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Sharknife

 
 
Super Boiling Hero RamenKing
03:24 / 19.05.05
It's pretty crazy, and awesome. Any opinions of others who have read it?
 
 
Sax
06:30 / 19.05.05
Apart from it being crazy and awesome - and, let's face it, who among us isn't? - I don't know anything about it. What's the story? Who creates it? Publishes it? Links?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:06 / 19.05.05
Sax, it's crazy and awesome, according to someone you know nothing about. Isn't that enough? Where's your sense of adventure?
 
 
Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER
08:33 / 19.05.05
I've not read it, but I've read a fair amount about it...seems interesting, at least - an attempt to apply videogame logic and stylings to comics work. The art's sort of "Jamie-Hewlett-Tank-Girl meets Magi-mecha-manga", but in a good way. Having said that, I have (from reading interviews and looking at previews) a nasty feeling that it might suffer from self-conscious "kewlness".
 
 
The Falcon
09:24 / 19.05.05
What is this word 'kewl'?

I do not like it.
 
 
Ganesh
10:14 / 19.05.05
All the people, so many people, they all go hand in hand, hand in hand through their Sharknife.

Possibly.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:19 / 19.05.05
Well, goodness me - it appears to be laughably bad!

Like Pope's THB plagiarised by a halfwit nu-metal kid.
 
 
Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER
11:07 / 19.05.05
Oh ye gods. Perhaps, if he tried really, really hard, he could make the storytelling a little more unclear and the figure drawing a bit uglier?
/winces at earlier post
 
 
The Falcon
17:07 / 19.05.05
It's not totally my bag, but I'd not call it 'really bad'; anyone who plays enough computer games or is into manga to any extent would prolly get something from it. I can definitely think of some of my pals who'd read this.
 
 
broken gentleman.
17:58 / 19.05.05
it's hardly literature, but i loved it. it had the same "this is awesome, and i don't care if i left logic at the cover" feel that scott pilgrim had. it's actiony, and the fairly simplistic plot isn't so much an attempt to be cool, as it is the definition of cool for someone who's world is defined by street fighter games, and the like.

my only real complaint is that sometimes the background is a little too bold, and it takes a second before you can see what the action is.

it reads a lot like an old videogame (this isn't, in my eyes, a negative thing), and the art is very engaging. definitely worth picking up, imo.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
03:35 / 20.05.05
nothing like a good old brainless fun sometimes.

I haven't read this but already love it.

more interior images here

it's SPECTREMAN via STREET FIGHTER! or somewthing...

would it find more respect if produced in Japan? sorry if it's not your thing, but bad it seems not.

am I Yoda now?
 
 
Withiel: DALI'S ROTTWEILER
07:37 / 20.05.05
I've had another look, and I can sort of see the appeal of the logiclessness... Having said that, I do still think that the storytelling is unclear at times, and that some of the drawing is not particularly brilliant (there's a particular bit in the first preview link I'll screencapture later)...perhaps it would be better in the mad technicolour that it seems to have been imagined in?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:10 / 20.05.05
would it find more respect if produced in Japan?

More respect from whom? I wasn't aware where it was produced in the first place...

Y'know, I try not to make dismissive sweeping statements about videogames based on the fact that I don't know much about them, really, and the fact that there are smart people here who've written eloquently about the good things about them, but... If this really is what happens when a comic is influenced by videogames, then it would appear to confirm a lot of my former prejudices.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
18:38 / 20.05.05
More respect from whom? I wasn't aware where it was produced in the first place...

there's a slice of the reading audience who'd take those things for granted if it knew SK was an actual manga produced in Japan. others [a smaller slice] would hate it for this exact same reason.

as for game-influenced comics, to me WE3 the best example of what Comics can achieve visualy-wise after PS2. and SK seems to go an interesting route in that matter.

has anybody read Rob Liefeld's take on Ellis' "game logic" theory? it surprinsingly makes a lot of sense: it's all early Image Style in the end.
 
 
broken gentleman.
12:08 / 21.05.05
has anybody read Rob Liefeld's take on Ellis' "game logic" theory? it surprinsingly makes a lot of sense: it's all early Image Style in the end.

i can see what liefeild is saying, but i think that the examples ellis points to as game logic have reached an odd balance of not taking themselves too seriously, but also not being a joke. the reason i can't look at early image stuff as game logic is because it read more like an abbreviated standard superhero script, with doubleplus action. liefeld seems to make this exact point, when he mentions the obvious kirby influence. that, and i think rob has somehow confused game logic with splash pages. fight scenes aren't the whole of it (other examples include the subspace highway dealies in scott pilgrim). basically, sharknife is a little silly, and knows it, and enjoys it. too often, early image work seemed completely clueless as to how silly it was. maybe i was just too young to take it with a grain of salt when image was new.
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
20:04 / 22.05.05
too often, early image work seemed completely clueless as to how silly it was.

yeah, good point there. the problem with the theory Ellis came up with in his Bad Signal mail list is that he seems mostly like a formalist [hence all the posts about panel grids, book format, story rythm etc - which entertain and enlight those as myself who care about this stuff].

being so he has to theorize about something which, to some authors, is just doing a fun comic where fucked up stuff happens not always with an over-explaned reason or major function as a storytelling tool.

it's like two kinds of musicians: those who need to understand every technical aspect of what they're playing to come up with a song and those who build up sounds through jamming.
 
  
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