Wind and Wasteland

Writing and art done by Alex Chow

Reviewed by Sammie Mifsud 

While I was perusing through the good old internet, I found the web comic Wind and Wasteland. This was created by Alex Chow. When I dug deeper into the contact information on the author's website I found out something super cool. He is actually a graduate of Sheridan College's Classical Animation Program. 

Wind and Wasteland is set in the year 2073. There was a huge war and by the time it ended in the year 2042...most of the world's population had perished. Those who survived tried their best to rebuild society but that came to a stop after a group called the "Sunny Days Liberation Front" terrorized civilians. In year 2073 the biggest city had become an extremely dangerous place to live. 

Miranda Kline is the main character in Wind and Wasteland. She may look like your average day 19 year old girl, but she is actually much more than that. She was made into something called wraiths. Miranda dedicates her life investigating Sunny Days Liberation Front and hopes to stop it once and for all. 

                                                       

What first attracted me to this web comic was the absolutely beautiful art. It really drew me in and once I saw it, I couldn't really stop myself from reading it. The art style, at times, is very roughly done. Not only that, there is not much color used overall. The color that is used the most is red. Other than that the comic is mostly done in whites and a grey scale. 

While reading Wind and Wasteland I realized it was quite serious, from the overall art style to the way the characters spoke. Initially I was surprised when I came across a change of style that was a lot more cartoon like and funny. At first I was not sure I liked it too much, I thought it took away from the mood, but then I realized that it helped lighten things up a bit. It gave some of the characters more of a personality. 

 Something else that I noticed was that the speech bubbles would occasionally change. They are normally black text in a circular, white speech bubble. There is a scene where Miranda is listening to someone over a radio. This person's voice is not seen in this speech bubble, it is seen in a light red speech bubble instead. Not only that, when there is a loud sound, like a gun shot for example, the sound effect is in big red letters. The text also changes when the sound effect is electronic, it won't be in red like the "bang" for example, it would be in green. I really like the way this was done. The color red is a very aggressive color and it is used to represent aggressive actions. Like the sound of someone getting hit or the sound of a gun being fired. 

In my opinion, I thought this comic was fast paced. The panels seemed to use the action to action transition most of the time. This was another thing that I really liked about the web comic; the shape of the panels. They kind of match the rough art style of the overall comic. The panels do not have perfectly straight lines and the they were occasionally randomly placed on the page.

On top of that, some of the panels even looked like they were not finished. Sometimes the panels would even be overlapped over one another.  

Even though this web comic is not yet finished, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I am looking forward to reading the rest. Wind and Wasteland is an action packed comic and I loved every aspect of it. I definitely would recommend this to those who appreciate unique and beautiful art styles and those who can be a little bit patient (considering it is not finished). 

Rabbits are also involved