Zuda Week: Dean Haspiel's STREET CODE

Dean Haspiel is a pretty damn successful webcomic creator. He's the guy behind ACT-I-VATE, so you know he was webcomic before webcomic was cool. So even though he's probably one of the creators with the least need for attention over on Zuda, I couldn't help but gravitate towards STREET CODE to check it out.



Haspiel appears to be telling a semi-autobiographical tale, which makes it all the more interesting in many ways. For some reason, there being a strong degree of reality to the tales being told helps, both because it takes guts to tell the world about your life (warts and all) and adds a level of oomph to the seemingly absurd (like the broomsticks in the trees bit).

Haspiel acquits himself excellently in both phases of his creation here. I'm a sucker for his particular style of art. Clean, crisp and cartoony is just very asthetically pleasing and, to my mind, can effectively tell tales in any genre. It definitely allows Haspiel the Artist the chance to give some real personality to every character present. The style lends itself to exaggerated facial expressions that are very efficient at informing the reader.

Haspiel the Writer does a great job at pacing and knowing when to allow the art to tell the tale. There is so little use of exposition and so much reliance on the image to convey the story beats. There's a four page sequence where maybe three words are used, but a really strong feeling is conveyed to the reader. It's his ability to nail both the writing and art aspects of his property that makes Dean Haspiel's STREET CODE such a great humorous, dramatic, slice-of-life webcomic that everyone should really check out.

(Note: I'd really like to go into more detail (and may revisit at a later date), but it's been a rough day and more detailed commentary is escaping me at the moment)