EyeCandy by Al Ewing and PJ Holden, a Review and Inside Look
You may remember that last month I did a sneak peek of the iPhone/iPod touch comic Murderdrome by Al Ewing and PJ Holden. Sadly, Murderdrome was rejected from Apple’s Application store for not meeting their community standards.
Not deterred by this, the guys at Infurious Comics went back to the drawing board (pun not intended) and came up with a new idea. The new comic is called ‘EyeCandy‘, and where Murderdrome was intended for a mostly adult audience, Eyecandy is aimed at a youth audience. Well, I should say really that it is aimed at parents, to be able to give something safe and fun for their kids to play with. I say this because I doubt many kids out there own their own iPhones, and because you need a credit card to buy something from the App store.
How you get the comic is by either going to the App store on your iPhone, and download the comic from there, or by downloading it from iTunes, and synching your iPhone/Touch with your computer. You will need to have an active Apple user account to be able to do this. For convenience this link will take you to the download site. The comic costs 99c, and should download pretty quickly.
As previously stated, it is aimed mostly at kids, but it works equally well for big kids, like me! The story is set in the American West, in the town of Dry Gulch. It is a humorous little adventure about the hapless ‘Masked Marshall’ and his inability to stop a bank being robbed. It is a great little tale with lots of laughs, and a little moral for the kids at the end. The bad guys end up hurting themselves, but no one gets killed or anything like that. The comic really reminds me of stories from British kids comics like The Beano, The Dandy, Topper etc. and a little of old Looney Tunes cartoons. The art is big and bold and very colorful. You will love it.
The best thing about it though, is that they have added all sorts of extras in to the comic, to make it a truly interactive experience. With a flick of your finger on the screen, you are able to go from the finished artwork, down to the inked art, then down to the pencils, which is really cool to see. Another extra is that you are able to pull up a colour pallete and paint your own colours onto the inked art, by picking a colour, and ‘painting’ on the screen with your finger. Another little extra is the cool horse toy add-on, which gives you a googly eyed picture of the horse from the story, which you can shake about to make its eyes move!
As this is a very visual and interactive experience, words don’t really do it justice, so here is a video of me playing with it:
Here is PJ Holden demonstrating the comic:
A bunch of people playing with it in line at the Apple Store:
So, if you’ve got an iPod Touch or iPhone, get over to the App store and download it now. It’s only 99c and is the most fun you will ever have with your thumb!
Issue Two should be out next month with a completely different story, new characters, and a new interactive toy. It will also have artwork from John McCrea, who is one of my favourite artists (not that PJ isn’t also!). I also have the inside scoop that the guys are taking another swipe at getting Murderdrome accepted by Apple. They have resubmitted it with a self-imposed 17+ rating attached to it. So far it hasn’t been rejected, where last time it only took Apple a couple of days to spit it out, so let’s keep our fingers crossed!
Related posts:
- iComics - The Future of Comics Brought to You by PJ Holden and Al Ewing, With Their New Comic Murderdrome
- Comic Book Review - Fear Agent #22
- The Daily Review - UBU BUBU #2
- The (Collected) Daily Review
- Comic Book Review - Crossed #0
“It’s only 99c and is the most fun you will ever have with your thumb!”
As much as I love PJ, I gotta admit, my thumb’s had a lot of fun in its time.
Hahaha, I knew someone would say that! I was just waiting to see who