Solstroia

A story shown over time(like television) has a different challenge then something with the whole story shown at once(like a novel); it has to convince the audience to come back at the next part. Webcomics must also jump this hurdle. For gag-a-day comics this is easy. The comic just has to make a joke. It does not need to remind people of the plot or character motivation. A comic with an ongoing narrative has to worry about something like this if they care about making shore the audience is not lost. Sadly today's comic Solstria is not an example of how to do it right.

Solstria is the story of a young girl named Samantha Russell on her quest to become a knight. Sam is our star and she works well in the story. She grew up on a farm thus her lack of knowledge of the world. This is more charming then annoying, and is a good way to introduce exposition for this fantasy world in a natural way. It may seem like I'm only focusing on Sam, and that is because I am. Their are other characters like Oksana, but while she does have a character and importance, she is not the real focus. It just feels like their isn't a party just for the quest.

Speaking of gaming relations this comic has a lot of similarities to classic RPGs. The world really does feel like somethingout of a Tales of game. The cast info is even set up like a game menu.

 This isn't to surprising given the cartoonist Angelica Maria has works on videogame for a living.

The world created in this story is vast and interesting. As said the world feels like it's from an RPG and as such it really does make you want to explore it and see all their is in this world. I'm also a real suck for world building.

Now for the elephant in the room. What did I mean when I said "Solstria is not an example of how to do it right"? Well the way the comic is written feels more like it was to be made into a graphic novel then a web comic. The comic updates every Wednesday and it updates one page at a time. This means for a week the only real update you'd get was this:

 That's it for the way of progression for a week. It may seem whinny, but when it takes weeks to finish a conversation it can be hard to remember exactly what is going on and why you should be caring. Now if you were to binge read it  this wouldn't be a problem. In preporation for this post I reread everything from chapter two which I had previously read with the page a week format. While I originally thought it was slow and dull, reading it has shown me it was actually really well done. It is just the style of release makes it very hard to stay invested.

The art is beautiful with a mixture of detailed and simplistic for characters that flow extremely well. For what I assume is a way to save time Maria will have a colorful background instead of just drawing the surrounding area. That's not to say it's a bad thing. I never actually had a problem with it and I only noticed it while I was rereading for this. The colors are also very colorful so even when the scene is dark it still has a mystical feel to it that really helps sell this magical world.

Over all Solstria is a very good tail. If it wasn't for the problem with updating I would recommend it a lot more, but for now my best advice it to wait until the story is farther ahead. If you don't feel like waiting what is their is still very enjoyable and highly recommended. Just be warned that following it weekly can be difficult. I recommend starting from the beginning so just click here. The prologue can be a little slow, but it really picks up at chapter 1.