The Adventures of Dat Williams #1

Posted: Wednesday, May 30, 2007
By: Steve Saville

Creator: Nicholas Welp
Publishers: Self Published
Address: 3412 Duval Street, Austin Texas 78705, USA
Price: US $2.00

This really is a tale of two comics. On the one hand it is visually uninspiring whilst on the other it presents a genuinely absorbing storyline.

The sketchy appearance created by a fairly basic use of pen and pencil for shading and contrast does nothing to lift the story visually. In fact it feels a little rushed and looks more like a sketched first draft than a finished product. The use of stuck on computer generated font for the speech and narrative merely adds to this feeling of a hastily produced final product.

But despite this flawed appearance the storyline in this Sci Fi Horror tale is great. Essentially it is a ‘lost in space’ scenario. An astronaut alone and lost with only a computer to communicate with gradually loses the will to live, until a chance signal from an equally lost female astronaut on a stricken vessel invigorates our captain and he starts to eat and wash again. His whole demeanour is revitalised as he hurries through space to rescue his damsel in distress, and when he gets there…well that would be telling wouldn’t it.

Welp paces the narrative nicely and there is a genuine building up of tension as the two lost travellers draw closer.

I would really love to see Welp work with an artist to re-present this tale as given more arresting art work I feel sure that this could be a comic worth getting a hold of. At present though it feels very much like a work in progress.

In a word: Scratchy

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