New review for Stargazer Volume Two by Von Allan. Fundraiser is still ongoing to keep the site up for another year. I did get an order today, but it occurred to me that I was counting postage as part of the fundraiser, and that’s still money that I’m spending, so that’s stupid. When I figure that into things I still need another $25 over the next 10 days. Two graphic novels would do it, like Bookhunter by Jason Shiga and The Hot Breath of War by Trevor Alixopulos. Or maybe Important Comics by Dina Kelbermann would be more your speed. Perhaps the all-ages fun of Nick Abadzis’ three graphic novels like The Amazing Mr. Pleebus? Your options are damned near endless.
Update for 10/19/11
October 19, 2011
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Posted by Kevin
Allan, Von – Stargazer Volume 2
October 19, 2011
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
Update for 10/18/11
October 18, 2011New review for Trip’s Over by Luis Echavarria. Fundraiser seems to be stuck at $30 left with 11 days to go. I’m not nervous yet, but I am nervous about the possibility of being nervous about this. Order some comics why don’t you!
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Posted by Kevin
Echavarria, Luis – Trip’s Over
October 18, 2011
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
Update for 10/17/11
October 17, 2011New review for Picket Line by Breena Wiederhoeft. Fundraiser to keep the lights on still ongoing, with 12 days left to raise $30. If you’re still looking for comics to buy to help out, what about the comics of J.T. Yost? Pat Lewis? Eric Adams? Austin freaking English (I added the “freaking” because you guys should already know about him for sure, but maybe you don’t, so maybe some extra emphasis is warranted)? Dig around in the store a bit, you’ll find a few comics that you absolutely must have.
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Posted by Kevin
Wiederhoeft, Breena – Picket Line
October 17, 2011
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
Update for 10/16/11
October 16, 2011New review for Star Pilot #5 by Frank Swartz. The fundraiser keeps chugging along, although it does seem to be stuck with $30 left at the moment. Still 12 more days to reach that number, which still seems more than reasonable than me to keep the website running for another year. If you’re looking for suggestions, why not try the Reporter series from Dylan Williams? Reich by Elijah Brubaker? Any of the many minis by Kelli Nelson? Just a few ideas to get you started.
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Posted by Kevin
Swartz, Frank – Star Pilot #5
October 16, 2011
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
Update for 10/15/11
October 15, 2011New review for Important Comics Are Bad by Dina Kelberman. I also have her first book for sale in my store, if you wanted to help out with my fundraiser to keep the website going for another year. That and 450ish other books, just in case you wanted variety. Still needing $30 over the next 13 days to keep things going!
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Posted by Kevin
Kelberman, Dina – Important Comics Are Bad
October 15, 2011
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
Update for 10/14/11
October 14, 2011New review for Vampires Need Love Too #4 by Brian Cattapan, which is also newly available in the store. Speaking of that (like I could stop myself from mentioning it), the fundraiser still has 13 days left to get me $30 to keep the website up and running for another year. If you’re planning on waiting until the last minute, please don’t, as it might take a day or two for the payments to clear. Besides, I committed to a fundraiser for the next 13 days, so that means daily updates for the next 13 days, even if somebody orders $30 worth of comics right after I post this. A deal is a deal!
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Posted by Kevin
Cattapan, Brian – Vampires Need Love Too #4
October 14, 2011
Vampires Need Love Too #4     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
Update for 10/13/11
October 13, 2011New review for Herman the Manatee #4 by Jason Viola. The fundraiser really picked up steam today, as I now need just $30 over the next 14 days to keep this site going for another year. Don’t stop now!
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Posted by Kevin
Viola, Jason – Herman the Manatee #4
October 13, 2011
Herman the Manatee #4
I don’t know how this issue of Herman got shuffled out of the rotation, as I like these comics a bunch, but there it was at the bottom of another pile of minis. Time to get my (imaginary) comics secretary in here to clean the place up. I remember wondering in the first issue if the shtick of Herman getting bonked on the head by passing boats would get old, and here we are at #4 and Jason has almost entirely taken that gag out of the strip. Oh, it still shows up a few times, and if anything it’s even funnier because you don’t know when it’s coming. Other than that this volume focuses a bit more on Herman’s friends (as you could guess by that fantastic subtitle), with a special 100th strip at the end that shows Jason’s creative process to get into Herman’s head. The other strips include Herman getting pushed around by the narwhal, trying to make friends with Lester, getting organized, summing up Hamlet in a beautiful way, being seen in 3D, putting god to sleep, and imagining a better life for himself. That’s maybe a third of the strips, but you should discover everything else for yourself. That’s assuming you haven’t been keeping up with this series, as you really should be. It’s not everybody who can make me rethink my “ongoing strips are generally just not funny” theory, and Jason did that in a big way. Of course, I don’t think he’s published in any newspaper or alternative weekly (although please correct me if I’m wrong), so here’s hoping he doesn’t give up. You giving him money for comics would probably be a nice motivation… $4
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/12/11
October 12, 2011New review for Jam Days by Emma T. Capps. Hey, the fundraiser has moved past the theoretical stage! I got a $5 donation today, which just proves that it really wouldn’t take all that much to get to $100 if a few dozen people sent in a few bucks. Or just ordered some comics, which would make more sense if it was me.
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Posted by Kevin
Capps, Emma T. – Jam Days
October 12, 2011
Jam Days
Comics folk who are older than 14, you need to step up your game. Emma is coming to steal your job! Well, not really, as there’s more than enough room for all kinds of people to make comics. However, she is 14, and gets 100 points (if I awarded points) for presentation alone. This comic came (along with another comic that I’ll get to in a week or so) in a blue folder, with a few pages of praise from critics and a long letter telling me all about the comics. There was also a greeting card, as she apparently does that on the side, and the whole package really made me take note. Not that you comics folk who just send a comic along with no note are jerks, as I do get the general idea when I get comics like that in the mail. One tip for Emma: if you want to make sure your comic gets to somebody without it getting all bent up, put a small piece of stiff cardboard in with the book. It doesn’t weigh much and the postal workers won’t have a chance to really bend it no matter how hard they try. And believe me, some of them will try. Some of them seem to take the “please do not bend” notice on packages as a challenge. So how about the comic? Well, I loved the fact that the inside front cover was a backwards version of the front cover, even though it had nothing to do with the story. She also mentions that she won the gold medal for comics in the Alliance for Young Writers and Artists, and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that such a thing exists. Anyway, Emma finds out that there’s no jam in the house so she decides to go out and get berries to make her own. The trouble is that they’re all high up on trees, and one of the trees is near a house, so there’s significant trouble getting the berries down in one piece. It’s full color and she’s already using pretty inventive comics panels, as her breaking down her effort to get one troublesome berry into nine panels worked perfectly. Technically it’s pretty impressive, and it sure looks like the (comics) sky is the limit for her, assuming she keeps at it. Having Dan Archer as a mentor doesn’t hurt even a little bit either. $3, and looking at the website it looks like you can get this in different sizes if you’d like.
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/11/11
October 11, 2011New review for Ex: Cloves by Mary Golding. The fundraiser to keep the site running another year is gradually reaching “is this thing on?” territory, as I’m still looking for $100 over the next 16 days. Has the site just run its course? Would somebody even tell me if it had?
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Posted by Kevin
Golding, Mary – Ex: Cloves
October 11, 2011
Ex: Cloves
One good thing about going through old minis is that I can find stuff that I should have reviewed ages ago. Mary (who always seems to go by Meg, but I was told to list her as Mary (or my brain fell out and I’m making that part up)) sent this one probably a year and a half ago and, even though it was a shimmering silver cover, it somehow got buried in the comics mounds. It’s a shame because it’s a damned fine comic and people should know about it, assuming that she still has copies. I didn’t see any on her website, but then again I didn’t see ANY comics on her website, and that can’t be right. Anyway, this tells the story of Mary trying to come out of a difficult breakup. Like all recovery periods, lying to yourself is a big part of it, as is hooking up with somebody on a purely physical level to ease the pain. This also happened right around the time when she was moving out of a city, so everything took on a sped up “what does it all mean?” quality. It’s heartbreaking and empowering at the same time, as she ends up being significantly happier with the guy who made her no promises than she ever was with the guy who broke her heart. Contact her if you want a copy, which you should if you’ve ever struggled through a difficult breakup, which is probably everybody reading this. Or maybe you’re one of the lucky few who only does the breaking up, in which case you might want to read this to see what happens after you leave. No price, but that fantastic cover alone has to make it at least $3.
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/10/11
October 10, 2011New review for PDX 100 by Matt Sundstrom, and no, the comic doesn’t have anything to do with racing bikes or exercise plans, if that’s what you were thinking. My (so far) purely theoretical fundraiser continues, and you reader types still have 17 days left to help me raise $100 to keep the lights on in this joint for another year. By buying comics from me, I mean, although you can always just send Paypal money to my e-mail address if you somehow don’t care for comics but would like for me to keep the website going.
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Posted by Kevin
Sundstrom, Matt – PDX 100
October 10, 2011
PDX 100
Well, this isn’t a good sign. Here I am trying to convince people to fork over the cash needed to keep this website going for another year, and I don’t have a damned thing to say about this comic. This is a gorgeously produced $10 comic that contains 100 drawings of different parts of Portland. And… that’s it. Matt drew different sections and sorted them all into geographical locations, so if you’re a local you can at least flip to a certain section of town to try to find something recognizable. If you’re not a local of Portland and if you really have no interest in the city one way or another, I’m completely comfortable telling you to skip this one. Basing this review purely on technical terms, there isn’t a thing wrong with this comic. I also don’t want this to seem like I’m crapping on Matt, as he’s done other comics that I’ve enjoyed, and I think there’s even another comic of his around here somewhere that I still need to review. It’s just that I don’t see why this comic exists. Looking around on the internets a bit I can see that this was published by a company that just publishes Matt’s books and it’s based out of Portland, so this does make sense in that context. Matt also apparently spent a lot of time wandering the city, as several of the pictures are of what appears to be random houses, so I’m sure the whole thing was a blast for him. Maybe I get stuck too much on price tags, and $10 does seem to be about right for a book of this size and quality. It just seems excessive at a time when so many people are broke and mini comics as a whole are becoming more and more of a luxury purchase. At least give me something to convince people to buy! Ack, I didn’t intend for this level of vitriol, as it’s a mostly harmless book for the world at large and probably quite a nice thing to have if you live in Portland. I’ll shut up now and suggest that you just buy some of his other comics instead. $10
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Posted by Kevin
