Comic Review: Sandra and Woo

Awhile ago, I stumbled across a cute little webcomic about a girl and a talking Raccoon. It is hard to pin down why I like it so. On the surface, it looks like a simple newspaper comic strip, but it is surprisingly smart. It is not as mindlessly goofy as most, and it also avoids taking itself too seriously - even hitting itself on the forth-wall when it dose. Quite often, it brings-up some obscure little tidbit that the authors notes in the annotations. It tends jumps around with the focused character and story-arcs, but not in a way where the cast feels cluttered, nor the plots get confusing. Changes like those help keep the comic fresh.

There are many authors who reads the feedback and answers questions or address criticisms, but this pair - Oliver Knörzer and Powree - sometimes snaps back at criticisms in clever ways. For example, someone excused the comic for being too simple or not being smart enough. They replied with a comic in the form of an elaborate puzzle and challenged the readers to solve it. I don't think anyone could salve it fully. They also like to engage in clever fake-outs.

The strips are safe-for-work, the characters are mostly eccentric, it sometimes deal with tweenage (11-12ish) drama (fitting-in, young love, puberty, etc.) without it feeling like some brain-dead tween show, and much of he humor is nerdy.

Although some might get turned-off by "anime" styled art, this comic seems to freely mix western and eastern styles to where its hard to noticed. (Oddly enough, '80s cartoons did the same blending of styles, and yet, no one seems to notice.) One odd thing I have with tho look of Sandra, is that she looks so much like Penny Gadget (from Inspector Gadget), that the young, accented voice of Cree Summers (who voiced Penny back in the day) sometimes bleed into her voice as I'm reading her dialog in my head. XP

So here is Sandra and Woo. So enjoy!