Sunday, November 3, 2013

365 Comics...307: Azure #1 (2010)

DC's Zuda Comics was a noble stab at bringing digital comics to the mainstream... but their method of going about it, by making it an on-line competition for primarily amateur storytellers, was perhaps less than best for advancing the digital form.  Zuda produced a few notable pieces, but the majority of the output, while readable, is not supremely polished from an artistic or storytelling standpoint.  It's like any first time work seen from Image or Arcana or early Boom Studios, it's just rough around the edges and doesn't feel like a fully accomplished work.  The creators were also sidled with a then-unique page structure, formatted for viewing in the Zuda app.  It transfers nicely to digital platforms like Comixology but at the time, and for new writers and artists it was just another hurdle to telling their stories.

Since Zuda has been shuttered, the properties are winding up on Comixology, like Azure here, which suffers the same fate as many of the Zuda properties.  It's interesting, but it's just not terribly good.  Vreator Daniel Govar delivers a post-apocalyptic story set in an underwater sanctuary, populated by a single individual, so it keys in nicely to my affection for differnt post-end-of-the-world scenarios. it also later involves the woman encountering a giant mutated great white, getting swallowed by it and slicing her way out of it, so that's something you don't see every day...well unless Sharknado is running everyday, but Govar did it first.  Even the breakdown of how humanity (or a very small faction of humanity) prepared of the extinction level event is interesting, but the entirety of it just doesn't feel refined.  It reads, and looks, like an early effort but there's definitely talent underneath.

It's one of those things where I'm interested in knowing where the story goes but I'm not certain that I'll like it or that it'll be good or even worthwhile... do I spend the 5$ to read the rest of it or do I just go with my instinct and not venture any further, or just spend another buck or two to see whether I should continue, or if it's too much to bear?

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