The Review Daemon: SinEater #1

This review originally appeared on the website Comic Crusaders, where Dan is moonlighting as an occasionally guest reviewer.

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.  It is artist Chase Dunham’s first published work, and writer JoJo King’s second.  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.  As you can imagine, the job has some very large, and interesting, downsides, which form the basis of the story’s plot.

What I Liked:

First off, I love indie comics.  And I don’t mean the big “indie comics” like Valiant and Dark Horse, but the tiny little ones that are basically self published.  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.  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.  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.  It’s a stylistic choice, but it sometimes makes it more difficult to read.  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.  The final version that is available for say replaced the hand drawn lettering with a font.  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.

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

Storywise, this first issue did its job, but I was left a little wanting.  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.  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:

SinEater is a good indie comic, about the level of skill I would expect from a team of new professional creators.  It has a lot of good things going for it, even as they continue to improve their skills in future issues.  I feel like SinEater is going to be a great story in the long run.  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.  It is priced reasonably, though, and available for download or print purchase on the Insane Comics store.

Art: 3.5/5

Writing: 3.5/5

Overall: 3.5/5