MTJpub said:
Ticklefur,
It's obvious by your comments that you did not enjoy this comic. I respect your opinion and I am sorry it did not meet with your satisfaction. However outside of saying it is a waste of money and that it's one of the worst tickle comics that you had the misfortune to buy. You left me and anyone reading your remarks without a clue as to why you feel the way you do.
This comic was first released in August of 2003 and has been a steady seller for us. In my opinion the art is amazing. The story is well done and the preview pictures give the potential customer a fairly good repensentation of what you can expect to fine within.
In fairness over the years we have had a couple of customers point out that the facial expressions are a bit stiff in the tickling scenes. Which I happen to agree with. But overall we have had very positive feedback and if the artist was still available we would have published a sequel by now with a focus on getting those facial expressions improved.
Let me reiterate that I respect your opinion but it would be beneficial to me and any potential customers if you would provide some particulars. Afterall tastes come in many flavors and often one man's trash is another man's treasure 🙂
Morandilas
MTJ Publishing
Dear Morandilas,
Sorry for the rather concise review, but I was attending to a lot of email and other e-chores at the time. Also, the messages most people leave on these forums are brief, including the positive reviews such as "I like it," and didn't think me also being brief would be such a problem.
However, if you'd like a more detailed review, very well.
At first glance, the art looks very nice. But on closer inspection, in my opinion, the characters are stiff and lifeless. There is no real sense of movement; all the women are drawn in nothing more than fairly generic poses. The anime style of the art is incredibly generic as well. Panel after panel, it's nothing but a series of single character shots bunched together in an atempt to be groups scenes. That attempt fails.
I feel it fair to say that the so-called facial expressions are almost non-existant. The women and their faces look like cardboard cut-outs, and have about as much emotional range. I have seen thousands of anime-style drawings in my day, and hundreds of hours of anime footage, and the manga/anime style of this series is at the bottom end.
In keeping with the lifelessness of the women, there's virtual no interaction between them and the background. It's extremely obvious that they were drawn seperately and then pasted onto the backgrounds. And it shows. Characters and background do not blend, do not interact. The use of blur and smudge does not work at all.
As for the tickle action, it's
horrible. Tickling is a very intimate act, one of direct contact, stimulation, and reaction. The endless tentacles and feathers used in this comic are, well, no other word for it than
lame.
There is absolutely nothing shown that makes me believe that the tentacles or feathers are in contact with the girls' bodies. They simple do
not look they're being tickled, not one bit. To add to this is the lack of any reactions from the Lees. Again, they could be cardboard cut-outs for all their reactions.
The whole comic from start to finish is, in my opinion, very poorly done. Even the font used for the dialogue doesn't fit the visuals, and looks as if it was placed almost as an afterthought.
In
total contrast, all a tickle fan has to do is look at the first issue of JMAIT to see what a truly great tickle comic is. There's a good story, wonderful charcters you feel for and become attached to (I feel *nothing* for Silver or any of the others), excellent tickle action (what there is, but it being the first issue I know BZ had to get the setup done) and when Julie's being tickled, you can really see and feel it.
Additionally, I have the good fortune to be close friends with Bandito, and have already seen the entire first issue of Bounce Chix, Temple of Bounce. I was even lucky enough to give him and White Lotus my feedback and toss in some suggestions, at his request. I can truthfully say TOB is perhaps the finest tickle comic I have EVER read, and I can't recommend it enough to the forum-goers out there. TOB is a
must buy! BZ will really have his work cut out to match it
I consider myself a long-time and loyal fan of MTJ, and while I've wound up with a few lemons like Stargirl Silver, overall I think MTJ is great.
Oh, and for anyone out there (not you M) who may get in a snit over this review: if you can't handle negative criticism, don't put your work in the public eye, and especially not the internet. I thought this comic was horrible, and with very good reason. It's not a slam against MTJ or Morandilas, whom I respect very much.
