Review -- BATTLE CRY

Battle Cry
Art by Willie Jimenez
Written by Willie Jimenez
When you review independently produced comics, you tend to get a pretty broad range of material, both in terms of storyline, and especially in terms of creative talent.
Battle Cry, an ashcan format book from Willie Jimenez is one of the title which you can tell right away the creator is just cutting his teeth in terms of doing comics.
That is immediately visible in the black and white art. Jimenez is still a touch rough around the edges in terms of rendering his art. The style borrows much from Japanese manga, with a westernized element that makes the art a sort of blend.
It is not the blending that is bothersome, but rather the inconsistent pen strokes. On one panel Jimenez will show a solid approach, especially when dealing with the main human characters. But, on the same page the work can verge on something out of grad school. That is particularly true of the representation of the demons in the book, which seem to hold more in common with abominable snowmen than anything else.
Jimenez said manga is a definite influence on his art. “Of course, some of my favs are Ninja Scroll, Kenshin, Afro Samurai, Samurai Champloo, and basically anything with swords or ninjas,” he said. “I like a lot of action, but I force myself as writer and artist to try to be open-minded and watch everything I can to learn from stuff outside of my genre and put it back in some how.”
Story wise, Jimenez isn't breaking a lot of new ground either. It's a human ninja versus demon, or demon crossbred storyline, with an apparent love story interest already seeded in the first 18-page book. The writing is OK, if not particularly memorable.
Jimenez said he has a number of influences when it comes to writing.
“The movie underworld was big inspiration and so was the anime Vampire Hunter D,” he said, adding, “watching movies and reading are great inspirations for me as you can tell. I like taking ideas and mixing it up into something new, or sometimes I'll take a movie that disappointed me and I'll be like, OK this is how I would have done it.
“This story was more about being fun and entertaining do to the small number of pages, there wasn't much room for a deep story!”
While Battle Cry is not going to rocket Jimenez to stardom, or even to a huge recommendation to go out and buy this book, it is what indie titles are about, a creator taking his early works to the world. He will hopefully grow as both artist and writer, and I have to say good job having the drive to take the story beyond notebook scribbles to a book people can share.
As creator Jimenez is satisfied with the book.
“I think it went beyond my expectations,” he said. “After I posted it on the web and it was printed both independently and by a small company called Purrsia Press, it got picked up but another small company for a series. That company fell apart but by that time I was already working with a super amazing artist called Bernard Llam, and we got picked up for short time by arcana.”
Check Jimenez's work out at http://westwolfonline.com
-- CALVIN DANIELS
-- Appeared on Yorkton This Week WebXtra