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
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 #4Ă‚Â Ă‚Â Ă‚Â Ă‚Â Ă‚Â 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
