A worm in the head

January 3, 2005 10:16 AM

Ballad is the story of a nervous and confused little homunculus. It's an unsettling webcomic with moody artwork and fantastic pacing that creeps along slowly, like a severed hand across the floor.
posted by picea (14 comments total)

it's so goth, i hurt. :P
posted by car_bomb at 10:32 AM on January 3, 2005

The backgrounding and inking are gorgeous, but there are whole pages where nothing makes sense, and as soon as the people show up... eh. I thought the Ballad character was more compelling before he got skin. I think the concept suffers from overshow and undertell- the art needs to serve the story.
posted by headspace at 10:34 AM on January 3, 2005

Cute and well drawn. I liked the moon dream sequence.
posted by euphorb at 11:39 AM on January 3, 2005

quite nice, a good break from the one-off comics that are so pervasive nowadays. It forces you to slow down and examine and enjoy the artwork. I like that some panels don't make total sense, exploration and contemplation make up much of the difference between art and advertisment imo....
posted by crunchywelch at 11:44 AM on January 3, 2005

the artist needs to have a writer. Seriously. He or she has the excellent pacing and layout aesthetic of Dave Sim, but in Cerebus stuff actually happened during those long silent bits.

ditto car_bomb.

Beautifully illustrated, though.
posted by shmegegge at 12:05 PM on January 3, 2005

Beautiful.
posted by nearo at 12:11 PM on January 3, 2005

"presents of mind"? Yes... definitely in need of a writer.
posted by The Thnikkaman at 2:39 PM on January 3, 2005

Wow. Fantastic work. (And nice presentation, picea!)
posted by taz at 3:00 PM on January 3, 2005

Not 'our' little confused homunculus I hope, poor thing...
;)
posted by dabitch at 3:14 PM on January 3, 2005

A good pastiche of Sim, Gorey, Brown, McKay and Escher. I can see this person developing a more personal style moving forward. One quibble I have on the technical side, if you're going to crib your puddle illustration from Escher, you have to be consistent with reflections in the water. The artist seems to be pretty arbitrary in deciding when water is reflective and when it isn't. To be fair working out the perspective for reflections can be a total bitch. I love the architectural and mechanical drawing, and the half glimpsed face of the father reflected on Ballad's pupil was genuinely chilling.
posted by Scoo at 3:37 PM on January 3, 2005

I don't get it. I went all the way up to 81, and finally decided it was pointless.
posted by Doohickie at 9:12 PM on January 3, 2005

It's an ongoing cartoon, so it doesn't quite have a traditional plot structure. This is why it seems so loose and rambling, which can be irritating if you try to take it in with one big gulp (there are 119 pages in the main section right now!), but I think it's a lovely project to check up on once a week. The artist updates on Tuesdays, and it looks like the current Ballad episode is "Cakes for Tea" (see the comics page); I'll be checking in later today to see what's new, and will probably keep tracking it. At any rate, I just loved seeing all that fantastic illustration.
posted by taz at 1:58 AM on January 4, 2005

"Fantastic illustration"? I guess aesthetics are lost on me.
posted by Doohickie at 9:48 AM on January 4, 2005

I think I'll wait for the movie.
posted by crunchland at 10:06 AM on January 4, 2005