Jess Fink
2009-present
Updates as completed
I first came across the work of Jess Fink through her comic Chester 5000, an extremely NSFW story about a woman, a man, and the anatomically correct robot that he builds to keep her off his back. Anyone who has heard of Japan can probably guess where this is going. Normally I would have written Chester off as another handwave-worthy attempt at drawing money in through porn, but I hesitated and actually read the thing. You see, much like Oglaf (I swear, every time I mention that comic my traffic jumps. Buncha perverts) I was intrigued by the art style enough to move on. Chester was more sex-based that Oglaf, that’s true, but it was still an interesting example of someone who can take something like sex, a subject that has had all the candy coating licked off to the point where the stick is dyed red with blood, and make it good. Well, the plot was kind of weak (not bad for porn, I suppose) but I really enjoyed the art style. Plus, Chester always kept his bow tie on, like a true gentleman.
On a whim I followed Jess Fink on Twitter and discovered Kid With Experience, a blog-style comic about her daily life. Typically these comics are absolutely horrendous, they’re usually self-absorbed pieces of garbage that are filled to the brim with ego, evidenced by the fact that they believe their daily thoughts are worth reading, much like a blogger who criticizes webcomics. WHO SAID THAT?! Damn straight, “no one, sir”.
However, I’ve found Kid to be an interesting read. I suppose the key to comic-blogging is this: you can’t post every day with deadpan presentation and expect it to be any good. Kid updates rarely, but the comics seem to be somewhat humorous, both in content and style. I can compare it to Sketchfevor, a comic that I just realized that I’ve never reviewed. Odd.
Anyways, it does tend to drag a bit occasionally, as the comics aren’t always continuous stories and thus will fill a panel with the entire story, making it rather wordy. The Star Trek fanfic comics are particularly guilty of this, although I will allow it seeing that Fink acknowledges that Picard is composed of super-densely packed sex.
The art gets a lot more simplistic over time, with the original panels being like Chester and the latter are more hourly-sketch-like. However, one doesn’t need detail to be expressive. It helps, yes, but look at xkcd, the comic that destroyed any hope of anyone else creating a stick-figure comic. You can be expressive with simple geometric shapes, if done correctly. And it is, oh yes, it is.
To wrap it up, Kid With Experience, Jess Fink’s life. It updates rarely, but I kind of like it, and that has to mean something.
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