Inverloch

Hello, hello!

France was fantastic. I had a wonderful time, and I wish I was still there. My current home town isn't so thrilling anymore.

But enough about me, on to the comics.

Inverloch

Sarah Ellerton
Fantasy

PG

Inverloch is the first webcomic that I found in a bookstore before I found it online. While perusing the comic-book shelves of BAM, I ran across the first two books of the series. I finished them quickly, and was suprised to find a URL on the back of the books. Lo and behold, the URL was the comic's home. I have seen the big guys on bookshelves, (Scott Kurtz of PvP, Penny Arcade, Megatokyo...) but I have not seen a webcomic that is not incredibly well known published offline before. This is pretty neat stuff, a sign that webcomics are being taken seriously by publishers.

The comic itself is standard fantasy fare. Young Acheron falls for an elf maiden who, in turn, is in love with an elf that disappeared many years ago. Out of love for the maiden Acheron promises to find the missing elf. What is a little different is that Acheron is a da'kor, a race of half-wolf, half-goat beings. Da'kor are generally hated by everyone who isn't da'kor. So he finds distain wherever he goes.

At the same time, the elves are suffering from a loss of power and culture. They must find a way to remedy their problems or they will slowly disappear.

There are a few bugs in the comic. The story is strong, but it feels like reading an RPG. I expect messages like "The thief has joined your party" or "the mage has learned firefight" to pop up from time to time. However, the writer says on her site that one of her greatest wishes is that one of her stories will become a video game. So perhaps she is being formulaic on purpose.

In the beginning, especially in the first two books, the transitions from scene to scene are very choppy. One minute I'm seeing two children running through a forest, the next I'm in a village. This gets better as the comic progresses, but is is very noticable.

The art is pretty, almost Disneyish, and the coloring is fantastic. But the characters never seem to move. Even during an action scene it looks like the characters are freeze-framing. This feels strange to the eyes.

Other than these fairly minor complaints, I think the comic is well done. The story twists in all the right places, and like any good fantasy it leaves you wanting more after each new post. I like that the auther created a completely new species rather than sticking with the usual fantasy suspects (i.e. ogre, halfling, and so on). The characters are slowly leaving the realms of two dimentionalness and becoming their own people. Inverloch is worth a read.