Another of my purchases from London Comic Con, Cafe Suada is a webcomic that's had a pop out into the printed form, as slim volumes of which I picked up the first.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's about cafes, particularly the Piyo Piyo teahouse, and its manager Geraldine, who finds herself suddenly at war with the Dark Moon Coffee House next door.
Even worse, the person in charge of the coffee house is an unnecessarily pretty man, which I'm sure isn't going to lead into an ongoing will-they/won't-they thing in which their feisty competition over which is the best hot drink turns into sexing.
Luckily, the rivalry is presumably never going to get too terrible, because in a third twist of fate, it's the same person who owns both the tea house and the coffee shop. If this is her way of being a wingman to Geraldine, it's the most complicated blind date ever.
The art is as you'd expected for a manga-inspired Brit, being fairly detail heavy, having the typical face focus and some nice action shots, especially regarding pouring of the various tasty liquids. Where it has nice variety though is in the colouring. The usual black and white is instead a sepia with red/orange highlights, giving the comic a rather unusual appearance that rather nicely distinguishes from others. Gives it a certain atmoshere. There's also been a lot of work put into the typography, with various visual tricks for particular phrases.
The first volume I picked up is rather light, so I think I'll have to have a nosy at the webcomic version to see where this story gets to. Not a bad start though, with a few interesting hooks.
Tagged: Comic Drama Slice of life Workplace/Employment