I was looking at steveuy.com, the writer and artist for one of my favorite short story comics/graphic novels. There’s a side-story sequel of Feather, called Feather Rex, that I have never read. Unfortunately, this guy’s store doesn’t deliver to Canada :'( I may have to get these via other means (eBay? Amazon?).

Anyways, as I was browsing around his site, I noticed that his entire Feather series is on the internet, in .jpg form. I don’t believe I ever noticed that before, weird. It’s under http://www.steveuy.com/feather/previewissues.html. Anyways, I thought that was pretty awesome, that these “preview pages” had pretty much the whole story, in image form. Unfortunately, you’d have to click on each image individually…it seemed like the readability/user-interface could have been improved. So what I did was broke out Emacs Dreamweaver and wrote, in PHP, a script to output all the images from the website via some loops and echos into a single page. I perfected the script, ran it once in Internet Explorer, went to the IE cache and voilà. All the image on my computer. Broke out RENAME.exe, a rename program I found over the internet that I’ve been consistently using for years, renamed all the files quickly and then built: http://warrenshea.com/images/feather/.

Awesome, no? And best of all, all these images were already on the internet, no scanning or hacking at all. Just some creativity :)

Review

Storyline – 10/10
I’ve read this series of comics more than any other short story of comics I’ve ever had. During my first read, I was blown with how…light-hearted turned dramatic this story is. While I don’t re-read the story often, each time I pick it up, I notice more to the story, themes, foreshadowing, flashbacks, symbolism…but what I find is that ever time I read it, I get more emotional. I never get emotional during a first viewing (of almost anything). I think my brain works hard just to make sure I understand everything (I’m not very bright…). Repetition and solid understanding begin to open up my emotional ranges as I start to focus more on character than plot. But imo, Feather has got it all. A great premise, hints of a long history and backstory, it’s simple yet…unexpected. Reasonable yet unpredictable. I mean, you could read it once and get it. But if you read it over and over, I think you start to feel it more. At least, that’s how I feel when I re-read it.

I also love that it’s a complete story. There’s a beginning, middle and end. But there aren’t really questions…it’s all wrapped up into a nice little package. That does make me wonder how Feather Rex is…

Art – 10/10
What caused me to get this book was the art. But not the art of the cover of Feather. It was this guy’s Iceman covers that first caused me to purchase Eden’s Trail, which I also thought was spectacular. It’s definitely not your typical comic. While the detail in the line art is less than a comic, less than even a manga, more like an anime, the coloring is spectacular. Spectacular that even in 2004, 7 years ago, it’s some of the best coloring I’ve ever seen. That each page has different hues, and that they can change from dark blue to bright yellow/red in moments. It’s really something. This thing is less a comic book than a movie (wow, now there would be an awesome idea…). My only complaint, which I’ve come to accept, is that the characters have no nose. That bothered the heck out of me at the start but after so many reads, it’s no longer noticeable.

Character – 10/10
If I could give a rating higher than 10, I would. While the plot is great, this really is a character driven story. It’s all about the characters, the choices they make and the paths they choose. Realistic and understandable…it’s incredible at how a relationship between two friends can be so…..dramatic.