Some very detailed feedback for my latest book.

In my pursuit of reviews for Censor Monkeys Have No Class, I recently got a rather in-depth response to it.  here's the email sent to me:


I must admit, Censormonkeys was one of the hardest comics to review . There are moments that made me laugh and ideas expressed that I can agree with. It's greatest strength is that you've spread a wide net over the political/social spectrum in your skewering. Granted it could be even wider, atheist monkey (note: I'm an atheist) is one that comes to my mind, etc.. The art is decent and fitting of the form, but it could use some polish. I think a little shadowing would go a long way.
There are some things I found to be problematic. The opening with Fanny did not work so well in my opinion. It was at odds with the Censormonkeys portion as here a naïve child is derided because she's childish; whereas, the main comic is absurd because the Censormonkeys are over scrutinizing children's drawings. The ending of the Fanny portion came as too suddenly and violent. I'm not against shock value, but I didn't feel it worked in this case because she's a child. As for the main comic, I didn't get the sense that it had much to do with censorship as much it was about overzealous groups forcing their extreme ideas onto children. I believe that is a good thing to satirize and one of the strengths, but that's not quite censorship. Along these lines I felt that both the Black Panther and Feminist Censormonkeys don't quite work as well as the others. I know both groups can have extreme reactions to media on occasion, but really neither of th groups hold enough power (certainly not in the comics world) to censor anything. However, I think you could combine the two concepts into a parody of the ultra-liberal PC types it would have the same effect. Speaking of ultra-liberals, I couldn't help but to think that the design of the Censormonkeys was, well... a bit too close to old racial caricatures. Before you get upset, no, I'm not calling you racist. However, the term “monkey” does have negative racial connotations when combined with the vague resemblance to ethnic stereotypes it can turn away readers. In context the comic is most certainly not racist, but at a glance it's iffy. I know this relates to the point of the Fanny section, but in comics readers do judge a book by it's cover. I don't think that is a bad thing, it is a visual medium after all. I don't know if you are committed to the “Censormonkey” title, but something as simple as changing it to “Censorchimps” could go a long way into not being misunderstood. I hope this helps you in some manner, and sorry if this seemed a bit harsh.


Pretty heavy stuff.  Here was my response:


Thanks for your candour.  Any feedback is appreciated.  Although, you're not really telling me anything I haven't heard before.  Also there's some things I need to clear up too.

1. Fanny doesn't die because she's childish, she dies because she's ignorant.  I only made her a little girl so that people would not expect her sudden death so much.  And really her death was just a Monty Python style punch line if you will (although the Pythons claimed they would end their sketches before the punch-line), not meant to be taken serious at all.  She was essentially set up to die so that the lesson of that tale could have more impact on the reader, just like the tragic tale of MacBeth.

2. I am aware that the term 'monkey' has been used as a racial slur on occasion.  But, as I've said elsewhere, these monkeys represents personality-types not races. For instance, the Black Panther Monkey would only represent black people of that overzealous personality type, not to all black people in general.  Jane Fonda was a black panther at one point so this monkey may or may not represent her. Plus, I have Tom Cruise drawn as a monkey among them and we all know he's absolutely Caucasian. 

3. You're right in that the monkeys more-so represent the overzealous groups that force extreme ideas onto people rather than the ones doing the actual censoring.  But one leads to the other.  When a small fringe group of feminists/angry soccer moms/defamation league jump and cry about some element they see or even just think they see, some suit behind the curtain cowardly takes it down.  With these monkeys I satirize the source of the outcry as a message to the cowardly suits to stand up to these lunatics, don't give in so easily.

4. This leads me to the final point where you give me suggestions on how to change things. If I make any changes to accommodate the sensitivity of others, well then I'm just giving in to the real life Censor Monkeys which pretty much violates the very reason I created this comic in the first place. I didn't come up with all of this scathing satire against them just to let them win. So for that reason I pretty much have to leave things as they are and keep fighting the good fight.  (Although I was toying with the idea of adding an athiest monkey at one point, but there's already 10 monkeys to keep track of as it is).

As for the shading, I am reminded of something that the great animator Chuck Jones once said. "The art of cartooning is to create a solid fully fleshed out figure without the use of shading or subterfuge of any kind."  Although I did put a drop shadow underneath all the characters in this one.  But, I think any more of that would be distracting.

Once again, thanks for your feedback.  Every bit helps.


Do you agree or disagree with any of the points raised here? Do you have any points of your own to add? If so, post them in the comment section below. I need to know the best way to proceed with my next Censor Monkeys book.

Twitter Review

You can follow creator David Germain on twitter at @d_m_g_daffy. The Censormonkey website is found at http://t.co/GE4u1fJq77.
— JohanReviewsComics (@DeanJohannesLor) May 11, 2014

You can find more comic reviews from him on Twitter @DeanJohannesLor or you can visit his blog Modern Boredom.

And, of course, if you want to see if his review is accurate or fair, you can find out for yourself by buying my book on either Amazon or Kindle.

Happy reading, everyone.

One lady's assessment of Censor Monkeys Have No Class

I think she did a fine job, don't you?  Do you agree or disagree with her?

Friends With Boys

On Saturday, March 10, I had the pleasure of being in Strange Adventures in Halifax and stood in line to purchase a new graphic novel from Faith Erin Hicks. It's called Friends With Boys. She even autographed my copy and made a nice doodle in it too.

That's a character from the book. Her name is Lucy. She's the kind of girl who likes to make a bold visual statement and really doesn't care what anyone thinks about that. Although, she does feel the need to hide behind the "tree of shame" at one point.

But she's not the main focus of the book at all. The story centres around a young teenage girl named Maggie. She's the youngest of 4 children, 3 boys and 1 girl. All of them were home schooled until they were old enough to enter high school. This year, it is finally Maggie's turn. Yes, she is definitely scared almost to the point of a nervous breakdown.

Can you really blame her? High school is really alot like a war-torn third world country. Everyone is a uncivilized insecure idiot looking for a king to lead them. But not a king in the sense of appointed royalty but more-so like someone who appears all powerful. They will do anything to appease that king (or queen, or both) and anyone who fails to do so is subject to any manor of physical or psychological torture.

Oh, Kony, you're so cool.

The book certainly has a character who is exactly like that. His name is Matt.

Yeah, the asshole jock who "rules the school" is kind of a cliché in high school stories. But, it's only a cliché because it's true.

I think the book does certainly work as a whole. The story flows along at a nice pace. I stayed involved with the characters all the way through. I never once got confused about anything. All the information necessary was presented very clearly. It kind of felt like an episode of Degrassi High to me. That's probably because this book's author is Canadian. That makes the most sense.

I also like how she incorporated actual Halifax locations into the story, like this one below:

I love the Oxford Theatre on Quinpool. It's what movie houses used to be, and really how they should still be. It has very elegant decor made to look like only the best and brightest people go there, not like today's theatres where they're all streamlined to look like tacky spaceships meant to babysit your annoying kids.

Actually, that shot of the Oxford brings me to another great aspect of this book: the artwork. Normally I'm not a fan of the faux-anime style. But, that's mostly because too many young artists are drawing that way these days. After seeing it so many times, it gets rather tiresome. But, none of that matters if the artist has the basic principals of drawing and composition down. Faith Erin Hicks certainly has that.

I'm very impressed with the inking. I saw her draw that doodle in the book for me right there in the store. She is very skilled with the brush and ink. Pretty much every panel in this book is a joy to look at for that reason alone.

There are also some very good facial expressions in this book too. We really do get a sense of what or how the character is feeling. They're not just stiff entities that just lie there flat on the page. She definitely knows her stuff.

If Star Wars has taught us anything, it's that for every bright side, there is a dark side. A review with only positive things to say would be rather incomplete don't you think? So, with that in mind, I will go over a few nit-picky things about this book that I didn't like.

I have a small problem with this panel here:

I can kin of see that Faith's trying to show that the character does a small shrug. For me, this doesn't work. It looks like she had trouble rendering that and so just copped out and put the action work beside the body. Could you imagine if an entire story was like that?

Wow! That's quite an exciting scene there. I think Faith would have been much better off if she just drew Maggie in mid-shrug. That would have gotten the point across much better. In my book, I drew Jesus doing a shrug in exactly that way. I think it comes across pretty well.

Here's another part of the book I really didn't care for at all:

In the book, there's a substory about Maggie's older twin brothers always fighting. Near the end of the book, this resolution was shoehorned in just so that all the elements of this book have a happy ending. Not only is this pure cheese, it would be better if it were unresolved, at least at this point. These twins' conflict could easily have fuelled another story with these characters. There would have been more room to explore this conflict and enough time for it to come to a more satisfying resolution. Here it's just tacked on unnecessarily and does nothing to support the main story anyway.

But, that's just two little nitpicks in an otherwise delightful graphic novel. I picked it up for about $16.89 Canadian. If you haven't bought your copy of her book yet, I suggest that you do so. Besides reading a great story, you'll also help support an artists in this harsh economic climate. If you can't find it in stores, you can definitely order it on Amazon here.

Two lovely videos...

...from two lovely ladies. Both of them talk about my book.