Blogwithfeet: The art/rant blog of Renee Lott

Comics Not Worth Reading…? (very clever, I know)

Recently, ComicsWorthReading posted a generally negative review for Festering Romance. Looking over some of the issues that the reviewer had with the book, I felt inclined to clear up a few things that some people may take as fact about the book if there was nothing written to the contrary.

Just to note, the only reason I write this reply to the review is to make known some of the technical details and thought process behind the book. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I knew from the outset that there would be people who did not like the book. So, whatever her reasons for not liking it, I can accept that Festering Romance was just not the kind of book this reviewer liked. Anyway, I suppose in order to generally edify myself most of all, here are some technical details and thought processes behind the book that this review brought to mind.

1. The author of the review believes the book to look like a webcomic.

Despite any appearance to the contrary that some may perceive, Festering Romance was never intended to be released online. It was never planned to be released as a webcomic. From the initial pitch, the book was planned for print. The bold lines I use in the book are a stylistic choice that I made that tends to appeal to my sensibilities in print or otherwise. I also know from experience that the book does not reproduce very well online. The preview I posted online itself has lost much of its quality due to necessary file sizes for fast loading times and to fit the dimensions of the website it was placed on. In order to make the book ready for the web, most of it would have to be reformatted and it would have to be completely retoned.

Although the panels are mostly rectangular, many pages in the book vary and would not line up well with each other unless they were proportionally resized, considerably changing the look of those panels. Also, every page of the book was planned for a certain event to take place on that page. I think that helped keep a single page tied together within itself while working with the previous and subsequent pages. The pages and panel borders were planned for how they would look amongst themselves in the form they are in. To break them apart into individual panels and change the format to place them online I think would drastically change the pacing of the book and the meaningfulness of certain panels at all.

The rectangular, grid-like panel design of the book was chosen deliberately and after considering other ways that the book could have been laid out. I have explored other types of panel layout before (see Blackmail Brouhaha in the Gallery at Fridgewithfeet.com), but thought that for this book, the grid would be best. Since it was my first book, I especially wanted everything to be as clear as possible, which the grid pattern assists with. Also, I was interested in starting out using a classic style and becoming acquainted with what it is that makes the basics work and what made this type of panel layout classic.

Now to go off on a tangent for a little bit… Many people believe that the flashy dynamism of diagonal panels and unconventional layouts should be the norm and are the only good type of layout, but I don’t agree. Many books work well within the rectangular grid panel format — even many manga. Some people work well with many diagonals and odd shaped panels and I enjoy many artists who do, but for this book, it was not my personal choice. Maybe some people would agree that the grid-like format of my panels is boring or unimaginative, but that is not necessarily my opinion of the format. Working with the grid was just as challenging as laying out diagonals in my opinion and forced me to think within defined limits to solve problems that needed a definite goal.

2. The author believes the book to be paced like a webcomic.

Despite what anyone may believe the final result to read like, the book was planned from the inside out rather than page by page without further planning. When I developed the script for the book, I started with a brief summary, and had to expand outwards to a longer summary, a detailed summary, then page breakdowns until I actually started working on the drafts of the script. I tried to keep out every scene that seemed unnecessary and even ended up expanding certain scenes because they made events seem too abrupt.

While the author of the review may think the book is too long, I believe that I could have made the book double its size if I had had the time or the desire. Right now, I am satisfied with the length of the book and don’t really feel there is a scene that should be shortened or removed lest information go missing from the story. Many people who read the script felt that it was a quick, easy read, and I don’t think the translation to comics pages has changed the readability of the book.

I considered other ways of pacing the book at the outset, and I know there are definitely other ways I could have paced the book in order to finish the story faster. My goal was not to make the book take as long as possible, but to make the story unfold in a certain way. I wanted the story to unfold naturally in a way so that the reader would experience events at the same time as the characters in order to help draw the reader into the story. I knew I would have to use troublesome devices like flashbacks, but wanted the flashbacks to unfold at the best place in the story.

If I had used a device such as narration, for example, a lot of information could have been presented quickly at the outset with no need for set up. However, that method removed a lot of the mystery and interest of certain events. I didn’t feel like it was good storytelling for the reader to know exactly who and why everyone is doing everything due to a device like narration. I wanted to describe events rather than merely state them so that the reader could experience how and why these events affect the characters’ lives in certain ways at different times.

Don’t worry Paul, I like you just the way you are.

3. The author of the review believes there is no need for Paul to be a ghost.

I really just completely disagree. There are many reasons why it was decided that the ghost characters would be ghosts. There are certain necessities for the them to be ghosts, and many reasons in constructing the story.

The reviewer mentions that the “ghost aging” seems contradictory to the fact that Paul is a ghost. I don’t really know why a ghost shouldn’t be able to age; maybe some of you could consider that not a ghost “canon.” But either way, it is a part of what the ghosts are in the story. In my opinion, generally ghosts are illogical anyway and do not make good sense in their very existence. In real life, ghosts are a phenomena that are part of the unexplained and the unknown. But this is a story where apparently ghosts can age and that is a reality in the story.

The ghosts in Festering Romance serve a specific story purpose which may make them unconventional sorts of ghosts to people who follow a prescribed ghost lore, but I do not follow ghost lore nor fashion my ideas about ghosts based on any canon. I don’t know if I want to go on and on about what the ghosts’ purpose in Festering Romance is here. For one, it would give away a lot of the story events to anyone who hasn’t read the book. Also, I think it’s kind of fun for people to figure it out on their own, which I know some people have. If people request it though, I will go into it in a later blog post and mark it a “spoiler.”

And so that was that. I know some people will say stuff like, “Well, it’s just her opinion that (insert opinion),” or, “No matter what you may have intended, people WILL see your work in different ways, sometimes even completely contradictory to your intentions.” Both of these statements are true. I am not trying to discount the opinion of the reviewer. I just realize that many people will read the review having never read the book and will take her opinions as fact without ever taking a look at the book’s pages. Many people will take the opinions as fact and never hear anything to the contrary.

Without any impetus for me to describe certain technical aspects about the book, it is likely those aspects would never be described or revealed. So, if nothing else, this review has given me the opportunity to go over the creation of the book a bit more for anyone who might be interested.

I offer my thanks to ComicsWorthReading for having someone take the time to review the book. I especially appreciate the fact that they decided to link to my websites. To the readers, thanks for taking the time to read through all this and hopefully your experiences reading Festering Romance will be more positive than that of this reviewer.

Here are a few positive reviews that have already been posted of the book if you would like to read a dissent:

Review of Festering Romance at AlertNerd

Review of Festering Romance at GamingAngels