Thursday, October 9, 2014

Doomboy by Tony Sandoval


Title: Doomboy
Author: Tony Sandoval
Publisher: Magnetic press
Rating: WARTY!

Translated by Mike Kennedy

I could not get into this story at all, which is sad because I'm usually good at making choices with graphic novels, and I typically end-up liking them, but I seem to have picked several in a row here which failed to make a good impression on me! Maybe I'm losing my touch?! At any rate, this one didn't do a thing for me. I'm not sure what it was about this exactly, but I can suggest a few candidates.

The drawing was really scrappy and amateurish, and too simplistic, while at the same time being really busy and messy - scruffy-looking without even being a nerf-herder! It turned me off, so I know that was part of it, but the dialog wasn't very stimulating either. Indeed, some of the early dialog was simply squiggles in balloons, and completely unintelligible.

I know this was intended to convey random, unimportant conversation, but it was distracting and combined with the very many panels where there was no speech at all - or any kind of communication other than purely visual about what was happening, it made me wonder if the entire book was going to be as vague as this.

Frankly it made me feel like the writer didn’t really care what was going on, so then I'm asking myself "If that's the case, then why should I care?" and it was quickly downhill from there. I didn’t feel any interest or investment in any of the characters, or any growing desire to find out how this story went.