Writing up a good and fair review is always hard, considering how much time it takes to go through archives. Still yet we can’t always find ones that we feel compelled enough to sit down and study, giving the comic it’s fair review. So we’re introducing a new practice, and that’s the guest review. From now on we will be accepting reviews from you about your favorite webcomic, with the only stipulation being that you can’t be one of the artists behind it. Submit your comic to us and it will get reviewed for content and pleasantness and posted to the main site.
This is your chance! Now send those reviews in.
Back when I first discovered webcomics, one stood out as my favorite: A goofy, Saturday morning style adventure about a rag-tag team of animal spacers trying to be heroes. It combined good clean artwork with energetic scifi hilarity, and best of all didn’t try to be the next Spaceballs. Then one day the comic, website, and creator vanished from the face of the internet entirely. Until now.
Commander Kitty is back, and is off to a great start. Rather than continuing the old story, creator Scotty Arsenault decided to start fresh, and so far it’s been a great ride. Kitty is a slightly pathetic and overbearing spaz with delusions of grandeur. (Imagine the rich kid Hon Solo used to give wedgies in school) After somehow acquiring a spaceship, and hiring a crew of the only three creatures in the galaxy willing to work for him, he’s ready to make a name for himself as a great space captain, mostly without any success. First Officer Fluffy is an airbrained little pink kitten. Lieutenent Mittens is a paranoid and highly distractible grey tabby, and the usual brunt of Kitty’s wrath. Mr. Socks is a brilliant, yet inarticulate ferret. The ship is run by a swarm of misanthropic robots referred to collectively as MOUSE. They’ve just been joined by the shady Red Panda Nin Wah, who just might be their ticket out of numfdom.
You can really tell that Scotty’s done this before. The art is crisp and polished, drawn in smooth, expressive lines, with bright toylike colours. The characters are reminiscent of old Hannah Barberra cartoons, and all very distinct and consistent, in both appearance and personality. The comic is very action-based; the animals never stop moving, and the “punchline” is usually something funny that somebody did, rather than what they said. The whole page, however is filled with sight gags, one-liners, and pop-culture references; Rather than giving you just enough to keep you from starving, Scotty loads up your plate with enough humor to last you all week.
Commander Kitty is more than just a great webcomic, it’s also great comedic scifi. Rather than just annother Trek/Wars parody, Scotty has created a unique universe with its own social structures, that borrows from the tropes and technology of mainstream science fiction; Similar to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The story started out a bit slow, (it began with a three-page dream sequence) but it’s still been fun to read, and things look like they will be moving faster now that Kitty has met Nin Wah.
The website is well designed and fits the comic perfectly. There is a flash window in one corner that shows mug shots of the different characters, a Jukebox that has some pretty sweet music to listen to, and a news box with Scotty’s Twitter feed. It all looks very clean, and futuristic, like a web page from outer space.
This review was courtesy of Robin Gibson.
