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Edentia:
Other Forces
June /2004
Publisher: Occy Design
Writer: Duane Haylett
Artist: Duane Haylett
Price: N/A
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A few months back Cape Town native Duane Haylett
released his first book in the Edentia series. I take a look at
this fun all-ages comic and see just what it’s all about.
Prince Corgan and his guardian Occy
live in a Galaxy near the edge of the Universe on a small and dry
planet called Horosa. They get into all kinds of trouble and meet
an interesting new friend when out racing their air bikes one day.
Then they’re off to explore new worlds in Corgan’s father’s
new ship the Mantaliner.
Based in a universe very similar to that of the Star Wars
trilogy both aids and hinders this books chances of success.
First off it aids a lot of readers with a familiar starting point
and can appeal to a more mainstream audience due to its familiar
feel and play-off of the Star Wars theme. Secondly it can be a hindrance
due to the fact that it tends to lean too heavily on this familiarity
and it would have been nice to see something more original come
out of this promising book. If you are a Star Wars and Sci-Fi fanatic
this comic will be a fun read as it has more Star Wars references
and in-jokes than you can shake a stick at.
Unfortunately the story itself is not that gripping and comes across
as boring in parts. The first half has some nice touches, especially
the ‘Hoppercraft’ scene which was a fun twist of mockery
on the sci-fi/Star Wars genre. The second half of the book failed
to grab me as much as the first and was a rather tedious and uneventful
read. The second half also suffers from the feeling of it being
a prolonged setup for the next book in the series.
The art is not particularly amazing and Haylett has gone for a simple
style of storytelling with flat colours and large panels. His character
renderings are incredibly inconsistent and sketchy and his angles
are rough. However his use of technology in his storyline
is clever as he gets to show off his strongest artistic offerings
in this area. At times I found the lettering to be annoying
as his use of large speech balloons and fonts would often obscure
the artwork.
With only 29 pages to its name and via its use of large panels the
amount of bang for your buck is limited. That being said this is
still a great piece of production with a gloss cover, in an oversized
format and it comes in full colour. I love the way South
African creators are getting more serious in this area as we start
to see more and more high quality comics in local bookstores.
A fun, light-hearted all-ages read with a lot of Star Wars references
thrown into the mix. A bit on the boring side when it comes to the
second half of the story and the art is rather rough looking. Nice
tight production in a glorious full colour oversized format.
Score 3/10
Reviewed By:Iain Duncan
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Comic Reviews
