Just tripped over this comic in the galleries (we've GOT to get a comics-stories gallery together here on Rendo sometime, to avoid being lumped in with all those great, but non-story superhero images). Having read the preview / first chapter, I just bought and read "River". Superb, pro stuff! Tight story, masterful visual storytelling, sharp dialogue, interesting twists, this story keeps one entertained from first to last page. The art's Poser, superbly converted to black and white, a la Miller's "Sin City", manga-inspired style. The manga style was originally developed for speed, hence the few panels per page, the few-and-far-between backgrounds and the overall minimalistic style. To keep the viewer's interest the creator needs to keep the story moving real fast, and Palmer is up to the challenge. The storytelling is as fast-paced and well-timed as anything Miller has done (and then some, I always considered Miller over-rated!). There are a few pics where the b&w is so stylish that it's hard to tell what's going on, on a few of the fx (such as explosions) are a tad too "comicky" to fit in, but overall, Palmer's pics take us on a fascinating tour of a stylish and believable noir world. The plot will be enjoyable to anyone who likes his Ludlum or Clancy with a dash of SF, and Palmer adds a welcome touch of tongue-in-cheek occasionally. One peevee : the download version is PDF, which is fine for printing, but lousy for screen reading. One could wish for landscape-format pages, since they utilize screen real estate far better. Then again, "River" is offered on paper as well, so I guess mr. Palmer had to stick with the portrait format. As one can tell from mr. Palmers webpage, he's a pro, and "River" is the work of one. I noticed in the galleries that the free pages of "River" have had disappointingly few viewers/readers. That's a shame - comics READERS miss a damn good read, comics CREATORS (regardless of their own style) miss a superb course in super-sharp storytelling. Poser COULD become the greatest thing that happened to visual storytellers since the speech bubble was invented, and mr. Palmer has given it a LARGE boost with this story.

I agree with thip. This is an EXCELLENT graphic novel, and I think the conversion of Poser to stark b&w is a very good idea. Not only does it play to poser's strengths, but minimizes its inherent weaknesses in textures and making human figures look uniform and mechanical. I've used this technique myself a few times (in Photoshop, check out the Threshold adjustment). The real genius here is the storytelling -- many people can create a single page illustration that looks nice, but Palmers is actually telling us a story, and that takes both artistry and skill. Fortunately, both are highly evident in what I've seen so far. It's not perfect (some of the word baloons are a bit awkwardly placed) and I agree with thip that there are a few panels where I had to focus to figure out exactly what was going on... but these are VERY minor issues. In general, this chapter was good enough for me to buy the printed book (please check out my comments on the cover, by the way). Finally, this actually reminded me mroe of Dave Gibbons work on the original British run of V FOR VENDETTA than it did of Frank Miller's work on Sin City. The original run of V (in Warrior magazine back in the 1980s -- yup, I'm that old!) was in b&w. The DC comic and graphic novel ran the story with color, which actually weakened the artwork a bit in my opinion. I'm looking forward to getting my print copy so I can post a full review later. Mike

That was David Lloyd on V, and yes, there was the same effort to minimise, to reduce the image to light and shadow, nothing else. I haven't officially released the new edition of the printed book yet - the plan is to try to get it reviewed, once my other projects are ready too - so you'll be one of the first people to read the new and different FIFTH chapter! IMP.