Oh wordless mini kus books, we do have some fun together. Well, it’s not entirely wordless, but I’ll leave the one thing that’s actually said in the book as a surprise for the reader. As always, I’ll most likely get some things wrong in my theories of what’s happening, but hey, isn’t that half the fun? This is the story of a young girl who’s being put to bed for the night. I used the first page for the sample image, something I rarely do, because just look at the sheer level of detail in it, and how much is casually set up for the story ahead. There’s a frog perched on the girl’s head, there’s a goat sleeping at the foot of her bed, there’s what may or may not be a witch (wearing oven mitts to tuck the girl in), there’s the bedposts (and claws on the feet of each bedpost), along with several other tiny details. From there the light is switched off, the frog also falls asleep… and once it’s pitch black, the young girl decides to go exploring, guided by a strange odor. Well, I’m guessing “strange” here, maybe the right word would be “enticing.” They travel through a barren landscape before eventually winding up at a large structure that looks like a natural part of the environment. Inside of this structure is a giant snake (and you should also linger on the small details of this gigantic room), where the nature of her quest is finally revealed, and we get to see which of the members is a coward. That’s all you’re getting from me, but this is a gorgeous, haunting book, and a damned solid fourth issue if you’re doing the “buy four mini kus comics for basically the price of three of them” deal. $7 (or $22 for the deal)
This was one of those rare comics where I flipped it over and read it again immediately after finishing it. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m OK leaving that up to the reader to decide, but on my end it was mostly because I read it thinking one thing and then realizing at the end that I had it wrong. Or did I? Eh, enough hypotheticals already. This is a straightforward enough story, if you’re worried that this was another of those abstract mini kus books that I just flatly didn’t get. Not so! This was entirely two women walking and talking, outside of the notable fact that one of the women might not have been there at all. I’m torn on whether the ghostly woman was meant to be the blond woman’s missing mother or grandmother (strongly leaning towards grandmother, but it’s open to interpretation). They’re looking for their old house, without much information or clues to go on, and the ghostly woman is regretting her life’s choices, specifically her choice not the speak up more when an old friend was deported. The fact that she would have been deported too, and possibly killed, is of cold comfort to her, especially as she takes stock of her own life and faded ambitions. She had stories to tell about her past and her own kids weren’t interested, but life has come back around to resemble the old horrors and now the young blond woman is very interested indeed. It’s all pretty ethereal, and difficult not to link it all back to real life horrors happening now. The only reason I’m not sure that’s what’s being referenced is that I’m not sure how long Ula was working on this comic, but it seems likely she’s obliquely referencing current events. There’s a lot to get out of this story no matter how you look at it, so as always you can get a copy for $7 or get a four issue bundle for $22. I usually recommend the bundle, even more so now that I’ve reviewed three of the four comics in that bundle…
One tricky thing about reviewing older comics is that I sometimes have no idea what the creator is up to these days. I liked Rusty’s books back in the day (it looks like the last time I reviewed one of his comics was in 2013), but lost track of him a bit and ordered this from the Spit and a Half shop recently. Now according to my usual cursory internet search it looks like his most current website is a Tumblr page that was last updated a decade ago? Eh, let’s just go with the theory that I’m missing something obvious. Besides, that Tumblr page does have images from this particular comic, so at least it’s relevant. Oh hey, I should also talk about the comic a bit, right? This one starts off with a brief story about Duane walking and talking with his bird pal Christian, trying to figure out what he’s doing with his life and what it all means. From there we go to a… I guess you’d call it Claymation if it was an animated short, but since it’s a comic it’s a series of staged pictures with malleable dolls, about a woman who’s giving a news report about a string of murders, but who may have lost the plot a bit on who exactly she’s reporting to. After that a trip to the bar is required, where the news woman runs into an old boyfriend, Duane tries to pet a bird and the band singer has a rough time of it. There was a nice through line on all of these stories, mixed styles and all, and hey look at that, it turns out that I still like Rusty’s comics. It’s a measly $5 and in stock at John Porcellino’s shop, give it a shot why don’t you?
Three cheers for the mini kus folks always posting links to the artists on their comics page, because an internet search for “Mao comics” was getting me exactly nowhere. This one is based on an intriguing concept: the androids in Blade Runner were designed so that they couldn’t evolve and they all had set expiration points. Well, what if all of that was disregarded, and no moral constraints at all were placed on genetic engineering? This one specifically deals with octopuses (which I’d always thought was octopi, but it’s mentioned enough here that I’m starting to doubt it). Specifically, since they usually only breed once before dying, what if that constraint was removed, along with tinkering with the results? This is going to be another one of those cases where I don’t want to say a whole lot about the evolving plot, but come on, when has checking out a mini kus comic ever been a bad idea? Maybe a literal few times in the (as of this one) 136 issue run? It’s a story well told, with the scientists being very human (worried about bad press and bad pictures in the stories about their work), the octopuses breaking containment at just about the first opportunity, and what happens when they inevitably run into other humans. As always, it’s $7 for just this one or $22 for a set of four different comics, and you know which option I always recommend. Hint: it’s the “you mean I basically get a free comic?” version.
There’s one easy question to ask to help determine how much you’re likely to relate to this comic: was the first music you purchased physical or digital? People who have only ever pirated music, stay out of this one. If your answer was “digital,” there’s still plenty in here for you to like, specifically his talk of making mix tapes (“playlists” now, basically) along with a detailed, nostalgic walk through how buying and listening to music evolved over the years. For everybody who bought their first music in a physical format (cassette tapes for me), good lord are you ever going to have a lot to relate to in here. The overall theme of this one is the joy of discovery; this may be the most lighthearted comic of David’s yet. Or maybe not, as the man has made a whole lot of comics. But it’s definitely one of them! This one is 46 pages of a love letter to music, told through his own experiences and mixed in with stories from family members of different generations. One through line of David’s experience: he never stopped loving vinyl. I mean, even when it was literally impossible to get, he’d still go very far out of his way to try, and he never bought into any arguments about the “superior sound quality” of compact discs. Pops and crackles forever, and honestly I’d say he’s been proven correct over the years. Stories in here go all over the music landscape, and deal with trying to decide a favorite band as a kid, making a drum kit out of what was lying around, discovering Adam Ant (and finding out that he used to be punk), the benefits of getting a single versus the entire album, having physical pictures to look at while listening to music (some of the artwork in records was glorious, as was the giant posters of the bands), favorite records that have held up over the years, taping theme songs from tv shows, compiling a bunch of his old ticket stubs from live shows (a project I’ve been halfway working for a while now), a girlfriend going to a Yes concert because of his love for it (and her hating it), and taking the assignment too literally when asked to make a scary compilation. Along with many other stories, because, like I mentioned, this thing is huge. If reading this doesn’t make you nostalgic for some of your favorite music (and, most likely, dig out some older music you haven’t listened to in years), then I’m afraid that you just don’t have any soul in you. Yes, I’d call that highly recommended, wouldn’t you? $10 (ish, I still don’t know how to convert the cost to dollars)
Over the almost 25 years that I’ve been talking about comics (yes, I really did start this nonsense back in 2001), I’ve seen a WHOLE lot of comics that are mostly about how the artist didn’t have any ideas for making a comic. I mean, it could almost be its own genre at this point. That being said, I’ve rarely if ever seen one as inventive and as thoroughly entertaining as this one. It starts off like an illustrated movie script, with stage directions and descriptions of the action, which is basically five full pages of setup. And right around the time you’re probably thinking, as the reader, “is this going to pick up the pace any time soon?”, Heather jumps in to point out her own doubts about the direction and pace of the story. We get a couple of pages of her describing her fears, wondering if this whole idea was a mistake, and then we’re treated to the most glorious two pages of procrastination in comics history. I almost used that double page spread as the sample image, but I couldn’t bring myself to give that splendor away for free. From there she spends a few pages going through the various stages of grief (and other things), before a pep talk from her dog finally get her back on track! We see the boy, the worm, their awkward friendship… and then we’re back to Heather’s self doubt. Will she pull it together to finish the comic, or are the next half dozen pages or so totally blank? Um, you can probably guess the answer to that one, but you’re getting no spoilers from me. This was a thoroughly entertaining comic, and good luck finding another comic that packs this much story into a 24 page comic about not really having a story. $8 (or $22 for a set of four different issues)
I thought Gabriel’s work looked familiar, and luckily the search option on this website is better than my brain, because I reviewed Forget Me Not a few years back, which is one of those books that’s been lodged into a small corner of my brain ever since. Thanks, my own website! Sooner or later you’ll be doing all of my thinking for me. As for this one, between the title and the message on the cover, I think you can probably guess the general vibe of the book. I mean, it’s hard to argue with him at this point in American history. This one is all about seeing things as they really are and what’s he’s hoping to get out of it when he meets up with guys. It’s a simple three step process that I won’t spoil here, which works great until it doesn’t. The rest of the comic deals with that time, how he changed during it, how he could see what was happening but couldn’t stop it, and how it all confirmed his worst suspicions. But still, who could ever stick to those three steps forever? This is a little on the heartbreaking side, but it’s also not something that you’ll soon forget. $7
Boy howdy, does this type of story seem like exactly the sort of thing that should inspire more comics. These are tales of different bands and musical artists, taken either from their writings or interviews, interpreted into comics form. Jason says in his intro that he intentionally priced these issues low enough not to make any money off of them, just in case any copyright issues came up from sharing these stories. But if you have any interest in the bands mentioned on the cover (or Mike Watt, who I sure think should get a mention on the cover), this comic is a whole lot of fun, and you’ll probably learn something new about them. This one starts off with three stories about Sonic Youth: one dealing with the spectacularly ridiculous time that Thurston Moore (and a makeshift band) played Keanu Reeve’s birthday party (which involves them playing on an ice rink as movie stars skated by), one about how their new band member lived through 9/11 in New York and everything he experienced, and finally one about how Thurston and Kim Gordon started dating (and the further adventures of the guitar that broke the ice for them). That would be a fine comic right there, but it’s the halfway point of the issue. Next up is the story of Mike Watt trying to put hot sauce on a sandwich while driving, not being willing to throw out the sandwich after the inevitable happens, and trying to survive the experience. Other stories include an adaptation of the Juliana Hatfield song where she sings about having to sell her favorite guitar, Alex Zhang Hungtai’s journey to misery and back again (also including the story of one of the best human beings to ever exist, honestly), and Neil Young writing a song and having to save it for the perfect moment. It’s a genuinely engrossing comic, and if you have any connection to these bands it’s indispensable. And hey, even if you don’t, these are some thoroughly entertaining stories. $4
I’m always a fan of comics that keep me guessing, so I was delighted that the assumption I made when buying this (that this would be a comic about a time when Caroline watched a house when somebody was out of town, with or without hijinx) wasn’t actually what the comic was about. It’s actually a story about Carolyn growing up, experiencing art first through how her parents decorated their own home, before having her world completely opened up after visiting the house where her father had done some repair work. This house had been designed by one of the students of Frank Lloyd Wright, so it was already a unique experience inside and out, but the inhabitants of the house had dedicated it to art of all kinds. There’s a lot going on in here, but that sample image really is my favorite, showing how they all took in what they were seeing in their own ways. Of course, Carolyn does eventually end up house-sitting, but what it mostly did was expand on her own love for art and show what her own home could eventually look like. She also dog-sat (and learned what to do and what not to do with a dog), but that section is so delightful that I’ll just leave it for y’all to discover. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable comic, and a good reminder that you can always surround yourself with art, or at the very least you can always have reminders of it everywhere. $8
I was curious how this one would hit me, now that we’ve got some distance from the pandemic. Well, we’ve stopped acknowledging it as a culture anyway, and that’s kind of like getting some distance, right? Oh America, you self-destructive scamp you. This is a collection of comics, starting off with a subject that a lot of people went through during the pandemic (including me): adopting a pet. I get nervous when I think about the number of those pets that ended up staying with the people who got them, but this is about Elise and her family, who adopted the adorable Bertie. She takes us through the adoption process and the acclimation process (for the dog and the humans), which luckily seemed to be relatively simple for all involved. Next up is a story about how Elise eventually started making masks for everybody she knew during the pandemic, and how it ended up bringing in some money for her due to odd jobs around the area and people in need online. That image of the environmentalist holding up a line filled with thrown away masks will haunt me, but people barely knew what they were doing at the time, and just about nobody was thinking long term. Next up is her family’s experience of all getting covid at the same time, and it will never cease to amaze me how differently that virus affected different people. She also mentioned in her update that her family got it again shortly before the book was set to be published, so there’s that. After a short piece about her imagination of how the new people she talked to regularly would look without their masks (versus how they actually looked when the masks came off), the last story of the comic deals with her getting way into making pizzas for the family while they were all stuck at home. And if you’re wondering, yes, she absolutely does include the recipe for the pizza, and yes, it does sound delicious. She even includes a recipe for another version of it that sounds a bit easier to make. So come on in, revisit a time when most of us thought “boy, it can’t get any worse than this, right?” Yeah, about that… $12
I got a rare, genuine, audible “huh” out of myself when I did a search for Ben’s name here and realized that I’d really never reviewed one of his comics. I’ve been hearing his name for ages, how was this possible? Maybe I’ve only seen his work in anthologies? Still, genuinely shocking to me. So how was this, the first of his comics that I’ve read? Well, it’s full color, and for this setting that was a solid choice. Things start off in a seedy bar, with our hero (I don’t think he’s ever named) using his robot to cheat at cards, which is something that the man he is cheating strongly suspects is happening. That was also an eclectic mix of thugs, considering the fact that we don’t see most of them again. Our hero excuses himself, tries to escape and is chased by a large rocky bodyguard. Due to a little bit of ingenuity they both escape, and then they get a tip (from as big of a “red flag” type tipster as you’re ever likely to see), and make their way to a mysterious city. They follow the clues (the dog standing in a spotlight was a nice touch), make their way inside, and are immediately confronted with oddities. A skeleton holding a mysterious book! A typewriter typing by itself (and getting very annoyed when our hero started typing)! Still, they’re not finding much in the way of actual treasure, but they do run across the couple who has set the trap, and there’s no way I’m going to spoil why they set it in the first place, but it got a solid chuckle out of me. Our heroes are put into a cell with more captives, things go down, and there’s even a series of illustrations in the back from other artists depicting our hero. It’s a thoroughly entertaining comic, and it opens up yet another artist who I’m apparently way behind on reading. $8 (on sale at Ben’s website)
I’ll call this one another bit of validation for my habit of never reading the back cover of a book before reading the book itself. Don’t do it kids! Spoilers coming right up, so if you don’t want to know why that’s the case, stop reading this and go stare at another screen for a bit. Read this book though, it’s great! For the rest of you, the back of the book refers to Sophie and some trouble she gets into… and we don’t meet Sophie until we’re 17 pages into a 54 page book. What we do see beforehand are two punks at a show, and they’re the sketchy asshole kind of punks, not the “heart of gold, just trying to have fun” kind of punks. If you’ve never been near that scene, yes, there is a huge difference. Anyway, one of these punks heckles the singer of the band enough that he walks off the stage, they steal his guitar and smash it, and drunkenly drive off into the night. One of them does have a brief mystical experience with some lights in the sky, so it’s not like they’re both thorough monsters, just not that great as far as human beings go. So the drunken driving ends up in a near miss, but they learn no lessons from that, so they keep going until they do crash into another car. And hey, it’s Sophie! She’s a sophomore in college, they help her out of her wrecked car and take her to an all night diner to wait for the car repair shop to open up. Of course they’ll be happy to help her and share insurance information later! But she eventually leaves to use the restroom, is disoriented enough to leave her purse in the booth, and of course they run off with it. From here it’s all the story of Sophie, as she sleeps for a few hours in the booth, calls her mother for help in the morning, and still makes it on time for the event she was trying to make, but that’s enough spoilers for now. I certainly wasn’t expecting it, and it wasn’t the sort of thing she should have been doing with head trauma. It’s a thoroughly engaging if occasionally maddening book (for the behavior of the punks, not the art or writing), but I’d thoroughly recommend it. $10
Who’s looking for a little mild heartbreak on a Monday? This one is told from the perspective of a young girl writing in her diary. Things start off fairly innocuous, as she’s writing about things she likes and how much she enjoys writing poems, before she gets to the heart of things: her parents are getting divorced, and she has no idea what her life is going to be like after that happens. What happens when her mom starts dating again? Or when her dad moves out? Will she lose friends at school over it? The writing is done with large single page panels (which is why the sample image is so cryptic), so it’s a quick read, but there are details in here that will stick in your brain and remind you of them later. As for the explanation of that image below, oof. I hope this is fiction, because the image of your dad moving out of the house would be heartbreaking enough, but bringing both cats with him would just be such an extra insult to the proceedings. It turns out that there are several Missy comics, so maybe I’ll keep looking for more, but this is one is solid by itself. Check it out, especially if you have any lingering divorce trauma in your life. $5
To readers of this website who are just discovering his work now and who think that maybe Hans has put out both of these books recently, a little reality check: that’s not the case. This second volume was at least a decade after the first, and he’s been working on it since 2014. If you’d told me that he spent about a month on each panel of this almost 200 page behemoth, based on the frankly absurd amount of detail in each image, I’d absolutely believe you. Just a gorgeous book from start to finish, full of beautifully detailed horrors. Should I tell you about the story? Fine, but this really is one of those cases where the art alone could carry the book. Things start off in almost a straightforward fashion: there’s a lone figure wearing a bear mask, crawling through the wreckage of civilization, hunting for a bird. He successfully knocks a bird out of the sky, cuts it open… and then removes a key from the carcass, which he uses to open up his own face. Yep, for a page or two there I was almost fooled that this was a typical post-apocalyptic story. Nope! We go inside his open face and see a character (that is soon named Fronky by Cochlea and Eustachia) who is clearly looking for something. He pulls two husks out of filing cabinets, plugs them into a device of some kind, and out come our heroes! Well, one of them, anyway. She has to pull her twin out of her husk, as she doesn’t really want to leave it. And, considering what happens to both of them throughout the book, she had the right instincts. The mystery of their origin is revealed, in case (like me) you were still curious from the last volume. Which has almost nothing to do with this one, in case you were wondering if you had to read them in order like I did. Anyway! Fronky was incapacitated somehow, and they manage to extract a black bubble from him. Which they then crack open, revealing an armadillo, which they then spend a lot of time chasing, and which figures into the overall plot pretty heavily. From there… you know, me going over this point by point doesn’t help either of us. There’s a giant with a globe for a head who’s hunting the twins, there’s a room full of exact duplicates of Cochlea and Eustachia, there’s a creep who’s using versions of them to power his vehicle, one of them loses an eye, and just about every oddity in this world is hunting them. Small details in panels are paid off beautifully down the line, and it somehow all ties together nicely. There’s a lot more nudity in this one than the previous volume, but it’s not like I’d call either of these appropriate for all ages. If you’re a fan of the odd and almost inexplicable (that somehow all makes sense in the end), I couldn’t recommend these two books highly enough. $36 (or get both volumes for a discounted price of $56)
I’d occasionally like to go back in time and give the past version of myself a smack on the head. I reviewed a few comics from Hans way back in the early days of the website, starting in 2005 if my rickety archiving system is accurate. At the time it was obvious that he was an exceptional talent, which current me can confirm by reading those old reviews. And yet! I somehow managed to lose track of the guy. One look at his website shows that he’s been making books ever since, so that’s a pile of books I need to get caught up with in a hurry. Because (long-winded and meandering introduction over) this is an exceptional comic, unlike just about anything else you’re likely to see. Before I even get started on the story, I’d recommend to anybody reading this book to take your time on those panels. Every one has a level of detail that rewards lingering on it, and the choice to go full color (his previous comics were black and white) was inspired. So what’s going on in here? Oh boy. Cochlea and Eustachia are twin (?) human girls (???), and no, you cannot tell them apart unless they’re actively addressing themselves. The “human” part is dicey since one drilled a hole into the side of the other and no blood came out (there was also only a momentary sense of pain), and the “twin” part is in question because most of this volume deals with the repercussions of getting mistaken for another identical version of the girls who’s going around and causing chaos. Things start off with a mole man emerging from the his cage in the back of a giant statue of an anteater with a fancy collar (or possibly a taxidermied anteater), which rouses Cochlea from her sleep. This also lets the reader take a tour of this house, surrounded by a sea of bird skulls, which is filled with mysteries and wonders. And dangers! They’re both seemingly at constant risk of injury or death, although we do see later that the rules might be a bit different in their world. After observing both the mole man going about his day and their evil twin doing all sorts of damage, one of them is captured after being mistaken for the evil twin. Horrible things happen to her as a result (how did a phone get up there anyway?), after one particularly horrible thing happens to the mole man, and things take an ugly turn after a plug is pulled. No more from me about the story, as I feel like I may have already said too much. This volume also has a short story in the back, which shows the pair digging up a (still living?) body and doing some improvements to it, which I should also probably leave to the reader. Highly recommended, obviously, and once again, reader: take your time with this one. There’s not a huge amount of dialogue, but some of these images are guaranteed to stick with you. $25 (or $56 for a pack of volume 1 & 2)
A new book from Ansis is always a treat, just to spare you any suspense regarding how this review is going to go. It was just last week that I was wearing my Zombre shirt to the gym and had the pleasure of watching a dude look at my shirt, silently mouth the word “Zombre” like it was a question, and go about his day. Too bad, as I would have had a grand old time explaining it to him if he’d asked. But hey, Zombre isn’t in this one, it’s all about cats! Do I always give comics about cats a positive review? Yeah, probably. And that’ll be true until I find the one comic about somebody being an asshole to a cat, at which point the streak will end. This one is a series of single page stories mostly about two cats (Skelly and Pip), with occasional guest cats thrown in. Ansis is also using occasional stickers and colors, mostly but not completely as part of his scanned images in the book (my cover had an actual sticker on it anyway), which made for an interesting look throughout. Side note: am I typing this while my cat Miles is literally cat yelling at me for closing the door while I’m doing this? Reader, you know it, so I’d better make this quick. Stories in here deal with the inevitable quest for quiet while you’re working (pretty on the nose for me today), the glorious dream of catching the mouse versus the reality of how much trouble it is, getting too worked up after watching a movie (cat edition), the sad origin story of Skelly (adopted as part of a bonded pair when the other half died only a week later, sadly I can relate to this one too), the tuna dance, and an unseen moment of cat peace. There are also stories about Ranger (it just never works to try to help a cat who seems too hot) and Cutlet (the shrieker) and Bob (awwww). I’m not seeing this on his website so it must be hot off the presses, but if you contact him through his website I’m thinking maybe $5 could get you a copy? I’m terrible about guessing prices so don’t quote me on that. He’s also putting out two new books next year, but for now… cats!
I apologize for this being a few days late to be considered an actual Christmas review, but you know how life gets around the holidays. And hey, at least I’m getting this out during the weird holiday taint week. Can the holidays be funny, was the question I asked myself after seeing this arrive in the mail. Normally I’d think that the subject has been satirized to death by now, but then again I’d never seen Brandon take a crack at it. This one starts off with a Christmas song (with lyrics), so gather the family around the fire and give it a go! Next we get a mysterious tale of a secret Santa who keeps sending a single egg to their chosen person throughout the holidays, until we get the dramatic reveal at the end. Next we see the moments where the Home Alone bandits question their life choices before going into that McCallister house and have time to briefly ponder what might have been. I’m not even going to tell you what the next two stories are about (other than to tell you that Rudolph is a human this time around and Santana shows up for the holiday), because I believe in surprises for Christmas. Oh, and Meat Santa to wrap things up, another unopened present for you. Still, the bulk of this book is a Christmas Carol parody. You may think, like I did, that parodying that particular story has been done to death and that there’s no hidden sources of humor left in it. Again, you haven’t seen Brandon’s take yet. Scrooge has never been humbuggier, Tiny Tim has never been tinier, the ghosts have never been more downsized, and the true effects of Scrooge’s change of heart on a larger scale have never been more clearly and depressingly explained. Brandon’s single panel per page style makes using a sample image tricky for me (oh, the troubles I have), but he asks the important questions, so I had to include the question that’s been bothering historians for over a century. This one is packed full of funny bits and I couldn’t recommend it more highly, ESPECIALLY if you read it during the actual holiday season. $25
I’m going to stick with my lifelong habit of avoiding spoilers whenever possible, but the biggest story in here deals with a breakup, and I’m still blown away with how it happened. The details are left to the imagination, and they’re kind of irrelevant to my bafflement, which is: people really break up over text and THEN ask to meet up so they can explain it in person? I’ve seen the cowardly breaking up by text, I’ve seen breaking up in person, I’ve even seen breaking up in person in a public place to lessen the chance of any unpleasant blowups. But breaking up by text and getting into the details later? AND asking them to return a loaned book when you meet them? I’m in awe. That story is told as in a fever dream, which makes sense, and the surprisingly good news he gets while waiting at the park was a fantastic juxtaposition. I mean, the look that the bank manager gave when he realized that heartbroken Eli would be a terrible model for a photo op! Eh, that’ll all make sense when you read the story. Other stories in here include the secret conversations of hospital equipment (come on, you know you were wondering about them) and a crowd in the rain joining together to salvage some poorly placed road detour blocks during a torrential downpour. Also sprinkled throughout are some of Eli’s interpretations of headlines from a celebrity gossip magazine he saw and didn’t understand, and there’s some hilarious stuff in there. The joys of hitting middle age are sparse, but “I have no idea who these ‘famous’ people are and also don’t care” is definitely one of them. I’d recommend this for the breakup story alone, but there’s a lot of good stuff in here, so give it a shot why don’t you? $10
This one fell through the reviewing cracks somehow (Alex put this out a couple of years ago), which wouldn’t be all that notable except for the fact that his online store seems to be down completely and the only active link I can find for this issue goes to Birdcage Bottom Books. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but the link shows as a security risk, so I’m using a different link that’s currently sold out. Maybe they’ll get more? Eh, I don’t know. Not the first time that I’ve reviewed something and wondered after the fact if a comics apocalypse happened while I wasn’t paying attention. Past me thought I’d be reading the previous three issues before trying to review this one, but current me is cranky and tired, so I’ll have to rely on my memory to keep these characters straight. Which isn’t as problematic as usual, since Alex put a brief synopsis at the start, and the theme of this issue is overall less about the people than it is about the town itself. The first half of this book is an oral history of the town given by one of its residents, and we don’t see any details about who or what’s happening until the end. This person goes through what the town used to be like, how the people used to interact, how sad it is that the younger generation can’t wait to get out, why they stick around, etc. If you come from a small town this one might hit you pretty hard, as it’s hard not to see some parallels to other places that I’ve lived. After a lovely centerfold depicting parts of the town (and a very brief story about Suzy), the rest of the book shows an outdoor wedding. Sure, Alex spends plenty of time with some character growth for several people (seriously, the number of things going on in the background makes me think that I still missed a few after reading this twice), but this is once again about the town and the various interpersonal dynamics happening. Also that ending didn’t involve any humans and it still got me. Here’s hoping that everything is OK in Alex’s world, as it’s odd not to see active links to his comics online. But if you can find this at a con or have better searching skills than me, give it a shot. It might not be the best single issue by itself, but it wouldn’t be possible without the character growth from the previous issues, and I’m still fascinated to see how it all comes together. $8
It’s been a little while since I’ve reviewed a comic from Charles (the pace he puts these things out at puts even Brian Canini to shame, and if I were to review everything he makes this would become a Charles Brubaker exclusive website in a hurry), but I do like to check in occasionally to see how things are going. Big picture: yeah, the guy is still pretty funny, even battering his way past my natural indifference to the four panel gag structure to get a few genuine laughs out of me every time. That’s no small task! Smaller picture, or a review of the actual comic: yep, he’s still getting laughs out of me. I’m genuinely astonished that this is the first issue of Lauren Ipsum I’ve reviewed here, especially since it’s #32 (!!!). I was also curious about how far he’s gotten with his various other series, and was mildly baffled to see that the only books he has listed for sale are his graphic novel collections of these (and other) minis. I’m guessing that you can contact the man and ask for specific issues, but that’s just a guess. This issue has a few stories running through it, all neatly wrapped up by the end. There’s an ongoing (and hilarious) story about a man and his sidekick who go house to house, stealing used books, in one of the more unrealistic get rich quick schemes I’ve ever heard. As a man who just tried to sell two very full paper grocery bags of books/graphic novels and was pleasantly surprised to end up with $60 in trade-in value… let’s just say that it’s a very funny premise for a thief. There are a few assorted strips in the middle dealing with Lauren as an author and her general inability to relax, and the last chunk of the comic deals with Lauren summoning the spirit of Zeus, which gives Charles the opportunity to have a whole lot of fun with Zeus as a sex creep who can’t even help pestering inanimate objects. Some genuinely funny stuff here, even more so if you’re familiar with the myths. So yeah, the man still puts out comics that are well worth checking out. If you’re just a little bit curious I’d suggest checking with him to see if you could get a grab bag of minis, if you’re willing to dive right in maybe start with his Ask a Cat omnibus and go from there? $2 (probably)
Posted by Kevin 
