My time today has a good number of things vying for attention, so the post today will be short; this is a shame, as there are some recent events in quite a few webcomics that deserve some serious discussion.

Rather than try talk about them and fail to do them justice, I thought today would be a good point to mention a recent comic I was sent to review, a little comic called Fish Tank.

Fish Tank was described to me as a comic about three intelligent fish living in a home aquarium, and their exploits. This didn’t seem like a bad idea for a comic, but my first though was that while it sounded clever, it also sounded incredibly boring.

Boy is my face red.

Even outside of the adventures they go on – taking them from the amazon to Alaska to outer space, the characters themselves are really dynamic, and really alive. Part of it is that they are unique – Ted is a brilliant goldfish with a gift for invention, Angelo is an extremely vain but friendly angelfish, and Hoover is a bottom-feeder who always puts his own interests first. But a lot of it is the way they are drawn. The design of the fish is simple, and feels like a very old school style of drawing – a few loose, flowing strokes that come together to create a complete image.

But the simplicity works wonders where a more complex design would have rendered them completely lifeless.

Fish Tank is a fun strip, and it is a clever one, too. But it proves to be a whole lot more than that, and that’s what really makes it great.