June 11, 2015
Website
Sea Urchin
Have you ever had any questions about the meaning of things, or why you should plan out your life, or why you shouldn’t, or why you can’t, or the through-line of life that started way before you and will (theoretically) go on long after you’ve gone? If so, Laura asks all of those questions here and many, many more. If not, one of those philosopher dudes once said (paraphrasing) that the unexamined life is not worth living, so you should look into that. This comic is basically one long, uncertain primal shout at the universe and at everything around her and about her inability to get out of her own head. She doesn’t come right out and discover the meaning of life, but that’s not really her concern. This comic is all about exploring her own mind, her feelings of inadequacy and/or not having anything original to say, but then powering through that and being determined to have her own say regardless. It’s inspiring in a lot of ways, and early on there’s a great example of the dangers of answering the “how are you?” question too honestly. Nobody really cares, and there’s rarely if ever any follow-up, but it’s become the thing to say to other humans, so we all go along with it. If any of you work in an office like I do you must have experienced somebody asking you that while not even slowing down as they’re walking back to their desk. It’s a ridiculous thing to say, and it was a joy to see her take it apart. I don’t want to dig into the specifics, as there are a number of really beautiful scenes that you can discover on your own, but her comments about looking for stray cats every time she walked home and that sequence where she tried to work up the courage to pet a dog were fantastic. If you’ve ever unleashed a primal scream into your pillow, this comic will fill a hole in your life that you didn’t even know was there. And, again, if you’ve never thought of any of these things, maybe now is a good time to start? $8
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Posted by Kevin
June 10, 2015
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The Jernagen Solution
OK, I’ll just tell you up front that this will be one of those cases where I dance around the substance of the story, as I’d like to leave it as a surprise for anybody reading it. Yes, even though the events of this comic should make it clear where things are headed. It’s based on events from 1898, which is far enough removed that nobody living then is still with us today (or if they are they almost certainly were too young to remember this), so why not leave it a surprise? Even if it is kind of a surprise that you can see coming? Let me just put my dancing shoes away and get down to it. This is the story of a revolutionary kind of technology that was discovered in 1898. A reverend (who claimed to have had a vision from god) and a chemist got together and found a way to extract gold from ocean water. As this would lead to gold being available in almost limitless supplies, they then went out to attract donors so that they could build more facilities and extract more gold. The story is told mostly from the point of view of a local journalist (Dan does a fantastic job on the back cover of going over which bits were real and which bits were based on his best guess, and he had to guess the personality of the journalist) and how he goes from skepticism to belief after seeing the process in action. He also documents the change that occurs over the town, as that much money coming in that quickly would be bound to cause some upheaval. There’s a bit of a twist towards the end, which you probably see coming even from reading this review, but I’m not going to be the one to spell it out for you. This is a thoroughly engaging comic that details a bit of American history that I was completely unaware of, and what better reason is there for a historical comic than that? Frankly, I wish more people did comics based on true events (Emi Gennis seemingly has a near-monopoly on it these days), as your options are damned near limitless. It’s a pricey $10, but it’s also a hefty book, so check it out why don’t you? $10
Leave a Comment » | Reviews | Tagged: Dan Mazur, The Jernegan Solution | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
June 8, 2015
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Ink For Beginners
Tattoos! Going into this comic, I only had one opinion about them: eh, not for me. I thought for years that I would eventually find something that I wanted on my body for the rest of my life, but still haven’t come up with anything yet, so I figure the odds of it happening are decreasing rapidly by the year. That being said, I make no judgments on people who do get tattoos. It’s not my place, and I’ve seen some tattoos that are genuinely awe-inspiring. Anyway, now that you know my personal opinions going in, this comic is exactly what that title implies: a guide for people who are thinking about getting their first tattoo. Some of the advice may seem obvious, and Kate even admits as much, but it’s really best to think for a long time as to whether or not you want this image/message on your body for the rest of your life. Getting a tattoo with the name of a loved one on it? If it’s a sibling or somebody directly related to you, probably not the worst idea. If it’s whoever you’re dating/married to at the time, chances are that you’ll come to regret it eventually. She also has a helpful body chart, front and back, that shows the most and least painful areas to get tattoos. Some of them were obvious, others not so much. Kate also mentions that she heard from a number of artists that they spend roughly half their time covering up tattoos from other, crappier artists, so it’s clear that a large number of people go into this without doing much of anything in the way of research. She mentions tipping, what to bring the day of the tattooing, how to care for it after the fact… basically everything you would need to know if you’re looking into this at all. Overall this is a damned comprehensive guide for anybody who’s thinking about getting a tattoo, so I’d highly recommend this before you take the plunge, or as a gift for anybody you know who is thinking of doing so. The one thing I’d want to repeat is something that won’t get heeded by the people who need it most, because they are convinced they know it all: if you’re a teenager, maybe don’t get the lyrics for some Justin Bieber song tattooed on your arm? Chances are that you’ll regret that very quickly. $4
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Posted by Kevin
June 4, 2015
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Thanger Dangers
Just so you know, the title makes a little more sense when you actually read the comic. Not much, but a little. This is a collection of short pieces that J.T. has done for various anthologies for the last few years, so if you track down every single one of his stories, you may have already seen them. Well, except for the first story, as that is unpublished (at least as of the publication date of this comic). For everybody else, this is a nice mix of stories. First up is the story of his odd habit of curling up his tongue when confronted with something too cute, to help prevent himself from hugging or grabbing said cute creature too tightly. I’ve never heard of this, but am equally confused by the reaction of people confronted with overwhelming cuteness who proclaim their desire to murder said cute creature in various horrible ways. Next up is the mysterious case of the lead masks, which I read in another anthology, making this the only story in here that I’d seen before. For everybody else, it gets into two men who died mysteriously with no signs of foul play, mysterious journal entries leading up to it and all kinds of weird theories as to what may have happened. From there we get a short history of the mohawk, followed by the angst of a female preying mantis as she tells her partner what is going to happen to him when they have sex. Next is the “you should take some drugs while reading this” story of the batch, as Little Orphan Annie morphs into the Popeye comic strip, but not in the way you might expect and not completely. Eh, this one you’ll just have to see for yourself. Finally there’s Jon having an honest conversation with Garfield, and Garfield gives him the advice we’ve all been wanting to give him for many years now. There are also a few shorter joke pieces, but I’ll leave those a surprise. I laughed for some of them and didn’t laugh for others, which is how these things usually go, but humor is subjective, so your opinion may vary in either direction. It’s a solid collection of stories, and it’s pretty cheap at $3. You should probably buy it and see what you think of it. $3
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Posted by Kevin
June 2, 2015
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Dark Pants #2
A little note for future people who send me comics to review: if you include the phrase “a mysterious pair of trousers,” you have increased the chances of me liking your book exponentially. Of course, then you have to work up a plausible reason as to why there would be a mysterious pair of trousers in your comic, which is why it helps Matt that that’s already the subject of his comic (as the title may have implied). This is the second issue, but Matt assured me in the letter he sent with his comic that each issue follows a different person in different neighborhoods of Los Angeles as they each discover these trousers and experience some sort of life change associated with them. In this issue we start off with Milena, a young college girl who happens to be a virgin. Which wouldn’t be notable, but she’s also writing a sex advice column. Anyway, she’s still living with her family and is increasingly unsatisfied with the situation, and one night she finds the previously mentioned mysterious pair of trousers on her porch. They don’t belong to anybody in the house and nobody has any idea how they got there (although I’m guessing the previous issue might clear that up), but they increasingly weigh on Milena’s mind, until eventually she wears them and decides to go out on the town. The pants are a rousing success, or at least they are in regards to her finally hooking up with some random guy at a bar. From there we see her finally getting the nerve to ask out the creep on the bus that she has a crush on and what happens because of it. And far be it from me to give away the ending, but it looks like the pants will be moving on in the next issue to another person. Where do they come from? What do they do? Are they just pants? Maybe all these issues will get resolved, or maybe the pants are just a good excuse to tell a bunch of different stories. Either way, it was a thoroughly entertaining and engaging comic. That $10 price tag is a little steep, but there is a lot of comic here, and we do get some color before it’s over. Check it out, jump onto the journey of what exactly the deal is with those pants! $10
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Posted by Kevin
May 29, 2015
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Baseline Blvd
This is going to be another one of those cases where I can’t say much about the comic without giving away the ending, so for those of you who enjoy watching me dance to avoid such a thing, get ready for some fun! Generally speaking you can count on a comic to be autobiographical if a character in the story looks like the author and is referred to by his or her first name, so when I saw another character refer to the female lead here as “Emi” I assumed that would be the case. But you know what they say about assuming, so I went to her website and it’s true, this is autobiographical, and clearly deeply personal. This is Emi’s longest work to date (unless I’m forgetting something, but it’s 64 pages), and long chunks of it are taken up with her driving through Missouri or flashbacks. The flashbacks detail a deeply troubled relationship, or at least that’s the bits of it we see, and I’ve read enough of these types of comics to think I knew was coming. I was completely wrong. The conclusion smacked me right between the eyes, and going by the chain of events that led up to it, I’m glad that was her reaction rather than crumbling up into a ball and shutting herself away from the world. I can’t say for sure that that wouldn’t have been my reaction under similar circumstances, but from everything I’ve seen she has no reason to feel even remotely guilty. I hope that this is an older story from her life, one where she’s had a bit of time to heal, but if it’s still raw, and if she does happen to read this, her reaction was exactly right. Those types of people take their power where they can find it, and they’d probably be delighted to know that they still had power over you even when they can no longer do you any harm. Knowing that conclusion even gives those driving scenes more power, as that drive must have seemed like it took an eternity with all the thoughts that must have been swirling around in her head. Everybody reading this who has ever had a problematic relationship should give this a read, as it answered a pretty big “what if?” question that was in my head. $8
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Posted by Kevin
May 27, 2015
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Colonel MacTaggart in Colonel Cube
OK, granted, that cover image makes the lead character look an awful lot like another vaguely cubish character from a ridiculously popular cartoon. Assuming it’s still popular and, as I have no kids, I don’t know that for sure, so I’m talking about Spongebob Squarepants if it’s no longer popular or if you’re somehow reading this in the distant future. But what’s wrong with turning your lead character into a cube? It’s obvious even from the cover that this doesn’t really happen to him, that it’s just a dream, so where’s the harm? Who am I arguing with right now? Anyway, this is the story of a dream of the Colonel. We don’t see the reason for the odd dream until the end, but right away we see the Colonel coming to terms with his new form and learning that this form also allows him to transform other creatures (albeit with unpredictable effects). So our hero transforms a small lizard, turning it into a giant monster, and the monster is then killed by a tribe of “cone savages.” We get some solidly funny dialogue from the Colonel to this tribe, showing the delightful contempt that such explorers often showed for native people back in the day, which leads to their interaction taking a bit of a turn. I’m in danger of giving the whole thing away here, so I’ll just say that the eventual reason for his odd dream was brilliant. It’s a fun and funny book all around, and I’ll always agree with the idea that creatures who look like living candy corn should always be the villain. Oh, and it’s all in full and glorious color, assuming that such things matter to you, and why shouldn’t they?
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Posted by Kevin
May 26, 2015
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Last Mountain #2
Small press comics artists, take note: that is how you do a cover. I knew exactly what I was getting into before even opening the comic, and Dakota even added a subtle touch (that bug) that played a larger role than I would have thought in the story. The bulk of this comic is about a new kid at school, Danny, and his troubles fitting in. But we see the story mostly from the perspective of another kid, as she makes a few attempts to be his friend. The gist of the story is that Danny is a young man who had to leave his past school for mysterious reasons and that kids there called him “Buggy.” Just in case there are any children reading this who have a nickname that they’d like to get rid of and are moving on to a new school: don’t announce that nickname to your new class! Granted, with social media all nicknames are more or less permanent, but at least don’t make it easy on them. Anyway, Danny has a giant chip on his shoulder about all kinds of things, and his genuinely odd behavior around bugs doesn’t do a thing to ingratiate himself with the local kids. It’s a heartbreaking story where the biggest moments are played silently, giving you plenty of room to interpret some of the more ambiguous silences. There’s one other short story in here, basically dealing with working up the nerve to commit some vandalism when you’re a kid and the consequences that sometimes come with that. It’s a really solid comic all around and I’d recommend it for anybody who ever had issues fitting in as a kid or knew somebody who had those issues. So, everybody, basically.
Comments Off on McFadzean, Dakota – Last Mountain #2 | Reviews | Tagged: Dakota McFadzean, Last Mountain | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
May 19, 2015
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Inside Salmeck
How much do you know about where you live? Granted, if you live in your childhood
home, or never left your hometown, chances are you know quite a bit. But if you
moved away when you were younger, have gone from apartment to apartment a few times,
and wound up wherever you are now, how much do you really know about your
surroundings? Know any neighbors? This comic is an exploration of Vincent’s
immediate surroundings. That much is obvious right away, as his image of the
building he lives in has notations for which neighbors live where and the nature of
the building itself, including the history of it and the styles of construction in
various parts of the building. From there we get to learn a tiny bit about his
neighbor (who killed himself; when his mother came by to clean up she gave Vincent’s
daughter the childhood toy from her son, which he was rightly creeped out by), then
into Vincent’s apartment. From there he has a close view of his neighbors across the
street, and each of them has their own story (or story that he made up after
observing them for a time). It never gets too voyeuristic and we learn precious
little about Vincent’s life, but it serves as a fantastic portrait of a place and of
the time in which it’s being observed. Check it out, then just try not to look
around at your own place and wonder what else is going on around you that you’ve
never seen. $2
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Posted by Kevin
May 13, 2015
Website
Crawdads
Who loves teenage angst? Everybody, that’s who! Well, maybe everybody outside of
parents of teenagers, as they’re sick of dealing with it. And angsty teenagers
themselves, who are convinced that their angst is the one true angst and that nobody
has ever suffered as much as they have. Well, if you’re not in one of those groups,
you’ll probably thoroughly enjoy this comic. This is the story of a 16 year old boy
who gets talked into taking a family trip, complaining all the way. Also along on
this trip are the father (who is annoyed with the boy but gets the whole teenage
thing), the mom (who is also annoyed and much less forgiving) and his younger sister
(who is trying to emulate him out of a clear desire to keep him around for as long
as she can). The bulk of the comic is the conversations between various members of
this group, but the highlight comes from the title, as the two kids notice some
crawdads in the lake and decide to catch one. They end up catching two and, because
of the book our hero is reading at the time, he thinks they might be delicious. So
they cook them up, probably in about the most humane way that they could
(considering that they didn’t know what they were doing), and discover that they are
delicious. But this is when the mom catches them, and instead of joining in in this
moment of family bonding, things take a very different turn. There are lots of cute
and/or insightful little moments in here, and there’s a good chance that this could
even serve as a bit of an instructional guide if you are a parent of a teenager, or
somebody who will soon be a teenager. Either way, there’s a lot to like here for
just about anybody.
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Posted by Kevin
May 4, 2015
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Eyelash Out
You know how some reviewers refer to any comic featuring a drug trip as
“psychodelic” or just go with the easier “weird?” Yeah, I am very tempted to just
call this comic “trippy” and leave it at that. Still, that would be doing a
disservice to the comic, as there is so much more going on here. It is also trippy
as hell, and if you’ve done a large amount of LSD in your life there’s a chance that
various images in here could lead to flashbacks. That’s how that works, right?
Anyway, this comic starts off with a young man who is barging his way to the front
of a… contest? Selection process? Whatever it is, it’s the process of another
person (?) trying to determine who is worthy to have one of his/her/its eyelashes.
One person goes through the process and is awarded one, while the young man from the
first page bursts through the crowd and just takes an eyelash. The rest of the crowd
apparently doesn’t take this well, but from that point on all we see is the
(distorted, surreal) world through the eyes of these two characters, on whatever
analogy to a drug trip that they’re experiencing, so they don’t have to worry about
an angry mob. And man, that imagery. Every panel has at least a little bit of
floating imagery, often unconnected from anything that could be mistaken as coming
from the “real” world. I often wish for full color in my comics these days, but I
don’t know if my senses would have been able to handle it with this one. From there
we get to experience their trip in all its glory, until the male in the group
chooses a confrontation, and things spiral a bit from there. I’d say I’m avoiding
spoilers by not going any further with the story, but I could tell you the story
from beginning to end and I’d still recommend getting this book for the visuals
alone. If I had to pick a style it reminded me of I’d say early Ron Rege, sort of,
but also entirely its own thing, so not a helpful comparison. Here’s a test to see
if this book is for you: examine that cover image. Really dig into it. If you think
you know exactly what’s going on there, and want to see more, then pick this up
immediately. If you’re not sure what it happening, well, doesn’t that make you
curious to see what you’re missing? $4
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2015
Website
R.A.T.
Do you maybe have a computer monitor that was made in the last 5 years or so, one of
the ones that has a webcam built into it? If so, have you ever wondered whether that
camera is ever really off? I don’t know what you’d call that, as it’s hard to say
“paranoia” when it’s a technology that’s so open to exploitation, but if you’ve ever
worried about that, this comic is for you! This one starts out with a creep who
watches a young woman through her webcam on her computer. She never turns the
computer off, so he always has an easy way to observe her. He still has his “rules,”
so he doesn’t use this technology to get her bank data or any other personal
information. Nope, this guy just uses it to watch her while she has no idea that
this is going on. From there we get a scene of our heroine out drinking with some
friends, and she finally comes across this R.A.T. program and decides to take a look
at it and at who is available on this network. What she finds isn’t all that
shocking if you read the first half of this review (and boy would you be a weirdo if
you only read the second halves of reviews), but it sets up a nice “confrontation”
for the end of the comic. It’s a problem with no easy answer (although I’ve heard
that duct tape over a webcam is surprisingly effective), but this comic is bound to
creep you out as you think about it. $5
Comments Off on Albert, Lala – R.A.T. | Reviews | Tagged: Lala Albert, Mini Kus, R.A.T. | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2015
Website
Drawn Onward
Who likes some experimentation in their comics? Is it you? Do you prefer to have
some boundaries pushed, to see an attempt at something completely different? It’s
impossible to talk about this comic without at least giving away the concept, so if
that’s your thing, and if you have trust in Matt’s abilities since he’s been making
comics for 20 (ish) years now, then I’m going to go ahead and recommend this
unreservedly right now. It’s unlike any comic I’ve ever read, and that is saying
something. That right there is your last chance to just pick this book up without
knowing anything about it, although I suppose it’s likely that the description of
the comic on their website might give something away. If you can manage to read this
completely unspoiled, do so. Anyway, now I’m going to talk about the story, in case
you need more convincing and don’t mind at least little spoilers. This is described
as a “palindromic comic,” which eagle-eyed observers might have already figured out
from that title. Things start off with a young woman and a chance encounter on a
subway with a young man. This man seems overly familiar with the woman, but too
desperate for her to do anything but run away from him. She keeps meeting him on the
subway, and gradually she starts to become less and less afraid of him, until
finally she realizes that she’s looking forward to seeing him again. Things finally
break just right, they kiss… and everything changes. And nothing changes. It’s up
to you to decide which of those things is true, or if they’re both true. This is a
genuinely remarkable book, and one of those rare occasions where I went back and
read through it again right after I finished it. Matt is a member of a group called
Workshop for Potential Comics, and I’m going to look into that after I finish this
to see what else they have to offer. For now, read this comic, especially if you
need a reminder that the only constraints that are on this art form are what the
individual creator brings with them. $5
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2015
Website
Grampa
Anybody who has been reading this website for more than a few days know that I abhor
spoilers, as all decent people should. But this time I’ll around I’m going to make
it clear that I’m going to be spoiling the ending for this book, mostly because I
just don’t get it. And if I do get it, I don’t care for it. This always leaves the
option that it’s over my head, which is always a possibility, but I wanted you to be
warned. So! This comic is all about a trip with two kids to see their Grampa. They
don’t care for the man, as he stinks, is mean and is kind of racist, but of course
their concerns are shouted down by their parents. Well, mostly the mother and a
nearly invisible father. Anyway, from that setup I was expecting them to either be
proven right or wrong once they reached their Grampa, but we skip over all that
stuff entirely. Instead the first look we get at Grampa involves him telling the
kids not to go into a house near his because it’s haunted. As a warning like this to
children is pretty much an incentive to go into said house, they wander away from
him and into the haunted house. He secretly follows them, notices their reaction (or
lack thereof) and bursts through the window to… really scare them? This is where
it lost me. They’re both all in white, so maybe Grampa cut an artery going into the
window and is now scaring them as a ghost? No, the kids are all white too. So why
would their Grampa busting through a window do anything to convince them that the
house is haunted? Agh, I don’t care for doing nothing but crapping on a comic, so I
should point out that I did enjoy the full color aspect of it and thought it mostly
looked terrific. That joke on the final page about how to be a grampa got a chuckle
out of me. And maybe this book is for little kids and I’m over-thinking it, but
narratively I don’t understand why the problems that the kids have with their Grampa
would be set up so meticulously only to never come to anything. It’s almost like
this comic started as the first half, got set aside for a few years and then started
again, by which Jason forgot or ignored the stuff he was setting up in the first
half. He sent along another book that’s an anthology of stories, and I’m looking
forward to it, but despite the bits that I liked I can’t really recommend this one.
$5.99
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Posted by Kevin
April 20, 2015
Website
Piggy
You know what we don’t see enough of when it comes to pigs? Pig rampages. Sure,
boars get mad and charge at people occasionally, but your average pig rampage is
rarely seen. That is corrected with this issue, as the main story is all about a
man, his post-coital attempt to smell some flowers, and the fierce reaction a pig
has to this fact. All in all the man stays fairly calm about it, which is not how I
would have handled something as shocking as being attacked by a pig. There are then
a series of single page images (at least a couple of which strongly imply that
things didn’t end well for that pig), a collection of ways that people say that they
would like to die, and a final story about a frantic attempt to plug up an active
volcano using a big boulder. Come to think of it, that’s probably how I’d like to
go: jumping into an active volcano. But only if I already knew that I had cancer or
something like that, and preferably holding onto the last remaining copy of Action
Comics #1. Yep, got it all planned out. Anyway, digression aside, I thoroughly
enjoyed the stories in here along with the single page images/stories, but I’ll
leave the details of those a mystery so you have something new to discover when you
buy this comic. $4
Comments Off on Bavarsky, Niv – Piggy | Reviews | Tagged: Niv Bavarsky, Piggy | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
April 17, 2015
Website
It’s Tuesday
Sometimes a title really nails the tone of a book, even when it’s a seemingly
nonsense title like “It’s Tuesday.” And, well, that’s what happens here. This is the
story of a typical Tuesday in (according to the back of the comic) “a small town
somewhere in southern Finland.” Once you get past that eye-catching explosion of
color on the front cover, things start off slowly and more or less stay that way,
much like it would in a typical small town on a random day. There’s a cat watching
some people gather apples from the ground, the apples being put out by the side of
the road for anybody who wants them, and we move to a flea market. A gentleman has
just dropped off five garbage bags filled with clothes, and the shopkeeper quickly
realizes that it would make more sense for her to wait until the day when her helper
works to start going through the bags. If all this sounds dull as can be, you’re
probably looking for another book entirely, one with explosions and robots, or
exploding robots. There’s nothing wrong with that, in moderation, but this one is
for the more contemplative moods. Anyway, there’s no sense in me going through this
beat by beat, but other bits I thoroughly enjoyed include the appraisal of a
painting by a moody teenager (and the scene later when this teenager reads over some
of her old diary entries and cringes in embarrassment), a babysitter trying to find
a polite way out of buying some clothes that she doesn’t want, and the creep who
tends to wander through the woods naked and is still on the loose. Translations are
always tricky in books like this, but I really appreciated the fact that Amanda went
through and put the English in for certain signs and locations around town, as it
really helped flesh this tiny world out. I thoroughly enjoyed this, in other words,
and bonus points to whoever did the coloring for this book, as it was stellar
throughout.
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Posted by Kevin
April 15, 2015
Website
Alone in Kyoto
What ever happened to all the small press travel comics? They pop up from time to
time now, but they seemed to be all over the place in the late ’90s. Or maybe that’s
just my confirmation bias speaking, as a lot of the artists I liked were doing them,
so obviously that meant that they were more common. Anyway! This is all about Ian’s
trip to Japan in 2003. He makes it very clear in the epilogue that this is a
non-fiction book, but only to the extent that his memory would allow. Meaning that
of course he was going to forget some of the finer points in the 10 years since his
trip, and he was going to misremember some locations, but the heart of it all and
its effect on him remained true. This basically covers three days of him wandering
around Kyoto and then returning to Canada at the end. He very much let events happen
to him on this trip, as he didn’t plan a hotel room or much of anything outside of a
few landmarks/gardens he knew he wanted to check out. He was a single guy at this
point, which left him plenty of time to quietly observe what was going on around
him, and maybe a little too much pure free time. As an aside, I will never
understand why somebody would travel all the way to Japan and then eat at KFC even
once, but as I’ve never been to Japan, maybe you reach a point when any reminder of
home is essential. This whole comic is contemplative by nature, and it’s a hefty 50+
pages. Highlights for me included his not being all that impressed with some of the
big temples that “everybody” recommended, his observations of a creepy guy who hit
on almost every woman he saw (with the custom in Japan apparently being to speed up
walking and keep your head down instead of slapping a guy, it sounds like a
creeper’s dream), and his being unable to just experience what was going on around
him when it mattered most instead of reaching for his phone. Overall it was
thoroughly absorbing, and yet another reminder that I don’t do nearly enough
traveling. If you need a virtual trip outside of your comfort zone or just wish you
could see something completely different without leaving your home, I can’t
recommend this highly enough.
Comments Off on McMurray, Ian – Alone in Kyoto | Reviews | Tagged: Alone in Kyoto. Square, Ian McMurray | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
April 14, 2015
Website
Logbook
So hey, death. That’s what this comic is about, basically, unless you have another
interpretation of it, in which case you may be right and I may be wrong. It
certainly wouldn’t be the first time! Anyway, this one starts off with a long
sequence involving large white pods bobbing to the surface in the ocean and the
process involved in collecting them and bringing them back to the lighthouse. They
are all quite large but appear harmless. Once these pods are brought into the house
we see why they were collected: there is a man on the bed, but he is covered in
literal darkness. Once these pods are split open a bright light shines through them,
enabling the family to see the condition of the man on the bed. Perhaps they thought
that these pods would be enough to assist this man, but they soon learn that the
darkness is not getting any smaller, with the rest of the comic involving them
dealing with this fact. It’s surprisingly haunting, probably because it’s impossible
to fight against it for long. Is that too grim for you? Eh, I could see that. Still,
the art is gorgeous, and this is one of those cases where full color really brings a
lot to the book. This is worth a look, assuming that you’ve made peace with your own
mortality. If not, you can also ignore the unspoken implications of the darkness, as
it’s not like Terhi smacks you over the face with the message. It’s there for you to
pick up on, or not.
Comments Off on Ekebom, Terhi – Logbook | Reviews | Tagged: Logbook, Mini Kus, Terhi Ekebom | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
April 8, 2015
Website
Colonel MacTaggart #2
Oh Colonel, don’t you know better than to go up against an angry monkey? Colonel
MacTaggart, in case you don’t know (and why would you, as I’m pretty sure this is a
new series), is an an explorer who wanders around with his manservant February.
February is a silent mountain of a man, and the Colonel is a proper English
gentleman, with all the obvious comedic potential that entails. I seem to have
picked up the second issue before the first one, but this one is so completely
self-contained that I doubt there will be any confusion. Unless I skipped the origin
story, and even then I’ll get to it soon enough. Anyway! The story for this one
could not be simpler. The Colonel is out wandering the jungle when a piece of fruit
hits him in the head. After a brief period of confusion as to the source of the
fruit, he finds out that it’s an angry monkey. And the chase is on! The rest of the
comic is all about the hijinx and the joys of purple fruits getting splattered. This
is where the full color really comes into play, because who doesn’t love purple
splatters? It’s a fun little story, unless you have something against monkeys and/or
English people. And even then there’s some mayhem involved that might make up for
it. Check it out! $3
Comments Off on Steiner, Steve – Colonel MacTaggart #2 | Reviews | Tagged: Colonel MacTaggart, Steve Steiner | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
April 7, 2015
Website
Collector
Oh abstract comics, you put me on the spot every time. Sometimes I feel compelled to
try to analyze every little bit of it, sometimes I throw my hands up in despair and
leave it entirely up to the reader, and either way I feel like I failed. Ah well.
Anybody who comes here for detailed, intellectual analysis went to the wrong corner
of the internet and somehow never left, so that’s kind of on them. This is the story
of, well, a collector. The cover gives as to what type of collector this person is,
and the back cover makes it even more explicit, but I like mystery, so I’ll leave it
up in the air. What this comic details is the process of collecting these subjects,
what they see and imagine, and eventually how it all ends up. It’s not as ominous as
it sounds! Unless it is and I lied to you right there. Ah, now you’re intrigued! If
so, good. After all, don’t you want to be able to say that you have a complete set
of the mini kus series of Latvian mini comics? As somebody who has mentioned them
out loud to regular humans, I can attest to the fact that it’s an automatic
conversation stopper. Anyway, it’s an intriguing comic, with a sometimes mesmerizing
and sometimes baffling story. Is that a recommendation? It’s up to you to parse that
language!
Comments Off on Zlemesa, Zane – Collector | Reviews | Tagged: Collector, Mini Kus, Zane Zlemesa | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
