Christian Beranek « Optical Sloth

Beranek, Christian – Silent Devils

April 27, 2010

Silent Devils

If you’re wondering what this book is about, well, look at that cover. If you guessed that it had something to do with samurais, you nailed it. There are two main areas in this. They’ve been at peace for a long time, but this book starts right when war is about to begin again. You have a huge cast of colorful characters, all kinds of samurai action and a few nicely done battle scenes. Still, what holds this together is that it’s intelligently written. Not that I’ve read a bunch of samurai comics, but Christian has obviously seen his share of samurai movies and has a good idea of the pacing of something like this. The art is solid too, if a bit huge. Sorry, but it’s not necessary for heads and torsos so fill up the majority of every panel. Hey, personal preference, that’s all. Overall it’s a pretty hefty book for $8.95. If you’re in the mood for a good action comic, you could do a whole lot worse. If you’re trying to find out the meaning of life, well, move along. Check out the website!

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Posted by Kevin

Beranek, Adam – Silent Forest

April 22, 2010

Website

Silent Forest (with Christian Beranek, Nick Beranek & Chris Burke)

Finally, here’s a graphic novel of a comic that I didn’t like at all. Sorry, but it’s true. This one has the inhabitants of the Silent Forest reveling over their ousting of the evil golf course, which causes them all to remember something different as to how they got rid of it. Then they go wrestle (no, I don’t know why), which is followed by a bunch of strange dreams and a football game for the fate of the forest! OK, good news first. The art is MUCH better than the first time around, and I don’t think it was that bad then. Good stuff, all of the pages look great, and that’s saying something with this many pages. The characters are a bit more interesting this time around too, as they get time to help flesh them all out a bit. My main problem with this book is simple: puns. Now, I can usually let them just roll off my back, but the puns in here were so bad that I literally almost stopped reading it in the middle, and that never happens. When one the characters said “Holy cow!” only to have a literal holy cow drop down out of the heavens… oof. I think blood shot out of my eyeballs. Still, if you can get a dark marker and cut those things out, it’s far from being all bad. Pretty far from being all good too, but there you have it. It’s $11.95 and I think it’s out by now (I got the preview edition because I’m special!), so check out the website up there.