Devil's Bones: a Natural One Without a Dialog Fix!
Webcomics are rarely presented in shockwave flash format. The only real notable exception is the "Broken Saints" graphic novel, which was rendered via photoshop rasters as opposed to vectors. It also featured panning frames and sound, unlike the debut episode of "The Devil's Bones". This one confirms my long-nagging suspicion that crisp comic-styled images can be rendered in Flash, so if you still feel suspicious about its potential as an animation tool, it still has plenty of merits as a drawing tool.
The chief problem I have with rating a flash webcomic is that they are closely related to slide shows. Just click to advance through the images. A moron can put one of these together. It doesn't sound too impressive from a technical perspective, in other words.
The other problem is that there are few examples to compare this comic to. I have read a few episodes of flash webcomics but those were animated. "The Devil's Bones" lacks that quality (again, slide show) and, as a digital presentation, suffers the same drawbacks as others in the format.
Traditional comic book stories are usually spread across 24 pages worth of content (6 sheets, folded and double-sided), often dividing those pages up into panels of various makes, shapes and sizes. This format has regimented and disciplined comic authors into creating concise stories. The plots are well-defined, with a presented conflict that is often resolved with some loose ends that get tied up in the next edition of the story.
Now, the following criticisms of "The Devil's Bones" apply to many webcomics in general. The fact that you're not shelling bones to convert pulp into another edition of a comic means you don't bother to use specific number of pages--you use as many pages as you like. This has editorial problems in that authors tend to meander; they just don't know when to quit or really consider the composition of each page. I have seen webcomics with such an overload of dialogue (often the biggest and most common problem) that I wondered why I was reading so much at once, especially if I haven't been reading on a daily basis.
In "The Devil's Bones", the plot is never truly satisfied because the protagonists' motivations are nonexistent... or merely undefined. Little is understood about this world, except there is a nameless gorgon-like being who wanders the desert and sports a style of dress that ends up explained in one of the reviews below mine... but not the comic. Nobody's names are mentioned, actually. God forbid anything is ever explained in the comic itself. Even the most bombastic laser movie remembers to prescribe motivations for its characters, considering the number of explosions they have to endure.
The dialogue sounds smart but it really needs to ditch most if not all of the profanity. When you write comics, you write dialogue. The tricky but comic-saving technique is to adopt colloquialisms for each character, so A: you can tell characters apart, and B: they don't sound like extensions of the writers' ego. The author is likely a big fan of swearing. Good for him. But if everybody swears practically every line, that really botches the characterization. It homogenizes the dialogue. The other issue is that it gets sparse during moments of calm--when exposition is in order--and overflowing in the event of heavy action, like a fight scene. Shut your damn mouth and smack that pig! Geez.
Another consistency problem arises when we realize that neither scene has anything in common with one another. Nothing. I already have a minor dandruff problem as it is, I don't feel like scratching my head anymore than necessary!
The criticism of there being no sound is pointless; this is a comic book in digital form. The artwork for characters is solid, although distance shots and backgrounds look too simple. Hyptosis can do better than this.
In all, "The Devil's Bones" has a very shaky first episode. Things better clear things up and quick, but despite its issues, the first episode has enough weirdness to merit waiting for the second one.