Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Panda Force Zuda review/ Pink is not my favorite color in this context

Panda Force is another Zuda comic this month, done by Sean Causley.
Here's the synopsis: A tear in the fabric of time has allowed sinister futuristic forces to wreck havoc upon the citizens of the 21st century. A highly trained and secret force of infant warriors has been assigned to protect our vulnerable world by the Animal Command Alliance (ACA) -- the NATO of the future. These elite baby soldiers go by the name of Panda Force!
This is not my go to genre of choice. I've probably typed that about a hundred times since I've been following Zuda, so maybe I should say what those words mean to me. It means I think the art/dialogue is fine, but the story is not something I would be interested in following should it win. It goes without saying I wouldn't part ways with the money in my pocket to buy a dead tree edition should said comic make it into print. That being said Panda Force isn't awful by any means.

Panda Force's lettering is pretty much unreadable for me in small screen mode. You get visually assaulted by all the day-glow colors from screen one. I doubt Sean was saying to himself as he colored this: "I'm going to burn their mother-******* eyes out!", but you never know. The color scheme actually fit, but it just went a little too far into a 'rainbow threw up on the pages' territory. Having a lazy Panda Force fighter did a good job on bringing some characterization from screen 1 on -which I liked. It does have the powerpuff girl feel to the art which I also enjoyed. The cat-pee spraying villain was a nice touch, and Mee-ouch as a name got a laugh from me. I liked the full page shot on screen 3, but felt it might could have had more impact. I thought it ended on a nice line, it was a good more, or less self contained short. I thought the banter with the villain, and the fight scenes were some of the highlights.


Some nifty examples from the comic that show you what I mean:


T
he sound effects are very well done especially for the fight scenes, one of the funnest parts of reading the comic for me.
The fight scene starting on screen 4 was really well done panel layout-wise. Screen 5 was definitely the highlight Sean, the reaction shot to be peed on by the evil feline "ohhhh--no--you--didn't.." was damn funny. In the next panel with the Panda Power up I liked all the sound effects as extra gadgets went off. Rock, paper, missiles was another good line.
We managed to see the two other members of Panda Force worked into the story. We also see when it's not a giant panda robot, the suit of armor becomes a backpack. I thought the art on her parents was very well done, and I liked the break the fourth wall wink at the end.

Have your cats spayed, or neutered.

The colors hurt my eyes, couldn't read the letters, and the concept didn't thrill me. Nothing was really wrong with the story or art, I'm just not in the audience for this one. Little kids who fight in giant robot panda suits is a twist, but not for me. If you like younger aimed more lighthearted
stories as opposed to the ultra-violent graphic violence I usually favor, you should give it a read. 3/5 stars.



2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for the review RKB! Your honest critique definitely helps me out for future Panda Force stories -- especially the legibility of the text when in small screen mode.

    Oh and BTW, I was definitely going for "I'm going to burn their mother-******* eyes out!" when coloring this, lmao. I'm glad you picked up on that.

    Thank you so much! -- Sean

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