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Urban Animal #1
Urban Animal, Vol. 1
Meet Joe Gomez. He’s got high school on lock – good grades, a cool band, and girls digging his vibe. But just when he’s got the world figured out, he goes and turns into a saber-toothed tiger. A shape-shifting nature spirit known as a Chimera, to be specific. Now Joe needs every single one of his new powers to help save the human race – whether he wants to or not.
344 pages, Paperback
First published June 21, 2022
10 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Justin Jordan
539 books100 followersJustin Jordan is an American comic book writer. He is known for writing and co-creating The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, Spread, Dead Body Road, Deep State, Dark Gods and Savage Things. He has also written Green Lantern: New Guardians, Superboy, Deathstroke and Team 7 for DC Comics and the relaunch of Shadowman for Valiant Entertainment.
In 2012, he was nominated for the Harvey Award for Most Promising New Talent.
In 2012, he was nominated for the Harvey Award for Most Promising New Talent.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 8, 2021
I recently joined Webtoons, and the banner for this immediately caught my eye - cool title, kid with glowing eyes, hell yeah. I read the blurb and got even more excited, because shapeshifters are one of my favourite things. But alas, I was disappointed.
The Story
Overwhelmingly mediocre. Very typical "main character discovers they have powers they must hide from everyone else, has a mentor figure, and has to fight monsters" but without anything new to add to the trope. I kept thinking I just had to keep reading, plenty of things start out a little rough and get better, but I finished the whole first season and was still left feeling meh.
There are interesting concepts however. Joe’s mentor transforms into a swarm of rodents, and there are creatures called soul parasites, animal ghosts that combine with human flesh into strange new forms. The reveal at the end also has potential for some great conflict and character development. So, while I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat, there’s just enough intrigue to keep me reading.
The Characters
Despite finishing the season just this morning*, I can't bring to mind the personalities of any of the characters. Honestly, I can't even remember their names, except for Joe and Corkindale. Everybody is pretty one-dimensional and bland. The default response to things, no matter how wild or unusual they are, seems to be “oh, okay, cool.” For example, his parents don't get angry or ground him when he ditches school the first time, and they don't push him for answers when things get worse. When they accept it instantly, as do his friends.
Joe himself is a boring protagonist and I don’t really care what happens to him. He gets his powers at the end of the first episode, so there's no time to get to know or care about him before this big change in his life. He says he didn’t ask for this, and other people say he lacks control and isn’t powerful yet… but what is shown says otherwise. He's shocked by his new powers for all of about 2 seconds before being able to shift with ease and throwing himself into battle, spouting heroic stock phrases as he does so.
Also, the entire world seems to revolve around Joe. Whenever there’s a switch to a POV other than his, the characters are still talking about him, and the little personality they have is defined by him. Corkindale is mentoring Joe The blonde girl stalks Joe. Evans hates Joe because Joe is better than him at sports. Joe’s bandmates’ sole conversation topic seems to be how weird he's acting. A bunch of monsters attack Joe because their master wants him to show his full potential/true self. I have no idea who these people are beyond Joe.
*At time of writing
The Art
The art’s pretty good. Very crisp and sleek looking. I liked the monster designs and chimera mid-forms, they’re very creative. I particularly liked one design which resembled a bearded vulture but with a human jaw inside the beak. The anatomy is good across the board with both humans and most of the animals (I’ll get to that later), and as someone with a bunch of vision issues, I appreciated how clear everything was due to the composition and value choices, as well as the large font. The artist sometimes reduces the characters to detached floating heads and hands in an empty grey space though, rather than drawing a full panel, which looks really odd.
Mini-rant about something that doesn’t matter that much but as a zoologist infuriates me
Joe's prehistoric forms are really outdated. I know this is fiction, but when the other creatures have pretty good anatomy, it's super jarring to suddenly see a naked raptor or a pterosaur with bat wings. Dinosaurs had feathers (raptors are known to have WINGS), pterosaurs were fuzzy, only had one wing finger and definitely couldn’t grasp things with their feet. There’s some debate over whether T. Rex was feathered so I’ll leave that alone – although relatives certainly were. Look up Yutyrannus and Dilong if you’re curious. The sabre tooth tiger is better but on thin ice (no pun intended). Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures aren’t movie monsters, they were real animals that deserve to be represented accurately. I'm so tired :( This information has been available for like 30 years.
UA raptor vs modern raptor (image by Fred Wierum)
UA pteranodon vs modern pteranodon (image by Gabriel N.U.)
tl;dr
An ok comic with a few cool ideas. If you’re interested, just read it for the art as there isn’t much story.
The Story
Overwhelmingly mediocre. Very typical "main character discovers they have powers they must hide from everyone else, has a mentor figure, and has to fight monsters" but without anything new to add to the trope. I kept thinking I just had to keep reading, plenty of things start out a little rough and get better, but I finished the whole first season and was still left feeling meh.
There are interesting concepts however. Joe’s mentor transforms into a swarm of rodents, and there are creatures called soul parasites, animal ghosts that combine with human flesh into strange new forms. The reveal at the end also has potential for some great conflict and character development. So, while I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat, there’s just enough intrigue to keep me reading.
The Characters
Despite finishing the season just this morning*, I can't bring to mind the personalities of any of the characters. Honestly, I can't even remember their names, except for Joe and Corkindale. Everybody is pretty one-dimensional and bland. The default response to things, no matter how wild or unusual they are, seems to be “oh, okay, cool.” For example, his parents don't get angry or ground him when he ditches school the first time, and they don't push him for answers when things get worse. When they accept it instantly, as do his friends.
Joe himself is a boring protagonist and I don’t really care what happens to him. He gets his powers at the end of the first episode, so there's no time to get to know or care about him before this big change in his life. He says he didn’t ask for this, and other people say he lacks control and isn’t powerful yet… but what is shown says otherwise. He's shocked by his new powers for all of about 2 seconds before being able to shift with ease and throwing himself into battle, spouting heroic stock phrases as he does so.
Also, the entire world seems to revolve around Joe. Whenever there’s a switch to a POV other than his, the characters are still talking about him, and the little personality they have is defined by him. Corkindale is mentoring Joe The blonde girl stalks Joe. Evans hates Joe because Joe is better than him at sports. Joe’s bandmates’ sole conversation topic seems to be how weird he's acting. A bunch of monsters attack Joe because their master wants him to show his full potential/true self. I have no idea who these people are beyond Joe.
*At time of writing
The Art
The art’s pretty good. Very crisp and sleek looking. I liked the monster designs and chimera mid-forms, they’re very creative. I particularly liked one design which resembled a bearded vulture but with a human jaw inside the beak. The anatomy is good across the board with both humans and most of the animals (I’ll get to that later), and as someone with a bunch of vision issues, I appreciated how clear everything was due to the composition and value choices, as well as the large font. The artist sometimes reduces the characters to detached floating heads and hands in an empty grey space though, rather than drawing a full panel, which looks really odd.
Mini-rant about something that doesn’t matter that much but as a zoologist infuriates me
Joe's prehistoric forms are really outdated. I know this is fiction, but when the other creatures have pretty good anatomy, it's super jarring to suddenly see a naked raptor or a pterosaur with bat wings. Dinosaurs had feathers (raptors are known to have WINGS), pterosaurs were fuzzy, only had one wing finger and definitely couldn’t grasp things with their feet. There’s some debate over whether T. Rex was feathered so I’ll leave that alone – although relatives certainly were. Look up Yutyrannus and Dilong if you’re curious. The sabre tooth tiger is better but on thin ice (no pun intended). Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures aren’t movie monsters, they were real animals that deserve to be represented accurately. I'm so tired :( This information has been available for like 30 years.
UA raptor vs modern raptor (image by Fred Wierum)
UA pteranodon vs modern pteranodon (image by Gabriel N.U.)
tl;dr
An ok comic with a few cool ideas. If you’re interested, just read it for the art as there isn’t much story.
July 2, 2022
I've been backing projects by Rocketship for a while now. At first I thought they were great, now I'm not so sure. Their quality is baffling. Let's take The Croaking, Vol. 1. There were pages where I had no idea which path to follow to read the panels in the right order. Not to mention the fact that it was so dark that it was hard to read it in my room.
Here it was the punctuation. Please, there should be a comma before a vocative. Not to mention some weird expressions and some spelling mistakes. For $24 I was expecting something better edited.
I think the story, with chimera and everything, may be interesting, but we really can't understand how bad the big bad guy is. The world building is a bit sketchy, in my opinion. Side characters are a bit spineless, apart from the guy whose favorite song is Silverchair's Black Tangled Heart... The memories, oh the memories!
I'll probably back the second volume as well. I really hope it won't end up like the other one... what was its name... Let's Play, which started out amazing and trudge along like hundreds of similar stories.
Here it was the punctuation. Please, there should be a comma before a vocative. Not to mention some weird expressions and some spelling mistakes. For $24 I was expecting something better edited.
I think the story, with chimera and everything, may be interesting, but we really can't understand how bad the big bad guy is. The world building is a bit sketchy, in my opinion. Side characters are a bit spineless, apart from the guy whose favorite song is Silverchair's Black Tangled Heart... The memories, oh the memories!
I'll probably back the second volume as well. I really hope it won't end up like the other one... what was its name... Let's Play, which started out amazing and trudge along like hundreds of similar stories.
July 13, 2022
Intriguing, kind of slow.
August 1, 2023
This became another favorite of mine! I absolutely love the concept and plot! The art was gorgeous! The characters were well-written! I can't wait to find out what happens next!
October 31, 2024
Interesting first volume. I'm curious to see where it goes from here.
June 26, 2022
The art is pretty good. The story has an interesting premise, but the writing leaves a bit to be desired. The side characters aren't fully fleshed out, and I'm a bit confused as to whether the stakes are supposed to be high or not. It was good enough I plan to read the next volume, but I'd like to see the writing and characters grow.
October 5, 2019
You know what this one reminds me of? Kirkman's Invincible and Bendis's Ultimate Spider-Man. It might not be a superhero comic book but it threads similar ground - characters find themselves possessing great power and forced into doing something with it for everyone's But it's got the same quality of sleek, fun supporting characters and the art really reminds me of the expressive quality of Cory Walker's illustrations.
Joe is a chimera, a champion of nature capable of transforming himself in different animals -- to start with. A chimera's abilities are pretty effin' cool, let me tell you that. Reminds me a bit of Malazan's D'ivers and soletaken -- especially one character whose chimera ability allows him to transform into a mischief of rats.
The first season was amazing. While it tackles with a lot of familiar ground that superhero comics go through, like the young protagonist hiding his powers and flaking out on his friends and family, I thought this particular aspect of Joe's story was handled well and the resolution came about naturally.
The second season has only recently begun but already it's got me hooked!
Crazy revelations, cuteness, bloody murder and some serious psychological warfare on our main character all make for a great story that's well worth the time investment. And the art is, as you've probably gathered by now, absolutely great. It really does remind me of Invincible but with a hint of something else there -- and the colour gammut has a lot of these gorgeous amber and browns contrasted with the most stunning light blue that just spells trouble for everyone. Another one on my weekly list and it deserves to be on yours, too!
June 9, 2020
This comic is great! The mistery's so good!
July 4, 2020
This is soooooo good!
March 11, 2021
Such a fun story concept! I love the characters, the art, the dialogue, the WORLDBUILDING AND MYSTERY, the COLOURS! Ok, I just love all of it. 10/10 I reccomend.
August 31, 2022
Exciting and have so much potential! Love how the creators injected Filipino references here as well!
April 21, 2023
Great writing with an interesting lore. I love the touch of making a music for each episode
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews