Review: SinEater #1

Writer: JoJo King
Artist: Chase Dunham
Logo: Ken Reynolds
Publisher: Insane Comics

Synopsis:

SinEater is a new comic out from small indie press Insane Comics. Â It is artist Chase Dunham’s first published work, and writer JoJo King’s second. Â It focuses on the life of Cassandra, orphan and resident SinEater for her town, as she does her unwelcome job: consuming the sins and demons of the townsfolk before they die. Â As you can imagine, the job has some very large, and interesting, downsides.

What I Liked:

First off, I love indie comics. Â And I don’t meanÂ the big “indie comics” like Valiant and Dark Horse, but the tiny little ones that are basically self published. Â Being an indie comic writer myself, I think it’s awesome that this team and this company have come together to produce and publish their story.

Regarding the story itself, it has an interesting premise. Â This first issue does its job of introducing us to the main cast, setting up the world, introducing deeper themes and presenting a plot-driving conflict that drives interest in a sequel. Â The art is all black and white, but has a consistent style and anatomy with a good level of detail.

What I Didn’t:

I’m not the biggest fan of hand drawn lettering. Â It’s a stylistic choice, but it sometimes makes it more difficult to read. Â I’d recommend using a font building tool to turn the hand drawn lettering into a consistent font.

EDIT: I’ve since been informed that the version of the comic I was given to review was not the final version. Â The final version that is available for say replaced the hand drawn lettering with a font. Â I think it looks MUCH better and have replaced the images I originally used with the new ones.

Black and white is also a stylistic choice, but I’d like to see some more shading, or at least some middle options between the two colors.

SE No 2 — I’m just not a fan of that much pitch black on a page.

While doing some research on SinEater, I learned that there is a DC character by that name. Â That’s something that the creative team might want to investigateÂ in order to avoid any sort of potential future legal mess.

Storywise, this first did its job, but I was left a little wanting. Â A little more foreshadowing and explanation of what a SinEater’s role is, and a little more plot development would have rounded out this issue nicely. Â I feel like that is likely to come in the next issue, but there wasn’t quite enough in this first issue (only 24 pages) to really hook me.

Summary:

SinEaterÂ is a good indie comic, about the level of skill I would expect from a team of new professional creators. Â It has a lot of good things going for it, even as they continue to improve their skills in future issues. Â I feel like SinEaterÂ is going to be a great story in the long run.Â It might just be my background in writing and producing a graphic novel as a webcomic, but I think that might be a publishing route that the creators should consider to build up an audience before jumping straight to print. Â It is priced reasonably, though, and available for download or print purchase on the Insane Comics store.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Author Profile

Daniel Sharp

Daniel Sharp is an MD/PhD student, writing and producing the sci-fi graphic novel The Demon Archives in his "free" time. He also hosts creator interviews and comic reviews on his project's website, http://demonarchives.com.