Jaka's Story

Well, I finished Jaka's Story and I have to say that while I enjoyed it immensely... 

Okay, here it is: I've always been a supporter of independent comics and not out of some misguided, sycophantic fanboy loyalties of any kind; independent comics are, in general, simply better. I love the superhero genre though, and most of the independents which bother to work in that genre usually do so satirically.

So my beef is this: anything can get old, and the constant reliance on "slice of life" stories in independents is a turn-off. This is why they aren't more popular, plain and simple; "independent" has become synonymous with phrases like "moving" and "introspective," which are translated as "slow-moving" and "obsessive." And they usually are.

The art is better, the story and the storytelling is better, but a hundred pages or so in, it starts getting tedious. Pacing is the ultimate tool of a graphic storyteller and slowing it down to capture the everyday minutiae of every, little thing is only one way it can be used. Yes, 25 pages of rain dripping from a rooftop ending with a wide pan of the main character, staring out the window is artistic and beautiful when well-rendered. Yes, I understand what I'm seeing and appreciate it; she's lonely, the world seems distant, she's appreciative of the smaller things -- sensitive to her surroundings and others, so on. Wonderful!

But 25 pages more of a guy she once met through her half-brother's distant cousin, twice-removed, on her father's side back when she was a kid, watching an egg boil and thinking of their all-too brief relationship that one summer when he became A Man is a bit... tedious.