Originally posted on Irish Comic News (16/Jan/2018)
Written by Nate Cosby.
Line art by Scott Brown and Ruairi Coleman.
Colour art by Dearbhla Kelly and Alfonso Espinosza.
Lettered by Zakk Saam.
Cover art by Scott Brown and Omi Remalante.One of the things you can’t complain about if you’re adding comics to the pull list featuring Irish comic folk is a lack of variety in the content of the comics. One of the recent new series I picked up was Fruit Ninja as it featured both Coleman and Kelly as part of the creative collective for the comic.
The comic is based on a popular (seemingly it was downloaded a BILLION times!) game where the player has to slice fruit. Check out this link if you don’t believe me. The game was such that it looked like it would afford those working on the comic plenty of room to get creative in.
The comic contains three strips, first of which is “Ancient Fruit Ninja”. The story opens with the ninjas honing their fruit slicing skills. A pig watches the ninjas train and slowly grows hungry as more and more fruit is sliced. Things initially look like they are getting better for the pig when a peach is unintentionally batted away rather than sliced by one of the ninjas. Needless to say, things don’t work out for the pig.
The second strip (and my favourite in terms of story) is “Jetpack Joyride”. The opening two panel origin of Barry Steakfries gives the reader everything the need to know in terms of the comedy of this strip. While the story of the strip is fun, it was the “Editor’s Notes” commentary over the strip that added that little extra to the strip.
The third and final strip is “Modern Fruit Ninja”. The strip continues the silly sense of humour from the preceding two strips. The ninjas decide that dance training could help improve their ninja skills. They have barely started dance training when the villain of the strip appears and decides to defeat the ninjas using dance. The ninjas must quickly get to grips with dancing if they hope to survive.
The art (“Ancient Fruit Ninja” + “Jetpack Joyride” by Brown and Kelly, with Coleman and Espinosza on art duties for “Modern Fruit Ninja”) is fun and energetic. It also gets the comedic timing right in each of the three stories. The body language and emoting of the characters is well done particularly in the silent panels where the art has to convey what is happening. The colours are bright and upbeat which adds to the fun comedic spirit of the three strips.
Fruit Ninja was a fun and entertaining read with some good looking artwork. It was also great that the reader didn’t need to know anything at all about the game (as I didn’t without googling it) to enjoy the comic. I really enjoyed the three strips and look forward to seeing how issue two continues on from the fun that issue one started.