The Goal

I want to provide a forum for actual reviews of comics, good and bad, to both help people decide what to buy and to be a useful point of comparison after reading the works.

The Current State of Affairs

Comics already have tons of review websites out there. Artbomb sticks to reviewing things they like, and they have a really nicely done site (the purchasing links alone are wonderful, the overall graphic design and usability are also well done) with a little attitude, which is good and bad. It seems more like comic advertisements than critical reviews at times, and I sometimes feel bad if I didn't like something they raved about. Sure, I don't have any real credentials to be a comic reviewer, but I don't want to feel like I'm not one of the cool kids because I disagree.

Comics Worth Reading has some nice longform reviews, but again, only of stuff that was liked (as if you couldn't guess from the site's name?) and not of too many things. The weekly capsule reviews don't seem all that different from any of the hundreds of other capsule review sites, although to be honest, I don't read enough of them to fairly judge that.

The Savage Critic is the one exception; I read these capsule reviews whenever they come out. I am a huge fan of reviews that are unafraid to be mean, and these are frequently mean. I don't always agree with the opinions, but I always enjoy reading them.

I used to check out the reviews from Savant before they blew up, although sometimes the reviewer would take too long setting up the review and I would lose interest. Ninth Art's reviews are usually interesting. Bob's Comic Reviews are usually well thought-out, but far too infrequent for me to remember to check there regularly. Jamie S. Rich should also write more reviews.

And as for The Comics Journal? Well, they don't post their reviews online, and I don't subscribe, so I don't really know, but I think they strive to be more of the artsy/literary journal/academic journal type of review, and I know I am not qualified for that.

How Our Reviews Work

So where does that leave us? There's plenty of places to go to get a one line thumb/star/scale of ten review. I want to have the site that probes a little deeper so you can go in to reading something with a better expectation set. I also want to have the site to go to when you finally finish Lone Wolf and Cub and you want to know what somebody thought of the ending, to think about the overall themes from a different perspective.

How does this affect our reviews? Well, first of all, expect reviews on this site to be unafraid of making negative comments. We'll try to be honest, tell you what was good and what could have been better. Nothing can improve without an understanding of what needs to be improved, and reviews that only say positive things are useless in that context. I, however, want better comics, so we’ll be including negative comments in the reviews here.

Second, don't expect reviews to worry too much about spoilers. If you only care about plots, you might want to avoid our reviews until you've read the book already. We won't go out of our way to ruin endings or surprises, and we certainly don't want to have our reviews be scene-by-scene commentaries (although that may be a wonderful feature for some deserving works, I know I am not the person to do that), but if the ending is an important point to discuss than the review should discuss it.

Finally, the front page only has Reviews as one category. Some discussion falls outside of the idea of a review, so the site has other ways of allowing for discussion and explanation. These categories and display formats may be refined over time.

Big Picture

I don't need comics to fill any void other than as good entertainment, in the very best sense of that word. Not mindless, not forgettable, but thought-provoking and beautiful and creative and funny and unique. The site has a long way to go before being able to reflect those qualities in the reviews, but I'll keep trying to get it there.