Black Magic

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Rating Summary

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Background
Somebody had to review this. It turned out to be even worse than it looked.

Downfall
This thing always sucked.

Story and Plot
The background of the story is about "the eternal goddess" who has created six immortal deities to protect Earth, and who also made pieces of enchanted jewelry to protect the deities. Unfortunately Queen Maida of Scaylum tried to harm them, only to eventually wind up magically trapped inside Julius's enchanted collar. The deities would have descendants, and one, namely Loretta Dalma, was foretold to be the one who would release Maida. As of the story's beginning, Loretta and the other descendants live as socialites, forbidden to touch the enchanted jewelry and no longer worshipped as gods. At Organa Manor, Loretta is woken early one morning by her tutor, and her duty for the day is to welcome juveniles to Salt Lake Village.

Let's pause here. It seems the author has built her world in haste, without putting much thought in its development. Who were the deities, what were they supposed to do, who is this Queen Maida and what was her grudge against them, why would the deities have descendants and what is their purpose? The story already has gotten off on the wrong foot.

But to continue: At the Village, Loretta meets up with Melanie, who tells her that she and Gabriel are to attend a socialite party, hosted by a very rich Italian. Aunt Raquel cannot attend this party so she sends her most trusted employee in her stead. Unfortunately, we discover that Loretta's cousin Elise dislikes her, though she does make outfits for the upcoming party. Sasha is another girl who also dislikes Loretta. She is, however, guilty of stealing the enchanted jewelry described earlier, and also of breaking arms and violins for spite. Our heroines go to the party where they already are arguing. But they agree on not liking the host. Later on, Gabriel realizes her mistake in inviting Loretta to this party. Also, it turns out Sasha has even more enemies that we first realized. Not surprising as Sasha is not a nice person. She turns on the charm when she meets Loretta, but she does not have noble intentions in mind. In fact, her goal is to convince Loretta to release Maida, but Loretta refuses to do so. Uh-oh, now Sasha finds herself called onto the proverbial carpet for her failure. But Maida gives Sasha another chance. However, Loretta discovers additional problems.

This is just the beginning, but the art is so bad I cannot bring myself to go any further. Even Wormcurse was more readable than this.

Art review
The worst part of this webcomic. Ignoring the coloring for the moment, the figures are stiff, inconsistent, and erratic, and the artwork does not improve one iota as the webcomic continues. Facial profiles have weird hatchet shapes, eyes are often too large or otherwise have odd shapes, mouths are often placed too high or low, fingers are often too short or too long or out of proper proportion, limbs are often U-shaped rather than properly bent.

But the worst problem at all is the sameface syndrome that occurs in several other webcomics reviewed here. The bad part of that is that it is extremely difficult to distinguish the characters from another, the crude art style not helping, and making it that much harder to tell who is who in each panel. Even in the horribly drawn Wormcurse we could tell one character from another, but it is not at all easy in this webcomic, and I had to read it several times to figure out which character was which.

Now let's cover the coloring. Ugh, it seems the author is trying to use every color she can find with the idea of being artsy. Yes, other webcomics listed here have used deliberately unrealistic color choices with the idea of being artistic, but that idea only works if done properly. The author seems to have the idea that more odd colors are better, but the end result is that the pictures look ugly and garish rather than aesthetic.



Besides the quality, though the story takes place in the United States centuries in the future, the pictures suggest a Victorian-type atmosphere a la Teahouse. Okay, the characters are supposed to be socialites and there might be a retro-Victorian fad in that era, and the future would not necessarily look like a Jetsons cartoon. Still, the quaint tone of the scenario doesn't seem appropriate. Also the speech balloons usually don't have pointers but use different colored lettering for the dialog to indicate who is saying what, the way Looney Tunes Reborn had done. That trope really doesn't work too well.

UPDATE: The author has made a degree of improvement in her artwork after all, so I gave it a better rating. Still not good though.

Writing review
The story starts badly and continues badly. Yes, I only saw the first couple of chapters but that for me was enough.

As mentioned before, the introduction was half-baked, but when the story proceeds, we are barely introduced to the characters and learn little about them. Sasha intends to release the captive Queen Maida, but what is her motive? And if the characters weren't supposed to touch the enchanted jewelry in the first place, why couldn't these pieces be locked far away from anybody's reach so there would be no danger of them being used for nefarious reasons? Already the story is making little sense, and it probably won't improve.

Author biography
The author goes by the name of "sacredhyacinth", and I could not help but be reminded of Hyacinth Bucket of the Keeping Up Appearances TV show. Though the author's page says, "I need to feed my wife and kids", suggesting a male author, she really is a woman.

Conclusion
A fantasy story like this could have been good, but it is so ineptly done it became a disasterpiece. Shockingly enough, this story does have some readers, so I guess it is enough for the author to want to keep at it. Highly unrecommended for anyone else though.

Links

 * Sacredhyacinth's YouTube channel
 * Tales of Salt Lake Village, another webcomic from this author, and probably no better.
 * Lillith Blackwell, this one about a female detective. Also not promising.