November 18, 2011
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Kid Space Heater
Is it possible to smack a scanner into compliance? I imagine it actually involves learning how to work the thing and fixing it that way, but all these images being too large to put on my website (when they’re nothing of the sort) is getting on my nerves. Luckily I found another cover image online, not that you needed to know any of that, but I ramble even more than usual on Fridays. Kid Space Heater! A look at that cover would give you one impression for this book, and that impression would almost certainly be wrong. Things start off with the prospective lead character leaping from a plane. Why he was dropping was never fully explained, but his parachute didn’t open and he ended up as a splat on the pavement, so it’s a moot point. I also have to mention the fact that the pilots were an alligator wearing sunglasses and what looked like a mountain goat, purely because that image was wonderful to behold. So five pages in we have a dead hero and pedestrians are looting his body. Among these looters is a kid who touches a cube. This cube tries explaining what it is to the child, who couldn’t care less about long explanations and whines about it until he is let out of the training course. Unfortunately a couple of thugs are coming to steal the cube and the cube talks the kid into shooting the thugs. Or maybe they were nice people? Again, never explained, and I loved the ambiguity. The kid had no interest in becoming a killer, but the gun tricked him into it, which leads to the rest of the issue and a few more of his adventures (told in short, highlight reel-like fashion) before ending the same way that it started: with a leap from a plane. Fantastic shit all around, with Josh’s skills really shining through with some of those intricate and ridiculous backgrounds. Only real haters of anything to do with science fiction should avoid picking this one up, and even those people should probably at least give it a shot. No price, but it’s hefty so…$6!
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Posted by Kevin
November 17, 2011
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It’s a Man’s Life in the Ice Cream Business #1
OK, maybe not the catchiest title in the world, but a new comic from Rob is always welcome around these parts. In this one he says he’s going “back to basics” and tells the story of how he quit his job and what he’s doing for cash these days. Things start off with a few pages of very simple, Austin English-esque pencil drawings explaining his motivation for quitting his pointless job and trying to sell ice cream at outdoor markets for a living. Once he starts telling that story the art shifts back to his usual, tighter style, and we get reports about the 21 markets he attended to start his new career. There’s a second issue coming, so we’ll see what happens next, but this tells a familiar story of fits and starts as he tries to get things going. Weather is key to selling ice cream (hot days are obviously the best), and he also has a lousy time of it during the early hours (nobody wants ice cream for breakfast). From there he tries to come up with unique ice cream flavors to make himself stand out, and when the weather gets lousy he branches out into selling cheese and some local delicacies. The key to the success of his ice cream operation seems to be selling it in hot places and/or locations where other events are occurring. I had an idea to help with his early morning problem: why not try more breakfast oriented ice creams? Granted, this is almost certainly going to sound ridiculous, but you could probably whip some ice cream up that would taste vaguely of pancakes. That and the world is just waiting for a bacon ice cream flavor. See, this is why I don’t go into business for myself, I’d spend all my time coming up with inedible flavors that made me curious. Another solid comic from Rob and I’m curious to see what happens next. Looks like the next issue is going to have some interesting scenes, as who wouldn’t want to see a fight between ice cream makers and cupcake makers? No price, so my random guess of the day is $4.
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Posted by Kevin
November 16, 2011
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Bizarre Love Triangle
Check any expectations you may have for happy endings here at the door. Ah, my favorite kind of comic, the one that doesn’t pander to anybody or let them off the hook with some happy nonsense when reality would go in an entirely different direction. This is the story of a man and his tiger as they spend a day shooting a movie. Or maybe it’s a commercial? Anyway, the tiger is needed for one shot, the actress (who the guy has a serious crush on) is nervous at first, but the guy talks her down and they get their footage. The tiger is docile as can be, but there is an incident where a photographer flashes in the tiger’s face, which could potentially set it off. The actress decides that she needs more shots with the tiger, the tiger is called back (against the better judgment of the man, but he does have his crush to think about), the photographers are again warned not to use flash photography, and things get ugly from there. It’s another solid mini from Luis in a constantly growing pile of solid minis. At this point I’d have trouble telling people which mini to get from this guy to check out his work and would instead recommend just sending him enough money for him to send you several comics. Hell, you can even let him pick which ones. So far I see no indication that you would be disappointed, unless he has a secret stash of lousy mini comics somewhere…
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Posted by Kevin
November 14, 2011
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Rabies Babies
I’m clearly getting way too cynical in my old age if I read a lighthearted story about a baby with rabies and am disappointed when that’s not what was actually happening all along. Spoilers! Or maybe I’m lying, or maybe Mary was lying in the comic. Still, after that excellent (and apparently hand-made) cover, I was looking forward to some baby mayhem. Things start off with a baby who has been left alone in the woods, a fact that is never explained (which makes it much funnier). An ominous shadow approaches and it turns out to be a raccoon… who quickly befriends the baby and they have a very nice afternoon together. The parents (represented by pairs of legs, like all good parents in comics or cartoons should be) eventually remember that they have a baby in the woods and come to pick it up, and the trouble begins when they blindly drop the baby off at daycare. She finishes things off in a way that is probably a good defense against people who would call her a monster for even making a comic called “Rabies Babies,” but those are the types of people who will never be satisfied anyway. If nothing else this is worth buying just to leave it lying around your apartment for the horrified gasps you’ll get from any recent parents, but it doesn’t hurt a bit that there’s also a funny (if short) comic in here too. No idea on price, but contact Mary and I’m sure she’ll lead you through it.
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Posted by Kevin
November 10, 2011
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Dodo Comics #2
Does everybody out there know of Sergio Leone? I know that this is going to sound like a stupid question to everybody over 35 or so (I hope), but I don’t know how much the youth of today know their film history, and christ do I feel stupid saying “youth of today.” Anyway, Sergio Leone directed a few of the more famous spaghetti westerns (and who know what a spaghetti western is… aw, forget it) of all time, and the first story of this book is a silent tribute to his film technique. Before certain dramatic moments, like a gunfight, you’d see a series of quick cuts between the eyes of the gunfighters, the fingers twitching near the triggers, a bead of sweat slowly rolling down one of their faces, all that stuff needed to build tension without having to beat you over the head with it. Grant does a really nice job of conveying that feeling although, if I’m being honest, that last panel was a bit of a mess. Still, everything leading up to it was nicely done. The comic takes a turn from there to deal with the remaining three stories, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. There’s a piece about Grant’s early years with his first nude models (and how one of the ladies loved talking to the college artists with her robe wide open), a comic pantoum story (with tricky reading of the panels required) dealing with going to see an ex singing, and a nice little story with the devil trying to trick a hermit. A nice mix of stories, and there’s even a funny panel on the back showing Grant trying to draw comics while surrounded by his two baby daughters. It’s a solid comic and I’m enjoying his willingness to mix things up with his stories. Hey, that’s why these things have more than one story each, right? $3
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Posted by Kevin
November 9, 2011
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King For a Day
Silent comics! If I scared you away, you should come back and finish the review. This one is fantastic, not one of those silent comics where you have to try and figure out whether it actually meant something that you missed or whether the point of it was to mean nothing all along, which would mean that your first impression was correct. Anyway, this is the story of a man who goes out for a stroll to start his day. He waves to a girl he likes (who barely acknowledges his existence), gets crapped on by a bird, gets laughed at by some kids due to the aforementioned crapping, and finally trips over a rock while chasing the kids and knocking himself out. From there we get into “is it a dream?” land (yes), as he’s woken up by a song leading him to a crown halfway buried in the ground. He puts the crown on his head, undergoes a brief metamorphosis, and that’s when things start to get crazy. From this point on everybody treats him like a king, collecting other items that add to his regal appearance, including some kind of royal holy book. Things start to get a bit ugly later when the book… ah, but now I’m saying too much. The question of whether or not the whole thing was a dream does come up again later, and there is a damned sweet panel to finish things off, but I’m not going to tell you what happens. I can rarely “hear” most panels of a silent book, but Robert has done an excellent job of letting the readers know exactly what you’re listening to in each panel, which is also an impressive feat when there are no words involved. If you’re a fan of comics that improve your day, you should give this one a try. No price listed and it’s brand new, so… $3?
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Posted by Kevin
November 7, 2011
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Sunnyville Stories #3
I was optimistic about the last issue, and there still isn’t much technically wrong with this issue, but I’m starting to get the idea that it just isn’t for me. First of all, the words are all spelled correctly and the perspective looks fine, which automatically puts it above roughly half of the comics I see. Max even has a few interesting shots, like the two visible upraised arms of a man who’s coming up over a hill. My trouble is that I’m too jaded for something this relentlessly all-ages. If you’re looking for a comic that’s safe for your kids, yeah, this one is pretty good. And possibly even parents too, I don’t know. This will probably make more sense if I summarize the plot. There are a few kids who are playing too loudly for their mother, so she sends them away to play. They run into more kids, who hatch their own plans. Meanwhile there’s an outlaw group on the loose who steal the detergent that the original mother was waiting for. The law gets involved, the kids dispatch the villains in some Home Alone-esque shenanigans, and all ends up being right with the world. Sorry if that comes across as revealing too much, but once you see “all-ages” you can pretty much count on “everything works out in the end.” Eh, maybe I’m just too damned cynical to be reviewing these things. The trouble is that there are still all-ages book like Nick Abadzis’ Amazing Mr. Pleebus series that I can see clearly as a good kid/parent reading experience, so my heart hasn’t become completely jaded yet. So that’s one more or less negative vote for this issue and one more or less positive note for the last one. Still one issue to go, which becomes the tiebreaker. The art has improved in this issue and Max clearly has big plans, which is what’s important in all of this, not one some guy with a website thinks. If even one creative person lets my reviews derail their planned comic career, I will find them and smack them on the back of the head. Just sayin’. $4
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Posted by Kevin
November 4, 2011
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Jerkface Comics #1
That does it. Center for Cartoon Studies, I beseech you: if you don’t already offer a course on basic spelling and grammar, please start one up. Pretty please? At the very least make sure that it isn’t lost on your students that their comics can be the most visually pleasing things in the world, but if there’s a spelling or grammatical error on every page then it’s not going to make a bit of difference. Of course, I have no idea if Zack ever attended that school, so it’s probably a moot point, but holy Christ am I sick of reading comics by people who have no idea when to use “your” or “you’re” and seem to get tripped up on every word longer than six or seven letters. I am aware of the fact that this is my own personal crusade, so I’ll stop talking about it already. What about the comic itself? Well, I think Zack is a fairly young guy, so there’s all kinds of potential here. And he seems be be keeping a steady schedule of releasing comics, which is always a promising sign. The main problem is that there are three big stories in here and two of them are about how he usually can’t be bothered to make comics, which isn’t a great sign for his second book. The introduction page (where Jerkface battles with the words in the panels when they get a little too mean) was hilarious, and I also enjoyed the second big story about Jerkface and a friend dealing with an asshole. And it’s not like the stories about his lack of motivation were worthless, as that’s a pretty common staple of the auto-bio genre. The first one dealt with the problem in more general terms (he keeps getting distracted by thoughts of various lady parts), while the second story on this topic dealt with his inability to stick to a to-do list. There were funny bits in both stories, but a limit of one per comic might be a good idea in the future. And some of that dialogue was awkward as hell (saying it out loud and hearing how it sounds can help). Still, a fair amount of funny bits, and the back cover showing the things that weren’t in this issue was also nicely done. A mixed bag, in other words, but promising. Provided that you’re not as stuck on the spelling errors as me, that is, but that kind of thing should improve over time. Right? $3
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Posted by Kevin
November 3, 2011
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Foie Gras #3
Do you like random images of different types of foodstuffs being prepared that are accompanied by a strange but compelling poem? Then you have found your comic. My general impression of both issues of this series that I’ve read so far is that they’ve both left me with memorable images and phrases juxtaposed together, but not much of the experience as a whole. I have no idea if that’s a recommendation, but that was my overall impression. This series is damned near impossible to review in any conventional sense, which is why I’ve stuck with my tried and true “ramble until the review is over” method. The images don’t follow a linear order like they would if you were making a recipe, although the words do end up making a point of sorts. Kind of. Fuck, I don’t know. Look, it’s a gorgeous book (that cover jumps right out at you) that mostly flew over my head, assuming that there was a larger point that I just missed. It’s also possible that the lack of a point WAS the point, in which case I’m a genius, but I have my doubts on that one. Still no price, still no clue about a price, so this time I’ll go with $4 as my random guess.
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Posted by Kevin
November 2, 2011
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Three #2
Are there any homophobes who read small press comics? I’d like to think that the level of open-mindedness needed to read and support small press stuff would weed out those assholes, but just in case there are, I’d like to scare them off: there’s gay stuff in here! There, that should have scared them off, now the adults can talk. This is the second issue of what has been (so far) a damned good anthology with three stories each. All that color doesn’t hurt anything, but it also wouldn’t help anything if the stories were lousy. First up is a piece by Sina Evil and Jon Macy detailing a slightly awkward but also magical night in New York between cartoonists. Our hero the narrator has never been penetrated before, but things are going so well that he has to give it a try, caution be damned. It’s a great story about not being able to properly read the signals and knowing when to hold onto something and when to let it go. Next up is the story by Jennifer Camper and Michael Fahy, and this one gets a little tricky. Our hero meets the man of his dreams, but this man was recently a woman and he still hasn’t had the full surgery to complete the change. Then our hero’s sister comes to town and it turns out that she played a role in the past of her brother’s lover. There’s also a pregnancy in there somewhere but I’m not going to say where. Finally there’s the story by Craig Bostick and Michael Kelly which varies back and forth (with the color coding telling you which is which) between a traveling musician and a male prostitute that the musician falls for. Sort of. Also with violence! Each story is wildly different from the rest, but they all go back to relationships at some level. Sounds like a good recipe for a successful anthology to me. Oh, and if the people who sent me this review copy are wondering, the reason this one took so long for me to review had nothing to do with my usual losing/misplacing of the comic, and was instead due to the fact that this comic was making the rounds among my friends and I couldn’t get it back. So sorry about the lack of a timely review, but it was for a good cause. $6.25
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Posted by Kevin
October 31, 2011
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Broke
A typo on the first page? Look, I bitch about poor spelling a lot when it’s called for, which to me is whenever somebody has over three or four misspelled words (the number varies depending on the size of the mini, but you get the idea). The reason is simple: it’s never been easier to check a word to see if you spelled it correctly. Back in olden times, if you were writing a comic that you were then going to distribute through your mailing list, fine, maybe you didn’t have time to trek across town and find a smart person to help you out. Now, though, if you have a question, type the word into Google. If you’re not sure about a word (when to use “where” instead of “were”), there are also sites that can help you out with that. It just never ceases to blow my mind that somebody can spend hours drawing a page, making sure that it’s just right to convey their message, and they then blow through the dialogue as quickly as possible. This isn’t meant to pick on Eric specifically, as he’s far from alone in this category, but it’s just so damned easy to check for the right word. OK, now that I’ve shat all over this book, this is the part where I point out that I didn’t hate it. This comic is about a woman who investigates insurance claims and makes her living selling “insurance investigator insurance” to the people that she’s investigating. She’s in a world of hurt financially, so she takes a bat to her car to try and get some insurance money for it. She is suspected of foul play, naturally, which leads to a confrontation with that bat and her own insurance investigator, then some crazy shit happens and the comics stops making sense. But hey, it was a fun ride up to that point. Eric has a genuinely unique perspective on character positioning and what he wants to highlight in any given frame. Sometimes these choices seemed to interfere with the story, but considering how it all ended that wasn’t as big of a deal as I first thought. It’s intriguing as a whole and I think there’s enough good to outweigh the bad. It’s $9, mostly because it’s a graphic novel. Didn’t I mention that?
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Posted by Kevin
October 29, 2011
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Ole
Bullfighting! If you have an opinion about this “sport” and that opinion is not “barbaric, cruel and utterly lacking in any kind of a spirit of fair play” then we probably wouldn’t get along. I’m all for some cultural touchstones not being messed with by the modern world, and you may be too, in which case you probably don’t know how bullfighting works. See, it’s not just some guy with a sword who goes out there and takes on a bull. That I could get behind, as who am I to say how some dope kills himself? He could even more or less cover himself in glory for the rest of his short life. No, bullfighting starts off with a few people using sharp sticks to bleed the bull for a period of time before the bullfighter comes out. Once the bull is weak from lack of blood and starting to stagger, out comes the conquering hero! It’s still dangerous, granted, and it does my heart good to see a bull occasionally get a good shot in, but the game is rigged. Anyway, enough about bullfighting, what about the comic? This starts off towards the end of a bullfight, with the matador about to deliver the finishing blow. The trouble comes when that blow doesn’t finish off the bull. So they try more methods, increasingly vicious, until they manage to chop the bull’s head off. And that’s when it starts to get weird. My policy against spoilers prevents me from saying much more, but I will say that I loved where it went from there. Combine that statement with my earlier opinions of bullfighting in general and you may get some idea of what happened. Buy it, love it, give this guy some money already. He’s three for three in his minis that I’ve read so far, with more still to come. No price, so… $2.50?
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Posted by Kevin
October 29, 2011
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My scanner isn’t cooperating again and I can’t get a sample image of the cover small enough to post it here, so my apologies. Is it rude to say that it was a bit of a mess of a cover anyway? Yes, that almost certainly qualifies as rude. Check out their website and you can see a smaller version of it for yourself, but in case you were curious it depicts a battle between the eight characters who are involved in this tournament. Battlefield pits eight people (or creatures, as a centaur and a gorgon are also participating) against each other for the chance to win riches and fame. For the other seven competitors, it’s looking like death. The creators were nice enough to show pictures of all eight characters right at the beginning, but it would have helped tremendously to have short bios of all of them as well to try and get a sense of their motivations and/or what they are. When a character gets killed towards the end I had to pop back to those pictures to try and figure out which one it was, which is not a good sign. This is the first issue of a projected five issue mini series, and it deals with the competitors arriving on the tournament island, fighting off a giant monster (their first test), trying to get some food after not being fed for three days, and the other test where the one character gets killed. Anybody who has lasted this long into the review is probably sure of my opinion by now, but you may be surprised to learn that I kind of liked it despite its flaws. There were boobs everywhere, but they were awkward comic boobs, so it wasn’t that. It may be just that I’m a sucker for a tournament like this, or it may be the fact that I think there’s serious room for improvement here that might actually happen. If you don’t like mostly mythical characters and creatures fighting amongst themselves, it’s safe to say that you can move along. If you have a touch of dork in you and if you can overlook a few flaws, this is worth a shot. They also sent along the second issue of this series and I’m looking forward to it, which I wasn’t sure would be the case when I was about halfway through this. After that one we’ll see where my optimism meter is at… $4
Battlefield #1
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Posted by Kevin
October 28, 2011
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Watermelon
Full disclosure time, for anybody who wonders about this “Whitey” guy who writes all the reviews: I’d had the nickname for probably four years before I had the slightest idea that there was any racial association with it at all. My hair in high school was damned near translucent, you see, so “white haired kid” got shortened down to “Whitey,” and here I am, currently in the awkward mid-30’s phase of the nickname, greatly looking forward to having my hair eventually turn white so maybe the nickname will start to make sense again. And as for why I keep the nickname, have you ever tried to disassociate yourself from a nickname that you’ve been given? Good luck with that. Just felt compelled to throw that out there, seeing as how the subtitle for this book is “and other things that make me uncomfortable as a black person” and knowing that some people were likely to experience some small brain explosions. So how about the actual comic? This is a great peek into the mind of Whit, obviously, but it’s probably an even better primer for people who probably don’t know when they’re being racist. There’s the cover story where she wonders how watermelon got started as a racist stereotype (and her grandma’s theory of “because slave owners wouldn’t give slaves utensils and watermelon was easy to eat” is probably close to the truth), what she does on the beach due to her “natural tan,” the dreaded n-word (who can use it, where it came from, and an unfortunate nickname for another black person in their neighborhood, “Reggin”), the south in general and New Orleans in particular, spending time at the beauty parlor listening to conversations and getting her hair done, black actors and tv shows, studying abroad in Australia and seeing the completely foreign attitudes towards race, black history month and WTF is Kwanzaa? She has an engaging, self-effacing style that makes you love the book more as you go, and I’d be shocked if you didn’t come away from this book having learned something, no matter what color you are. I wish she’d take a bit more time with her handwriting in certain panels, as it’s clear that she’s occasionally rushing it, but kids these days back in my time we walked to school in the rain etc. etc. Still, it’s a hefty piece of work that manages to take a fairly serious subject and make it funny, which is no easy thing. No price, but I’m going to spin the random price wheel… $6!
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Posted by Kevin
October 27, 2011
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Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini-Comic Science Edition
That is one awful title. Which is a shame, as it had that fantastic Marvel Universe homage cover, and the inside is pretty damned good too (mostly), but title needs an editor. The only real problem I had with the interior was the repeated uses of footnotes which, while informative and occasionally funny, crapped all over the flow of the book. Luckily John mostly quit using them about halfway through, leaving us with a regular old comic book about robots on the moon. Why? “…that’s all robots do. They attack us and break our stuff!” That right there is more than enough to sell me on some robot mayhem. From here there isn’t a thing complain about. One of the characters is a sequentialist (somebody who is convinced that they’re in a comic), but John did a great job keeping that from getting overbearing. The robot fights themselves were fantastic, up to and including some later stuff that I’m not going to talk about to avoid spoilers. There are also a few pages detailing the scientific basis for some of the weapons, which were close enough to seem plausible to me. There was also an entry for space serpents at the end, further mimicking the Marvel Universe idea, and it was perfectly done. Most of the dialogue is witty, which can come as a shock considering the material (robots on the moon!), but I’m somebody who is always happy to be pleasantly surprised by a comic. Now if he can only work on the titles he’ll be in pretty good shape. $1
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Posted by Kevin
October 26, 2011
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Eye of the Majestic Creature: Sister Carrie
See, sometimes the world in general works the way that it should. I just finished reading this issue, so it was off to the internets to check on her website and make sure the address was still valid. I was thinking after finishing it that it was damned near criminal that Leslie wasn’t published by any of the “big” independent companies, and there it was: a collection from Fantagraphics containing her first four issues. Such immediate representations of there being some justice in this world are always welcome. I missed a few issues of this series so I’m not fully clear on what came before (looks like I need to get my hands on that collection), but this issue is combined with text from “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser, which was a novel from 1900 detailing the adventures of a young woman making her way to the big city on her own. The small text blurbs blend seamlessly into the story of Larry (the Leslie-ish (?) main character) as she goes about her daily life of working at a clothes shop with no customers and a boss that she only talks to on the phone. There are also her anthropomorphic household objects, all of which are bored crazy while she’s away at work. Some small press people take a year to make a comic for a variety of reasons (sometimes good and sometimes just due to sheer laziness), but Leslie takes that year to make the damned comic. This is 44 or so pages with nine panels per page, with damned near each panel ridiculously detailed. Along the way Larry picks up the habit of the long-lost art of counting sand from a museum exhibit, goes to bars alone, finds a giant cockroach in her shoe and tries to make “life” a little easier for her depressed household objects/friends. And for a good chunk of the comic there are brief blurbs of text from that Dreiser novel that work perfectly with the story. I’m consistently behind the times on these things, but if there are any people out there who also always miss out on the good stuff, buy that collection from Fantagraphics from her, then come back and buy this comic. Or just buy them all in a clump, whatever works. $4
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Posted by Kevin
October 25, 2011
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Light Riot Departure
Haters of science fiction and fantasy, take note: that dragon on the first page is not indicative of the content the rest of the way. This is the story of Rio (it’s called a “fantastical autobiography,” so use your own imagination as to how much of this is true) as he watches people on inner tubes floating down the river, noting that they never take the time to look up at him in the tree. He’s also worried about his girlfriend and whether or not she’s using hard drugs. A strange creature appears and offers to split Rio’s soul from his body, allowing him to exist in the real world while his soul takes a different journey into self-discovery. He accepts and the story splits in two, with soul Rio on the top of the pages and human Rio on the bottom. Human Rio gets the news that he was dreading about his girlfriend while soul Rio gets to try and fly into the center of the moon while avoiding some seriously odd hazards. No sense in my telling you much more about this, as it’ll get spoilery in a hurry (if it isn’t already there), but you could read this comic a few different ways. I see it as a man retreating into himself when he gets the worst news possible, but who am I to say? Maybe he did take that spiritual journey and I’m just a materialistic cynic. It’s worth checking out either way and figuring it out for yourself. $5.50
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Posted by Kevin
October 25, 2011
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Window #12
For any imaginary reader out there who’s a fan of Dave’s work but hates all that times he spends detailing the most fascinating parts of his teaching experience, you’re in luck! This issue of Window wanders outside of the school and into a strange and rewarding place. It starts and ends with sketches from both Dave waiting for a bus sketching people and Dave sketching trees. Then there are the two stories in between, the first of which is called “Other Things” and should be seen by more people than is possible with this book currently out of print (Secret Acres, Top Shelf, whoever, publish a collected edition of this comic already!). It tells the story of (probably) Dave and a friend after death, with everything hazy, imaginary or undefined. Entertainment and food and based on their imaginings, as nothing is real in this limbo world, and Dave repeatedly regrets never having any of “those things” (floating ethereal babies). There’s no beginning or end, just the two of them wandering around and commenting on the events as they happen, but you’re given the impression that anything that does happen is temporary. Oh, and everybody is a walking skeleton, with skeleton dogs wandering the streets. It’s a fantastic story and I hope it at least made it into an anthology somewhere along the line. The second story is solid too, as it’s back in the real world with a few kids who find caterpillars and decide to capture them to watch for what happens next. That event doesn’t go down like you would think, but good luck not having least a small childhood flashback while reading it. Only two more issues to go in this series and everybody reading this should bug a small press publisher to get a collected edition together. Think of it as your good deed for the day, for which you may be rewarded with the existence of a truly remarkable book.
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Posted by Kevin
October 23, 2011
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Rosie & Jacinda
There are times when I feel exceptionally lazy with the whole reviewing thing, and in those times I like to see if the blurb from the creators explaining their comic is accurate. In this case it’s “a teenage romantic comedy with a hint of fairytale,” and yeah, that sums is up pretty well. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that people don’t come here to read blurbs that they could get from any website, so I’ll go on about it a bit. This is the story of Jacinda (a sullen teen who hates everyone, mostly because she’s convinced that she’s smarter than everybody else) and Rosie. Rosie takes a bit more explanation, because we’re led to believe that she may or may not be entirely human. The story of Sleeping Beauty is featured heavily in this book, and Rosie also gets knocked out for a bit after being pricked by a pin. She woke up naturally, leaving the whole thing still delightfully vague. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit, as Rosie is a French exchange student who asks to sit with Jacinda. She then rejects an invitation to sit with the cool kids, endearing herself to Jacinda a bit, and confides to Jacinda that she’s never even kissed a boy (despite a chunk of the male population of the school trying), which cements their friendship. From there they both try out for a play (mostly because it’s a class requirement; Rosie gets a big part and Jacinda gets costume duty) and the rest of the issue deals with them becoming better friends and the various troubles involved with doing a play. It’s very much aimed towards the teenage crowd, and here’s hoping that there’s a female teenage crowd that loves comics, as there probably aren’t nearly enough explosions for most teenage boys. Richy has already proved to me that he’s a gifted writer and Zarina is perfect for this story. The art is whimsical with a slight touch of anime style, but not enough to turn you off if you hate that sort of thing. The coloring also goes a long way to really filling out the art and, again, it’s excellently done. No price listed, but I’m guessing it’s roughly $6. I did mention that I was guessing, right?
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Posted by Kevin
October 21, 2011
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First Fight #2
Technical difficulties forced me to use images of this comic from a couple of different places online, so my apologies if the quality seems a little off. In this issue I get an answer to my question about why Bryan doesn’t just change the name for each issue (First Fight, Second Fight, etc.): because these comics aren’t about one fight each. In this issue Bryan has his first fight in a tournament and loses on points. That seemed impressive enough to me, because at least he managed to stay “alive” for the whole fight. He watched the rest of the tournament with the rest of the crowd, and grew increasingly thankful that he didn’t make it through to some of the beasts that made it to the end. From there he made his first comic, talked to some folks at a convention about it, then got his own table for a later convention. As most of the questions seemed to focus on when he’d participate in his next tournament, he eventually decided that he was going to go ahead and try it. With training, of course, which is what the rest of the issue shows. One trivial thing bugged me, though: why put in a very obviously fake name for Robert Kirkman (Bobert Birkman and his comic “The Walking Dread”)? He used real names for everybody else, and I think “Birkman” has better things to do than sue small press comics artists who use his name. Baffling, but little things like that stick out to me for whatever reason. Still, no sense getting bogged down by the small stuff, as the bulk of this comic was a lot of fun. If he keeps this up this could be one of those rare crossover hits, as I’m sure a good chunk of MMA fans wouldn’t mind reading comics about the sport. And if it gets too rough on Bryan to continue producing material for his comics (i.e. taking a beating), then he could always follow another MMA fighter and do a comic about him. Just trying to save the man a few brain cells… $6
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Posted by Kevin
