Greg Weisman, prior to his working with Disney Animation, wrote for comic books; the first issue is a little bumpy in places but overall it looks as though he will be falling back into the work like slipping on an old pair of shoes. Knowing his work from animated shows and the Gathering's yearly radio play, it is not his ability to construct plot and write a gripping story that the fans are concerned about, but how the visuals translate the story in the comic book medium.

What stands out first about the comic is the art- and this, not in a good way. There are a few nice panels and sequences that show the artists (David Hedgecock on pencils and Will Terrell doing the coloring) are capable of quality work...which makes the fact that 85% of the first issue is sub-par all the more infuriating. Fans may not know how the industry works, that artists who can consistently produce work on schedule are more valued than those who can produce beautifully rendered work but may be unreliable (or unable to create equal quality work en masse in such a limited span of time as the comic book industry has) because when you miss a deadline in the comic world, you waste the speed you have built up with your advertising and the money you spent on it, lose the interest of those who order the comics to sell in their stores, and annoy the fans. Speed, reliability, and cost are the driving factors of the comic book industry...but even for those who know this, the comic has not met the high expectations of the waiting Gargoyles audience. The formula for a successful, off the shelf comic book could be defined as art that draws you, writing that holds you, story and characters that keep you interested and coming back. We have all but the first, and that letdown when the rest is what we hoped for has sent a number of the fans howling.

A limited timeframe to produce and clean up the art does not excuse page after page of glaring anatomical inaccuracies, awkward perspectives, and muted coloring jobs. The phrase "the readers are less concerned about the art than the written story the comic tells" has been trotting around the fandom since previews of the first issue's art were put online; in many cases, this is true. A person enthralled enough by the story will not set down a book because the art doesn't blow them away with every panel. However, bad artwork can distract from the storytelling in a graphic medium, and there have been more complaints about what stands out as badly rendered than there have been compliments on the quality of the words, partly because there is little to find fault in with the script, and partly because the audience has an animated version to compare it with.

Rather than just generalize about the quality of the comic's art as some have, since it in fact not all poorly done, let's talk specifics in both where the art stands out as remarkably bad, and where it shines as good.

Starting with the more eye-catching bloopers, we have the top panel of page 2, showing "footage" the clan fleeing the clocktower. There seems to be a problem with proportions in relation to the perspective, especially noticeable with Goliath and Hudson; Goliath is holding on to Hudson's arms, so the older gargoyle cannot be as far behind as the difference in size between himself and Goliath suggests. The rest of the page does not diminish at the same angle to allow for the explanation to be an extreme vanishing point. The features of the characters haven't been captured well either, with Goliath bearing an uncanny resemblance to Elvis with his hairstyle, Broadway and Bronx appearing too similar, Brooklyn sprouting a large curvature to his lower jaw, and Lexington appearing to have lost part of his wings' webbing. ....................................................next -->