Webcomic Retcons can do wonders.
Normally, I'm not a fan of retcons, but in this case, it's more than justified. Not only do the early chapters and art now fit the storyline, but the story itself is far more believable if not realistic. Just remove the magic and replace Drow with the European population of the Middle Ages, and this story would be a valid historical drama.
The art is also wonderfully done, and the world is truly fleshed out. Readers can tell that the author clearly put great efforts to keep the Drowtales universe internally consistent, and that's not easy, especially in a daily release format.
The Chapter One cover does lie a bit. While it's true that there are no heroes in the story, there are some clear villains, even if they delude themselves into thinking they're not.
Seneh'ka is single-handedly responsible for turning an orphanage/mental hospital into the pit of insanity (and garbage dump) known as the V'loz Rez clan that we all know today, not to mention doing a wonderful impersonation of "angel of death" mengele with her horrific experiments in tainting (which become central to the story later), as well as being directly responsible for a fate worse than death for Kiel's mother.
Snadhyarune(s), Sarvswati, and Zahless not only murdered their own mother, but founded the Nidra'chaal clan and to this day are guilty of committing numerous atrocities, and continue to do so, either directly, or by using Nidra'chaal agents. Should their plans come to fruition, they could easily be responsible for the destruction of their own race, not to mention countless other races on their world.
There's no where near enough room to get into even a brief description of KALKI, and do it justice.
The story is engaging, and the characters are sympathetic, so much so that they could be people you meet on the street.
The only real downside is that there's no obvious "good" side, and that tends to be more than some people can handle from a webcomic, especially one that is released daily.
I strongly recommend this series to people willing to expand their horizons, and stretch their brain.
Those looking for a simple laugh, or an overly simplified battle between good and evil are not going to be happy. This comic DOES require some heavy thinking and putting aside one's own morality to see things through the eyes of others.
WebComic Wonderful art, decent story, but its best read if you don't consider some things
As far as webcomics go, Drowtales has a good few things going for it. It has spectacular art, the best of any webcomic out there, and a fairly complicated and multi-layered story with numerous characters who are almost always deeper then initial characterizations would have you believe. It really can be quite enjoyable… provided you don’t think too deeply on a few details regarding the world of Drow Tales.
One of the first things that becomes apparent in Drowtales is that the writer has a severe adoration for the titular Drow. Drow have magic (‘mana), drow live forever (thanks to feeding off mana from eachother), Drow have the best stuff, Drow are super successful, Drow are the strongest, the fastest, the prettiest… about the only major problem they have (beyond infighting) is that their mana leaves them open to demonic possession, and even that doesn’t seem to be as much of a big deal as it once was. A lot of this is nothing particularly special in any setting with elves of any kind, but Drowtales takes it to the most ludicrous degree possible. Other races exist in this setting, but given how much better these particular Drow seem to be compared to them, one has to ask why?
Humans, orcs, dwarves… these creatures exist only to make the Drow look better (and be their slaves), and if ever they get brought up, expect them to fail miserably compared to said drow. Such examples include a dwarf sneak attack not so much as causing a dent to a caravan and ending up slaughtered, and an entire human kingdom ending up curb stomped by a small group of very young drow followed up by a small raiding party. When the story focuses upon the Drow alone it’s pretty good, but whenever anything that isn’t Drow comes into the picture it starts to show off the very worst excesses in fantasy literature. Seriously, James Cameron didn’t love the Na’vi as much as the writers of Drowtales love their drow.
So in short, provided you don’t think too deeply on these things (as well as the implications of copyright infringement), this is an okay webcomic storywise, one that at least goes the extra mile when describing the society and world that the characters inhabit. Basically if you can ignore the serious hard-on the writers have for the drow in this setting, you’ll be fine.
Webcomic A good story
Pros
-Regular updates
-Giant
-Good artwork
-Long story,about webs of conspiracy,feuding and war in an interesting fantasy setting, between a great variety of characters. Slavery is common,and civil strife is rife , which sort of makes me think of ancient Rome.If you like the change in cultural feel engendered by such things then you may well like this story .
It is not all good however as occasionally characters will just randomly overcome situations,and problems, with out any logical foundation from either any real world persons experience , and may even make no sense in the world it's set in. These however only take hold of the story a very small amount of the time , and are rarely the main or only focus of the chapter if they do .
For example some people complain about when a group of main characters stormed a castle . They say that it makes the other races irrelevant and pathetic (although this is judged based on basically one chapter) , and the author won't let the drow lose .
But I view that chapter somewhat differently , I mean even if I accepted the fact that the other races are irrelevant, that doesn't necessarily make the whole on balance story bad . The bigger problem is that the chapter there was ;
-Boring , why should I care if the characters kill or maim people or succeed , when they (the human kingdom) were never or barely shown directly doing bad things (meaning their's no sense of satisfaction with their comeuppance) , never knew who they were (meaning I can't feel any sort of pity or sympathy when they snuff it) , there's never any tension as the story nor the characters can convince me they are in any danger, and they're distracting from things which are interesting so why are they even there? To quote Mr. Plinkett , "it's the same damn thing if they're there , or not there".
However , the chapter had relatively little of that contained in it , it was a small part of the chapter for me . Also the part being complained about only directly makes up 1% of the total story (literally 1%). So there's no real reason to hate the story for that reason (beyond placing high importance that the different species must be equal in all appearances), as there is 98-99% of the rest of the story to dislike . However I could not find any major faults in the rest, on the whole . So I still call it good .
WebComic A resounding "ugh".
There are some webcomics I stop reading becasue I have to-I'm out of archive, it's past my bedtime, my computer's got a case of the gremlins or what have you, and there are some webcomics that I stop reading because I want to- The characters are unlikeable and I feel alienated/depressed/offended by the story. This is one of the latter. The culture's Blue And Orange Morality rubs me the wrong way and the majority of characters feel like Black Mage without the longsuffering attitude, incompetence, and Bumbling Sidekick that makes him funny (and indeed, at all tolerable), or get traumatized and/or killed horribly. A big chunk of it feels like Avatar without the charm, namely that bit near the end where the humans get fed up and try to beat the aliens smug blue faces in (it didn't quite work, but at least they just didn't just bend down and take it like drowtales' humans do). I have to admit, the artwork's of phenominal quality, but that's hardly a reason to read the comic when I'm hoping for the setting to spontaneously implode.
WebComic And the award for Most Improved goes to...
I started reading DrowTales because I have a longstanding Bile Fascination with drow, and having read several reviews, I did not expect to enjoy this comic. However, having finished an archive binge, I am now suffering from awesomeness withdrawal.
You could use DrowTales as a case study in what you should and should not do in a webcomic. Using dialogue to bind consecutive pages together and make them flow, using the layout of panels to convey emotion, and much more, I didn't realize how basic and important these things are until I saw the author take ten years to learn how to do them.
The best thing I could say about the first twelve or so chapters is that it is an earnest effort by an inexperienced author. He shows flashes of being able to write well, but only flashes. The art is not great either. The author had not yet developed much of a sense for color palettes or good character design, with garish results, nor a sense of layout and shot composition. There's a few interesting ideas hiding in there, I appreciate what the author is trying to do, but across the board, it's really not executed well.
The rest of part 1 (up to chapter 33) is at least enjoyable enough to push through without having to skip ahead every few chapters to remind myself that yes, it does get better. Slowly, slowly, the author learns how to write, worldbuild, and do good art. Regarding this section, I second pretty much everything that @stutebaker says in their review.
Part 2, though... Night-and-day improvement. The art is truly excellent, but the writing is merely pretty good. It has (mostly) exchanged narm for awesomeness, and learned how to achieve emotional force. (I teared up several times in the last few chapters.) The worldbuilding is much better fleshed-out, and its weirder elements downplayed.
So, in all, would I recommend DrowTales? Honestly, no. If it was just part 2, the answer would be an absolute yes. But as it is, much of part 2 wouldn't make as much sense without the characterization, worldbuilding, and general context set out in part 1, and part 1 is bad enough that I'm really not sure it's worth it. But if you're willing to push through some real garbage to get to the gold, go ahead.