Some people are more interested in aesthetics - they like the look of something and appearances matter more to them than other information.
Some people are very tactile, they like and are attracted by the feel of objects. My wife is...the amount of times we've been out shopping and I've noticed she was absent, then look back to find her touching a piece of fabric or fluffy cuddly toy or something.
Me? I'm interested in the smell of something. I especially like the smell of new items of technology and I love the smell of textbooks - especially new ones. New books have a fantastic smell - take the time and have a sniff and tell me that the smell is not great.
So when I first looked at The Land of Strange Rivers that’s the first thing I noticed. Land of Strange Rivers smells great! I don't whether it is the paper they have used or the printing process, but it just has a great smell!
Shame I got more pleasure sniffing it than I actually got reading it...
Land of Strange Rivers is an "epic" fantasy yarn set between worlds and presented in a Shoujo Manga style.
I can't really give you any more a plot rundown than that because I actually found it very hard to work out what the fuck was going on in most of the comic and I read it several times to make sure. The most information I got about the plot was from the blurb on the back of comic.
There’s no getting away from it - LoSR is very, very difficult to read. Dodgy artwork, badly thought out layouts, a flurry of ideas with no apparent selection between good and bad ones, and a distinct lack of editorial control seem to have come together to make this comic what it is.
I suppose its trying to be all individual and independent and I know there is a call in some quarters to push the envelope and be different from Marvel and DC stuff but frankly there are some pretty elementary rules of comic presentation which should not be ignored. The panelling makes it unclear as to where to read next in many places because it is never clear where you are supposed to be going next. The panels are arranged differently on just about every page and not in a way that facilities natural reading. This has created some pages that appear more like some random arty collage than anything else and its pretty confusing for the reader.
This confusion is not helped by the caption and dialogue boxes. It is difficult to work out what is supposed to have been dialogue, thought, narrative and so on because there appears to be no clear delineation between the different types of verbal caption. It used different styles, sure, but, they seem to be changed at a whim throughout the course of the comic and the captions are apparently placed in a pretty random order.
This all ensures that the Land of Strange Rivers is very hard to follow indeed.
Since I obviously can't recommend a comic on the basis that it smells nice, I've gotta say avoid this one for now.
Glenn needs your feedback! Have your say on the Real Mainstream on The Real Deal message board.
