Red String Volume 5

Red String #5

by Gina Biggs

Published by Strawberry Comics, this volume contains chapters twenty-seven through thirty-three. Treat yourself to the high-quailty of a printed edition of your favorite series. You also get some cool extras including a foreword by Jennie Breeden of The Devil's Panties, character confession booths, inner monologue theater, notes, and eight bonus comic pages extending a scene from chapter thirty-three.
(B&W, 224 pgs.)

Genres: Romance, Graphic Novels, Webcomic, Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels Comics

224 pages, Paperback

About the author

Gina Biggs has been creating comics for over twenty years and recently resides in Portland, OR. She is the creator of the sci-fi romance series, Love Not Found . Other notable works include Red String (Dark Horse Comics, Strawberry Comics), and Erstwhile Fairytales.

Reviews

[Catie Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

I just fly through these I swear, but they're so good! This one was also amazing but not as fast paced as some of the other volumes, which is totally okay!

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This, I think, is around the time when the story is reaching its apex, where the story-telling is spot-on, the characterization is on point, and the art is fantastic. But it goes downhill from here, honestly. The more this story goes along, the more and more it becomes clear that Biggs no longer invests as much care and interest into the story as a whole, to the point where the entire last volume will simply not be worth purchasing, due to the compression of the story to reach an arbitrary deadline, at the sacrifice of art, story, and character.

Until then, though, this is one of Biggs' stronger volumes. The art is improving as is the anatomy. The story is drifting away from shoujo-esque cliches and creating itself into a true slice-of-life, authentic expression of love and growing up. The storyline is maturing along with Biggs' style.

There are, of course, completely pointless things. For instance, Karen's arc. Why waste all this angst on Karen's inability to choose her own destiny and have to give up a relationship with a guy she would genuinely love to spend time with... and in the end, declaring she has to break off her engagement with Makoto is faced with just a simple shrug and a dismissal of the problem. As if it never mattered! Which means that all of Karen's angst and uncertainties were totally pointless.

This is a problem that Biggs faces often in her writing: the failure to execute side-stories and side-arcs. She presents this problem, focuses all this attention to it... and then the resolution is completely anti-climatic and brushed under the rug, resolved within one or two pages. Which is completely pointless and poor writing.