Shake the Lake Volume #1

By Hervé St-Louis
September 22, 2018 - 11:43

It’s summer, you’re 23, jobless but you are a pro wakeboarding expert. What do you do after you trash your place with a party from hell? Well, you and your buddies find a job at a yacht club in neighbouring Arizona and you compete like your life depended on it.

Shake the Lake is like those young adult film about the redemption of the main aimless character who we hope by the end of the story gets the girl even though he’s a doofus with skills. If this comic was a film or a television series, it would be a typical mainstream show which would attract a wide audience. In comics, this story which features the basic life of young people is considered an independent comic.

While the first page may scare you into jumping in because of its twelve intricate panels, the creators of this comic quickly gain their footing and slow down the pace enough to provide nice layouts of Callun, the hero performing flips in intricate compositions later in the comic.

This issue is the set up one where the creators explore the relationships between Callun and his friends and hint at future conflict to emerge. The love story is nascent and will probably explode in future stories. There are a few wakeboarding sequences throughout the comic, but I wish there has been more. Such stories are tough to balance because the audience really wants to see the action but the set up and construction is also necessary for the story to make sense.

You’ll enjoy the wakeboarding and the care used to create the background as well as the colloquiality and chemistry between the characters. The comic uses 3D software for the character, the locales and the vehicles. Many of the characters are retraced and shaded with crosshatching which make them more solid. While I don’t mind the integration of 3D contents, with the style used here, strong contour ink lines would help solidify the comic and extract the characters and foreground elements from the backgrounds.

I support comics that attempt to reach new topics and adventures. There are no flying cars or aliens here. It’s a story about a young guy who will probably make a difference in the life of others while having fun along the way. We need more comics like that so do check it out at ComixCentral.com.

Rating: 7.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12

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