While Watchmen is excellent, I've never been a huge fan of Alan Moore. However, I was very disappointed by Smax, a spin-off from Top 10. I was expecting something with a bit more substance from the great man (although perhaps I ought to have read the original strip). I found Smax smug and fatuous, the characterisation dreadful and the dialogue awful.To add insult to injury, the artwork by Zander Cannon and Andrew Currie is awful. Cartoony is fine, but this is just bad; loose and poorly detailed, so that characters hardly look the same from one panel to the next.
The net result is that Smax seems self-indulgent and sloppy.
To distract myself from this terrible disappointment, I have turned my attention, at long last, to Marjane Satrapi's Persopolis.It is quite graphic and stylised, which I like, and proves that comics needn't be fatuous, sexist or stupid to be funny.
I'm also taking some solace in Zuda Comics. DC Comics's web comics imprint has received criticism for its opaque submissions policy, but there's no question that Zuda features some interesting content.
