Motel Art Improvement Service
By Jason Little
http://www.beecomix.com/

With Motel Art Improvement Service, Shutterbug Follies author and Act-I-vate member, Jason Little, uses the immediacy and flexibility of the Internet to create a fun, unique, Webcomic. The story focuses on Bee, a precocious 18-year old who sets out on a cross-country bike trip, which turns into a multiple hotel-spanning adventure with a mysterious–but bright–drifter.

It’s the art, however, that’s truly the star of the show. Little crafts Motel Art with fluid lines rendered with a computer-quality precision. Colors pop off the screen. Bright oranges, greens and blues dominate his palate, and are responsible, largely, for the aesthetic success of Motel Art. His style fits the narrative well; both are whimsical but precise in their execution. Little also regularly employees unconventional panel layouts. One installment features Neil Adams-esque diagonal panels, and another uses what can only be described as, biomorphic trapezoids. His creativity is refreshing.

The story, on the other hand, is entertaining, if inconsistent. Motel Art is at its best when Little allows his artwork room to breath. At times he clogs the panels with dialogue for the sake of exposition, but these installments often lack the fun felt in the rest of the series, like the sublimely entertaining episode 33, which finds Bee cleaning a hotel room currently occupied by some Dungeons and Dragons-playing nerds, only to be startled by something mysterious which darts around her feet.

It’s perhaps not the most epic moment of storytelling, but it aptly illustrates Little’s use of the Webcomics serialization. Through expert pacing, creative paneling, and eye-catching illustration, the artist crafts an entertaining episode while simultaneously creating a cliffhanger. It would be interesting to see the same work translated into book form, but in the meantime, Motel Art Improvement Service serves a a largely effective and captivating–if uneven–exercise in the Webcomics form.

–Ben Gold