[Hannibal Goes To Rome] (the link will take you to Shadowline Comics’ webcomics section; to see Hannibal’s alpine adventures, you need to select it from the drop-down menu)

Well, wow. I haven’t quite figured out whether this won Zuda or not, but in any case it’s good to see a (web)comic get picked up that has neither the writing nor the art hanging on a gimmick.

Let me qualify this: some of my favourite comics are based on clipart – Wondermark, Queen Vic, Red Meat – but unless the surreality manages to create a coherent world or the writing is top-notch, comics that depend on the writing more than the artwork tend to irritate me.

I am really pleased to see a collaboration here – [Brendan McGinley] on the script, with [Mauro Vargas] on the lineart and [Andres Carranza] providing the colours – and one that’s so well matched. The artwork is dynamic and keeping the pace with the snappy writing, both balancing the comic with the scholarly.

So far it’s less than ten pages in, but I’m already hooked.

My only complaint goes to the site design, which offers the reader no option to skip to a specific page or at least chapter, ‘forcing’ one instead to scroll through the lot from the beginning upon each visit. Now I don’t mind revisiting these pages, but I can see it getting irksome as the comic grows. (If there is a way to pick up or hop to where one left off and I simply can’t find it because I’m thick, I apologise.)