Indie Comic Review: Scornwood

Sequential storytelling is an incredibly difficult art form. Plenty of artists can draw incredible pinup artwork but fail when it comes to actually making a series of images that tell a narrative story. I don't necessarily believe that there is an art style unable to become a comic. It's just a matter of what type of comic that is. Scornwood isn't drawn in the style of a traditional comic. But it does manage to pull it off to some degree. The biggest problem is not the story itself but rather the format it took.

Scornwood is a story that touches upon themes of friendship and religious fanaticism. All of it is wrapped in a coat of constant dread and horror. The problem is that the story is way longer than it should be. The art style doesn't fit the work required to absorb the long-form storytelling. Don't get me wrong, the art is great on its own. For fans of quirky horror, there's plenty of absurd moments to get absorbed into. And the comic rightly didn't try to emulate a traditional panel layout. A lot of the pages are either splash pages or have minimal structure in order to maximize the story's craziness. But trying to engage in a graphic novel length story using that format can be tiring. 

Instead, I would have much preferred vignettes, short stories to break up the larger work. In fact, the same story could have been told but structured much differently in order to piecemeal it out for easier consumption. This type of style and format would be best served in short bursts. That shouldn't scare you away from checking it out on its own, as it still has an incredible amount of detail and is a comic to be proud of.