Sunday Revue January 31: Bubbaworld

And Now To The Stage, A New Act!

Art By JollyJack

A Round Of Applause Please!

Dear Readers, The Strip Show will now have someone new backstage! Jade will be writing our Sunday Revues from henceforth. So without further ado, I give you their opinion of

BubbaWorld!

So, my first time out, and our lovely editor’n’chief has given me a wonderful piece of art called Bubbaworld Comix by artist Andy B.Childress to review. I reviewed the six archives I could find on the website (if there were more, and I like to think that there are, I couldn’t find them in my sleep addled state that evening) I found a charming strip in the classic Sunday Funny style.

The Rating

The Raves

The scripts for Bubbaworld are generally a joy to read, landing on many common tropes that most readers will understand at a glance. I’m hard pressed due to lack of exposure to make any assertion to the overall originality of the jokes, the final presentation in the context of the picture is well thought out. There are a few which I found to be impenetrable, but for the most part, I believe that this strip would be accessible to just about anyone.  

On first impressions, I have to say that I like the clean lines and straightforward jokes very much. While larger story arcs could be seen, the basic premise is to make each comic stand alone and be something that a casual observer might enjoy in passing; context within the overall framework only adds another layer of depth to the punchlines.

The style of art makes no pretense toward any level of realism; it brings to mind something you might see in Sunday Comics page, and is optimized so that the artist can create his characters on model with a high degree of efficiency. The panels are all of a consistent size and every scrap seems to be used to it’s full effect; the composition of the panels is brilliant in this regard. The lettering is done by hand (my compliments); It’s definitely easier to add via an art studio program in post, but the extra effort lends a unity to the finished product that is very difficult to achieve even with the modern software available.

The Razzes

There were, however, a handful of disappointments.  I felt is that the artist’s work appears to have arrived in this world fully formed, which leads me to believe and hope, that there are further archives and other projects to be found containing some early work from which we can learn more of the creator’s style development.
There is a noticeable lack of depth to this webcomic. It falls into the category of a gag a day strip, of roughly the same quality as those you might find in the daily papers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it's something that is much more tuned to the casual reader than someone that is seeking something more involved. 

While the content is amusing, there is the question of sustainability; strips that have the gag a day structure require a lot of work to keep the content fresh, or readers can become disenchanted. This speaks more to the overall talents of the cartoonist as a writer, and it will be interesting to see how long Andy sticks to this model.


While the website design is functional, I would like to see more of the menu options out in the open, and perhaps a bio on the artist. As mentioned before, the artist’s style seems to have arisen from earlier work, and to a degree I feel robbed of the experience of watching him grow into his craft.





So… On a completely arbitrary five point system:





Art - 3.5


It’s not what I would call incredible, but it is clean and well drawn. It takes many cues from traditional funny pages





Script - 4


The jokes are fun, clean and simple.





Website - 3


Functional, but it lacks in elegance. It feels like it could use a little love to make it into better user experience

The Revue

I’ll be honest; I’m not going to call it a must read, but Bubbaworld Comix is amusing if you have a little time to burn. Without an overarching storyline, this is a good comic to pick up for a quick laugh, but there really isn’t anything to suck you into it or that leaves you begging for the next page.