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Review: Love the Way You Love #1
Love the Way You Love #1
Written by Jamie S. Rich
Art by Marc Ellerby
Published by Oni Press. $5.95 USD
A 64 page, quarterly romance comic is going to be a tough sell, let's face it. On the plus side, Rich is a thoughtful and witty writer, and Oni is already doing well with another black-and-white comic featuring sarcastic young people playing rock music in Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series, and those come out whenever they come out.
On the negative side...Well, there's no fighting or fourth wall breaking or any real energy in this book like there is in Pilgrim, and Ellerby is no O'Malley, or Chynna Clugston, or Andi Watson, all of whose fans might find some things to like in Rich's script. The art is cute for a few panels, but becomes very dull, and in Ellerby's defense, Rich's script for this first issue is mostly characters standing and talking, standing and singing, or standing and looking meaningfully at each other or pausing significantly. This isn't broken up with symbols, or fauna, or close-ups of details of the setting, or odd angles. It's static, and Ellerby's design for the antagonist is bizarre and off-putting.
And that puts increasing weight on the dialogue to sparkle, and though Rich is capable of this, he seems to be taking it a little too easy, with a luxuriant pace and sparing use of one-liners and zingers. There are some fun exchanges, absolutely, and it's not that I'm not curious about how rock star Tristan is going to hook up with the beautiful girl from the airport he meets later, but I'm just barely curious, you know? It's not that it needs the gimmicks of O'Malley or Clugston; I'd be happy if it just gave me a little more for the six bucks.
Written by Jamie S. Rich
Art by Marc Ellerby
Published by Oni Press. $5.95 USD
A 64 page, quarterly romance comic is going to be a tough sell, let's face it. On the plus side, Rich is a thoughtful and witty writer, and Oni is already doing well with another black-and-white comic featuring sarcastic young people playing rock music in Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series, and those come out whenever they come out.
On the negative side...Well, there's no fighting or fourth wall breaking or any real energy in this book like there is in Pilgrim, and Ellerby is no O'Malley, or Chynna Clugston, or Andi Watson, all of whose fans might find some things to like in Rich's script. The art is cute for a few panels, but becomes very dull, and in Ellerby's defense, Rich's script for this first issue is mostly characters standing and talking, standing and singing, or standing and looking meaningfully at each other or pausing significantly. This isn't broken up with symbols, or fauna, or close-ups of details of the setting, or odd angles. It's static, and Ellerby's design for the antagonist is bizarre and off-putting.
And that puts increasing weight on the dialogue to sparkle, and though Rich is capable of this, he seems to be taking it a little too easy, with a luxuriant pace and sparing use of one-liners and zingers. There are some fun exchanges, absolutely, and it's not that I'm not curious about how rock star Tristan is going to hook up with the beautiful girl from the airport he meets later, but I'm just barely curious, you know? It's not that it needs the gimmicks of O'Malley or Clugston; I'd be happy if it just gave me a little more for the six bucks.
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