Here's Something To Rhapsodize About!
This Week, It's
Life's full of odd moments, and it's all showcased in Rhapsodies, a slice of life comic with a wryly eccentric cast of characters. The creation of W. P. Morse, Rhapsodies can be found here.
The Rating
The Raves
'Rhapsodies' definitely has its moments to make you grin. It catches little oddities in life and shines a light on them; the weird and the wonderful ways people interact, identify, group themselves and make connections.
The art's an effectively simplistic and effortless style occasionally enlivened with blending techniques or pattern fills, and suits the mood of the work nicely. All around, it's something I wouldn't mind picking up on a slow moment.
The Razzes
The problem is, that's about all I'd do. Unfortunately, there's an overall ennui to this comic.The basic response when reading is 'eh'. Partly this is due to the format: tightly worded and image stuffed panels all in a row form to the casual glance an opaque and inaccessible grey block. I'd really recommend that the creator works on enlarging their work and allowing for more breathing space inside each panel and each word balloon. The characters' body language is often stiff as well, which really doesn't help the problem. I'd love to see more fluidity in the body; expression isn't limited to faces!
The other problem is, and I hate to say it, the content. There's just....well, nothing to get attached to. It's strangers going about their lives and dealing with their social problems. Reading this, I felt much the way I did as a child when my grandma's soap operas played in the background. I wasn't annoyed, but I was totally disengaged. There was nothing here to draw me in, nothing to attach to. It was somebody else's life, and I didn't need to be involved.
I can't say exactly how this could be fixed, but I can recommend this: less talk, more action. As a reader I really don't care about someone else's social life until I'm invested in THEM. Give me a reason to think of these characters as people. Make them interesting. Make them DO THINGS. Make them care about something, strive for something, fight for something! Otherwise it's just a conversation in another room.
I can't say exactly how this could be fixed, but I can recommend this: less talk, more action. As a reader I really don't care about someone else's social life until I'm invested in THEM. Give me a reason to think of these characters as people. Make them interesting. Make them DO THINGS. Make them care about something, strive for something, fight for something! Otherwise it's just a conversation in another room.
The Revue
Good for killing time, but it's less than rapturous.
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