Why I Read: Kyria

Dan here with the next “Why I Read” review. I also made a blog section sorting all these reviews together, which you can see up under the “Blog” tab in the menu 🙂  Today I’ll tell you why I read the webcomic Kyria by Aero Zero.

Synopsis:

Kyria is a colorful and light-hearted fantasy tale that follows the adventures of an RPG-style mercenary guild.  It takes the best elements of some of the classic RPG games and brings them together into a single world, unafraid to poke fun at and/or explore the implications of the RPG elements.

For example, defeating monsters DOES provide the heroes money, but only because the monsters EAT the money in order to gain magical powers.

And you have to “harvest” the monsters in order to get at the money 🙂

Despite the light-hearted nature of Kyria and our protagonists, things do start to heat up pretty quickly in the plot with bad guys, plots and warfare a plenty.  Yet even in these “darker” sequences, Aero does a good job keeping it fun and enjoyable.

For example, on the latest page, Hitero interrupts Osprey in the middle of his “bad guy” speech with an iceblast to the face 😀

How I Found It:

I also met Aero Zero originally as part of the Webcomic Underdogs, where we had a frenemy type banter going on.  But since Kyria is primarily hosted on Smackjeeves (which doesn’t work that well on my computer and internet filters and etc), it wasn’t until Kyria got a ComicFury mirror that I was really able to start reading it.  Well, that and reading new pages as they come out on its Patreon 😀

Why I Like It:

The first thing (and I know AZ gets tired of hearing this) that really struck me about Kyria was the amazingly colorful art and backgrounds.  The level of detail, the balance of the colors and emphasis between characters and background is really quite beautiful.  It’s the sort of art I wish I could art, which is probably why I ended up commissioning AZ recently for a piece 😉  It has also been a lot of fun to be able to watch via Google Hangout sometimes as AZ draws the pages.  For example, the previous page I posted above?  That first panel?  AZ hand draws each of the stars individually.

I also really enjoy the RPG game references/tip-of-the-hat often present in the story.  I’ve played a lot of those games myself and really enjoy them, and appreciate how they’re being utilized as inspiration for the look, feel and plot of the story.  Even if I sometimes get confused by the inclusion of the names of the person speaking in the word balloons 😉

I particularly like the characters AZ has created for Kyria.  They’re quite likable.  Currently the cast is a little too large for me to know them all, but the ones who have had a good chunk of screen time are quite fun.  Xerxes is just so good-hearted and idealistic, Mordecai is such a snarky bird-man, etc.  I look forward to learning more about each of the characters.

Things I Think Could Be Better:

I already mentioned that the nametags in speech bubbles confuses me sometimes.  Mostly because sometimes we learn people’s names that way, and other times it says “???” if we don’t know who they are (see the post’s featured image at the top).  This isn’t really that big a deal (and it’s one of the few things I can think of), but the inconsistency in how I meet and learn characters names makes it harder for me to care about the names of people who I’ve only met and learned by their dialogue coming with a name tag, instead of someone saying their name.  This is probably also more because even though Kyria is so heavily inspired by RPG games where they do this all the time, I still expect it to read like how I assume graphic novels should be (aka how I make them).

Other than that?  Um… all the characters are ridiculously attractive?  Might be nice to have some average or ugly characters.  Sometimes I half expect Xerxes and Mordecai to start making out or something 😉

Closing Thoughts:

Kyria is a fun, well told and beautifully drawn comic.  The characters are engaging, the plot is interesting, and I always look forward to the next update.  It is one of my favorite webcomics and I heartily recommend it to all of you 🙂

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Delta-v is writing up another “Why I Read” for next week, but does anyone else have a favorite comic they want to write one of these for?