The Bards Comic Relaunched #1

Nikki O'Shea was one of the first artists I ran into at Anime Boston's artists alley this year, and I picked up this compilation of her webcomic.


Title: The Bards Comic Relaunched
Issue: #1
Date: 2010
Publisher: Dragon Press Graphics
Writer: Nikki O'Shea
Artist: Nikki O'Shea

Standard comic format collection of the Bards Comic webcomic. This collection introduces Jack and Samantha, two new members of the Bards.

This issue starts off with a series of strips about something I could definitely relate to: the difficulties of creative work done in the presence of toddlers and cats. This was some good, funny, geeky, and true-to-life material.

From there, it was time to put the band back together, or rather, to recruit some new members of the Bards before the intrepid musicians (and artist!) set out on their latest adventure.

As you have probably figured out from past reviews, I'm a sucker for a good geeky autobiographical comic, so I was having a lot of fun reading this just because of the familiarity of the different personality-types who appeared in the story.

The jokes were good, and the plot looks like it has potential, although a lot of the second half of this issue was setup and introductions. The comic suffers a bit in its transfer to print in terms of layout and small font sizes, but that is partly the result of trying to get a decent number of comic strips (41!) into one issue.

Overall, this was entertaining and fun with lots of good nerdy references.

Rating: 7.5/10