Broken Frontier

Even though this particular comic didn’t win the August Zuda Competition I still wanted to highlight the first time efforts of its creators, Ian Daffern and John Lang. As you might remember from my Zuda reviews this past July, many of the winning creators are already professionals in the comic book industry. And while this doesn’t make their creations any more ground-breaking or creative, it does cast a faint shadow on a webcomic system supposedly in place to discover fresh new breakout talent.

To be fair, the creators of Shock Effect aren’t exactly newbies in any sense of the word. Daffern has several producer and director credits to his name, though many of them are documentaries. Lang also has several comic book creations available from his website, though they are probably self-published. Ultimately, while both Darren and Lang are established elsewhere, they are certainly new to the mainstream comic industry, and I’m glad the Zuda competition gave them at least some exposure.

The story of Shock Effect is wrapped in disarming normalcy. Many times, it seems simple – deceptively so. The main character is a young girl named Alice leading a tedious life in the suburbs where something is definitely amiss – in the form of monstrous Triffid-like plant creatures at every corner. Alice lives with her tough-as-nails mother in a boarded-up house, waiting for her father to return from tour. Suddenly, two armored soldiers right out of Starship Troopers barge into their house to evacuate them – only to be attacked further down the road by more creatures. With the two soldiers fighting an even bigger plant monster, Alice’s mother takes control of the situation and starts to drive off, though Alice doesn’t want to leave the two soldiers behind.

If there’s one definite flaw for Shock Effect, it’s that it's too short for eight pages. Many other Zuda entries are able to craft their entries into a full story in eight pages or less. The downside of Shock Effect is we don’t quite know how the story turns out. We’ve seen stories like this that are too sappy or depressing. From what I’ve seen, Shock Effect’s tone is just right – but still I’m not sure. Then again, the benefit of Shock Effect’s cliffhanger is also imminent – I want to know what happens next.

The artwork is definitely professional quality. Lang does a great job illustrating every character and giving each one a substantial look and voice. I also like that the two soldiers don’t blur together – we can tell them apart and both are designed with a distinctive personality – much like all the characters. The plant monsters are a bit generic – we don’t really see enough of them to know. However, Daffern gets points for depicting human characters that stand up to the monsters without disintegrating into the irrational panic seen too often in sci-fi or monster flicks.

Overall, I’d like to see the rest of Shock Effect, whether it’s a print comic, a webcomic or another Zuda entry. Daffern and Lang are two talented creators, and I have no doubts I’ll be reading their stuff again soon, one way or the other.