By Casey Muller
Clan of the Cats is a good webcomic, but not for obvious reasons.
It
fills the niche of the comic that is not technically good enough for
publication in a print medium. This will probably keep the strip from
ever being profitable.
At first glance, it is clearly a somewhat amateur production. There
are misspellings, the drawing is crude, and the attempt at daily
one-liners grows thin quickly. Additionally, it comes off as whiney
and self-pitying for the first several weeks. To really appreciate
it,
it is necessary to look at it as a creative outlet for the author.
Even then, it is difficult to see the story past the mistakes. It
is
occasionally difficult to tell characters apart, or be sure who is
speaking, and the flow of the story stops each time there is a blatant
grammar problem.
Clan of the Cats is a very ambitious undertaking. The prospect of
putting out a daily comic is a very difficult one. The author has
chosen to have the strip focus on both developing the characters and
plotline, while at the same time follow the newspaper comic convention
of making each strip funny in and of itself.
This strip is a monument to the concept of self-publishing on the
internet. It allows the author to experiment with characters that
express thoughts and desires much like any other art form. As the
comic progresses, the production values do get better, and it is
possible that this effort will allow the author to eventually go
professional.