Finding physical copies online of the comics I got at SPACE this year seems to be a bit of an issue, but maybe this one is just too new to show up on his website? I’ll go with that. As always, you can contact the artist and ask them directly for a physical copy, but you all already know that. This one is a mostly silent comic, leaving me lots of room for interpretation, which can often end up with me hilariously misinterpreting something. Will I do it again? Let’s find out! This one starts off with our hero (the guy with the polaroid camera head) being asked by an unseen figure to tell them a story. Most of the rest of the comic is a series of silent movements, which may or may not verge into wacky territory at times, of our hero trying to accommodate this request. After the result of this search we see what the comic was actually about, which I can’t spoil here, but I can say that it was quietly devastating. It’s basically a book for people who feel like they’ve missed their moment, and possibly people who feel like they consistently miss their moment. Give it a shot if this describes you in any way, but first you have to find a copy of the comic. You can do it, says I!
New review today for Anxiety is the Pits! by Olivia Shamell. I think she was in the CCAD section of SPACE, which I only realized well after the fact, meaning that I should have stopped at more of their areas to get more of their comics. Well, if anybody from there is reading this and wondering if I would also ramble on for a bit about their comics, I absolutely would! Just send them to the address on the sidebar there. The bar for entry here is basically me saying “oh look, a new comic!” when I get the mail.
A brief note here: the link in the title goes to the complete comic posted on Olivia’s website for free. I prefer to link to a place where somebody could purchase the physical copy (or a digital version), but I don’t see that anywhere at her website, so if you wanted to financially support her art, maybe send her an email through her website and offer to buy a book or two? Anyway, explanation over. This is a short comic about a band making their way to a gig. One of them (Cherry) asks if they’ve remembered everything, leading to another band member to accuse her of thinking that they’re all stupid, which leads to Cherry explaining the real reason why she can no longer let little things like that go. I’ve been in a few awkward car rides with conversations like that, and either one of the other people in that car could have made things easier, but I think Olivia just wanted to let that awkwardness sit around for a bit. They eventually have a real conversation about it, and it’s all wrapped up with a really solid punchline. People on any side of this conversation could find something to relate to here, and it’s admirable that Cherry (I realize that this is fictional) was able to express herself as clearly as she did. It’s common in anxious moments to shut down socially, at least for me, so I think a lot of people who deal with anxiety could come away with this with at least a helpful hint or two. No idea on the price, but you could either read it for free or offer to give her money if you’re curious. Follow your conscience!
I made it to SPACE and ended up with quite a pile of mini comics, so since I noticed that I had a SPACE month last year, why not do it again this year? This may include a few books from my visit to the Laughing Ogre comic shop, but since I make the rules around here I’ve decided that this also counts. And what the heck, I’m also doing an old school reviewing week, where I review a comic a day. Believe it or not, this was the norm for the first decade of this website. Yes, it seems crazy to me now too. New review today for Metroid Gear by David G. Caldwell!
This right here is a silent comic that’s going to appeal to a very specific group of people, and that’s mostly people who have memories of the original Nintendo games of Metroid and Metal Gear. If you’re in that category (and I sure am, as evidenced by the fact that I could have picked several mini comics from David’s table this year and couldn’t keep my hands off of this one), prepare to be blasted with nostalgia! First off, don’t make the rookie mistake that I did: this is a flip comic, so after getting to that glorious double page center image, stop what you’re doing, go to the back cover and start again from there. It’s just about impossible to review this one without any kind of spoiler, so I’ll just lay it out: the first half shows how Samus (what us nerds know as the real name for the Metroid main character) infiltrates a mysterious facility, and the second half shows Solid Snake (ditto for the Metal Gear main character) doing the same thing from another angle. For those of us who remember the games, the fun of the comic is in showing the little things from each series, so I’ll leave those bits for you to discover. If you’re not familiar with either of these games, would you still get something out of the book? Less, for sure, but it’s still a fun wordless adventure comic either way. So middle-aged nerds, this one is required reading, and younger folks (or older folks who don’t know their video game history), follow your hearts! $5
New review today for Glimpses of Life #9 by Brian Canini, and speaking of Ohio artists, it’s SPACE time again this weekend! I think I’ll be able to make it, although it’s a little trickier now that I’m living in Illinois again. If you’re local, check it out!
Brian has a fascinating introduction in this issue, going over his year in comics (he lays out just how many comics he put out last year and, once again, the sheer level of productivity should make other comic artists evaporate in shame), and it was a heck of a thing to have it all laid out like that. A general policy of this website, that readers may or may not have picked up on by now, is that I don’t like to have the same artist listed more than once on the main page at the same time. They cycle through as I add more reviews, so it’s rarely an issue, but Brian makes it tricky all by himself. I actually keep his “to review” comics in their own pile! Ah, another unwanted and possibly unwelcome peek behind the curtain here. This is a collection of short autobio comics, mostly things that Brian wanted to clear out of the way before getting to his more recent stuff in a future issue (according to the man himself), but there are still plenty of solid stories in here. Mostly single page stories, with the exception of the last time young Brian made a sandcastle; given a hundred chances I would still never have guessed how it ended. Other stories deal with the shame of buying pre-made pasta sauce as an Italian man, making his peace with being a runner, the sad inability to sleep in on the weekends, learning at a young age about a lack of Jedi powers, Jason Vorhees getting outsmarted by a lack of pants, “tips” for grilling a perfect burger, being generally OK with spiders, existential dread while stopped at a red light, and webworms. Which I did look up after being prompted in the comic, and I could have gone my whole life without knowing those things existed. And lots more stories, obviously. One of these days maybe Brian will put out a terrible comic so I can tell you to stay away, but today is not that day. Check it out, especially if you’re a parent too, as there’s plenty in here for you to relate to. $6
New review today for Dick Blaster by Jeffrey Williams and Danny Ferbert, which really got me into the Easter spirit (I often write reviews for the week over the weekend).
The long, gradual but inevitable process of this website replacing my own memories continues, as I was surprised to see that Danny had already been reviewed on this website. Only once, almost a decade ago for a comic that I was a little hard on, but it had long since flown out of my brain. Still, the website remembers! Is that a bad sign? It seems like it should be, but I can’t put my finger on why. Anyway! This is the mostly silent story of Dick Blaster, and things start off with him milking a cow. Which seems innocuous enough, but the cows of this land have giant penises instead of udders. And since that’s the first thing the reader sees, I’m just going to say that if that’s enough for you to drop out of this review, fair enough! Perfectly fine if it’s not your sort of comic. For the rest of us creeps/people who can’t stop reviewing a comic just because of something like that, read on! From there own hero trades his, um, “milk” to finance a trip through an apocalyptic wasteland. He rides a giant chicken like a horse, his cows stick with him, and he eventually runs into a giant robotic ape, as one does in an apocalyptic wasteland. It doesn’t go well for our hero, he’s rescued by a tribe of mostly women and one bro, but he has revenge on his mind against that monkey. The rest of the issue deals with that (and another confrontation), but hey, I’m not going to tell you everything. I wasn’t sure if this was the first issue (they were nice enough to send a few), but that seems to be the case judging by the website. No introduction, no clue what’s happening in a big picture sense, but after the story we learn that Dick was the one that caused this mess somehow. Maybe it’ll come up later? Overall it was a decent enough comic; I thoroughly enjoyed the art, but the humor might get a little stale after a few issues. We’ll see I guess! $5
As always with gigantic anthology collections like this, I like to make it easy on the reader. See that list of contributors in the tags? How many of your favorites do you see in there? Probably quite a few, huh? Then what’s left to think about? For the rest of you, or if you’re just trying to kill time at work, now I’ll say some stuff, then we can both go about our days. Hm, that seems like a grim way to sum up reviewing. Anyway! This is a collection of stories from people who are at their lowest points in life, so if you’re going into this expecting a barrel of laughs, you’ll be disappointed. There are some laughs, sure, as laughter can be the only way to get through some truly horrific times, but mostly it’s just sad. My biggest fear going into this, honestly, was seeing the worst parts of the lives of some of my favorite artists, but outside of a few of them, the artists were drawing the tales of people who submitted their stories anonymously. No, I’m not going to reveal which artists told their own stories; if you’re that curious about them get your own copy. There are also websites in the back so that anybody going through a similar issue in their own lives can get some help, so if you’re seeing too much of yourself in any of these stories, please do so. Not that you need to hear it from me, but I thought I’d throw it out there, because who knows when it’ll start seeming like good advice. There are roughly 40 stories in here, so I’m not going to go through them one by one, but I’ll give you some “highlights.” Subjects deal with reaching out for the last time and having it work out, the first time taking crack, getting beat up by cops (this one pops up more than a few times, which sadly isn’t shocking), using whiskey in a bong, getting addicted to voyeurism, a series of bottoms (a recurring theme was that there was rarely just one lowest point), having an imaginary dog, and very, very many slow descents to the bottom. It’s grim stuff, but it can also show you that there’s hope in even the worst times, as all of these people are still here to tell their stories. Get help if you need it, and give this comic a shot to see that however bad your situation is, there are people out there who have gone through something similar. $15
New review today for This Years is Next Year’s Last Year by Christopher Sperandio. Would you believe that this might not be the last of the comics I have to review from Cartoon Crossroads last years? It’s possible that I buy too many comics!
It’s trickier than I thought to find this comic online, but since I got this from Christopher at Cartoon Crossroads last year (that would be 2024, readers in the future. Sorry about the mess!), I’m going with the theory that you can either request a copy through his website or when you see him at the next convention. If not, I linked to Spit and a Half for their single copy, so whoever is fastest gets the comic! Christopher is an expert at repackaging vintage comics and making his own stories out of them, or at least that’s my conclusion after reading a couple of his comics. Which is great for gags (and boy howdy are there a lot of gags in this one), but I was impressed with how well he was able to put together a coherent narrative using these materials. The basic story is that there’s a ghost who is confused about how they died, who they were and just what was happening to them. It turns out that they attended the insurrection back in 2021 and were killed, and Christopher takes great delight in spending the bulk of the issue going over the people involved, their overall mindset, even the planning that went into it. But in a funny way, which is a tricky thing indeed when going over a riot that, you know, ended up completely destroying the country. Um, spoilers if you haven’t been watching the news, I guess. Then there’s the story of Casper the Friendly Non-Viable Fetus, and this time around he plays an ectopic pregnancy, which could never be viable and could only kill the mother. Hijinx ensue, and somehow that is true! As always around these parts, if you’re a conservative you probably won’t like the comic, but I also can’t imagine that you’d like much of anything that I have to say, so I don’t know why you’d stick around here to begin with. Other highlights include the many fake ads (they aren’t all funny, but with this many gags he still managed an impressive hit to miss ratio) and several articles about a fake board name called Croatoan. There’s some really great stuff in there, and I’d recommend getting your hands on this if you’re able. The race to get the single copy for sale that I saw online starts… now! $20
New review today for The Fifty Flip Experiment #33 by Dan Hill, as I once again try and fail to stay focused while writing one of his reviews. Maybe next time!
Is it bad that I sometimes link to the complete comic online for free? If so you should give Dan money for a subscription to alleviate my guilt. Sure, subscriptions are a sucker’s game for a lot of comics, but look at the productivity of this man. #33! That’s longevity you can count on. And as much as I hate to sully my website with an all caps message, forgive me for this, peaceful readers: DAN HAS GONE TO FULL COLOR. He mentions this nowhere that I could see in his comic, merrily going about his comics day, as if switching to full color 33 issues in wasn’t a thing to be trumpeted to the heavens. With many, probably most, black and white comics, I see them merely as black and white and think of them in no further colors. The Fifty Flip Experiment though? My brain would automatically translate many if not all pages into vibrant colors, with the haunting thought that I could never be sure if my colors were “right.” Well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore, and neither do you! Dan also sent a nice letter along with this, welcoming me back to Urbana Illinois, even though he’s in Chicago now, but it’s all Illinois, am I right? Could I wrap things up here without ever mentioning what’s in the comic? Yes! …it took everything I had to keep typing after that. What a perfect exit! Alas, my sense of duty to the readers of this website and comics all over the world is too strong. This one starts off with another introduction from Dan, explaining his thought process in making the comic, so don’t go saying that you couldn’t figure out where he was coming from. In this issue, Larry Fine and Scarlet Johansson finally have the team-up that the world has been demanding, as they are needed to live in a haunted house for three days to save some orphans. Larry Fine is a woman and Scarlet Johannson is Jughead. And I’m sorry, but every time I flip through this comic to talk about specifics, I’m dazzled by the colors again and can’t remember what I wanted to say. Do the nipples of one of the orphans place a crown on Larry Fine’s head after a job well done? I’d say, but you know how I hate spoilers. Look, it’s another triumph and now it’s dazzling to boot, so your excuses for not buying this comic series are over. Get to it! $5
Back to the reviews after the election, and assuming I stick with this job it’s my last election until next year, so reviews should be back to normal for the foreseeable future. Assuming we keep having elections, ha ha ha I guess? Oof. Hey, it’s a new review for Midville High #7 by Matt Blair! Which was a welcome excuse to edit a couple of my older reviews of his comics, as the formatting for those got wonky somewhere along the way. One of these days I’ll get around to fixing all of them! (I will probably never get around to fixing all of them)
Do you know what gets me every time, even (getting pretty close to) 24 years after I started this comics review website? Seeing new comics from people that I first reviewed ages ago, or in this case 2009. Which, yes, is very much “ages ago”. I got a couple of comics from Matt in late 2009 (the review date says 2010, but that’s because that’s when I remade the website, losing a lot of the original review dates and zzzzz), reviewed them both in the same month and seemed to like them just fine, and then can’t recall seeing his name again. According to his website he made two more comics at the time but only released them relatively recently, but this issue looks like it’s hot off the presses. Am I ever going to get around to talking about the actual comic? Yes, right now! On the inside front cover of this comic we see the main characters, and in a single image we get their names and a general personality type for each of them. Bravo, it’s best not to assume with a #7 that everybody has been along for the ride, especially if you’re coming back to comics after so long away. The story here details the way that school worked in the old days, roughly when I was in school it looks like, so that was a little chunk of nostalgia for me. The heart of this comic deals with a poster project, which was essentially an assignment that a teacher could give a student to keep them occupied for a week. If you guessed it involves making posters, well, it’s right there in the name, so don’t congratulate yourself too hard. But our hero Kyle both wants to be a magician (the story also deals with being “assigned” a future profession after taking a test) and is trying to get his hands on some new Funyon type snacks. He makes the poster himself, but he talks his friends into following a lead into the forest about the snacks, and ends up finding something he’d rather not know about them. There, no spoilers. It’s a fun, lighthearted comic, which is exactly what I needed today. Welcome back to comics Matt! Unless you never left, in which case welcome back to Optical Sloth I guess? $1
New review today for Career Shoplifter by Gabrielle Bell, and considering how many comics/books I’ve read from her over the years, it’s odd that this is only the fourth one I’ve reviewed. Yeah surprise, I read all kinds of comics that I don’t review. Also there’s an election coming up on 4/1. Yes, again! Meaning that I most likely won’t have any reviews up next week, but if you live in one of the many states having an election, please participate. If it’s not obvious yet, there are a whole lot of things that we take for granted in this country that are rapidly disappearing, so exercise that right while you have it, won’t you?
If you’re middle-aged and making comics, you’re going to get a lot out of this one. Or reading comics, or talking about comics, etc. Still, this is Gabrielle’s story, and as one of the best that this field has to offer, it’s disheartening to see that she (in a big picture way, not in totality) considers her life a failure. Money is still always an issue, there’s little to no security if things go wrong; you know, what most of us are dealing with in this life. Speaking purely for myself, there’s a great injustice in the world when somebody with her talent has to worry about these things, but that’s part of the deal of life, I guess. Yeesh, I did not mean to start things off so maudlin. Hurray, a new comic from Gabrielle! That was what I said when I saw this on John’s Spit and a Half page. Sure, it’s a couple of years old, but it’s still always good news to see new stuff from her, and one of my big “will probably never get around to it” comic projects is to go back through all of her books and comics over the years and read it all in chronological order. It’s the story of her life, after all, or at least the parts that she shares in her strips. This book is 60ish pages of strips and sketches (mostly strips), with a lot of time spent with her drawing in cafes. Or I think one cafe in particular, mostly, as it never seems to go all that well when she tries to shift locations. There’s the eavesdropping (always good fun at cafes), joining in on random conversations, trying to sketch people without getting caught (and what happens the few times she does), hanging out with friends, dealing with spending so much time alone, trying to work at home versus in the cafe (too isolating, it turns out), and several stories of some really fascinating dreams. And a lot more, obviously, but there’s no point in me trying to describe her riveting writing style, the emotional swings you get while reading her stuff, and how thoroughly captivating the whole thing was. My plan was to read a few strips on my lunch break, and I ended up having to apologize for getting back late because time as a concept just made no sense to me while I was reading this. John describes her as a master cartoonist at this point in her career, and there’s not much I could say to add to that. $8
New review today for Santos Sisters #8 by Greg and Fake Petre, and hey, the collection of the first five issues is available from Fantagraphics now if you want to get caught up.
Posted by Kevin 
