Saturday Revue October 8: BrunoHarm

Load Your Guns, We're Going On Patrol With

'A dark night in the naked city...great, time for a glass of prune juice and bed. What, you thought a hot dame was gonna walk in? Gimme a break!'
That'd be Bruno Harm, the creation of Travis Shearin. This crotchety crimefighter will save the day, and he'll get the damned kids off his lawn too.

The Ratings

Pretty good for a rookie, you're getting your chops on these mean streets.

The Raves

It's the writing that really charms readers in Bruno: the perfect one-two punch of a subversion of a trope and deadpan humor team up like the Keystone Cops to have you chuckling. This comic is a master of the deft bait and switch: just when you're settling down for a boilerplate noir novel, in stumps a crotchety old fella. So you get ready for a male version of Murder She Wrote? Nope, because there's fight in the old dog yet.  Thought you were getting noir? Sorry, here's the comedy surprise. And just when you thought it was funny, wait! It gets dark!
And while you're being bait-and-switched around the plot like a rookie boxer being flurried by an ol' pro, you'll be chuckling at the deadpan jokes delivered so adroitly that they'll get a chuckle out of you no matter what.

Shading and color scheme rapidly improve, and by the most recent comic they've become quite a treat: bold, sharp and engaging. There's wonderful use of visual intensifiers and sound effects as well, encouraging that Golden Era comic feel. You can almost hear the newsprint crinkle between your fingers.

The Razzes

While there is amazing improvement from the first page of the comic to the last, I'd still like to see a little more work done on figure drawing, especially around the head and joints. For me, the most jarring note in the work was in two areas: shading and layout.
The artist often leaves faces unshaded, while the rest of the body is limned in bold shadow. This leaves faces looking flat, doughy and unfinished when contrasted with the rest of the visual landscape.

and boy oh boy, did following the speech bubbles get to be a pain in the neck! Right to left, top to bottom Travis, that's how English readers do it. Anything else confuses your readers: keep it in mind going forward. I can sympathize, I'm a fellow sufferer in this area of my art, but you gotta keep at it till you got it!

The Revue

Plenty of shenanigans here! All around, a good ol' fashioned Penny Dreadful romp through Noir City. Give it a read!