My biggest complaints so far are with the slow pace, which admittedly shouldn't turn anyone off if they're really interested, and with the absurd placement of speech bubbles. I read manga, and even their untethered speech bubbles are easier to follow. Sometimes, when multiple characters are off frame, it's extremely hard to tell which one said what. This makes following the realistic dialog challenging.

The plot, as I noted before, is moving very slow, but this shouldn't be a problem for anyone really interested in the story. I would always prefer a slow-moving, well-thought out story to a story with a break-neck pace and plenty of plot holes. That said, I can't say Broken Things has really hooked me. My problem is I can't really put my finger on why I don't love it.

I like drama, I like deep characters, and I love mystery. What is it with this story that seems to push me off?

But you may have different tastes and I heartily recommend checking it out if you're interested in a moody drama with the depth of a novel. Just be prepared for a long wait for answers.

(first review, many apologies if I did it wrong.)

Done in three shades of grey and the occasional red- Broken Things' art style is very unique. When you examine the shading, some of it seems like it could be considered very simple, it's realism and ability to show the emotion of the situation and characters are anything but. It makes good use of accent in the dialogue, so that it helps the comic rather than trying to use it as a crutch to make up for failing dialogue as I've seen some do.
It's layout is somewhat similar to that of newspaper comics, though it has anywhere from one to four panels a strip, and often it's the strips with fewer panels that have more dialogue and push the story a bit faster, despite the usual assumption that one panel pages/strips barely help the plot so much as show setting.

The location and story of the comic give it an odd feel where you aren't entirely sure what to expect from the plot. It starts in a graveyard, and ends up in a very realistic portrayal of the joys of highschool. The plot has yet to start really moving, though it's already gotten intriguing. In some of the later pages, there's been a bit of humor and every-day banter wrapped around more serious bits that give a glimpse of what may come.

I have to say that this is a very well if unorthadox story.

With pages consisting of 2 to 3 panels moving horizontally instead of quasivertically. It's a bit more like reading your favorite serious comic in the Sunday cartoon section of the paper more than really having bought a comic. From the layout, to the artwork this quickly sets itself apart from most other works.

There's a distinct lack of colors sticking primarily to monochromatic shading more than anything. It reminds me of reading the Zombie comic that Image did a bit back. A semi cartoony/realistic looking book with an excellent application of grey cell shading. There's an occasional usage of red which makes me wonder if it's symbolic to something else to come later into the story since there's heavy mention of murder and death in the book.

The narrative that you assemble based on the charecters conversations with his mothers gravesite in the begining is also quite well contructed. You quickly begin to feel that this charecter feels as though his back is to the wall and there's little for hope him. It urges you to read on just to put more pieces of the puzzle into place. A very noteworthy skill. This isn't a typical bashem' up super hero book, but more of a serious story.

While it's not quite the kind of story I like to follow it was a great read and very well crafted. Nothing but best wishes for this story and it's creator.

I am having a love affair with Broken Things. Why don't I marry Broken Things? Because it's impossible. It's a webcomic and not a physical person. I'm sure any state would look down upon our marriage. But I would check it's updates every day! Comment every day that I love it, and give it all the 5's it deserves.

The artwork is superb. Consistent and distinct characters. Nice digital greyscaling. Great use of blacks.

The writing is well done.. each character again is consistent and distinct... "Character X" says and does things that you think "Character X" would do or say.

As for the cons.. Unfortunately... I think it's more of the format of how you present your comic. I think it's great.. I know you have it all paneled out at home and we just get 1 to 3 panels at a time. I just want more! All the time! DAMMIT!

I think since that's how you chose to do it... your scenes tend to seem like they drag on forever... (seems like we've been under the tree for a while). But, I think in context, laid out in a full page.. we could see the flow of this comic.

This is consistantly one of my favorite comics on Drunk Duck, and I highly recommend it to anyone out there.

firstly, i have to agree that the artwork is top-notch. the artist makes great use of the meager color palatte, but then again i imagine that's the point. you can see emotion dripping from the protagonist's face, and the background never ceases to impress either. for example, the morning depiction in the twenty fifth tier and the tree in the forty ninth are downright beautiful. i really can't praise the illustration enough.

the story was sucking me in until about the twentieth tier, when the slow pace became more evident. still, the art is enough to lull the reader on so this isn't really much of a criticism; especially since the artist uses the strip format. i would rather a story be drawn out than be rushed.

having said that, that the story itself lost me by the time he got to school. this is not to say that it's lackluster by any means, it's just not my type of story.... it's far too (and sometimes needlessly) gloomy for me. but for those who enjoy this genre, this should be a gem. the dialogue is free of forced lines and cheesiness from what i read, save artist's comments like "I wonder where he's headed.."

in all, broken things is a solid comic by a very talented artist, and it deserves every accolade it recieves. 3.5/5

Ah, this comic looked very interesting. Objectively, it's an interesting storyline. Not my tastes, however, but I like my comics to have more cartoon violence and fart jokes. Now for the meat of this review.

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Broken things is a beutiful comic. Right out a noir flick, the shades of grey, the artsy shots, everything was well done. It sucks you into the world and makes you feel as if you're really there. And of course, the occassional splash of red color helps to give the world even more of a lively appearance. All in all, the art is simply awesome.

The storyling is interesting too. Right from the start you can tell that not all is well in this seemingly peaceful town. The protagonist has very real concerns, and not just the obvious one. But dealing with death and the more mundane issues of bullies, crushes and oddball friends are issues that many of us have had to deal with so it's easy to relate to the character. I felt genuine concern when I thought the father was comic home early in this serial.

Now for some criticism. The pacing is too slow for me. There were a lot of transition shots, which looked great but moved a bit slowly. I found it hard to follow some of the conversations later on, and for the life of me I still have no idea what the main protagonist's name is. I'm sure further character development will happen down the road, but I felt a bit as if they tossed me into the middle of a story without giving me necessary set-up.

Even still, the comic was very well done all around, and while it doesn't target me specifically I would recommend this to people who enjoy a good, egaging story.

Thanks, all of you, for taking the time, energy, & thought to review Broken Things. You all had wonderful comments & observations. I promise I'm not being condescending when I say that yout insights have both encouraged me & given me food for thought.

Thank you,
Chip

For many who have never read Broken, as this is its intended title, one initially sees just 2-3 panel tiers and assumes that the comic runs at a slow pace. But what the new reader is not aware of is that these tiers are part of three tiers in a single page, broken up with each update. The end product Chip is making is not necessarily aimed for the web-comic community but for the printed form. If one could take each set of three tiers and place them on a page then they would see vastly different paced story.

From the opening scenes in the cemetery one is pulled into the sorrowful mood of the story. The mood is its own character which plays heavily throughout the story. Chips use of gray tones captivates the reader with sparse inclusion of red for striking results. Chip captures the mood perfectly. And for me is the major draw of the story. And Chip consistently delivers. His artwork and direction are well done and always dead on leading the reader through this somber tale.

The story follows a lone boy called Steely Dan, whom we don’t find out his name until later in the story. This lone boy has seemed to have lost his mother in some death, which has not been revealed but alluded to. He has a sister who may be in danger by SD’s father. There is a local sheriff who appears to be trailing the boy looking for answers which SD refuses to provide. Along with all these troubles there are the terrors of school and the bullies which reside there in SD’s waking nightmare. SD’s story thus far should strike a cord to many dealing with the trials of growing up. No gags here. This is a straight story. One filled with heart and soul. And Chip is a first class storyteller.

When I first came to Drunk Duck this comic was one of the first which got me excited about creating and posting here. Chip is a master of his craft and his highly critical eye can be seen with each masterfully created tier. Although the story may not be for everyone due to its depressing nature and lack of action, if one wants to learn how to tell a story I would point them to Broken. I for one look forward to the developing story.
My gratitude is extended to Chip for sharing this wonderful work with me and others. It truly is inspiring.

Broken Things

I'd like to say that the white/gray tone of the comic book and the website does a great job of creating the noir type mood.

Even though I'm often repelled from this type of drawing, the way you distinctly showed your light/shadow suprizingly showed a great deal of sophistication in the contrast, and presented the more favorable part of the style.

Your use of a sudden different color scheme adds intensely more meaningful symbolism, and allows a deeper focus from the reader.

Story wise, it's very layered and complexes over many strings of emotion, but many may skim past it due to it's already presentation.

The website layout is a perfect choice of color scheme, but the logo and the arrows seem a bit unsettling.

Overall, it's a fine series, but it's a series that I will never be able to read on the web, as it is a book material.

I'm pretty sure I've come across Broken Things (or Broken, as it really should be called) before and somehow managed not to get sucked in. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's a comic about a highschool kid with a kind of angsty sounding title, which in the world of webcomics translates as 'to be avoided like the plague', at least for me. And maybe that's why you're not reading it. And you're wrong, and so was I. Broken is among the best stuff I've read on DD, easily.

The comic follows teenage kid Steely Dan, whose mother was murdered by his father, and who's constantly pushed around by most everyone else in his life except for his two best friends and, apparently, his sister, whom he feels very protective of. That's really all that's been revealed so far as Chip's taking his time developing his story. Broken is full of silent panels and revels in its quiet, somber mood, opting to examine its characters slowly rather than move the plot along. This isn't an easy thing to pull off, but Chip nails it every time and makes it look easy. The story flows perfectly, the dialogue is always spot-on and the quiet moments carefully placed so as to maintain Broken's slow, but steady groove.

What first attracted me to it this time, though, was the art. Broken often reminds me of Eduardo Risso's work in 100 Bullets with its slick, but purposeful characterization and skillful use of black and grey values to establish mood, structure panels and create depth. The backgrounds are detailed where they need to be and simple when they would only clutter things up. The aforementioned silent panels often only show background items and no characters, and Chip pulls off all kinds of textures and lighting conditions masterfully with the very limited array of tools he has chosen to employ in Broken (his other comics look totally different, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that this was a very conscious style decision.)

On the downside, the art sometimes fluctuates a bit. Chip clearly knows what he wants in terms of style, but he doesn't always get the desired result. The school sequence around tier 31 looks pretty out of character. It's not bad, it's just almost in a different style. I'm also not sure how the pacing of the story works if you're reading it one update at a time. I just plowed through the whole archive more or less in one sitting, and it reads very well this way. But if all you're getting on a given week is a panel of a rickety wooden fence and a banged-up mailbox... I realize this is intentional and Broken isn't really meant to be read webcomic-style, one or two updates per week, but that's how it's published. I'm dealing with the same problem myself, so I'm sympathetic to this problem.

The art style's back on track in the last few updates, and Chip seems to be getting better at nailing what I assume he's going for, and he's clearly very dedicated to this comic, so I'm seeing a bright future for this one. I, for one, am hooked.

4/5

I really like the drawing style on Broken Things. It's very well done. So the look isn't the problem. The writing is not bad either although I will say this (constructive crit...take it or leave it): Maybe you should consolidate the pages a little more. Maybe turn three pages into one big one. When reading one page at a time it feels disjointed and a difficult to hold my interest. It's a shame too, cause the artwork is so nice.

I actually found Broken things late last night, and read It through today. So writing a review on it right away is pretty neat:

Broken things is a comic about a boy who's trying to protect his sister from his murdering father. His father apparently killed his mother

Art:
The art is well executed, but the dull colors leave a lot to be desired. You could say it adds to the mood, but strenth could come from adding a bit more contrast and shades. Repetition throughout the comic is common, yet no use of the copy paste trick, each panel is redrawn and not always from a new perspective. It's repeated for a reason though, so a dramatic change in camera angle might draw the readers attention away from key elements.

Story:
The mood is one of the strongest pieces in the entire comic. It's both set and broken by the repeated strips. A good example of this is in the beginning with the gravestones, the regret and sorrow Steely Dan feels for his mothers death is there and real. A bad example is when the school scene starts and too many useless strips bog the story down and make some readers think 'get on with it!'.

Dialog:
The dialog in the beginning was crisp and clear. It was suspensful even, made you want to click that next button right away. Later it becomes confusing and even dull, I found myself completely skipping dialog on the school pages, besides to establish that the main character is 'human' it just didn't seem important. The accent is nice, forced at times, but nice.Not too many comics have characters with full-on accents.

Overall:
It's solid read that simply needs to get back on track and stop straying, learn where the repetition is a strength, and when it ruins the comic. I was glad to see you compiled 3-4 into one page on pg.19, I wouldn't be surprised if this was published should you compress a few more of your older pages like that.

Thank you again for such wonderful reviews. I really appreciate each of you taking the time to read, much less type your reactions to, my work.

Later,
Chip

If I may comment about the art style in comparison to cs3ink's other two comics, it is very stylized and unique in its own right. Each of the comics cs3ink works on have a very unique look and feel, and Broken Things is no exception to that.

Art: The gray scale is great, very dramatic, and very moving. You really feel that the character has lost something important (in this case, his mother) and that his life is gray and bleek. With an abusive father, and a younger sister that he tries to keep safe, the main character is thrust into a situation that no one should ever have to face. The story is good with a good sequential feel (ie: the panels meld into each other pretty well and form a story that makes sense visually), although some of the pacing feels a bit off at times.

Story: Some of the pacing in the story feels a bit off, like things either happen too slow or too quick. The passage of time, while often done very well within a single page (like on Tier 38), sometimes can lose the reader when spread out to multiple pages. An example is on Tier 32 when the main character is shoved, and then on Tier 33 he screams and falls. I'm not sure it was supposed to be in slow motion, but the last panel of Tier 32 (between the shove and the yelp) of the books flying distracted me from the flow of the action.

Dialogue: Very sparatic, but realistic when used. Conversations have a flow to them that is coherent and makes sense, and accents are used for many of the characters, helping to identify them through text bubbles. As each character has a distrint look in the art style, each character also has a distint voice in the text and dialogue.

Overall: Broken Things has a very unique and stylized look and feel to it, has great distinct dialogue for each of its characters, and is overall a great read. Although there are a few issues with the pacing of the story, overall it flows very well and has a very real-world character with real-world problems. You feel for this character as a reader, and want his life to get better. You experience the loss and loneliness with him, and can only hope that things will improve. And that is some tallented writing.

I've read that the actual name for this comic is "Broken". But, so far,there's nothing too broken about this comic. Chip Skelton is a masterful storyteller whose artwork strikes me as a post modern version of the type work once done by Will Eisner, whose tombs I'm sure Skelton has studied. I have to admit that the story started and is still developing quite slowly but I think that when the tiers are seen together they would reads at a workable pace. Unfortunately, they are separated and that slows it down for the online viewer and, I'm certain, diminishes the potential impact for some of these pages.

The artwork is what I would call Eisneresque. "Blankets" had a similar feel. I think that if this comic continues, the final product will be every bit as striking and well-oiled as that product was. The use of shadow to dictate mood and to increase tensions or to deepen the loneliness of the lead character's lost mother is really well done. Skelton can use tone to depict nearly any atmospheric condition, it seems and his backgrounds not only fit perfectly with his figure drawing style, but they are presented in the proper place at the proper time.It will be great to see him develop even more as this comic progresses.


The writing is intriguing as well. Like I said, it seems to start slow, but we ease on down the road quickly enough. "Steely Dan" as the lead protagonist is called, is the moody young man in this tale wherein he is faced with the prospect that his father probably killed his mother and now he believes his sister to be in jeopardy. The Sheriff uses not so subtle manipulations to try to get the young man give something up on his dad. But one might surmise that even prior to her death, there was abuse in this household. And, from the way they live, it's obvious the father is shiftless. I'm really surprised the Sheriff didn't already have a rap sheet on the dad and had him in custody for the murder. He must have one great alibi, and it's one we haven't been made privy to yet.

It will be good to see how it all fleshes out and how deep the character development goes. With the innate lack of words that seems to go with the mood of this comic, that could take some time. But I'll certainly be checking it out. It's faved, because this is the type of storytelling that, if finished right, could touch your soul. Chip Skelton is to be applauded.

Thanks, Hal & Trevor for such kind and encouraging words. I hope Broken will measure up to the faith you've shown in it.