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Crossover

Visually, Crossover is stunning. Vibrant colors & imaginative character, set, & tech design create a lavish tapestry that my eyes react to like heaven. Simply beautiful.

Technically, I am extremely impressed with how well the fact that the book is photo/photoshop/CGI creation seldom rears it's ugly head. I tend to dislike this medium almost as much as Poser books. The rendering & use of photoshop filters is so masterfully done that I almost have to work at reminding myself how the work was produced. I am beyond impressed at the technical skills employed to visually tell this tale.

The writing is good. Not great (though, in all fairness, it is early in the telling, so, in the context of the finished work, the writing may be better than it seems in this first issue), but solid. I know that I should be the last to comment negatively on this, but I find the storytelling a little *too* decompressed. I know. I know, sorta the pot calling the kettle black, but I think that there are different types of decompression. I prefer than decompression be buffered with alot of mood & atmosphere (Lone Wolf & Cub being a prime example). While Crossover is indeed atmospheric, said environ isn't used as a decompression storytelling device. It just feels slow.

I did get VERY confused when the scene switched from the King & elvin leader to the airborne humans towards the end of the books. That whole scene really left me scratching my head, as I wasn't sure who was in what ships or how much time had passed from when the King & his escort were on the hill & the humans were worrying about the tunnels.

I think I'd rate this puppy 3.75/5. If my confusion toward the end of the issue were not so great, I would have probably gone with a 4 or 4.5.

Still, it's a solid work, & I'm eager to see where it goes from here.

Later,
Chip

From what I've read this story is about an uncle telling his niece about a war between some science fiction race of people and a magical kingdom. The magical kingdom has two border worlds apparently one's Night and the other is Day. The humans on the day side were united after a drought and their leader went to the night side to ask for something. Instead the Elves or whatever they are on the Night side decide to have him help fight in their war. Also the humans are from space.

Writing wise.
As for characters alot of it is your normal fantasy and sci-fi exposition. We have an old wise man telling a child about a war. This issue is just setting up the plot of the overall story and not much is told about anyone. The book is pretty decompressed they'll be multiple panels focusing on the little movements. It's not to overdone except in the center when it is mostly just shots of the ship at different angles and were they were counting the number cyrogenics tubes they had.

Artsy farsty
The art uses poses and lots of CGI. It looks good for most of the comic but they're always a weird feeling when you have to look at the actual humans. Something about the king looks creepy. The rest of the world looks nice. From the wide shots of the horizon to the battlefield, to even elves and tech suits. It looks good and when I said mostly I mean kind of like in Beowulf how most of it looked really good except for some of the closeups of the people faces. It's not to distracting or anything just a niche. Other than that it's really pretty especially the coloring. The mixture of blue and the red in the history compared to the modern time when everything is sort of gray and orange.

Overall
Interesting art, I'm was not really blown away with the writing. Curious to see where it goes. It's like taking a nibble out of a mystery sandwich and not quite how it taste. I need to take a bigger bite to understand where I would stand of liking it or dis-liking it. So make more pages.

Artistically its very well executed. I'm not a fan of so much CGI, but in most panels its stunning.

The writing is a little stiff though. While the story is unique, I feel like I've read some of this dialouge before. Transitions also need a little work.

But otherwise a good start. But be careful; you have a nice hook, but if you spend too much time explaining the backstory instead of moving to a plot, I'm afraid some readers might loose interest.

The art:
The backgrouds are jaw dropping. It's better than published professional comics i've seen. But the humans are your only flaw, and they are a big one. The faces look downright out of place, something more handdrawn and natural would fix the problems. The creatures are much better, and quite creative as well, I wouldn't have minded seeing them as the main characters.

Your actual site layout:
Something should do something with the html template of the site, the boring default DD template doesn't really do much for it. I'd suggest just going for a black design with the rounded decals of windows vista, then throw in that orange/blue insignia from your cover page. Use the same effect from the insignia on your first/next/prev/last buttons and it's good enough for the comic!

Writing:
In all honesty, it's not very exciting. A lot more could be done if the pages of 4-5 'filler' like comics were compressed into one. Sure the artwork is very nice, but it doesn't make the story flow.
Dialouge
Maybe it's the sci-fi feel but it's very in-human and forced. Some of it's downright forced and stiff. It's gets better later on it seems.

Overall:
It's pretty. The writing isn't strong, it's not weak so to say, but this comic could become a huge hit if it was better, The art can be a driving force where the story fails.

I'll go against the grain here and say it's actually the writing I like most about Crossover.

Sure, the art looks good. The integration of the various digital tricks and techniques at work here is very, very difficult to pull off because you have to constantly cover your tracks - as soon as the audience can see exactly how something was accomplished, it loses its effect and sticks out like a sore thumb. And for the most part, Fuzzy Modem pulls it off nicely. And the page layouts are great. Lots of wide-angle landscape shots alternating with closeups of characters to establish both the epic scope and emotional immediacy that the story needs. Plus the character and tech designs are imaginative and elegant.

However, the art is not without its weaknesses. Some things seem a bit rushed, and FM clearly does tech much better than he does nature. Compare page 14 to page 16, for example. It looks like what he's trying to accomplish here is build a dynamic with the contrast between the warm colors of the nature imagery and the cold, hard look of the tech stuff, and unfortunately it falls somewhat flat because the tech images look much more crisp and confident.

With the writing, on the other hand, I'm detecting no such obvious flaws. The story flows very well, FM communicates very well without being blunt about it (the introduction of the case system, the 'zooming out' of real time back to the old man's narration to skip over a few years), and the dialogue feels natural. I do wish the story would develop a bit faster - not much seems to have happened at this point - and yeah, towards the end of this chapter, it gets a bit confusing.

All in all I'd say this is a good comic with the potential to be great. Fuzzy Modem knows what he's doing and it looks like he works very hard to make Crossover as good as possible - if the pacing picks up a bit and the quality of the art becomes consistent, we've got ourselves a big-time winner on our hands here. As in professional publishing.

If you like epic fantasy/sci-fi with a somewhat European flavor, you need to check this out.

3.5/5

I'm gonna interject momentarily to thank all the reviewers thus far. Truly great critiques :)

It appears I now have a new writer (pro bono.) She's pouring over my original scripts and notes and organizing group readings and collaborative character rewritings as well as finding plot holes and inconsistencies.

This girl is brilliant! Another thing she's having me do is develop a timeline, based on the movement of the moons, which will appear as the bottom of the world map, which come to think of it you havn't seen yet. It's on the website. Anyway, we're both burning through alot of material and I think it's really improving.

I'm going over this issue one more time, spicing up the dialogue, trimming a bit, and making a second pass with my new tablet.

I really hope the tablet can make the difference in improving the quality and cohesion of the art. My hand drawing abilty (which had atrophied since high school) is starting to come back, and with more practice I think I can virtually eliminate the difference in quality between my characters and my environments.

Hey- this is an idea I just had. During the comet/starship scene (which admitedly drags a bit) what if I had some of unckle's dialogue. He can just be listing dates of world events off the top of his head, establishing the timeline. It will give us something to read as we watch the ship come in, while providing new information and maintianing the pace.

I'm also going to add the line "-and it was at this same time that your ancestor, King Galan, arrived by gate from the Dayside to coordinate a trade agreement." (I know that's horrible I'll paraphrase later) at the very end of page 15. Does that clear up the confusion?

Thanks again everyone. I'm really excited! :D

Mmk, your main strength is your art, I'm still drooling. I'm facinated by the sci-fi vs. fantasy crossover, the drama of the writing and the strangeness of this burnt-frozen world that you set your comic in. I'm a huge Sci-Fi and Fantasy buff, and the High tech and High Magic realms clashing is a dream that most nerds posess. Unfortunately, not much has happened in the first twenty-five pages. Thankfully, this will be remedied as you update, but It would have been more prudent to stave off posting reviews until after the proverbial crap hits the fan, if you will.
As for the story it's great, frankly! I'm all for the mysterious references to magical item A and sci-fi widget B, I use them a lot myself. But all that terminology could turn off some readers who can't quite understand what you're talking about. The art is bordering on perfection, with all the characters popping out, and the environments aren't perfect, but are leagues beyond much of the art permeating this site. The dialogue between the characters feels natural and unforced, and every word adds to the story. For 25 pages, it's looking damn good so far. While your panel flow is solid without being boring, the speech bubbles tend to span between two panels, which detracts from the natural flow, and forces a double-take on the reader's part. I understand you don't want the text to cover up too much of your art, but try to work on a less awkward comprimise between the two.
Otherwise, your art's great, your story is brilliant, and I look forward to the next update. Keep up the good work. 9.5/10, and a "keep it coming" from Naughtelos.