Saturday 23 December 2006

Dead Tree blues: Estancia


I never thought I'd see the day I'd reject a dead tree version of a webcomic but after yesterday I have come to that bridge and crossed it, gnashing my teeth all the way. Some strips are meant to be adapted to print, the Megatokyo website is merely an online holding point for the books, but Estancia, I am very much afraid, is not one of these strips.

Estancia looks like smooth anime on a computer screen, it looks good, smooth and fully shmik on screen, on paper it looks dull and childish, I like scrolling down as I watch the puzzles play out. It's a consistently good mystery/fantasy strip that works well online. I can see what Hammock are doing - they're trying to expand their empire, but from a reader's point of view it isn't much chop. if they had used callandered paper it might have worked better, it's just hard adapting of course, maybe it's just angst that one of my favourite strips has become more popular than I wanted. If you like drawn out - over the top - cyberpunk strips drawn in pure anime then I recommend looking at this webcomic.

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