Review: ‘Royals’ #2 Is More Storyboard Than Comic
by Benjamin Hall
Summary
The Wahng twins are facing the cost of hustling the wrong poker player. Can Paul Wahng survive on the run from the player’s murderous gang? Will Castor Wahng mess things up more? Lastly, what is the deal with the mystery woman Paul is currently eating with?
Overall
6/10The art is unquestionably great for a first timer to the comic creation business. Artist Jacob Perez is especially good at sequencing the action beats. Although the amount and size of the panels exhibit the fact that he as well as writer and variant cover artist Derek Kirk Kim could do better when it comes to clarity. In other words, certain pages feel as if they are storyboards for either a television or movie production. Not to mention at least one page has a layout with too small sizing of the panels and this creates a lettering problem with transitional text. Still, the overall attempt to do so much on the page is resulting in quality work. As far as the coloring goes Perez is arguably doing everything right to enhance the emotional beats of each scene.
When it comes to the writing Kim is doing a fine job with writing each character. They each appear to have unique personalities that are matching their respective visual representations in a believable way. Also the dialogue is realistic despite being a bit cliché at times. Still, Kim is definitely going overboard with one of the character’s antics to the point that certain readers, such as this reviewer, may be finding the character to be too immature and tactless. Thus, Kim should definitely work harder on watching out for how far they go with character personality flaws in the future. Not to mention that Kim is too obvious at times when foreshadowing events because of the movie production evocation.
The three covers are by Perez, Kim, artist Ethan Young respectively. They are all high quality and eye-catching, but Young’s creation is debatably lesser since its design is a homage.
From a professional standpoint the narrative that Kim and Perez are continuing to create with this second issue seems to be a relatively decent one. However, this reviewer personally feels that this series is not as fun as it could be mainly because one of the twin leads is extremely off-putting.
Royals #2 is out now from Image Comics.
