What makes you pick up a graphic novel? For me, it’s always the art. I can grow to love a story even if it’s not my preferred genre if the art is great enough. Joyride accomplished that but just barely.
I’m not a huge fan of sci-fi in general; space just doesn’t cut it for me I guess. So when I got approved for this I was intrigued but a bit biased.
The art is definitely neat. I loved the character designs very much even if they weren’t the flashiest out there. The line-art was clean, the colors muted but pleasing. I did think the character’s facial expressions were a bit stiff and they could have been drawn in a more expressive way to accurately convey their emotions. While the art was nice, it wasn’t…unique. I felt like I had seen the style before and nothing stood out to me.
What I did not like about this graphic novel was the distinct lack of world-building. I’m still not sure what the whole plot is really about; I’m guessing it’ll be developed more in the next volumes. The dialogue also didn’t help in contributing much to the plot line. It was wasted a lot in cheesy lines which I guess gave some personality to the characters but just managed to make me cringe a lot.
There needs to be a lot more character development for me to feel something for these characters. Even the villains are far too vague and out of reach that I don’t find myself rooting for the heroes. And some of the secondary characters seem completely pointless. Adding some depth to these characters would help this story immensely.
I can definitely say this series has potential but there’s a lot of work to be done both with the art and the writing.
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Boricuan Bookworms 