October 20, 2011
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XO #7
In the general chaos that is Brian’s comic empire (I think we can call it that after a few years of him averaging a comic or two per month), it might be a little tough to know where to start. And for people who wonder about that, might I suggest XO? It sure seems like these issues all stand alone, although I could be wrong about that and he actually has some master plan for this series. This issue starts off innocently enough, with a young man looking at a dating website and wondering if it isn’t time to start dating again. He then flashes back to his last relationship, and we see that he isn’t nearly as innocent as he appears. That Brian, he is a master of such ratfuckery (which, in case you’re dense, is a compliment of the highest order). This man had fallen into drugs, alcohol, and apparently everything else you could think of, so much so that he didn’t even notice that his new girlfriend was actually another assassin (oh, didn’t I mention that the young man was an assassin?) until he woke up tied to a chair, gagged, with a knife in his chest. Things seem bleak for our hero, but there’s always a way out of these situations. Still, his method of escape might have you thinking of him as significantly less than “our hero.” Melissa really stepped up her game as well, as that Breaking Bad-esque shot of the bloody broken chair and the debris around it was a thing of beauty. These comics just keep rolling along. If you’re looking for an alternative to the current BRAND! NEW! #1 comics that the big companies are putting out, how about going with series like these that you can actually afford? The fact that they tell much better stories than the big expensive comics should also help convince you. Or at least it should… $1
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Posted by Kevin
October 19, 2011
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Stargazer Volume Two
You know, I don’t think I asked for the last review, but why Stargazer? The title, I mean, not the comic as a abstract concept. It sure doesn’t seem like stars play too big of a role in this, unless it’s just meant to imply that they’re dreamers. That one makes sense, so I’ll go with that. If you missed the first volume this review won’t make a bit of sense, so go read that and come back. Or go read about other comics if you can’t be bothered, as I’m not the boss of you, but you really should read it if you like comics. In this volume they reach that tower from the last issue and explore it a bit. They also encounter another race (that also doesn’t talk, just like the robot didn’t talk), and we get to see what the monster looks like. One member of the group splits off and heads back to the tent, where she discovers how they got there in the first place. We also get explanations for several of the oddities that are scattered around, even if we never do quite get a full explanation of just what these kids were dealing with this whole time. This is the part where I have trouble, because I want to get into the ending a bit. Many reviewers wouldn’t bat an eye at spoiling such a thing, but look away if you don’t want to see it. I’ll still be vague (it’s wired into my brain not to spoil things, so I can barely even do it when I try), but something might slip out. I had mentioned in the last review that I hoped that Von got the chance to make this into a saga, but he mentioned in his letter with the comic that it was always his intention to make this a complete story in two volumes. He does hope to do more with this universe, but with comics realities being what they are he’s not optimistic. Anyway, this story does wrap up, and it’s almost certainly not in the fashion that you’d probably expect. My concern: how does the doodad work at the end if they’re not all using it? Granted, it’s a magic doodad, and such concerns can be explained in magical ways, but it still struck me as confusing after it was all over. Anyway, like I said, that ending took the whole story in an unexpected direction and it felt completely earned, so what more can you ask for from a 200ish page story? I hope he does get back to this world, as I still have lingering questions, but even if he doesn’t he’s managed to put together an impressive story. $15
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Posted by Kevin
October 18, 2011
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Trip’s Over
Here’s another of the minis that Luis sent over recently, and it’s a very short thing. The presentation was impressive, with cardboard covers and a story that continues on the back of the pages after you flip the comic over. Eh, it’s complicated, you should see it for yourself. Anyway, it’s the story of a story that Luis was told by his mother when he was a kid. She was with some family when they got the news (or she gave the news, it’s not completely clear) that their mother had died. They went to an undertaker (or the equivalent) and were told that the cost to transport the body was astronomical. It was too much money for the family and they ended up with an alternate plan to transport the body. Luis mentions in the intro that even though he believed the story at the time, in hindsight it’s probably an urban legend. Considering the fact that I’ve heard this story myself, I’d say that that’s a safe bet. Still, it’s a darkly funny story, and that reaction shot at the end was worth the price of admission all by itself. No idea about the price, so I’m going with the thoroughly random price of $4.
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Posted by Kevin
October 17, 2011
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Picket Line
I’m starting to think the Xeric Grant people are omniscient. Seriously, I don’t think they’ve ever made a bad call in giving a grant to somebody. Well, maybe there were people who took the grant money and just bought booze and drugs with it, leaving no comic for me to judge, but their track record on published work is stellar. This one is no exception, as it exceeded my expectations every step of the way, and this is with me going in predisposed to like it with that “Xeric” label and all. This is the story of Beatrice, a girl who leaves Wisconsin and heads to California more or less for the hell of it and because she’s directionless in her own life. She doesn’t know anybody and has no plans for a job, so she calls the only person in town who had been kind to her looking for work. She starts as a receptionist for a lawn care company, then is assigned to work on the lawns and finally gets in deep when her company is contracted to do lawn care for a controversial logging operation. Her boss (Rex, a man with tiny arms that Breena delights in depicting as a T-Rex) thinks that he can do more good working for this company and trying to change things on the inside. They eventually have to move onto the land where they’re working, as protesters on a picket line have been getting more and more violent in their demonstrations. Beatrice gradually comes to wonder if Rex is really doing all he can to stop these trees (which are old growth trees, hundreds of years old in some cases) and reluctantly quits to join the protesters. I’ve already spoiled more than enough, but at that point in the story you could probably pick a few obvious directions that things could go and Breena manages to veer off in rewarding and unexpected directions every time. I’m not even mentioning Rex’s daughter and her troubles with her husband, or Rex and his own problems with his wife (who’s trying to be an actress and apparently cheating on him all over the place), or Beatrice’s own relationship with one of the lawn care workers and how that goes after she quits her job. And did I mention that the entire site was under a volcano? That details roughly the first half of the book, the rest is up to you to discover. The art is fantastic (really, looking at her diary strips on her website it’s tough to even picture them as the same artist, but then again diary strips are practically designed to be rushed) and have I gushed enough yet about the story? This is Breena’s first graphic novel, so it’s your duty (yes, YOU) to buy a copy of this to encourage her to keep it up. Well, if I say it’s your duty you’ll probably get all resentful, as you already know that the only way to encourage young artists like this is buying their books. Still, just buy a copy, OK? Or at least try and convince your local library to carry a copy so that you can read it first. $19.95 (but only $13.95 at Powells!)
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Posted by Kevin
October 16, 2011
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Star Pilot #5
I’ll sometimes warn you reader folks not to judge a book by its cover. Obvious advice, I know, and not exactly insightful, but people sometimes ignore it anyway. Take, for example, this cover. There’s so much going on here (zombie shadow? man on a motorcycle riding to the rescue? barbed wire? bullseye?) that I was genuinely curious to see what happened inside, but I can see some people maybe passing this by if they saw it in a store. One look at that sample below should change your mind. Granted, this is a bit late in the story and it’s possible that I shouldn’t give away who was really in that special agent suit, but it’s so thoroughly ridiculous that I just couldn’t help it. And no, I am not laughing AT this. I think it may just be brilliant, but even if it isn’t Frank still gets serious points for originality. The story may wander just a bit, or maybe that’s just because I haven’t read the previous issues and don’t know the whole story. This is about a team of a monkey and a rhino who are trying to deliver medicine to some sick baby possums. Really, I could stop right there, but this kind of analysis is why you guys pay the big (imaginary) bucks, right? While this is going on there’s a scientist with a crisis of conscience who is trying to smuggle some designs for a delightfully vague doomsday device out of the country before they can be used. From there we get the backstory of this scientist and how he came to be the hero and we see the monkey and the rhino trying to save the possums. I don’t want to say much more, but I will say that “Use my back as a ramp! It’s the only way!” was a thing of beauty. The art is maybe a bit dicey at times, but kudos to Frank for getting to #5 in his series, not to mention the complete lack of spelling errors. That’s more rare than you might think, but it’s always welcome. You can get a copy of this for $1 and, if that’s too rich for your blood, you can always check some samples at his site first. $1
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Posted by Kevin
October 15, 2011
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Important Comics Are Bad
Hey wait a minute, no they’re not! I’m not sure if it’s a good sign that this title is designed to make you start arguing with it, or maybe that’s just me. This is a collection of comics covering the very vague time period of 2008-2011. Dina was able to get a weekly strip in the Baltimore City Paper, and she masochistically includes a letter from a reader of that paper begging them to cancel her strip on the back of her book. For you philistines who haven’t seen any of her past work, her comics are simply drawn with word bubbles bursting out of the confines of those little square panels. My only complaint about this book is that that choice makes some bits of these strips unreadable (not many, just a few), as the words straggle off the page and into the page break. You know, that part where double page spreads in comics go to get mixed up? That one. Anyway, some themes are procrastination, enjoying a good day, equally enjoying a crappy day or event, and her fantastic Tron 2 review/drawings. There’s even an index in back that lists the locations of the various strips, just in case you’re so familiar with these strips that you want to look them up by title. If you think that I’m cheating you by not going into detail on more of these strips, well screw you, chum. Go to that website listed and flip through her many samples if you haven’t seen a thing that she’s done; I’m keeping most of the strips as a surprise for people who already know her work and want to be surprised by this one. It’s a bit bigger than her last collection (90ish pages compared to 45ish), but it’s only a few dollars more expensive ($14), so that still sounds like a good deal to me. Buy some copies why don’t you? The world needs more genuinely unique comics like this one.
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Posted by Kevin
October 14, 2011
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Vampires Need Love Too #4     Now Available! $3
It’s always a good sign when I have trouble picking out a sample from a comic of one page strips. I generally try to pick a page that I think is funny, and when it’s an easy choice that means that there weren’t all that many laughs. This time around I could have picked a half dozen strips pretty easily. The basic setup is probably familiar to you by now, especially if you’ve been keeping up with this series: it’s all about a vampire and his crew of freakish friends. Brian posts one strip a week on Sundays, and it looks like they vary between this and some of his other series. If you wonder how many series the guy has going, check out the online store, as most of them are for sale here. Anyway, strips in here include his friend the bat and its problems, the lizard with the strange accent offering him advice, accidentally turning a girl into a vampire, the usefulness of having “divine” protection, and his troubles with ladies. Lot of strips are about his troubles with the ladies, actually, and he gets in more than a few good lines in the process. Well, he does if you’re a guy who has trouble understanding what is going on in any given woman’s head, but your opinion may vary if you actually are one of those ladies. Either way, there’s no quicker way to make funny stuff unfunny than by going through each strip in detail, so I’ll leave that sort of thing to the readers. If you liked his previous issues in this series, Brian is only getting funnier. If you haven’t liked the previous issues, you should maybe give this one in particular a try; I think you might like what you see.
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Posted by Kevin
October 13, 2011
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Herman the Manatee #4
I don’t know how this issue of Herman got shuffled out of the rotation, as I like these comics a bunch, but there it was at the bottom of another pile of minis. Time to get my (imaginary) comics secretary in here to clean the place up. I remember wondering in the first issue if the shtick of Herman getting bonked on the head by passing boats would get old, and here we are at #4 and Jason has almost entirely taken that gag out of the strip. Oh, it still shows up a few times, and if anything it’s even funnier because you don’t know when it’s coming. Other than that this volume focuses a bit more on Herman’s friends (as you could guess by that fantastic subtitle), with a special 100th strip at the end that shows Jason’s creative process to get into Herman’s head. The other strips include Herman getting pushed around by the narwhal, trying to make friends with Lester, getting organized, summing up Hamlet in a beautiful way, being seen in 3D, putting god to sleep, and imagining a better life for himself. That’s maybe a third of the strips, but you should discover everything else for yourself. That’s assuming you haven’t been keeping up with this series, as you really should be. It’s not everybody who can make me rethink my “ongoing strips are generally just not funny” theory, and Jason did that in a big way. Of course, I don’t think he’s published in any newspaper or alternative weekly (although please correct me if I’m wrong), so here’s hoping he doesn’t give up. You giving him money for comics would probably be a nice motivation… $4
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Posted by Kevin
October 12, 2011
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Jam Days
Comics folk who are older than 14, you need to step up your game. Emma is coming to steal your job! Well, not really, as there’s more than enough room for all kinds of people to make comics. However, she is 14, and gets 100 points (if I awarded points) for presentation alone. This comic came (along with another comic that I’ll get to in a week or so) in a blue folder, with a few pages of praise from critics and a long letter telling me all about the comics. There was also a greeting card, as she apparently does that on the side, and the whole package really made me take note. Not that you comics folk who just send a comic along with no note are jerks, as I do get the general idea when I get comics like that in the mail. One tip for Emma: if you want to make sure your comic gets to somebody without it getting all bent up, put a small piece of stiff cardboard in with the book. It doesn’t weigh much and the postal workers won’t have a chance to really bend it no matter how hard they try. And believe me, some of them will try. Some of them seem to take the “please do not bend” notice on packages as a challenge. So how about the comic? Well, I loved the fact that the inside front cover was a backwards version of the front cover, even though it had nothing to do with the story. She also mentions that she won the gold medal for comics in the Alliance for Young Writers and Artists, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that such a thing exists. Anyway, Emma finds out that there’s no jam in the house so she decides to go out and get berries to make her own. The trouble is that they’re all high up on trees, and one of the trees is near a house, so there’s significant trouble getting the berries down in one piece. It’s full color and she’s already using pretty inventive comics panels, as her breaking down her effort to get one troublesome berry into nine panels worked perfectly. Technically it’s pretty impressive, and it sure looks like the (comics) sky is the limit for her, assuming she keeps at it. Having Dan Archer as a mentor doesn’t hurt even a little bit either. $3, and looking at the website it looks like you can get this in different sizes if you’d like.
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Posted by Kevin
October 11, 2011
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Ex: Cloves
One good thing about going through old minis is that I can find stuff that I should have reviewed ages ago. Mary (who always seems to go by Meg, but I was told to list her as Mary (or my brain fell out and I’m making that part up)) sent this one probably a year and a half ago and, even though it was a shimmering silver cover, it somehow got buried in the comics mounds. It’s a shame because it’s a damned fine comic and people should know about it, assuming that she still has copies. I didn’t see any on her website, but then again I didn’t see ANY comics on her website, and that can’t be right. Anyway, this tells the story of Mary trying to come out of a difficult breakup. Like all recovery periods, lying to yourself is a big part of it, as is hooking up with somebody on a purely physical level to ease the pain. This also happened right around the time when she was moving out of a city, so everything took on a sped up “what does it all mean?” quality. It’s heartbreaking and empowering at the same time, as she ends up being significantly happier with the guy who made her no promises than she ever was with the guy who broke her heart. Contact her if you want a copy, which you should if you’ve ever struggled through a difficult breakup, which is probably everybody reading this. Or maybe you’re one of the lucky few who only does the breaking up, in which case you might want to read this to see what happens after you leave. No price, but that fantastic cover alone has to make it at least $3.
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Posted by Kevin
October 10, 2011
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PDX 100
Well, this isn’t a good sign. Here I am trying to convince people to fork over the cash needed to keep this website going for another year, and I don’t have a damned thing to say about this comic. This is a gorgeously produced $10 comic that contains 100 drawings of different parts of Portland. And… that’s it. Matt drew different sections and sorted them all into geographical locations, so if you’re a local you can at least flip to a certain section of town to try to find something recognizable. If you’re not a local of Portland and if you really have no interest in the city one way or another, I’m completely comfortable telling you to skip this one. Basing this review purely on technical terms, there isn’t a thing wrong with this comic. I also don’t want this to seem like I’m crapping on Matt, as he’s done other comics that I’ve enjoyed, and I think there’s even another comic of his around here somewhere that I still need to review. It’s just that I don’t see why this comic exists. Looking around on the internets a bit I can see that this was published by a company that just publishes Matt’s books and it’s based out of Portland, so this does make sense in that context. Matt also apparently spent a lot of time wandering the city, as several of the pictures are of what appears to be random houses, so I’m sure the whole thing was a blast for him. Maybe I get stuck too much on price tags, and $10 does seem to be about right for a book of this size and quality. It just seems excessive at a time when so many people are broke and mini comics as a whole are becoming more and more of a luxury purchase. At least give me something to convince people to buy! Ack, I didn’t intend for this level of vitriol, as it’s a mostly harmless book for the world at large and probably quite a nice thing to have if you live in Portland. I’ll shut up now and suggest that you just buy some of his other comics instead. $10
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Posted by Kevin
October 9, 2011
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Cross-Eyed
Eyeballs! Everybody has them, so why not make a comic about them? Adam goes a bit further than that, theorizing that everything has eyeballs, and from that idea several strips were born. The big story in here is more or less an extended illustrated poem, in which Adam talks about how even eyes have eyes, and their eyes have eyes, onwards to infinity. Excellent punchline, but I’ll say no more about it. Other strips are shorter and generally deal with various crises from these creatures, including the beach, ocean and sky all not knowing their own vastness, clouds complaining to a rainbow, another poem with that sort of fell apart but was saved by another nice punchline, raindrops wondering what they’ll be when they hit the ground (and the moment of realization of what they really are when they hit the ocean instead), and a confused desert island. Existential crises galore, that’s what I’m trying to say, with the occasional bit of complete silliness thrown in to keep any readers from falling into a funk. Right up my alley, in other words, but your opinions may vary. I didn’t see this listed on his website, but then again I couldn’t find a website of his that had comics on it, so I’m not sure of the price. I’m going with $4 in my role as arbiter of such things. Not that I ever asked for such a role, but as fewer and fewer people tell me what their comics cost, I’ve decided to just make things up and stick with them, evidence be damned.
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Posted by Kevin
October 8, 2011
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Nothing is Private
It’s probably impossible to tell from that scan, but you open this comic by pulling the key out of the keyhole, which is ingenious. The whole comic is impressively put together, as there’s also a transparent sheet when you open the book with the title on it. This is a story from Luis growing up. Back in the day he would share a shower with his younger brother (he was 11 and his brother was 5) and the two brothers were perfectly content to keep showering together, but their older sister would consistently barge into the bathroom looking for some small item that most likely could have waited until after the shower. This went on for awhile, word got out to the rest of the family, and between that and the embarrassment of Luis’ younger brother pointing out his early pubic hairs, Luis put an end to it. That still left some revenge on their sister to take care of, but kids like that aren’t always the best at plotting such things, and the revenge backfired horribly. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that they barged in on the wrong family member. There’s also a pretty great ending bit involving his younger brother and his own first “pubic hair.” This is a damned solid book; the facial expressions were fantastic, and there was substantial attention to detail. Maybe that’s supposed to be the norm, but I see a lot of minis and a lot of people wouldn’t have bothered drawing the tiles on the bathroom wall, or the rich wealth of items surrounding their dinner table. I have no idea on the price, as nothing was listed on his website (which is in Spanish, by the way, but Google can translate it for you), but judging from sheer quality alone it has to be at least $5. Luis was also nice enough to send along several more minis and I’m looking forward to going through them. Well, I’m looking forward to them if all of the comics are of this same level of quality. If this was some bizarre fluke then it’ll be a different story…
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Posted by Kevin
October 7, 2011
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Cereal With a Fork #1
A funny thing happened while I was reading this comic. Well, several funny things, as it’s a collection of over 100 strips varying from one to several panels (but mostly one panel). The thing is that it wasn’t all that funny at first. The humor was either stupid or just not that funny, and the art didn’t do it a ton of favors. Then it started getting gradually funnier, then suddenly I was laughing out loud on a fairly regular basis. The strip sampled below was the one that totally convinced me, although your opinions may vary. The art never did get all that complicated, but who cares? It’s the humor that matters in something like this, and Kyle figured that out pretty well after he worked the kinks out. He also mentioned in the afterward that this was the first time he had drawn anything since maybe grade school, so that’s a perfectly respectable learning curve. So what are the comics about? Well, keeping in mind that there are more than 100 of them, some of them are about bad advertising for a coffee shop, the difference between somebody wearing a bluetooth and the same person not wearing one, the Douche Palace, a beginner piano, and suddenly being transported 10,000 years into the past. There’s also a continuing gag for a few strips that starts off with a family of pizzas ordering a medium human, with the following strips documenting the imaginary reactions to this strip. If you want to know more, you’ll be happy to know that this behemoth is only $3, and if you need more convincing he has all kinds of samples up at this site. The ones I saw all looked funny, which indicates to me that he has the hang of this daily humor thing now. It’s a difficult thing to keep up, but he’s off to a pretty damned good start. $3
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Posted by Kevin
October 6, 2011
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Star #1
These comics of Brian’s are often illustrated simply, at least partially due to the size constraints (if you’ve never held one of these comics, they’re about the size of your thumb). This one breaks that trend in a big way, as Kurt Dinse makes this book gorgeous. I’m assuming that he drew these larger and then shrunk them down, but it wasn’t done in a way to detract from the art. This is the story of a rock star who’s trying to outrun his past of summoning demons. His lifestyle helps in this endeavor, but his utter lack of concern for all of the other people who are damaged from his actions makes him a less than sympathetic character. Still, that’s half the fun for most of Brian’s characters, and he generally he has me caring about them in the end anyway. Like all of his #1 issues, this is primarily just setting up the character and what’s happening. Frankly, I don’t know if it would have been all that compelling with stick figure art, but Kurt’s drawing really do wonders for this story. I don’t know how the man crams that many foreboding shadows on such a tiny page, but kudos to him for doing it. This is $1, like pretty much all of his books and, as always, I advise you to spend at least $10 and get a sample package of these l’il treasures.
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Posted by Kevin
October 5, 2011
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Indestructible Universe #7
No, the pages aren’t that strongly yellow, but a new computer means trying to figure out how the scanner works all over again. Three stories in this one, and I wish that Morgan would make the titles a little more distinct so that I know that a new story is starting. I was a few pages into the second story before I understood that this was an entirely new thing. It’s also possible that I’m just dense and he’s doing it fine, which is the most likely answer. The first story is a creepy little tale of a man and his apprentice building a long set of stairs. The master tells how the steps are numbered (gold, silver, and death) and what it means to step on each one. I didn’t understand exactly why the ending went down the way that it did which, again, is more likely due to my denseness than anything else. It just didn’t make sense to me who the apprentice was in relation of the master, but it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t supposed to. The second story… holy crap, I think there are actually four stories. Yeah, he does need to work on his title placement. There was no clue that there was a third story starting. Anyway, the second story deals with a new venereal disease that appears to remove the lips and leave only a patchwork mouth. The afflicted are also drawn to other people who share their primary number, which I shouldn’t get into too much without blowing the story. The third story is a shorter piece about a man who breaks in to the home of a long-time adversary and ends up on a horrific, inescapable trap. Finally we get the continuation of the Driftwood story from the last issue (you know, the one that I was already confused about due to the lack of any kind of a recap of previous entries) and things start coming together a bit this time around. Frankly, it’s still too jumbled for me to be sure, so I’ll refrain from saying much, but it looks to be going in an innovative direction. Frankly, all of his stuff is innovative and deeply weird (which is always great in my book). The only troubles I have are with the technical aspects. Maybe a table of contents? That would have shut me right up about anything wrong with the book. I don’t see this listed on his website, but I think the last issue was $5, so this one must be close to that.
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Posted by Kevin
October 4, 2011
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Life is Good #6
Huzzah to Steve for including a concise, informative recap of past issues right on the inside front cover! Hey, if I’m going to bitch about all the people who don’t take that simple step, it stands to reason that I should praise the people who manage to do it, right? Anyway, if you’re not caught up in the series and have plans to at some point (it’s generally funny with a thoroughly ridiculous cast of characters and it looks great, so why wouldn’t you?), I’ll probably spoil a few bits from the past. This time around Charles is trying to come to grips with his “littering addiction,” Sewer Gator gets his revenge on Charles (possibly the most good-natured beating I’ve ever seen), and Peace Rock and Unity Flower continue to see their relationship fall apart (and she finally starts to see through Unity Flower). Also starring Brownie! Seriously, it’s odd that what started out as the main character gets less focus this time around, but at this point all of the other characters are more interesting anyway. Not that Brownie doesn’t have a thing to do, as his crudely drawn daily comics are discovered by Sewer Gator, who then exploits them for all they’re worth. That opening scene with Charles talking about his litter addiction in front of an AA group was beautiful, as was Unity Flower’s hiring a worker to take care of his duties. Steve’s built up a nice little universe here and it’ll be interesting to see what he makes of it over the coming issues. $4
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Posted by Kevin
September 28, 2011
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The Bride of Hellatron
Since all these reviews are starting off with me complaining these days, I wonder if there’s any particular reason why this comic wasn’t stapled. Maybe it’s just a review comic thing, but I hope he isn’t selling them like this. By the time you put them in a bag and get them home they’d be all jumbled up. Now that I have my bitching out of the way, this was an enjoyable enough story, although if you’re not a fan of ball-busting wives in comics you’d probably be OK moving on to something else. The first half of the comic is introducing the reader to Hellatron, who is basically the scourge of the galaxy. The second half of the book deals with Hellatron being late for a dinner date with her wife and her friends, which turns even uglier when it is revealed that he accidentally ate the planet of her friends. It has a few laughs and the punchline was funny, even if you could see it coming. The art suited the story too (I particularly enjoyed the image of Hellatron slurping up a planet). Worth a look, although I’m mostly looking forward to the next issue of his First Fight series, which also came with this but I picked this one to review instead. Why? It made sense at the time… $2
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Posted by Kevin
September 27, 2011
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Werefore Teach Comics?
I was all set to praise this thing before I noticed the glaring typo in the title. In the freaking title, by a person who teaches students about how to make comics! This isn’t the first time that I’ve wondered if there was a class on spelling at The Center for Cartoon Studies. They do fantastic work in every other area (as far as I’ve been able to tell), but that title alone may well have scared me off if I saw this sitting on a shelf in a store. So anyway, this is a tiny mini and the title basically says it all. Rio praises her teacher Alec Longstreth and gives some of his pearls of wisdom, then goes on to feature a few students who talked about what they learned in class. Like I said, it’s short (six pages of story), and the content was fantastic and thought-provoking. Still, I’ll be the guy yelling on street corners in 20 years about spelling errors when the rest of the world has given up, so don’t think my annoyance about that title will do a thing to dim your enjoyment of the book. Rio also sent along longer comics that I look forward to digging into (rushed for time today, so that pretty much always means I’m reviewing a mini comic), and I’ll go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt on that typo. Hey, why not? There’s nothing about this comic on her website, but you could probably get a copy for a dollar.
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Posted by Kevin
September 26, 2011
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Jay’s Brain #1
Jason Viola seems to be on a quest to convince me to stop hating the weekly (or, Jeebus forbid, daily) comics. Granted, these comics weren’t produced for a weekly magazine or (as far as I can tell) on any kind of a timed basis. So no, I have no idea if he could physically pull off a weekly comic. There’s also the tiny fact that weekly comic artists seem to be a dying breed, so the guy almost certainly couldn’t make a living at it. Still, his comics have convinced me that he’d be perfect for it, and if I ever get this time machine working I’d be happy to send him back a couple of decades where he could have made a great living by being genuinely funny on a regular basis. Jason is the man responsible for Herman the Manatee (which he says he’s wrapping up) and Amy Amoeba, so yeah, he’s funny. Pretty much my only concern when getting a new book from somebody I already know is funny is “OK, so are they going serious (and, if so, can they pull it off)” or “can they still be funny with a new title?” That second thought is rarely a real concern, but it pops into this cynical brain of mine anyway. No worries at all for this comic. As you can tell from that cover, it’s all about Jay and his brain. I’m not sure if this is 100% autobiographical stuff, but Jason mentions on his website that it’s the most personal comic he’s made yet. Anyway, these are generally six panel strips, often with the last panel being some kind of a laugh line or an “oh you!” type finisher. And there isn’t a shitty one in the bunch, except for maybe the Twitter comic, which I didn’t understand enough to comment on either way. Topics in here (often in a roundabout way) are insomnia, guilt, going blank at the worst moments, being unable to stop thinking during sex, only having the good story ideas at inopportune times, drugs, hoarding, and thinking of himself as a fraud. That’s the first half of the book anyway, the rest is up to you. Your best bet is to just buy a bunch of his books, as he currently has the four issues of Herman the Manatee available for $10 total. $3
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Posted by Kevin
