The Challenges of Zona

Before starting this review, I think it is important to get one thing out of the way. The Challenges of Zona is a very sexual comic. The title character is a half-naked barbarian woman and it doesn’t take very long for her to have sex with the main male character. She’s even part of a people known as the Erogenians. If you come to this comic, expect sexuality on the order of that found in The Lounge or Flipside.

OK, still here? So the comic is about a self-professed loser from San Bernardino, Mentl, who touches a magic book one day and gets transported to a fantasy realm. When we meet Mentl, he is traveling through the woods in some clothes that he stole in order to fit in, his only possession the aforementioned book. He wanders into a campsite after smelling meat cooking, only to find that the meat being cooked is human, and the cookers are demonic lizard people. They come after him, but he is saved in the knick of time by the sudden appearance of a sword wielding barbarian woman who makes short and bloody work of the Urtts as they are called. This is, of course, Zona, the title character.

I would hardly dare to call this an original plot, and even the twist that he gets a hold of a lute, and is able to charm people playing classic rock songs is pretty similar to an Alan Dean Foster story I read once. But it is also said that there are no new stories, and I’ve seen this basic plot done a lot worse. There is a good helping of humor in the comic to go with the action. In a dig at the classic barbarian warrior woman story (Red Sonja), there is one knight who keeps showing up to try and defeat Zona in battle, cause he heard that she was a virgin warrior who would only give herself to someone who could defeat her in battle. This greatly surprises Mentl since he had just slept with her the night before. Then there is a mysterious old man that appears to Mentl sometimes, and likes to pepper his speech with quotes from Star Wars. In many ways, it is a silly comic, but JE Draft (the comic creator) doesn’t make the mistake of having his characters take it lightly. They are serious about serious matters, and have fun when they have fun, and the fourth wall stays pretty darn sturdy. But, mostly, when it comes down to it, while as an original epic tale of fantasy the Challenges of Zona is nothing special, as a romantic tale of two people falling in love, it actually works pretty well. Zona, while physically imposing can be pretty vulnerable emotionally, and Mentl is smitten from the start, but has to deal with the fact that he knows nothing about this world he is on and its customs, and the fear that he will mess things up like he has done with everything before in his life.

Now as for the presentation itself, this is a 3-D comic, and it is undoubtedly initially created with Poser or some similar software, but the range of expression of the characters, the richness of the scenery, and the care taken with lighting put the art a cut above most computer generated comics. The action sequences flow well, and while I’m no expert at putting comics together, the fact that I’ve never gotten confused about the panel sequences seems to point to JE being pretty good at that aspect of things. The magic affects generally seem well done as well, looking good visually without being over the top. Some other aspects are a little more hit or miss. Some of the clothing works better than others (Mentl’s never seems to work all that well) and sometimes the eyes of the characters in particular fall into the uncanny valley. I also wouldn’t call this a pretty comic; there is not a lot of warmth to most of the tones, the skin is a bit too shiny and the world is a lot more Boris Vallejo than Charles Vess. But, I can’t fault the effort that is put into the comic particularly when compared to some of the comics out there. There are lots of details that either point to heavy work on textures or heavy post-production. JE hasn’t put up anything on how he puts the comic together, and I’m no CG expert, so I can only say that it looks like he puts in a lot of effort compared to many 3-D comics.

As for the website, it is functional, but could use improvement. There is hard to read text on the home page, the comic navigation is very basic with no good way to jump to a particular spot in the archives. The color scheme is pretty poor as well, and I’m guessing JE is more familiar with modeling software than HTML. Still, turning a bad website into a good website is a whole lot easier, IMHO, than turning a bad comic into a good comic, so I will hope that he gets someone with some usability abilities to help with the site, and in the meantime continue to read the comic.

As usual, whether you will like this comic or not will revolve on your tastes. I like a good romantic plot-line, don’t mind things being a bit bawdy, and can overlook the deficiencies in originality and navigation scheme. If your tastes and tolerances run similarly, I expect that you may like it too.

Eric Stokien aka Quiller