Author: Bash (no website found)
Publisher: Gen Manga
Rating: WARTY!
Well, Eden qualifies as the most incoherent comic I've ever read without any question, which is sad, because it actually succeeds where far too many comics fail by actually having the text large enough to be legible on an iPad without destroying the quality of the image.
It begins with a young girl getting a ride on a wagon, and the wagon-driver rambling on about proposing to his girlfriend for no apparent reason, and suddenly there's this bird-person coming out of nowhere and wanting to kill the wagon-driver, also for no apparent reason. The passenger fights to save him, and then is suddenly on trial for fighting to save him.
Meanwhile, there are these obscure symbols drawn in almost every frame which I at first took to be some sort draft scribblings (since this was an ARC copy). For example, on page six, it looks like measurements were written down, and then changed: 11" is apparently written in the first frame, and then crossed out and changed to 17, and in the third frame it looks like 19 is changed to one.
These seemed to make some kind of sense until I finally realized that they were not notes to be removed before the final copy was released, but actually were intended to be a part of the image. I could only conclude that this comic was originally written in some Asian language which was changed in the speech bubbles to English, while the original image outside the speech bubble was left unchanged. Kudos at least for having the comic read the regular way for the western world.
On page nineteen this girl - or maybe it's a guy, I can't really tell- actually says this: "He used a deadlier poison than I thought". I am not kidding. I'm sorry, but deadly is kind of an absolute. It means it will kill you. So in effect, this character is saying, "It looks like he killed me more than I thought". I'm sorry but that's just plain stupid. The writer could have said something like - "He used more of that poison than I thought" or, "He used a stronger dose than I thought", or something along those lines.
Suddenly this guy (or girl) named Tehra is hanging out with a wolf who appeared from nowhere (and the expression on its face suggests it was just as confused as I was!). Page thirty-one is nothing but name-calling - no I mean literally - what appears to be two names are called back and forth for the whole page which does nothing to move the story or even to tell a story.
On page fifty eight, the character says, "I'm not moving forward," which is exactly how it felt for me, and that's when I gave up - at just over a quarter the way through. He used a more deadening story than I thought! I cannot recommend this, especially not some two hundred pages of it. Although the artwork isn't bad at all, the story is non-existent. Either that or it moves so slowly that life is not detectable.
