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It pained me to have to write that without correcting the terrible punctuation and grammar. Here's some free advice for the folks at Kiss Me Comix... if you're going to be in an industry that involves writing TAKE SOME ENGLISH CLASSES!!!! Maybe a creative writing class at your local community college. Good God. At the very least, get an editor! Not only does my editor threaten me with a bullwhip, but she catches my grammatical mistakes. A back cover riddled with errors like this reflects very poorly on the quality of your company. I cannot over-stress the importance of proof-reading!
Let me point out a few of the most glaring problems. First would be the extreme over use of exclamation points. It makes you sound desperate to instill enthusiasm into your writing, and those reading it. It's especially bad to have them in place of commas. Second would be your lack of cohesiveness. "We invite you today"... invite me what? To read your comics? To challenge and re-evaluate my view of comics as a whole? To come over for dinner Wednesday night? Since I don't know what you're inviting me for, I've chosen to take it as an invitation to nitpick, and you're right, there isn't a dull moment.
I suppose my biggest problem is with the whole "Graphic Adventures" thing. Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with calling comics something other than comics. It's pretty silly to write a very serious story and call it a "COMIC book." And hey, Graphic Adventures is as good a name as any... assuming your comic has adventure (for Serenade, I suggest "Graphic Boredom" or "Graphic Whining"). However, if you're going to say how you don't call them comics, your company name shouldn't have the name Comix in it, dammit!
Why not Kiss Me Graphix? Kiss Me Press? Kiss Me Inc? Kiss Me Co? Kiss Me Publishing? Kiss Me Studios? Kiss Me, Then Read This? So many possibilities, yet they choose the most hypocritical one available! Why, you know, I'm almost beginning to feel that this comic exists merely to give me, and critics like me, fodder for a bad review. It was never intended to be read by normal people! They just wanted to see which critics picked up on which problems! Yes! There is hope for the world!
Well, my good readers, since you are "normal" people, in some sense of the word (I hope), you will never have a chance to read this comi- er, Graphic Adventure, so I will tell you a little about it. Honestly, there's not much to tell. You see, the big problem with Serenade, is instead of having panels and dialog like a normal comic, the first two issues at least are drawings, mainly of the character Serenade/Serena, with narration in big letters. Each issue tells VERY LITTLE story because of all the wasted space. Allow me to sum it up in a single paragraph:
Serena is an attractive young woman who is the daughter of a Korean woman and black soldier, a bastard child who only met her father once and probably killed him (narration is pretty vague). Growing up in Seoul, she was teased a lot because of her heritage, called a monster, etc. The comic often alludes to her actually being some sort of monster. She found happiness with her husband for a short time, then some bad gang people mistook him for someone else and killed him. Now Serena apparently, or so I guess, turns into a monster and goes around killing bad gang people.
Yes, it took them two issues full of pictures of Serena looking sad and sexy (sometimes naked, sometimes in a low-cut dress) to explain what I did in a short paragraph. The problem is, this comic is apparently bi-monthly. Even if there is a good story to tell, by the time they get there everyone is going to have lost interest. I found the comi- er, Graphic Adventure too stereotypically melodramatic and the character too two-dimensional to ever be hooked enough to spend money on this comic.
Barbara Jenkins' art is better than her writing, but definitely not enough to carry the comic, especially since the art mainly consists of pictures of the character with little to no background or action. In fact, this comic's only redeeming quality exists only in my mind, that being that I will continue to swear that it was created solely for my torment and will not be inflicted on other people. That, and I got a good deal of entertainment from reviewing it!
Tune in next month when I review Kiss Me Comix's other Graphic Adventure, Bountyhunter! Guess what? It's worse than this one!
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