Tall Tale Features / Tall Tale Radio

Welcome to a brand-new feature of our TTF community. Webcomics Reviews. On a weekly basis, multiple members of the Tall Tale Features roster will review a strip submitted to us by it’s creator. The reviews will be honest (brutally if need be) and constructive (hopefully). If you’d like to submit your strip to be reviewed by the Tall Tall Features gang, send an e-mail to talltalefeatures at gmail dot com. Please note: Due to volume, not all submissions will be reviewed.

This week, we will review Rival Angels by Allen Evans. Rival Angels follows the story of Sabrina ‘Ultragirl’ Mancini and her three roommates in the fight of their lives as they battle against the best wrestlers in the world. As Sabrina begins her career she finds the road already full of personal and professional rivalries to contend with.

Reviewers:  Brock Heasley and Barb Jacobs

Reviews are split into four categories:  Art, Writing, Characters Design, and Final Thoughts.  Enjoy!

Art

Brock: RA’s biggest strength is in its art. Fight scenes are handled quite well and camera angles from panel-to-panel are well chosen. I had a real problem with the dead line inking style in the first pages I read, but by the end there was a lot of variety in the line weights. Art appears mostly rushed, but the layouts are strong. In fact, the art feels like inked layouts. Good inked layouts.

Probably what’s hurting the art the most though are the word balloons and sound effects. SFX is tough to do, but in a comic with so much of it they really ought to “agree” with the art more. Instead, the SFX feels slapped on and overly outlined. The word balloons are nearly equally as intrusive, often being arranged in the panel in a confusing way when multiple people are speaking. If found myself reading dialogue out of order many times.

The colors are pretty nice on RA. It’s real easy to make a garish webcomic and that’s not what happens here. The time taken on the shading is much appreciated as well. Very difficult to get that quality of color three times a week.

Barb: Rival Angels has a classic comic book feel to the art, both in the layout of pages and the primary colors used. Backgrounds are clean and Alan does a decent job changing up angles to give an old school cinematic feel. Some of these angles pose challenges in drawing human anatomy however, and the character consistency is sometimes off a little bit (more on this in a moment), but the settings: locker rooms, wrestling rings, etc. are convincing and well done. Background textures, circles and line screens are used for effect in action sequences with varying degrees of success. The line screens are best utilized when an impact occurs, like a kick to the face.

Regarding the handling of characters: the cast of women is designed to appear fairly realistic, a difficult task for any artist because with realistic characters, if anatomy is even slightly off it’s going to be very apparent. Alan’s use of tricky camera angles adds to the problem of rendering accurate human forms, and there are times where the girls proportions look a bit off. Additionally, the action sequences, while showing proper wrestling technique, sometimes aren’t quite as dynamic in postures as they could be. An arm or leg could be pushed or exaggerated more, a body jerked back from the impact to enhance the feeling of power or drama.

Writing

Brock: Let me state first off that I have no interest whatsoever in wrestling. Clearly, I’m not the target audience for this comic, which is set entirely within the world of Women’s Wrestling. That said, I’ve read comics and books about things that did not interest me, but, because of the strength of the narrative and the grounding of the characters in some kind of reality, I have enjoyed learning and experiencing those new worlds anyway.

I wish I could say that was so in the case of Rival Angels. I never felt like I was being led on a journey, which is what a good narrative will do. Instead, scenes and characters were thrown at me with very little flow or sense of pace. I think this was mostly due to the fact that nearly everything feels very overwritten. Words crowd the page and characters speak in long monologues when maybe a silent look would do.

One thing that did work quite well for me was the banter between the announcers during the fights. It was colorful and often clever. That felt authentic if, again, a little too wordy.

Barb: Being that I’m not personally a fan of wrestling, there is a lot of the strip that goes over my head. Reading the comments from readers confirms my lack of knowledge as they banter back and forth with lingo I don’t know. But that’s okay- Alan has found a unique niche in webcomics and has filled that need very well. The characters interact in that ‘wrestler way’ with lots of intimidation and trash talk both in and out of the ring. It’s fun for readers to choose favorite girls and root for them. Another thing that Alan does an excellent job with, which is something very useful in the medium of webcomics, is creating a mini cliffhanger with each page. He leaves us at then end of each update saying, “but then what happened?” which is an excellent formula for gaining and keeping regular readership in the webcomic genre.

Character Design

Brock: Maybe it’s a function of coming in late to the story, but I had a very hard time telling the characters apart from one another. It didn’t help that nearly the entire cast is made up of women with the same basic body type (which makes a kind of sense I suppose since they are all athletic). Mind you, there are good girls and there are bad girls, but no matter who they are they all seem to have personalities that boil down to variations on “bitchy.” The different costumes they all have certainly help, but if you stripped them naked and took away hair and skin color, I daresay you’d have a hard time telling the women apart.

Barb: One of the things I do really like about this comic is that the characters are varied in appearance and are actually realistically rendered women- they aren’t all ridiculous comic book stereotypes with impossible proportions. Some of them are overweight, some of them AREN’T big busted (imagine that in a comic!) and they have accurate muscle tone that athletes would have. Props to Alan- a dude- for designing them this way. Additionally, the jabbering of the girls is pretty good mean girls street talk. Sabrina “Ultragirl” seems to be the main protagonist, and is easy to root for against the nastier opponents. Again, not knowing that much about wrestling, some of the wrestling sequences are confusing for me, but the readers all know exactly what’s going on, and that’s what really counts.

Final Thoughts

Brock: Like I said in the Writing section, the material here just isn’t for me. Beyond the wrestling, I admit to having no taste for T&A and catty women. I think, in the webcomic world, that puts me in a bit of a minority, and I can accept that. I notice that Rival Angels updates three times a week. That’s quite the feat and major kudos to the team for doing that without missing an update. I mean, wow. Still, I wonder what effect going to twice a week might have on the art and the scripts.

One final note: I love reading Author’s comments below a strip as much as the next person (and goodness knows I’m known to be a wordy sonuvagun when the mood strikes me), but the comments on each RA page commit a cardinal sin: they explain what I’ve just read. The work should stand on its own, without outside narration. If any webcomicker or storyteller feels that such explanations are necessary, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board. That kind of stuff can truly ruin the experience and is painful to read.

Barb: In summation, I would say the strengths of this webcomic are that it effectively hits a niche market, the characters are well drawn and in a realistic distinct style, and the frequent update schedule and cliffhanger pages are a really effective and successful way of presenting the story. Things to work on: rendering character consistency from every angle, and pushing the envelope on drawing action panels, exaggerating the poses for more impact. Overall, a good solid webcomic!