April 24, 2010
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Window #9
I probably should have checked here before ordering another random issue of this series, but this is looks to be self-contained, so no continuity issues here. This is all about Dave sitting through a fire alarm at the school where he teaches and watching a fight that seems to alternate between serious and joking around. He seems amazed by the lack of willingness of the people around to do anything to stop this fight, and there’s an especially disgusting finale to the whole thing. There’s also a tiny story at the end about why people don’t seem to mind if there are racial epithats on the walls. Anyway, it looks gorgeous and it’s an interesting mini. This seems to be one of those comics where you could do a lot worse than read a bunch of them in a row, which is somewhere on my to-do list along with reading every comic in the world… $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Window #6
This is the trouble with picking only the latest issue of a series when you’re picking out stuff on the indispensible USS Catastrophe site. Chances were pretty good that I wouldn’t be entirely sure what was going on. This is an autobiographical strip, or at least it appears that way, about Dave going through an old journal, having a conversation with a couple of kids about angels and a man getting his head smashed on the steet, Dora (one of said kids) getting teased and harrassed at an art center, and a conversation Dave had with a student in his art class. Unless I read that last part wrong and he’s not an art teacher at all. It doesn’t matter. This is as honest and heartfelt a comic as I’ve seen in a while, and another one of those where I feel the need to go back and catch up with what I’ve been missing here, and there’s no greater compliment to a book. Oh, and he seems to be friends with Chester Brown, which can never be a bad thing. If you like the autobio stuff as much as me, this is something that you’re not going to want to miss. $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Stray Bullets #30
After what’s been going on in this series lately, this issue could almost be considered a break. And there’s a happy ending! You might think that I’m giving too much away, but the title of the story is “Happy Ending”, and how much does that really give away anyway? The story here is that Bobby takes a gun to school to impress his classmates. Not that much funny there, but there’s actually a funny line here and there. Compared to most of his stuff, this is almost lighthearted. Kind of a “break” issue in the big story (at least that’s my judgment, but what do I know), but that almost makes it a perfect comic to pick up and try if you don’t know where to try out this series. Why don’t I have the website linked anywhere up there? Oh well, it’s fixed now.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Stray Bullets #29
Did I say that that last issue was a good place to start? No, actually the best place to start would be at the beginning, that was only if you were broke and wanted to pick up one of the issues instead of one of the collections. Honestly, I’ve read this in chunks that have been too spread apart for me to know how coherent this has been from the start (I’m getting to it, really I am), but it’s really coming together now. This has become the best noir comic going and David even has the common decency to put it out on a regular basis. This issue is about the police trying to find Virginia Applejack, who you may remember from way back in the third issue (or the second), or maybe from other parts of the series that I’m too lazy to reference right now. Contact info is way up there but I’d still recommend that you get the books to see what’s going on here. There aren’t many comics out there that come out on a regular basis and are this engaging, so buy it already.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Stray Bullets Vol.1
I think this reviewing thing is a virus sometimes. Here I am, sitting at work at the comic store. I realize that I haven’t read Stray Bullets in a while so I sit down, read it… and I realized that the section on my page for this book was blank. Damn you website, why can’t I just read one book without blabbing about it? Ah, my problems, they are serious. Anyway, I thought that maybe this book wouldn’t age well, what with the incredible work he’s doing these days with the series. It’s different, sure, but the kernals of what makes it so great now are right here. All kinds of familiar faces too, but I’ll learn more about that when I get through the whole run. In these days he mostly only did stories from issue to issue. The first story (unrelated to the rest except for the fact that it introduces the mysterious “Harry”) is about a couple of hired goons trying to dispose of a body. Nothing is ever that easy in this series, as you’ll see. The second story is about a little girl who witnesses a murder and has one of the most… what the word when it feels like your stomach just jumps out of your body? That’s what the ending is like. The third story is about a party after a job and it introduces all kinds of characters that come up later: Beth, Nina, and Monster that I can remember, and I’ve never read this stuff all in a row. The fourth story, well, I don’t want to ruin anything for you but it took the edge off one of the other stories in the book a little bit and has a completely unexpected ending, what with the theme of everything else in here. If you haven’t read this series yet, this is one of those cases where the first book is a perfect place to start. It’s only $11.95 too, so it’s not too expensive to just go crazy one day and buy the whole mess of stuff…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Murder Me Dead
There’s only one reason that David wasn’t one of the first people that I put up on the page, and that’s because he doesn’t have a website. Stupid, I know, and it takes away from the point of having most of the page be dedicated to small press stuff. What’s more small press than not even having your own web page, even if he is getting some kind of “mainstream” (it’s ridiculous to even use that word in connection with comics) acceptance? Anyway, I decided to sit down and read this whole series at once today, and I can longer accept not having him on the page. This was a long, good book from somebody who was already very good at telling short stories. This is a noir tale about a man who has his rich, aloof wife kill herself and the problems he deals with from there. It’s not as simple as that, obviously. He finds an old crush from high school, and there’s the current mistress he has to deal with. Throw in a private detective hired by his mother-in-law who wants desperately to see him suffer and you have a smorgasboard of deceit and betrayal. Nobody involved in this is an innocent in any way, and the story had me guessing right up until the very end, which is all you can ask out of a story like this.
Even with as good as this was, it was obvious that he’s still learning. He had this planned as an eight issue series and it ended up being nine, with the last one being twice as big. I thought it could have been shaved down just the slightest bit, so maybe he should have stuck with the original plan. Still, it’s tough to use a lot of the noir dialogue in the modern day, so it’s tough to say that it would have worked any better if it was wordier and shorter than it did when there were large silent chunks in this to tell you what was going on. This is a major work from somebody who is still learning his trade (don’t forget the fact that he’s prolific, which is so incredibly rare in quality comics), and I for one can’t wait to see what he does next. I’ll put a link up to buy this as soon as I find one, but until then you can always just contact the author if you’re really interested and don’t live near and good comic shops, as most of them would at least be able to get this: El Capitan Books P.O. Box 351508 Los Angeles, CA 90035.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Reality on the Rocks #1 (written by David Arroyo)
If you’ve read the other stuff on this page, you’ll be happy to know that this issue is better than the other ones. The only real gripe I have is that the black people in this book are written like they’ve never seen a black person, or if they have they’ve only seen them in bad movies. The boobs, which were almost overpowering at times in the other books, have been trimmed down to more realistic levels, which is a good thing, because this book is about young people going through life as realistically as possible. It’s basically about four people. One of them is addicted to video games, another one is doesn’t have much of a personality at all yet, and the other two are the very odd black guys. It’s hard to say too much about a book like this until you get a few issues worth of personality. I don’t know how good the prospects are for that, frankly, because there wasn’t any kind of publication date for #2 in here and it apparently took about three years just to get this issue yet. If I had to give Juan any advice at all, I’d say to stick to one series and get a few issues out, see how that goes. If those aren’t the characters you want to deal with, move on to another series, as you have a few to choose from. Just my advice, anyway. Contact info is up there, as always…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Esoteric Hunters #1
Just yesterday I was begging to read a crappy book, as I had read nothing but good stuff for a long time and was afraid that I was going soft. Well, this is a crappy book. It’s half of a split book with Faire, reviewed a bit further down. What’s this about? Well, have you seen the movie Blade? Do you remember the scene with the vampires dancing in the spray of blood from the sprinkler system? Substitute werewolves in for vampires, and you have this issue. Oh, and somebody named Cristopher in the role of Blade. Yes, it really is that simple. The art’s not terrible, although it’s one of those “boobs a’plenty” artists (which is odd, considering that Michelle, the artist, is probably female). The writing is pretty much the cliched stuff that you’d expect from a movie ripoff, with the added bonus that the grammar is terrible and punctuation is nonexistent. Look, I always try to say something nice about the comics I review, but there really isn’t much positive here. The stories might be going somewhere, I guess, but they’ve both gotten off to such a terrible start that I don’t really care where they’re going. They should (if they want my advice) consider this a learning experience and start on their next project. Here’s a website, check out their stuff for yourself.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Baja
This one is a follow-up to Bughouse and, like the first book, I wasn't all that impressed on the first time through. It's a lot smaller, for one thing, and the basis for the conflict, the criminal who comes back to get his revenge, just seemed like an afterthought after it was initially set up. I'm getting ahead of myself. The story here is that Mr. Muggles gets sent to jail and swears revenge on Bughouse. He comes back and gets them in trouble for some drugs and money that he's planted on them, but the band gets to finish the show and there's not much said about their miraculous escape. Kind of an important thing to gloss over, or maybe I just missed it. It seemed to me that there was a lot less going on in this one than there was in Bughouse. It was mostly about Bones on the run (although forming a band while on the run doesn't seem like the smartest thing in the world to me), falling in love with a sorceress in Mexico. Who knows, I loved Bughouse after I read it again, maybe the same thing will happen here. All I can say right away is that I was disappointed. Check out his other book and if you love that I'm sure you'll come back for more. Otherwise, you won't be missing all that much here.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Bughouse
If I’ve learned anything from doing this page, it’s that I can’t assume anything about books that I didn’t think I liked. I read this one when it first came out, probably about a year ago, and didn’t like it at all. I put off putting it on the page mostly because I didn’t want to have to read the damned thing again, otherwise it would have been up here months ago. Well, I liked it this time around. Not sure what my problem was with it the first time around, but I didn’t have much of a problem this time. It’s the story of a jazz band and what they go through to become famous. It starts off with the main character (the sax player, Jimmy Watts) as a child, and goes up all the way to when he’s an old man. It’s too bad I didn’t read this again before I saw that there was another collection coming out, because now I’m going to have to wait and see if the local comic store gets it before I can buy it. Funny, insightful, and it has a lot of shady characters in it. Good readin’, folks. I guess you could even say that it examines addiction and the self, if you wanted to go that far. Worth a look, then worth another look if you decide that you don’t like it the first time around… Hey, a website!
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Election 2020 #1
Wow, two political comics in one week! I thought nobody in the small press biz even bothered. This is an older mini, meaning that it came out before the 2004 election, with a twist that is odd for these “time capsule” type books: Kris doesn’t advocate voting for Kerry. Oh sure, he readily admits what a mess Bush has been (and little did his 2004 self know how much more crap there still was to come), but this is mostly a call to vote for third party candidates, people who share your actual political views instead of just being slightly less awful than the other guy. There is nothing new to an old election hand like me (3 years at the local Board of Elections in Ohio and counting). Still, it’s great to see this argument laid out for people who often seem apolitical, and it’s pretty enough to look at, even if the word bubbles do take over the panels at times. Hey, he has a lot to say in a small mini, nothing wrong with that. Oh, and he’s also announcing his candidacy for the 2020 election and so far, based on this mini alone, he has my vote. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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The Mean Goat #1
How far can you take a one note premise? It helps a bit if the premise is that of an angry goat kicking everybody it meets off of a cliff, but even that has to wear thin pretty quickly. Luckily Kris is smart enough to realize that and about halfway through this book it switches from mostly one page kickings to something more resembling actual stories. Granted, the premise never changes all that much, but it’s a funny premise. The goat kicks a bunch of people and some animals before eventually meeting his match. Things get ugly from there, but karma has a funny way of protecting creatures that don’t necessarily deserve it. Or something like that. It’s good clean fun, cheap for a buck and even has a few pages with full color. Granted, if it ends up being nothing but a goat kicking things off a cliff it’ll get old in a hurry, but if he can mix it up it could be a ton of fun. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Broken #1
Ah, my first crappy memory test from SPACE. I think this is a photocopied version of a fancier mini (color, that is, with a fancier cover) and this was a copy Kris gave me for review purposes. Or that’s a completely different comic and I shouldn’t even be bringing that up on this page. I don’t see this on his website, but this is new to 2009, so it might even be one of those books that gets made specifically for a convention. Um, anyway, what difference does it make? This is, as the title indicates, a mini about despair, depression, wondering why you should bother going on. The first chunk is the internal dialogue between a man as he runs into an ex (and in this case I should point out that the “ex” seems to be “ex-wife”). It’s damned near pitch perfect in its honesty, as his thoughts range from hatred to only wishing to live because HE is still alive (clearly the new boyfriend) to still being sadly in love with the woman. The verbal response, however, is how these things usually play out in real life. The second part of the book deals with a sad lonely man as he lives his days being constantly harassed by his inner demons. He imagines the disgust that the rest of the world must feel for him, how the highlight of his day is the hope that he might get the cute bank teller in line, and how he dreads going home alone to his apartment at the end of each day. If you’re looking for a pick-me-up this probably wouldn’t be a good idea, but it’s a smartly written book that’s downright brutal in its honesty. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Cheetah Story
All that nonsense about never judging a book by its cover aside, it does help to be impressed before opening a comic. In this case it’s not because of anything particularly impressive about the image (not that there’s anything wrong with it), but because of the fact that this is a 24 hour comic about a cheetah.  Maybe it’s only impressive to somebody like me who can’t draw their way out of that proverbial paper bag, but the thought of doing a rushed comic with all the different motions of a cheetah just sounds daunting. Kris does mention that he loved cheetahs as a kid, so maybe it was easy to him, but I was still impressed. This is, obviously, the story of a cheetah as he goes through a couple of days. He hunts, rests, and remembers a traumatic encounter with a lion. It’s nicely paced and looks much better than it has any right to, which is all that you can ask out of these 24 hour books. Kris also put an informative timeline in the back of the book (so some of these people DO take naps while making 24 hour books!) and writes a nice epilogue while clearly hanging on by a thread. What can I say, people pushing through pain always gets approval from me. Way back in the day when Martin Wagner had marathon session of answering the phone for people ordering his book Hepcats. I waited until the 72 hours was almost up just to see what he would be like. Charming and alert, as it happened. So yeah, this comic is worth checking out, don’t mind my unrelated rambles… $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Euni the Unicorn #1
Quick, set the initial impression you have of this comic from the cover into your brain. You may have a different impression if you’ve already read some comics by Kris, but if you haven’t I’m guessing that you have a totally different picture in your head. Got it? It’s wrong. Well, OK, you may be the luckiest person in the world and you managed to guess it on the first try. What do I know anyway? This is the story of a magical unicorn that crashes into the bedroom of a sick woman (this is dedicated, as you can tell from the cover, to Mary, who I’m guessing is Mrs. Lachowski).  It takes some convincing (and some genuinely hilarious dialogue), but eventually Mary sees that Euni really did come to help her get over her cold. Euni, sadly, has already used up his magic by repairing the damage he did crashing into the house. He does have one more way to get her well, and although I generally hate spoilers in this case I just can’t help it: unicorn urine. If I have to bitch about something I will say that the art was a bit sparse at times, but with material like this all you really need is the two characters and the dialogue. It’s well worth checking out, and the man is building a damn fine back selection of minis that all seem to be right around the price of this one: $1.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
The Constant Dilemma
Everybody has been there at one time or another. You’re sitting around, having just eaten your cupcake, or cookie, or muffin, and you’re vaguely satisfied but you wouldn’t mind another one. You notice that the person next to you hasn’t eaten their cupcake/cookie/muffin but (especially if you don’t know the person) it’s a bit tacky to just ask for their dessert. That’s as far as it’s ever gone for me, and yes, I have, on occasion, just asked for their dessert. Kris, on the other hand, takes this in another direction. He notices that the person he’s sitting next to hasn’t eaten his cupcake, but his instinct is to smash it. Why? He has no idea, but he has a hard time fighting back the urge. What would the person do, what would the other people around him do? It’s an impossible thought, but then again, why not? This is a tiny mini, so there’s not much more to it than that, but I also appreciated the alternate ending on the back cover for anybody who wasn’t satisfied with the actual ending. Um, assuming that this was in any way a true story.  Good stuff once again from Kris, and I’m sure he’s not the only person out there who can relate to wanting to smash a cupcake… $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Now this is more like what I usually expect from a 24 hour comic: a jumbled mess. There have been entirely too many thoroughly planned out 24 hour comics around here lately. Kris starts off with an asshole teacher being mean to his students for about 15 pages, with most of it being funny and some of it falling flat, before deciding to chuck the whole story in disgust. At this point he turns the teacher into a zombie (before quickly tiring of that as well), then shifts the comic into the adventures of Vampire Boy (one of the students), then tosses that aside to roll the credits. It’s an object lesson in planning these things more than anything else, although it did still have more than enough funny in it to justify checking it out. Really, that cover alone was enough to get me to grab this one from my review pile, even if the zombie action was rather limited. You’ll certainly find better comics from Kris if you wander around this page a bit, but I think he may have a new winner in terms of both cover image and title. $1.50
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
New Venus
Cheers to Kris for the scientific facts about Venus. Unless, of course, he’s just making them up, in which case jeers to Kris for making up facts about Venus! This mini tells the story of how the inhabitants of Venus, many years ago, discovered technology, overreached in a big way, doomed their planet and set off to find another one to ruin. Um, populate. They all see it coming, but for a variety of reasons none of them want to do anything about it, so the survivors set off in search of a new world. Alas, their calculations are incorrect, and they end up heading straight for a world that is already populated. This is, granted, a very thin cover-up for a comic about global warming, but I did appreciate the fact that he showed that the utterly lethal conditions on Venus could be repeated here, given enough time and effort by our industries, and given a lack of any organized push back from anyone else. If you don’t believe global warming is happening you probably won’t like this book, then again if you don’t believe global warming is happening you probably have a full day already just trying to remember to inhale and exhale in the proper order to sustain your life. It’s a good story, maybe a touch preachy, but I think the eventual destruction of the planet is a good excuse to get a little preachy, don’t you? $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Kris’ For The Hell Of It Mini Comic Collection #1
This time around we’re taking a trip down memory lane for Mr. Lachowski as, even though this appears to be a collection of snippets from older comics, it’s all old enough that I haven’t seen it at all. Hey, that makes it a new comic to me, which is good enough for review purposes. The art is a little rough at times and he’s clearly matured as a writer since these strips, but they’re not without their charm. This mini includes what has to be close to the first appearance of the Mean Goat, the obnoxiousness of listening to radio stations bragging about not playing commercials…in their commercials, a photo piece about going to see The Passion of the Christ, a dream of climbing a crumbling mountain, monsters dancing, and a lone ant pondering existence gets an unpleasant (but accurate) answer from the sun. Kris clearly put this together as something to give away at conventions (the $0 price tag is a bit of a hint), and I can see it working wonderfully for that purpose. He’s done better stuff since this, sure, but it’s worth asking him for a copy if you see him at a convention, or if you order comics from him he probably wouldn’t mind tossing a copy in with the order if you ask politely. If you’re not a big fan of early work and just prefer to see the artist at his/her best, scroll around this page, you’re sure to find something you like.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Gross Jam
This is exactly what you might expect from a comic with that title: a series of jam comics with some, well, gross subject matter. These aren’t meant to be actual stories so much as attempts on grossing out the reader and a good chance for the creator to go a little nuts, so it’s silly to review them as such. It is pretty gross, but most of the stories are at least mildly amusing which, I believe, is why comics were invented. OK fine, I’ll get into the content a bit. Stories in here include the birth of the antichrist as the result of an ill-advised trip to Wendy’s (that ends abruptly, but as I already mentioned that this isn’t about the stories I suppose that’s OK), a man in hell musing that he has it relatively easy (with Justin Lynch), pooing from an airship (with Justin and Mary Lachowski), a romantic walk spoiled by monkeys (with Justin), dildo fun, a jab at the censors, and tree sex. I mentioned when it was a jam, or at least when it was mentioned that it was a jam comic, for those of you who are curious. I’ll leave aside the question of why it took three people to come up with some of this stuff but hey, that’s the fun of jam comics! He has better stuff on this page if you’re just looking for a sampling of his work, but if you’re all about the gross-out this is the one for you. $1
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Posted by Kevin
