January 11, 2012
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Supplementary File #2A
American readers take note: this comic is meant to be read manga-style, meaning back to front and right to left instead of the other way around. Granted, the fact that the cover is on the back of the book (as they are usually arranged) should be a pretty big clue, but I just wanted to make that perfectly clear. Another big clue is the fact that this is a redrawn version of a Matsumoto Lieji comic called Queen Emeraldas from 1979. So really, you no longer have any excuses if you read this thing backwards. Anyway, this is the first of three parts of the adaptation, with Ryan releasing one part each month for three months (an impressive achievement in today’s small press comics world). This one starts off with our hero running into somebody who apparently just landed called “Boundless Ocean Boy.” They’re also searching for Deathskull, who apparently got away after being wounded. They chat for a bit and then leave the planet, but after they go our hero blows the entire place up. And this is one of the things I’ve always loved about manga: the willingness to let the stories breathe. We’re treated to several pages of the planet starting to blow up, first with smaller explosions and finally with an explosion big enough to turn it into rubble. With most American comics you’d see the planet explode, either in one panel or one page, before moving on to the rest of the action. In this comic you’re given plenty of time to absorb the fact that you’re watching a frickin’ planet explode and maybe you should take a moment to appreciate that fact. It’s an intriguing set-up for a three part comic, with my only complaint being the lost word bubble on the third page. Maybe it was supposed to fly off the page? Either way it doesn’t do much damage to the rest of the book. Oh, and this book will also make perfect sense to you even if you’ve never read any of Ryan’s other comics, so don’t worry about getting bogged down in the continuity. $4
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Posted by Kevin
January 9, 2012
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The Offering
I was wondering what had been going on with the folks from the Good Minnesotan anthologies. I first noticed Anna’s work in the pile of other comics that comprised Good Minnesotan #4 (hey, whatever happened with that Kickstarter fundraiser? Is there a collected edition in the works?) and have been curious to see further work from pretty much everybody involved. This comic tells the story of two young sisters who go off into the woods to meet some witches. The older sister is going because she wants to help the witches, while the younger sister is reluctantly being dragged along for the ride. The older sister decides that she wants to be an active participant in the witchcraft that’s going on and ends up being sacrificed to bring a monster baby either to life or back to life. This freaks the younger sister out more than a little bit, obviously, so she runs away from the witches and comes across another, unrelated witch in the woods. From here she learns a possible method for bringing her older sister back to life before confronting the original witches again. It’s a thoroughly engaging story and that ending is pretty much guaranteed to creep you out. Solid art, enthralling story, there’s not much more to ask for from a comic. My only problem was a technical one, as she didn’t list any contact information inside the actual comic. Luckily she doesn’t have the most common of names and her information is easily found with a Google search (and she included a business card with the comic), but it’s always a good idea to put at least an e-mail address inside your comics, as you never know who’s going to end up reading it. But the actual comic part of it? Yeah, I liked that a lot. No price listed (which is impossible to get annoyed about, as very few people bother with a printed price), so I’m guessing $4 for no good reason.
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Posted by Kevin
January 5, 2012
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Fight
Sometimes my rule about never listing any spoilers really hinders some of the points I should be making. This comic was damned near a masterpiece before it reached that ending, which kicked it up a few notches. Mega-masterpiece? Masterpieceapocalypse? Make up your own awesome word, it won’t be as great as this ending. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself. Fight is the story of a professional wrestler/monster named Fight. He’s having a good run as champion until a female version of himself called Super Fight comes onto the scene. He falls instantly in love and she takes advantage of his distraction to beat him and win his title. It turns out that Fight managed to get Super Fight pregnant during their kiss (hey, they’re monsters, who’s to say how they reproduce?) and she has a baby called Fight 64. This thing seems to exist purely to cause mayhem in various situations (I would direct your attention in particular to the chapter dealing with the pathetic creature known as the Boobstadon). Meanwhile Fight is down on his luck after losing his title, attempting to get a series of humiliating jobs, and Super Fight seems to be trying to drink herself to death. All three of these characters stay away from each other until right near the end and, as I’ve mentioned, what an ending it is. The book is a damned epic, and this in a book that I assumed would be merely funny with a bit of a punch-’em-up thrown in, which is what I get for assuming. This book won a Xeric award, and this world would be a poorer place if the money didn’t exist to put this book out, which maintains their damned near perfect grant record. I guess you might hate this if you’re looking for a heartfelt tale of introspection and loss, but if that was the case you probably wouldn’t be picking up a book called “Fight” anyway. Read it, love it, and recommend it to your friends. Yes, even the ones who don’t like comics. If they like funny things done well then you just might manage to convert them to comics. $5
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Posted by Kevin
January 4, 2012
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Brown Vs. Brown
My sozzled brain is still recovering from all the cold medicine and nasty side effects of this cold, so I’m sticking with small comics like this for the time being that have simple concepts. This one, for example, deals with Bryan’s rage at being confused with Box Brown (who makes the delightful Everything Dies series, among other comics). The rage builds for a bit before Bryan snaps and has to attack Box, but Box has a secret weapon up his sleeve (that I couldn’t help but spoil in the sample, for which I apologize, but how could I pass up that image?). It’s funny and you might end up being surprised by the winner of the fight, so what more could you ask for? It’s also a short 8 pages, so you might want to go for one of Bryan’s other comics if you really want to see him flex his artistic muscles. Or you could apparently just buy some of Box Brown’s comics instead just to piss him off…
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Posted by Kevin
January 3, 2012
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Lobotomy
There are times when a silent comic needs a few words of explanation, and this is one of those times. Or it’s possible that all the cold medicine that is still coursing through my system (along with the actual cold itself) is making me stupid and I’m just not getting parts of this. Actually, I’d bet on the latter explanation. This is the story of a smaller chunk of a larger brain that has taken over the whole brain and, well, lobotomized it. Sort of, anyway, as the larger part is still capable of independent thought. Why don’t I just flip through this again in the hopes of making this review at least slightly coherent? Small brain chunk wakes up and goes about its daily business. Then it wanders over to the larger brain and hooks it up to something that is clearly hurting it. The small chunk then rides the large chunk throughout the day like a steed, while the large chunk is clearly miserable the whole time. Once the small chunk goes to sleep the larger chunk takes off for its own adventures, and I’ll just tell you the whole comic if I’m not careful. Maybe my confusion is due to the fact that a lobotomy is permanent and I’m taking the title too literally. It’s a fun little story regardless, although the ending was a little confusing to me, but again, that’s probably the cold medicine talking. $2
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Posted by Kevin
December 30, 2011
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Nibble #6
A bit of an explanation will be required for this one. I’ve been sick as the proverbial dog since getting back from the holidays, with my head feeling like it’s been wrapped in gauze and thrown down a mountain. What this means in a practical sense is that I’ve been looking at a few comics that have been coming in and, while some of them look quite good, they’re also far too complex for me to talk about with any kind of coherence while I’m in this kind of state (even if this review ends up seeming coherent, it’s taking forever to write, mostly because my body just isn’t in working order at the moment). Anyway, along comes a few Tom Cherry comics, which are always short and to the point, so I picked one of them for the last review of 2011. Too much information? Quite possibly, but what are you going to do? This comic is about the boasting of a small rock. Seriously, you can see it starting on that cover image, then the sample image is of the next page so you can see that it keeps up. And that is the illustration for a good chunk of this book, so without a couple of pages there at the end this could have been done in a few minutes. As for the story, this boasting does not go unnoticed (either by someone actually hearing it or just the cruel universe in general), things change and there’s a genuinely funny final line. The end. Like I said, this is as much complexity as my brain is capable of handling at the moment, so your opinion may vary if you’re not hopped up on cold medicine, but I thought it was funny. $.25
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Posted by Kevin
December 22, 2011
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Vortex
You know, generally speaking pseudonyms make more sense when your real name is a secret, not when you list both names in every publication. Hey, whatever works for him is fine with me. Mark’s work has occasionally baffled me in the past (and long time readers know that I usually mean that in a good way), but this one made perfect sense to me. Whether that should be worrying or a good sign I’ll leave up to you. Things start off with a big old cosmic figure who is searching for a “tranz force” and notices a signal coming from an uninhabited planet. He/she/it goes down to the surface and meets a life form. This life form slowly (over the course of pages) reveals that this was a trap set for the original life form, as they knew that it would come to investigate the tranz force sooner or later. A brief battle ensues, the original entity is cut in half, and that’s when things start to get interesting. Mark has a nice intro in this comic that explains this universe a bit, but it’s best to read such a thing for yourself instead of having me summarize it. The battle of these two creatures was suitably majestic , which also gave the reader the sense that we were seeing a fraction of everything that was happening. I also liked his choice to take as many pages as he did showing this battle, as something between two cosmic beings like this should be big and dramatic. I always hated how some Marvel comics would have some big cosmic entity like Galactus getting punched out, as if that was the extent of something that could happen in a battle with a guy who ate planets. Ah, I’m wandering now, but if you liked any of Mark’s previous comics then you’re sure to love this, and if you never gave them a chance then this is as coherent a starting point as you’re likely to find. $5
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Posted by Kevin
December 20, 2011
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La Petite Mort
Just when you think that there is no possible way to find anything original to say in the zombie genre, somebody always comes along and proves me wrong. I’m not even sure if it’s accurate to call these undead people zombies in the usual sense of the word, but I’m getting ahead of myself. This mini is told from the perspective of various people who saw a strange phenomenon start off first-hand. Um, and that may be an unfortunate choice of phrase. Anyway, it all started with an EMT who came across a drunk driver. He died on the way to the hospital, but after he died he looked at her and started masturbating. After he died. Then we get stories from other people with the same experience, in both male and female dead people, with the scientific world being flummoxed. I say that these aren’t the usual zombies because they had no interest in eating people, they were only interested in masturbation. Well, science started studying the problem and they eventually stumbled into a solution, and what a fantastic solution it was. I’ll say no more, as it’s up to all you good folks who aren’t afraid of a picture of a penis to buy this comic in support, but I’ll be damned if Russell didn’t handle it perfectly. I haven’t seen his name before (that I know of, it all tends to be a bit of blur around here), but this comic is professional as can be. If he’s just getting started everybody should give him a burst of encouragement, and if he’s done a few comics that I just haven’t seen then he also deserves further encouragement. Give him your $2 either way is what I’m saying. Also, if you really hurry this would make a fantastic stocking stuffer for any overly religious relatives that are bugging you excessively around the holidays…
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Posted by Kevin
December 19, 2011
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Optik Noize #2
Ah, one of the genuine perks of this website: I get to see talented comic folks mature throughout the years. Well, that wasn’t the plan originally, but as I’m still doing this 10+ years after I started it is now one of the perks. Matthew did a series of minis a few years back that were mostly fun, all-ages science stuff. The cover has improved and the art is noticeably better and in full color, but it remains full of fun, all-ages science stuff. This time around our hero has developed a mind enhancement machine and has used it on his dog and a rat to prove that it worked. It’s still too untested to use on a human, so naturally his nemesis overhears it (with a complicated spy device, it’s not like his nemesis was in the room with him or anything) and schemes to use it on himself. Shenanigans occur, hostages are taken and an over-sized brain gets thrown into the mix. Matthew has also been much more creative with his panel layouts this time around, as I remember them being pretty standard for most of his minis and they’re all over the place (in a good way) for this one. His stuff wasn’t bad to begin with, but he’s made a leap forward with this one. If you’re a fan of grim and gritty realism then you should probably pass, but this is perfect for the kids or people who like a little scientific mayhem in their comics. $3.50 and that website is still pretty bare, but I’m sure that he’ll get it updated in no time. Right?
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Posted by Kevin
December 15, 2011
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Fear of Failure #1
I don’t know what other comics Thom has done, but he displays some serious mastery of the craft here. The action starts with a scene from the end of the book, which has been done before, sure. But the rest of the book reads like a story that you’re fast-forwarding through on your DVD player, with the action becoming larger and more prominent when the reader needs to slow down and everything being depicted through a series of tiny descriptive panels when you’re fine just skipping ahead a bit. It adds up to the impression that you’re being guided through a story by a guy who knows exactly what he wants you to see, and that sort of thing is always a good sign to me. Anyway, this is all about Dr. Lois Pritchard, a psychiatrist (?), and her daily happenings. Things start off with her confronting a mystery person (who is revealed at the end), then we get a detailed description of this section of the town. Next we get to know Dr. Pritchard a bit and the rest of the book is her dealing with her co-workers (one who is trying and failing to get rid of a large cluster of cats that howl outside his window, and the other a religious nutbag), her family, her patients and her own life. Along the way we get these panel clusters that I mentioned before that show bits of her life flashing by until we get to the meatier stuff. As a little bonus we also get a story on the history of fainting in Thom’s family (at least I think it’s autobiographical) and how it has affected him since. I pretty much loved it, and you can read it for free at his website at the moment (along with some of #2) if you’re curious. You should probably buy it if you do love it, as the guy has to make a living and buying books from people is always an excellent motivator for them to keep going. The price is roughly $6, but this is a hefty thing.
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Posted by Kevin
