Queen of Wands: King of Fail

Hello, and welcome to another edition of "Webcomics and their Failings!"

Today we are going to review a pretty well known webcomic known as The Queen of Wands.

I referenced this comic earlier when I was reviewing Kate Beaton: The Goddess of Webcomics to exemplify a comic that might have good writing but had god awful art. Of course, I never gave QoW a chance now did I? The art was so off putting that I decided I didn't want to give it the time of day but didn't want to criticize that which I was uncertain about. So I read it and I'm sorry to say I was...really really disappointed.

I am a fan of Punch N' Pie because this is the rare Slice of Life comic that is actually interesting as it is very story driven and twenty/thirty somethings like myself easily relate to it. Believe it or not, the same person wrote both but only illustrated Queen of Wands which perplexes me as PnP is funny and interesting and QoW is anything but.

1. Writing

Sigh....Aeire must have been using QoW as practice for PnP although it's difficult to see much similarity. Typically a 4 panel comic, it often included the "nothing" panel. A panel in which nothing happens or there is a pause. The "nothing" panel is unnecessary I know the purpose of this is for effect, but the same could be done in a three panel comic with far more substance and far less unnecessary exposition to set it up; it would've been much better had it only been 3 panels. Panel 1 for exposition, panel 2 for the climax and panel 3 for the punchline. However she has Panels 1+2 for exposition, making the second panel unnecessary. This adds for a bulky and boring read.

In addition to the needless panels, the writing just isn't that funny, the punchlines are lame or otherwise nonexistent. Sometimes, less is more Aeire. Many of the comics would be funnier with a bit less explanation or reaction afterwards. It has also been realised that this comic started off with punchline in mind, and then switched to drama. Comedy and then drama. Hmm...I think I have stated before that it's always a bad idea to start off with one type of comic and then end with another because then you get the readers going "Uh....I didn't sign up for this" because they didn't and you are giving them something they don't want. That being said, it's possible it switched to that because she wanted to go in a different direction with the characters. If this was the case, it would have been better to END the comic section that was humorous and start it again with the same characters, but with a different genre in mind.

2. Art

Ugh

Ugh

UGH

Bad bad BAD art. Probably one of the worst artists I have seen. Colors are flat and painful to look at, characters are rough and not in a good way. Everyones' profile looks like badly drawn animu. with the face on depiction of eyes looking very similar to the profile of eyes. I'm pretty sure most of this was done in Photoshop, and not well. Lines are too thick, the hair looks like its a heavy lump of colored clay on each of the characters heads and sharp at that. Ugh...hurts my eyes. Bad..ew..

3. Lame

Something that I want to touch into here is how the author made her character clearly more beautiful and attractive than all the others. All the other women have plain hair and drab colors whereas her characters coloring is vibrant and attractive with long lashes and luscious red hair. Give me a fucking break. It's obvious you think you're hot shit but let me tell YOU something howabout: You're not.
All around, the comic is just lame. I kind of see where the better writing picked up towards the end, and then she went on to make Punch N' Pie which was much better.


More things that make this webcomic fail:
Poor structure
Boring
Immature writing
TEH COLORS OMG

Grade? D