Remember Erin, the pink haired spy from the Progressive insurance commericials? Imagine those commericials as a webcomic, down to the "mid-Noughties Flash-animated advertisement" art style, and you'll have a good idea of what Sarah Zero is like.
Like Erin, Sarah Zierinski is made up of 30-second cliches. She's a rock star, an inventor, and a tomboy. She has a dead parent. She loves a guy, but pushes him away to hide from her feelings. Ignore what page 1 implies, you've read this story before, though since the overall storyline is fragmented and stretched like taffy, it is somewhat unique in execution.
And she's also a bit of a Mary Sue. Not that she's flawless, far from it, but the comic spends most of its time in Sarah's head. You will learn about her through a faux children's book, a Zero Punctuation parody and a long infographic, and Trevor's unfinished, blocky look is a (intentional?) metaphor for how characters not named Sarah are treated. She's self-depreciative and wants to be a better person, but due to the comic's stop-start pacing, we still don't know if she can put her desires to action. The obsessive focus on Sarah's backstory creates an emotional connection through brute force, but it comes at the cost of slowing the main plot down to a glacial pace. The entire comic, as of January 2015, takes place in one night. Compounding this problem are that nearly every page is a splash page, and the author seems to enjoy trolling his readers with stunts like making one page per second of a Youtube video
Those genre shifts I described do a lot to save the comic. Nearly every page has an attention-grabbing stylish touch that makes the flaws go down easier, and occasionally (like when Sarah remembers how she put her father in a coma) the stylishness comes with an emotional punch. The constant meta jokes are funny in a /v/ sort of way, and the art is borderline great as long as you don't think too hard about the anatomy.
It's a hard comic to untangle. I'm not sure if it's decent-but-flawed experiment, or a bland and vapid comic caked in glitter. I do know that, for better or worse, the comic has no serious plot. It's 100% Sarah Zierinski, and whether you'll like this will depend on whether you like her.
Webcomic A mess, but I sort of like it.
Remember Erin, the pink haired spy from the Progressive insurance commericials? Imagine those commericials as a webcomic, down to the "mid-Noughties Flash-animated advertisement" art style, and you'll have a good idea of what Sarah Zero is like.
Like Erin, Sarah Zierinski is made up of 30-second cliches. She's a rock star, an inventor, and a tomboy. She has a dead parent. She loves a guy, but pushes him away to hide from her feelings. Ignore what page 1 implies, you've read this story before, though since the overall storyline is fragmented and stretched like taffy, it is somewhat unique in execution.
And she's also a bit of a Mary Sue. Not that she's flawless, far from it, but the comic spends most of its time in Sarah's head. You will learn about her through a faux children's book, a Zero Punctuation parody and a long infographic, and Trevor's unfinished, blocky look is a (intentional?) metaphor for how characters not named Sarah are treated. She's self-depreciative and wants to be a better person, but due to the comic's stop-start pacing, we still don't know if she can put her desires to action. The obsessive focus on Sarah's backstory creates an emotional connection through brute force, but it comes at the cost of slowing the main plot down to a glacial pace. The entire comic, as of January 2015, takes place in one night. Compounding this problem are that nearly every page is a splash page, and the author seems to enjoy trolling his readers with stunts like making one page per second of a Youtube video
Those genre shifts I described do a lot to save the comic. Nearly every page has an attention-grabbing stylish touch that makes the flaws go down easier, and occasionally (like when Sarah remembers how she put her father in a coma) the stylishness comes with an emotional punch. The constant meta jokes are funny in a /v/ sort of way, and the art is borderline great as long as you don't think too hard about the anatomy.
It's a hard comic to untangle. I'm not sure if it's decent-but-flawed experiment, or a bland and vapid comic caked in glitter. I do know that, for better or worse, the comic has no serious plot. It's 100% Sarah Zierinski, and whether you'll like this will depend on whether you like her.