Strange Someone - Full Review

I Love When I Get To Say That

I don't like giving spoilers away in my reviews, so writing about 'Strange Someone' is proving a little difficult. Much of the appeal of this webcomic is that it tells a not-so original story in a pretty original way. Taking story elements that are typically exclusive to one genre and fitting them into another. For example, taking superheros and putting them into a horror story. 'Strange Someone' attempts to mix two types of stories that are not generally mixed. And, thankfully, it does a decent job at it.

In addition, 'Strange Someone' earns bonus points from me for being a webcomic that actually tells a story and then ends. I'm sure many are tired of my rant about the need for more short story webcomics, but thankfully, this one does indeed end with a self-contained and rather solid story.

'Stange Someone' starts out with Liz, a writer, meeting up with Jeff, a nurse, in attempt to get some insight into the workings of a hospital for her new book. As the two begin to get to know each other, Liz can't help but notice something peculiar about Jeff and his friends. What follows is a cute little story that lasts just long enough to not lose my interest.

'Strange Someone' has found a way to be both very subtle and extremely blatant. While the plot itself take a bit of time revealing itself, the hints and clues about the twists that are dropped can be pretty obvious to anyone paying attention. Each scene seems designed around the purpose of pointing out the main character's odd qualities. I'm sure this was a necessary choice as this webcomic was written as a single story with a beginning, middle and end. Like movies and TV episodes, there isn't an abundance of time to tell the story so each scene needs to develop the characters and/or plot.

While it is pretty easy to figure out what's happening fairly early on, there was enough doubt to keep me wondering if I was right. Even when you do understand the situation, you may still find you want to see it through to the end just to see how it all ends.

Some may say that the story ends just as it is getting interesting, but that's not a fair statement. This particular story is about Jeff and Liz; it is not about all the other events that get revealed near the end. The rest is just context. It's a bold choice and I like how it was executed.

Oddly, about half way through 'Strange Someone', the art style changes dramatically. While I personally preferred the original art style, the second style works well enough. It can just be difficult to tell what is going on during the second half as the art work has a rougher, more grungy feel to it. Overall, both styles are very well done and have a level of quality to them.

One of the largest negatives going for this webcomic has little to do with the webcomic itself. I hate the website. Not only does it run slowly, but it can be at times difficult to navigate. Hosted on veiledtruths.com there are apparently a number of webcomics sharing one domain. This leads to a great deal of confusion as main menu options like 'main' and 'extras' do not link to 'Strange Someone'.

There also seems to be an odd bug where, when reading the comic in order, it skips the second to last page. To read it, you'll have to skip to the last page and hit previous.

I've read 'Strange Someone' twice now and even after knowing the ending, I can't say the experience was changed much. Since I had already assumed what was happening fairly early on, the twist wasn't much of a surprise. I feel bad even saying there's a twist as that'll make many look for it when they would not have the first time through.

I do recommend reading it. 'Strange Someone' is a short webcomic and at least deserves the 45 minutes to an hour it'll take to read through it. There are not enough completed webcomics out there, so the ones that do end, should be read.