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Instant Classic - Brian Caroll
main characters: 'Citizen' Kate, Author, Litchfield
appears five times a week - in English only
Instant Classic is a comic about a guy and a gal who really love movies. And who make them. Much like Brian Caroll, the creator of Instant Classic.
That's IC in a nutshell. Kate is a Citizen Kane-obsessing and occasionally very annoying girl who doesn't seem to reside in this reality too consciously, and Author is her sensitive, intelligent, down-to-earth counterpart. They make for a funny couple, and the strip has a few very nicely timed jokes, but all in all - as the author admits - it's mostly about building the two characters (and their beatnik nemesis, Litchfield's) and less about intriguing plot twists or sharp, witty jokes.
The few cameos and references so far, however, are pretty funny, and I'm not saying this is a comic without brains - far from it. But it's not a hilarious daily hit, for instance. I guess you can best compare it to comics like Strip Tease or Eightland's "Road Waffles", in the sense that, if you isolate the episodes they're not really funny or may not make much sense, but the characters go through developments in their relationships with one another and the audience gets to know them pretty well. And, when done well, as it is in Instant Classic, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Plus, who knows where this comic's plots will be going once the characters are firmly established.
Brian Caroll has also done an older running comic called BriWorld, in which the seeds for Instant Classic are reasonably clearly present. It's worth a good read, also - and it's nice to see such a leap ahead from the BriWorld style of drawing to the style of IC - if such a leap is made with every new comic Caroll starts, then I can't wait for the next ones.
Click here to read "Instant Classic" for yourself |
