Optical Sloth

Sorry about the sudden absence, but all is right with the world: I have a working scanner again. Now if I could just figure out how to use it… eh, who has time to read the instructions. New review today for Magic Whistle 3.0 #1 by Sam Henderson and a few other artists. In theory reviews should now be back to normal, at least until the upcoming election removes me from humanity entirely for a few months. But the next week or so should still be good!

OK, that’ll do it for the nostalgia tour. Back to regular reviews next week, meaning sporadic and based on free time. But I did put in an order for a new scanner, so that shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. I’m pretty sure that 15 years makes me something like 100 in internet years, but it has been a lot of fun much more often than not, and I know that I helped at least a few people out along the way. As for how much longer I’ll keep doing this? How about this: at the exact moment when I’m not excited to see what comics are in the random package I just got from Kiev, or Ireland, or Brooklyn, or Chicago, or Denver, or where-the-hell-ever. It’s clear to me that I make a poor proper adult, so that time probably won’t come for several years yet. Now if only I could find the time to fix all the typos from the old articles, update all the contact info, put the review dates back to their original dates, fix the online store, replenish the stock in said store with books that’s weren’t all from the aughts, start interviewing comics creators again… Which reminds me, if there’s an eccentic millionaire out there who wants access to all the old mini comics in the world, get in touch! I’d quit my day job in a second. Thanks for reading everybody!

Grant Reynolds

Rafer Roberts

Johnny Ryan

Steve Seck

Katie Skelly

Steve Steiner

Dan Taylor

Esther Pearl Watson

Julia Wertz

Jeff Zwirek

OK fine, so there are a LOT more of these than I was anticipating. It’s a pleasant surprise. And that’s without me including people who have been doing this for 15+ years while I’ve only reviewed one or two of their books, or people whose books I’ve never reviewed because I frankly didn’t feel worthy to do it. Los Bros Hernandez, Dan Clowes, Eddie Campbell, Chris Ware, all of those people have shaped my views on comics to an immeasurable degree. But smarter than people than me can talk about them in any kind of critical detail.

Kris Lachowski

Dave Lapp

Jeff LeVine

Carrie McNinch

Tom Motley

Kelli Nelson

Anders Nilsen

PANEL Anthologies (Columbus Ohio convention books)

Marcos Perez

John Porcellino

Quite a lot of flashbacks are hitting me as I dig through the archives; even a surface dig of this many reviews is bound to do that. What happened to all these artists who released a half dozen books over the course of a few years and then vanished? Are they happy and fulfilled now? Are they still drawing but just no longer releasing comics? What about Tony Consiglio, who was a favorite of mine for years (and who had the best rebuttal to Dave Sim’s speech at SPACE 2004 that was humanly possible)? Drop me a line is you’re somehow reading this, sent me comics to reviews many years ago and are still reading about comics while not making them. I do wonder sometimes

Emi Gennis (I don’t think she’s actually been around that long but I’m cheating on this one)

Jenny Gonzalez

John Hankiewicz

Tom Hart

Sam Henderson

Paul Hornschemeier

Kevin Huizenga

Max Ink

Rob Jackson

Dave Kiersh

James Kochalka

Turns out that there are way more artists who have been working for 15+ years than I thought, so this might actually take more than a week to get through them. If you’re wondering why the dates on the reviews don’t seem to indicate that this website is in fact 15 years old, blame that on an update in 2010 when I tried to fix a bunch of links/typos/misc problems. I was told that it would keep the original review dates, that didn’t happen, and since it would take months to go back and figure out the actual publication dates (if it was possible at all), I left it alone.

Brian Canini

Isaac Cates (& Mike Wenthe)

Chris Cilla

Ryan Claytor

Max Clotfelter

Jaime Crespo

Mike Dawson

Brad Dwyer

Austin English

Robin Enrico

Neil Fitzpatrick

Renee French

Kelly Froh

The actual date when I started this website has been lost to time and a few different hard drive crashes, but I know that it was in August of 2001, and I know that I had 100 reviews written when I put the website online. I wanted it to look like it had come out of nowhere, which it more or less did. This week I thought I’d post links here to some of the people (and companies) that have been making or releasing comics since at least 2001. I’ll probably get some of these wrong, as there’s no historical database for comics artist (right?), but at least it’ll be close.

Trevor Alixopulos

Graham Annable

Pat Aulisio

Peter Bagge

Suzanne Baumann

Gabrielle Bell

Sean Bieri

Pam Bliss

Gareth Brookes

Jeffrey Brown

Due to my busted scanner (I’m hoping to get a new one this week or next week, I just bought way too much furniture when I moved and am very broke at the moment) I’m not going to to review the new comic from Caitlin Cass yet. It’s about R.R. Whitehead, is another in her “Great Moments of Western Civilization” series and is so new that it’s not even on her website yet, but you should go there anyway and ask her if you can buy a copy. But I didn’t want to talk about it without any images attached, so the reviews is on hold. I did want to throw in some news (assuming anybody reads this far on the non-review posts): this month marks the 15th anniversary of Optical Sloth. Balloons, all the balloons! So I had a request to anybody who has been making comics for a very long time, like for example 15 years or longer (especially if I’ve already reviewed some of your books): send me the latest thing you did! I’d like to do a very tiny retrospective of some of the comic artists I’ve reviewed over the years, and having your most recent books would be most helpful. Or if that doesn’t work out (since this is ridiculously late notice to be throwing this out there), I’ll at least go through the reviews over this month and see for myself who I’ve been covering the longest and post links to their stuff. Oh, and there will also be another artistic improvement to the site soon, but that’s still top secret for now.

New review today for Slump by Bryan G. Brown. Since I’m mostly writing reviews on the weekends now, I don’t know the current news, but I’m guessing that today Trump is going to… insult Mother Teresa somehow. Well, people of the future? Did I guess correctly?

New review today for A Witch Named Koko #2 by Charles Brubaker. I still have to dig through my old comics to see what reviews I missed entirely the first time around, but in the meantime there are openings for reviews if you want to send your comics my way. Basically no waiting! Outside of my finding time to review them, that is…

New review today for a new issue of King Cat, #76! By John Porcellino, of course. And just in case anybody in the world reads only this page and not the review, John has set up a Patreon page. You really should give him some money!

New review today for Once Upon a Time in Morningside by Sean Michael Wilson & Hanna Stromberg. And it turns out that Big Ugly Robot (the publishers of this and many other amazing comics) is now offering six month subscriptions of their books, or a six month chunk of comics from last fall for an affordable $30. I’m not the boss of you, obviously, but I think the best way to experience their books is in bundles, so what better way to do it?

New review today for Elbis and the Orphan Daughter of Time by Mulele Jarvis. I have to say, it’s a little eerie writing these updates in the past. Who’s to say what’s happened this week? Eh, probably not all that much. Still, right now the possibilities are endless…

Two new reviews today, for You Don’t Get There From Here #36 by Carrie McNinch and Sinaloa Cowboys by Robert Hendricks. Yes, I do still need to figure out a better schedule so that I’m actually reviewing comics during the week. Still trying to adjust to the new work schedule/life in general combo. The job itself seems to be going swimmingly, thanks for asking!

Rare weekend update! What can I say, my new job has increased my travel time by a whole bunch, so I have to get up reviews when possible at the moment. New reviews today for A Witch Named Koko #1 by Charles Brubaker and Zero Sum Bubblegum by mostly David Robertson along with a few guest artists. New reviews when possible, bear with me as I sort this new schedule out!

Yep, turns out I didn’t have time to post any reviews last week. Should have just planned it that way from the start. New review today for Hellbound Lifestyle by Kaeleigh Forsythe & Alabaster Pizzo, and I have a new job and a (still mostly) broken scanner, so it might make more sense to plan on 1 or 2 more reviews this week instead of 3. Assuming you plan anything at all around my reviews, which would be very silly.

I’m moved into the new place (please use the new address to send review comics from now on!) but am just now getting reliable internet, so maybe I’ll get a review or two up over the next few days if I really have fixed the problem.

OK, I thought I could balance this being my last week at work and the week that I’m changing apartments along with putting a few reviews together, but since only one of those things is optional, guess which one isn’t going to happen? Yep, no reviews this week, and I’ll post my new address this weekend once I’m actually living there. I should be able to get a few reviews up next week (assuming competence from Time Warner), and there was a bit of good news from all this packing: I’ve uncovered more than a few caches of comics that I got years ago that were never reviewed, as it seems like they ended up in a box during a previous move and then buried. So apologies to those artists and writers, and I’ll check to make sure that they’re still active, but I should be able to get some of those reviews up soon. In this culture would they be considered “retro” if they’re a few years old? Probably so…

New review today for Mutant Punks Fuck Off #1 by Kevin Panetta & Jared Morgan, which is a heartbreaking tale of forbidden love in dire circumstances. Or you could refer to the title and guess for yourself what it’s about. Also sorry about the lack of a sample image, but my scanner is now apparently at the point where it scans the cover image and then needs to rest for several hours. And since I’m moving next week and have to buy a bunch of furniture, I don’t have the cash to spare to get a new one. Luckily the internet still exists and the images aren’t hard to hunt down for those who are inclined to do so.

New review today for Satan Cat #2 by Steve Steiner. Have I mentioned that I’m moving in a couple of weeks? Because I am. If you have review comics to send, maybe hold off until after 6/24 so there’s no confusion with mail delivery.

New review today for Elf Cat in Love by James Kochalka, who was maybe one of the first people I reviewed on this website back in the day. Who can say for sure, that was 15 years ago!