For the most part I feel like I haven't read and reviewed a webcomic that was truly bad, until now. Dumnestor's Heroes finally broke the streak and unfortunately it was a comic I was asked to review by a reader.
I would have reservations about criticizing this work if I really felt it deserved a level of praise, but I simply don't find much here worth showering with accolades. Dumnestor's Heroes is a four panel fantasy/gaming comic by Irony-Chan (her real name is listed somewhere on the website but honestly, I don't care enough to dig through and find it). The majority of the comic is based around the fantasy characters of several friends playing a tabletop RPG. We spend most of our time in the fantasy world, with the occasional divergence to the real world in an attempt at gaming culture humor. I say attempt because mostly the comic failed to make me even crack a smile.
Which brings me to my biggest problem, that this site is falsely labeled as a webcomic. It isn't. What I was reading was a blog with a comic attached almost as an afterthought. Irony-Chan spends at least 50% of the updates talking about her nerdy hobbies, attempting to increase my weight by offering baking instructions for sweets, and posting pictures of her cats and friends in "funny" poses. This is not how you should present a webcomic if it is indeed supposed to be the focus of your site and to be honest I don't know if the comic is intended as the focus here. Moreover the layout is annoying, to read through the archives I had to scroll past every comment (usually not too tedious because there aren't too many desperate followers of this piece, but still) and click on the button at the bottom. You are telling me this couldn't be easily fixed? Really? How long would that take, about five minutes?
Enough nitpicking of the layout though, as none of this has to do with the comic itself. I think it is much easier to overlook flaws in site design or an overt amount of unrelated posts when the comic is well written and original. In this case, the average (if I am being generous) quality of the artwork and comic only makes the other missteps more glaring. For the most part the strips have little to no background detail and it actually looks like less background was put in over time. If there were one way to describe the appearance and tone of the comic it would be cute, and not in the endearing or enjoyable way. Cute comics that are fun to read include Better Days, Sabrina Online, Kevin and Kell, PVP (occasionally), Candi, and Dominic Deegan. In fact, Deegan would be the template for cute fantasy comics that really make you enjoy reading them. What Dumnestor's Heroes is trying to do is be childishly cute and therein it could be considered successful if it were entertaining. Think about kids cartoons and movies that adults also like. Pixar flicks, Nickelodeon shows like Doug, and some Disney films are works that do this well. So, maybe to a degree what Dumnestor's is trying to do is truly difficult, but I don't grade on a curve.
I can't throw too much sympathy to the comic because the plot is ridiculously generic and doesn't make any real effort to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to do anything dramatically different in a fantasy comic, but it would be nice if there was a little more creativity present. If you're going to do a comic like this you have to do it well, because a lot of other comics do fantasy adventures and/or gaming comics and they do a much better job. In writing you either have to have a really original idea or a very new slant on an old one. Dumnestor's Heroes has neither, we are following a small party of heroes attempting to restore one of them, an elf that has become a human, to his former self. That was interesting enough until the gods overseeing this little world started discussing how they needed to make the group into heroes by sending them on some "save-the-world" quest. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot right when it looks like you're going to take that "new slant" method.
I think the moment where I actually said, "The unoriginality here disgusts me" was when several priestesses were attempting to escape an ogre and wondered aloud what had "Ulixes" disguised his men as to evade the beast in their myth. If you don't get the stupid mythological reference here then slap yourself in the face, hard. If you actually find it amusing in some way, slap yourself twice. When an author or artist makes references to modern or mythological places in a fantasy setting it (mostly) drives me nuts. Piers Anthony's terrible Xanth setting in Florida is the epitome of this faux pas. Never did like those books.
As a disclaimer, maybe I'm just particularly disinterested in this piece. I do know that Irony-Chan has written another comic that I will probably look at (I believe it was also a request). In the end I'm definitely not recommending this webcomic to anyone, but if you want to check it out yourself go right ahead at: http://www.dumnestorsheroes.com/
One thing I will say is that this is a very young comic, only a year or so in, and that gives it plenty of time to improve in both story and artwork. Really I think the biggest problem is that the three main characters didn't involve me enough that I would care about what happened to them. If I were to pick the high point it would be the section about the necromancer which had some decent glimmers of humor. In the end though, there is so much better out there why would you waste your time on a flawed work like this?
More is coming and hopefully at a better clip then it has been. As always thanks for reading.
NOTE: No images provided because they do not contain copyrights or the author's name, I'm not going to stick it out there without that documentation. Sorry about the Wall O' Text.
NOTE PART II: Irony-Chan's name happens to be Laura Chapple. See, I'm not that lazy.
I would have reservations about criticizing this work if I really felt it deserved a level of praise, but I simply don't find much here worth showering with accolades. Dumnestor's Heroes is a four panel fantasy/gaming comic by Irony-Chan (her real name is listed somewhere on the website but honestly, I don't care enough to dig through and find it). The majority of the comic is based around the fantasy characters of several friends playing a tabletop RPG. We spend most of our time in the fantasy world, with the occasional divergence to the real world in an attempt at gaming culture humor. I say attempt because mostly the comic failed to make me even crack a smile.
Which brings me to my biggest problem, that this site is falsely labeled as a webcomic. It isn't. What I was reading was a blog with a comic attached almost as an afterthought. Irony-Chan spends at least 50% of the updates talking about her nerdy hobbies, attempting to increase my weight by offering baking instructions for sweets, and posting pictures of her cats and friends in "funny" poses. This is not how you should present a webcomic if it is indeed supposed to be the focus of your site and to be honest I don't know if the comic is intended as the focus here. Moreover the layout is annoying, to read through the archives I had to scroll past every comment (usually not too tedious because there aren't too many desperate followers of this piece, but still) and click on the button at the bottom. You are telling me this couldn't be easily fixed? Really? How long would that take, about five minutes?
Enough nitpicking of the layout though, as none of this has to do with the comic itself. I think it is much easier to overlook flaws in site design or an overt amount of unrelated posts when the comic is well written and original. In this case, the average (if I am being generous) quality of the artwork and comic only makes the other missteps more glaring. For the most part the strips have little to no background detail and it actually looks like less background was put in over time. If there were one way to describe the appearance and tone of the comic it would be cute, and not in the endearing or enjoyable way. Cute comics that are fun to read include Better Days, Sabrina Online, Kevin and Kell, PVP (occasionally), Candi, and Dominic Deegan. In fact, Deegan would be the template for cute fantasy comics that really make you enjoy reading them. What Dumnestor's Heroes is trying to do is be childishly cute and therein it could be considered successful if it were entertaining. Think about kids cartoons and movies that adults also like. Pixar flicks, Nickelodeon shows like Doug, and some Disney films are works that do this well. So, maybe to a degree what Dumnestor's is trying to do is truly difficult, but I don't grade on a curve.
I can't throw too much sympathy to the comic because the plot is ridiculously generic and doesn't make any real effort to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to do anything dramatically different in a fantasy comic, but it would be nice if there was a little more creativity present. If you're going to do a comic like this you have to do it well, because a lot of other comics do fantasy adventures and/or gaming comics and they do a much better job. In writing you either have to have a really original idea or a very new slant on an old one. Dumnestor's Heroes has neither, we are following a small party of heroes attempting to restore one of them, an elf that has become a human, to his former self. That was interesting enough until the gods overseeing this little world started discussing how they needed to make the group into heroes by sending them on some "save-the-world" quest. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot right when it looks like you're going to take that "new slant" method.
I think the moment where I actually said, "The unoriginality here disgusts me" was when several priestesses were attempting to escape an ogre and wondered aloud what had "Ulixes" disguised his men as to evade the beast in their myth. If you don't get the stupid mythological reference here then slap yourself in the face, hard. If you actually find it amusing in some way, slap yourself twice. When an author or artist makes references to modern or mythological places in a fantasy setting it (mostly) drives me nuts. Piers Anthony's terrible Xanth setting in Florida is the epitome of this faux pas. Never did like those books.
As a disclaimer, maybe I'm just particularly disinterested in this piece. I do know that Irony-Chan has written another comic that I will probably look at (I believe it was also a request). In the end I'm definitely not recommending this webcomic to anyone, but if you want to check it out yourself go right ahead at: http://www.dumnestorsheroes.com/
One thing I will say is that this is a very young comic, only a year or so in, and that gives it plenty of time to improve in both story and artwork. Really I think the biggest problem is that the three main characters didn't involve me enough that I would care about what happened to them. If I were to pick the high point it would be the section about the necromancer which had some decent glimmers of humor. In the end though, there is so much better out there why would you waste your time on a flawed work like this?
More is coming and hopefully at a better clip then it has been. As always thanks for reading.
NOTE: No images provided because they do not contain copyrights or the author's name, I'm not going to stick it out there without that documentation. Sorry about the Wall O' Text.
NOTE PART II: Irony-Chan's name happens to be Laura Chapple. See, I'm not that lazy.
