Digital comic book review: Dark Moon #2- Invoking Happy Memories of Doom

Title: Dark Moon #2

Released: 18th June 2015

Creators Website:
http://www.darkmooncomic.com/wpl6l6yynmz1ttq1sfct3x1m39ehb1


Click link below to read Dark Moon #2 for FREE:
http://freematik.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Moon-2-Into-the-Abyss-540417867




Do you like comic books? Do you like fun? Do you like things that are free?  If so, I have some good news for you. Click on the link at the top of this review and you will find a FREE AND FUN sci-fi digital comic book about astronauts and creepy alien monsters.

There is no catch. You don’t have to sign up for anything. You don’t even have to type in your name, or email address, or take a survey. It’s free, it really is free, no catches.

So what exactly is Dark Moon #2, and why should you bother clicking on the link at all, free or not?  I’ll explain:

Dark Moon #2 is a digital comic book, with an accompanying musical sound track. All you have to do is right click and the entire experience unfolds before you. The story is simple. It’s about a group of astronauts investigating a suspiciously deserted alien planet and attempting to uncover just what the heck is going on.

The music is amazing. It’s spooky, creepy, atmospheric, dark, chilling, and takes me back to the days when I used to play Doom. It has that same tension, that same anxiety, that same feeling that something bad is about to happen, that you are being stalked and that any second now something horrible is going to jump out of the shadows and scare the beejeezus out of you.

Dark Moon #2 has an excellent sound track, but it’s not just about the music. The art is stark and uncluttered, and uses a dark grey palette, with a vivid blood red exploding onto the screen during startling moments of horror. The music builds tension, leading you calmly, spookily, inevitably into dramatic moments of fight or flight horror. The art follows the same template, and compliments the music perfectly.

An overly complicated script could have stripped the enjoyment out of this project, but you don’t have to worry about that here. The script serves the tension building experience, and is not trying to impress with elaborate cleverness or gimmickry. It keeps the story moving, builds up the tension, and gives the reader the information they need in order to fully immerse themselves within the narrative.

The script and artwork in Dark Moon #2 do exactly what they are supposed to do. They are in perfect synch with the movie quality soundtrack, and by keeping it simple, they combine to create a tremendously enjoyable, spooky, tension filled digital comic book experience.

I’m an old cynic, and I talk a lot about neoliberalism and horrible real world realities, but I also like a bit of fun in my life as well. Dark Moon #2 is a lot of fun, and it’s free. What more could you ask for? Click the link, enjoy the book, and tell people about it. Free fun is what you are getting here, and who in the world would not want to experience that?


Rating: 7.5/10 (Lots of tension, and lots of fun)

Comic review: Time Warriors #1- A strong central idea and lots of laughs

Writer: Guy Hasson
Artist: Juan Manuel Almirón

Publisher: New Worlds Comics

Release Date: 12th May 2015 (Get the book early by clicking on link below)
http://newworldscomics.com/?p=1403



Time Warriors #1 is an independent digital comic book that I got for a couple of quid online, two weeks before it’s official release date of Tuesday May 12th.

I liked both the marketing strategy, and the plot idea behind the story. That marketing strategy and plot idea combined to win me over, to get me to buy the book, so it’s already a success for the independent comic book creators at New Worlds Comics.

So what did I think of it after I actually read it?

I thought that it was fun, it made me laugh, and overall it was well worth my £2. The art was messy, but messy in a good way. The mess created it’s own little (yes, I’ll use the word again) messy little world, and that (here it comes again) messy little world worked very well with the script, not distracting, and not being too out there to stop me from knowing exactly what was going on plot-wise.

The plot idea that hooked me, the idea that time travelling soldiers get information, and are then killed, only to be brought back to life later was played out mainly for laughs in this first issue, and the serious implications will no doubt follow in the up-coming issues. The soldiers knew they were going to die, but it was their first time, so they were understandably a bit nervous about it. Writer Guy Hasson cleverly played with this, creating different personality types who all dealt with this weird situation in their own individual way. This led to naked street running, sex, drugs and dying on the toilet.

What would you do in your last moments before your temporary death? I’d probably do what I’m doing now, eat a sweet and type out a review, but I’m an odd guy, as anybody who has ever met me, or had any correspondence with me will be well aware of.

That self-indulgent reference to myself brings me to the end of issue #1 and a reveal that didn’t exactly surprise me. I’ve had some brief correspondence with writer Guy Hasson and I’ve asked him why he writes his main protagonists as rebellious young girls when he himself is obviously not in that demographic. It puzzled me, and his answer that he just always did that, puzzled me even more.

Is it a male guilt thing perhaps? The idea being that men are terrible, that all of the problems in the world have been caused by evil men, so it has to be a young woman who comes along to save us all? Come on Guy, feminism is so 1970’s man. Get with the kids, it’s all about the MRM (Men’s Rights Movement) today dude.

I’m just messing here. Well, just a bit. Put aside that whiff of third wave feminism and I liked Time Warriors #1. Okay, the title doesn’t exactly win any points for originality, but the actual idea, the central core of the book is very original indeed and has a heck of a lot of mileage in it. This first issue took that idea and had some fun with it, so issue #2 is already intriguing as I’m sure that strong central idea will be developed a lot further as the story progresses.

Get the book. You’ll like it. I did. We need to support people like Guy Hasson and debut artist Juan Manuel Almirón. They are doing interesting work outside of the boring, safe, lame, tired mainstream, and if you are like myself and constantly bemoan the lack of originality or new ideas in contemporary comic books then you’re sure to get a lot of enjoyment out of Time Warriors #1.


Rating: 8/10 (A strong, intriguing #1 with lots of silliness, laughs and hints of darker things ahead)

Review: Dark Moon #1- Free Motion Book Comic: Great kid friendly digital comic book

Website:
http://www.darkmooncomic.com/wpl6l6yynmz1ttq1sfct3x1m39ehb1


Link to comic:
http://freematik.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Moon-Issue-1-Transported-to-a-Dark-Moon-491512045

Twitter page:
https://twitter.com/DarkMoonComic?refsrc=email



Dark Moon #1 is free, so check it out. You have nothing to lose except approximately five minutes of your time, so give it a go. The story is about astronauts landing on an alien moon. They don’t know what is there, so decide to have a bit of a walk-about whilst hoping that big creepy old monsters don’t sneak up behind them and do what big old creepy monsters tend to do.

That’s the story, and it’s quite basic, but it’s how its being portrayed here that is a lot of fun. It’s a motion comic book, so as you click along, following the story progression, you get spooky accompanying music that really enhances the reading experience.

The art consists of abstract paintings of an alien landscape. It has a fuzzy, dreamy feel to it that lends a quality of unease to the narrative that really enhances the reading experience. This is an old-fashioned, (but on new technology) kid’s sci-fi/horror book. It features brief jolting moments of adrenaline based action/peril and children over the age of ten (approx) should get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

If you have young kids who think that comic books are boring, then this might be just the thing to spark their interest in the genre. They can watch it on their tablets, and click along as the tension rises and the alien monsters get closer and closer to the heroes. It’s spooky, atmospheric and fun. When the monster attacks do come they are sensibly portrayed, using shadow to portray what is happening rather than needlessly explicit gruesome detail, so don’t worry about it being too violent for children. Check it out for yourself first of course, but I think that you’ll find that it’s not too scary or inappropriate for children. It will give them a bit of a scare, but hopefully no nightmares. The book is short, atmospheric, easy to follow and a lot of fun, and just the thing for kids to enjoy during what remains of this Easter holiday, so check it out NOW.


Rating: 7/10 (Highly recommended for children just getting into comic books)

Insane Tales from the Dead Issue 2, Volume 1: Halloween frights

Writers/ Artists: Doug Randazzo and numerous

Released: Halloween 2014

Website to order a copy: 
http://www.insanetalesfromthedead.com/



A good horror short, in the style of a television episode of Tales from the Crypt or EC horror comic has to have a satisfying ending where a twist in the narrative leads to a morally dubious character getting the instant karma that s/he deserves. Horror therefore isn’t really about the horror; it’s about the good story. If you don’t have a good story, if you don’t have strong characters, and if you don’t have a strong ending, then you don’t have a good horror narrative. What you have instead is grimness, and a celebration of being gross for the sake of being gross. It can be very childish and teenage boy as well. Oh look, it’s somebody sawing a guy’s leg off.

KEWL MAN!

Do you know what I mean? What made the movie Seven a good movie? The horror, or the twist at the end? It was the twist, wasn’t it? It elevated what would otherwise have been just an unpleasant movie about a disgusting individual into something that made you feel satisfied, and totally grossed out of course, when you left the cinema. It made you feel like you got your money’s worth. That’s what a good movie is supposed to do, horror or otherwise.

Thus, when I read ‘Horror’ genre comics I’m looking for a good story first, and the horror, and art, are secondary concerns. ‘Insane Tales from the Dead Issue 2, Volume 1’ has points of interest, but does it contain a fully formed, satisfying horror story? No, it doesn’t have one of those.

What it does have is a funny story about aliens making everybody on planet Earth need to go to the bathroom at the same time. The story concludes with a ridiculous panel where the entire planet is subjected to its second world-wide flood, but this time Yahweh/Allah/El/Jehovah/Whatever is not involved.  That was a funny story. There was no moral lesson, no characters/ protagonists, but it was funny, and probably the best thing about the book.

A werewolf tale didn’t work because the protagonist was unfairly punished whilst his unpleasant, horror hating girlfriend was spared. It should have been the other way round. That would have been satisfying to the reader, but instead, the opposite happened.

A tale about alien musicians was more or less an advert for a bands myspace (does that still exist?) page.

‘Torture’ was unpleasant, and it went nowhere.

A story about a squirrel being tamed and then killed by a watchful crow was equally unpleasant, but it had a better structure to it.

Some pages of random horror artwork followed. A guy called Mortuss Art showed some talent, but the rest of it was a bit ‘high-school teenage boy doodling in the back of his textbook’ in its quality.

It sounds like I didn’t much enjoy this book, but I don’t want to conclude this review by giving the impression that I hated it, because I didn’t.

I would much rather read independently produced comic books, such as this one, than all of the mainstream superhero, statist junk that dominates the comic book industry today. I enjoyed the roughness and amateur nature of it all, and it wasn't trying to be something that it was not. It screamed independence and ambition, two HUGE plusses in my book.

I want people to keep on producing independent comics, to do them over and over and over again until they’re so bloody good that some twit like me will be absolutely unable to say one single negative thing about them. I’ll leave this book thinking, and laughing about aliens making everybody poo themselves. I’ll tell you what. That’s a lot more than I’ll get out of reading the latest copy of Spiderman, Avengers, Wolverine, X-men, Captain America or Batman.

Rating: A couple of Pumpkins and a bag of sweeties