Yeah, I've decided that I like this comic, but it's really… frustrating to read. The artistic style is appealing and surprisingly detailed, even if it's a bit silly in places (like the pointless censorship, which seems to be mostly for the benefit of people reading the strip at work; it's hosted on the Katbox, of all places, which features stuff a lot naughtier than this), and the characters have depth, although the lack of variation in design means they all have a tendency to look alike. (This is especially true of the dragons, who are color-coded; in strips like this one, which takes place at night, and in earlier ones, which are in
black and white, they're virtually impossible to tell apart.)
But what bugs me the most is the story itself. This comic comes really, really close to being good, but the progression of the plot and the overwhelmingly bleak outlook hobble it pretty badly. A series like
Prequel, for example, has a tendency to drag and is generally pretty dark, but you keep reading it because Katia is actually improving and making progress, however haltingly. Then you have
Girl Genius, which is notorious for its plodding plotline, but even there, you have characters learning things and more details about the setting gradually being revealed.
Not with
Draconia Chronicles. The vast majority of the comic is exactly like this page: angst and misery piled high on top of more angst and misery. The strip has been online for a decade now, but only a few days (?) have passed in the comic world, so the plot is more or less exactly in the same place it was ten years ago, and buddy, it's a bad world to live in. Virtually the entire cast is made up of psychopaths, war criminals, or otherwise damaged people, to the point where it's easier to count the ones who
aren't unstable versus the ones who
are. Everybody is such a giant, revenge-fueled asshole that if most of the cast were to simply
die, it would probably improve the state of things.
There is no hope in this world. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. It's not exactly
Warhammer 40K with furries, but the premise is similar: war is forever, peace is impossible, and anyone who dares to believe otherwise just ends up like poor Kelani here, ready to check out by her own hand. (Cinder is not saving Kelani out of any concern for her life, but because she's under orders to bring her back alive so the
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