Samantha is a relatively normal girl who one day follows a stray cat into an abandoned building. What happens to Sam is not normal at all, as she is thrown through a rift in time to the late Cretaceous Age, where she meets Caroline, a girl who claims to be a time-traveler.
The tagline for this series is “Time Travel Girls Love Feels” so, as you can imagine it interested me greatly. And, as it’s currently in the middle of a Kickstarter, I thought it suitable to mention it on the Yuricon Facebook Group, right after I supported it myself. In return, creator Ellis Kim has kindly sent me an advance PDF to share with you. ^_^
There’s a fair amount of Dr. Who-esque hijinks in Time Fiddler, and the Whovian in me thinks that’s perfectly cool. Sam is a companion-type character (you know, nice kid, seemlingly normal life) who suddenly gets dragged into a time-traveling adventure that involves dinosaurs. Only – and this is a big sell for me – instead of being just another companion, Sam becomes a time traveler herself. Very little time is spent in explicating what “The Agency” does or why or how or…anything. The specifics of pretty much every plot point must be accepted as such with no discussion so far. Even the repeated line “read the manual” is given to Sam without an actual manual. (Which blew the chance for an old-school RTFM joke, but Kim seems too young for the reference anyway. Oh well, guess I’m just old. ^_^)
On the less-good side, the plot is uneven, with TV pacing, (you know, spurts of action followed by explication while we wait to run some more) and a few odd throwaways, like Caroline’s “boyfriend” Ulysses, who was introduced clearly wearing “I’m a future plot complication” expressions. When we suddenly have a confession from Caroline that she likes Sam, it becomes even more crystal clear Ulysses was introduced to be broken up with and get pissed off, which is wholly unfair to him. The art is manga-inspired. It has moments, but still Kim’s style is still evolving. One sees it more in his color art his black and white pages thus far.
On the positive side, the next adventure takes place in 1880s California and Sam and Caroline are cute, so final judgment will remain reserved until volume 2.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Story -7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 4
Service – 0
Overall – 7
Time Fiddler is a fun webcomic that I hope will take itself to a more sophisticated level of writing and art, but which is worth throwing the price of a cup of coffee at in order to help it do so.
Thanks Ellis for the advance copy and best of luck to you!
