New review today for She’s Not Into Poetry by Tom Hart, which is a collection of all of his early mini comics. So yes, you now live in a world where this exists. Congratulations, you’ve made it!
Hart, Tom – She’s Not Into Poetry
September 6, 2016
Do you ever feel like you’ve wished something into existence? Well, that’s this graphic novel. I’ve been hoping for a collection of all of Tom’s early mini comics basically since a few of them went out of print in the 90’s, and here they are. All the titles are in the tags and sure, I have copies of about 2/3 of them, but that’s still 1/3 that I previously had no access to. And since I have some of the original comics, that means that I have 20 year old belly lint by Tom Hart, because he taped that to two of his minis. Um, yay? Does that mean I can clone him once the technology is perfected? I have to think through the ethical implications of that responsibility. Oh, am I not talking about the comics yet? How about this: these comics were a solid chunk of the reason why I fell in love with small press comics, and the fact that these had mostly disappeared down the memory hole in the early 00’s was a solid chunk of the reason why I started a small press comics review site where books like these could all be lumped together. So yeah, you could say that the guy influenced my life just a bit. Oh, here’s one valid question I could answer with this review: do these comics hold up as more than nostalgia? Yes. Yes, they do. Want specifics? Wodaabe Comics is the earliest (and rawest) and it still made me laugh several times. Love Looks Left, if there is any justice in this world, is being taught in all these various cartoonists schools as the perfect mini comic. Maria mixes some casual background horror with a quiet day with the ducks with an obsessed stalker seemlessly. New Hat and Ramadan are both basically prequel comics for Hutch Owens, even though I’m pretty sure Hutch Owens was done at roughly the same time. Vital supplementary comics, the both of them. This comic does make me miss the days when I could occasionally come across a new Tom Hart mini comic in Quimby’s or Chicago Comics, and it looks like those days are gone for good. But it does fill me with hope to know that a guy with this brain is helping to teach the next generation of cartoonists. Just in case you are the only person on earth who has every single comic here, this volume does contain a new introduction, afterward, and a list of his favorite things/influences/people, then and now. $14.95
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Reviews | Tagged: Love Looks Left, Manana Heike, Maria, New Hat, Prince Frederick's Feet, Ramadan, She's Not Into Poetry, The Angry Criminal, The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake, The Most Powerful Gate, Tom Hart, Wodaabe Comics | 
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/4/16
September 4, 2016Sorry about the sudden absence, but all is right with the world: I have a working scanner again. Now if I could just figure out how to use it… eh, who has time to read the instructions. New review today for Magic Whistle 3.0 #1 by Sam Henderson and a few other artists. In theory reviews should now be back to normal, at least until the upcoming election removes me from humanity entirely for a few months. But the next week or so should still be good!
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Posted by Kevin
Henderson, Sam & Various Artists – Magic Whistle 3.0 #1
September 4, 2016
We can all agree that the world would be a better place with more Magic Whistle in it, but Sam Henderson is just one man with other demands on his attention. What’s the solution to this problem? Bring in more funny artists! That’s the general idea with this latest version of Magic Whistle, and it’s a fantastic idea that works splendidly in this first issue. Sam does his thing better than most funny people so you know going in that that’s going to be good (check the handy chart to see what gum is called in your state; Ohio is “Pennsylvania asparagus”). But what about the newbies? Well, to start with, I think they’re all oldbies (i.e. people who have been making comics for years now), so no worries on that front either. John Brodowski (if you’re a regular around here that should be a familiar name) has a series of strips involving Sid and Sid (basically a carnival barker and a mute ghoul, although it’s probably best not to know for sure exactly what they are) spreading knowledge and horror wherever they go. Manuel Gomez Burns picks apart the traditional gag comic, spending a lot of time with the character in the last panel who always plops over in horror/outrage/hilarity and exactly what might make this character tick outside of the frame. Leah Wishnia devises the ingredients necessary to create the perfect spitball and show the devastating effects of such an object. Jesse McManus’s comic might require some knowledge of older Magic Whistle strips (mostly the ones where the bear and the human exchange body parts with each other with joy and hilarity), but he injects some unsettling realism into that hypothetical situation. Finally there’s Ansis Purins, another familiar name to regulars around here, with an oddly sweet tale of brothers with little in common who go out to plant a tree. And because it’s Ansis, some version of zombres are of course involved. Here’s hoping that increasing the pool of funny means more Magic Whistles in the world, because we’re all going to need something to laugh about over the next few months, he said, injecting a slight political note into an otherwise non-partisan review. Don’t vote Trump, you dummies. But do buy this comic, because it’s funny. $5.99
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Posted by Kevin
Anniversary Week Extravaganza! Day 5 (8/19/16)
August 19, 2016OK, that’ll do it for the nostalgia tour. Back to regular reviews next week, meaning sporadic and based on free time. But I did put in an order for a new scanner, so that shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. I’m pretty sure that 15 years makes me something like 100 in internet years, but it has been a lot of fun much more often than not, and I know that I helped at least a few people out along the way. As for how much longer I’ll keep doing this? How about this: at the exact moment when I’m not excited to see what comics are in the random package I just got from Kiev, or Ireland, or Brooklyn, or Chicago, or Denver, or where-the-hell-ever. It’s clear to me that I make a poor proper adult, so that time probably won’t come for several years yet. Now if only I could find the time to fix all the typos from the old articles, update all the contact info, put the review dates back to their original dates, fix the online store, replenish the stock in said store with books that’s weren’t all from the aughts, start interviewing comics creators again… Which reminds me, if there’s an eccentic millionaire out there who wants access to all the old mini comics in the world, get in touch! I’d quit my day job in a second. Thanks for reading everybody!
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Posted by Kevin
Anniversary Week Extravaganza! Day 4 (8/18/16)
August 18, 2016OK fine, so there are a LOT more of these than I was anticipating. It’s a pleasant surprise. And that’s without me including people who have been doing this for 15+ years while I’ve only reviewed one or two of their books, or people whose books I’ve never reviewed because I frankly didn’t feel worthy to do it. Los Bros Hernandez, Dan Clowes, Eddie Campbell, Chris Ware, all of those people have shaped my views on comics to an immeasurable degree. But smarter than people than me can talk about them in any kind of critical detail.
PANEL Anthologies (Columbus Ohio convention books)
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Posted by Kevin
Anniversary Week Extravaganza! Day 3 (8/17/16)
August 17, 2016Quite a lot of flashbacks are hitting me as I dig through the archives; even a surface dig of this many reviews is bound to do that. What happened to all these artists who released a half dozen books over the course of a few years and then vanished? Are they happy and fulfilled now? Are they still drawing but just no longer releasing comics? What about Tony Consiglio, who was a favorite of mine for years (and who had the best rebuttal to Dave Sim’s speech at SPACE 2004 that was humanly possible)? Drop me a line is you’re somehow reading this, sent me comics to reviews many years ago and are still reading about comics while not making them. I do wonder sometimes
Emi Gennis (I don’t think she’s actually been around that long but I’m cheating on this one)
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Posted by Kevin
Anniversary Week Extravaganza! Day 2 (8/16/16)
August 16, 2016Turns out that there are way more artists who have been working for 15+ years than I thought, so this might actually take more than a week to get through them. If you’re wondering why the dates on the reviews don’t seem to indicate that this website is in fact 15 years old, blame that on an update in 2010 when I tried to fix a bunch of links/typos/misc problems. I was told that it would keep the original review dates, that didn’t happen, and since it would take months to go back and figure out the actual publication dates (if it was possible at all), I left it alone.
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Posted by Kevin
Anniversary Week Extravaganza! Day 1 (8/15/16)
August 15, 2016The actual date when I started this website has been lost to time and a few different hard drive crashes, but I know that it was in August of 2001, and I know that I had 100 reviews written when I put the website online. I wanted it to look like it had come out of nowhere, which it more or less did. This week I thought I’d post links here to some of the people (and companies) that have been making or releasing comics since at least 2001. I’ll probably get some of these wrong, as there’s no historical database for comics artist (right?), but at least it’ll be close.
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Posted by Kevin
“Update” for 8/10/16
August 10, 2016Due to my busted scanner (I’m hoping to get a new one this week or next week, I just bought way too much furniture when I moved and am very broke at the moment) I’m not going to to review the new comic from Caitlin Cass yet. It’s about R.R. Whitehead, is another in her “Great Moments of Western Civilization” series and is so new that it’s not even on her website yet, but you should go there anyway and ask her if you can buy a copy. But I didn’t want to talk about it without any images attached, so the reviews is on hold. I did want to throw in some news (assuming anybody reads this far on the non-review posts): this month marks the 15th anniversary of Optical Sloth. Balloons, all the balloons! So I had a request to anybody who has been making comics for a very long time, like for example 15 years or longer (especially if I’ve already reviewed some of your books): send me the latest thing you did! I’d like to do a very tiny retrospective of some of the comic artists I’ve reviewed over the years, and having your most recent books would be most helpful. Or if that doesn’t work out (since this is ridiculously late notice to be throwing this out there), I’ll at least go through the reviews over this month and see for myself who I’ve been covering the longest and post links to their stuff. Oh, and there will also be another artistic improvement to the site soon, but that’s still top secret for now.
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/8/16
August 8, 2016New review today for Slump by Bryan G. Brown. Since I’m mostly writing reviews on the weekends now, I don’t know the current news, but I’m guessing that today Trump is going to… insult Mother Teresa somehow. Well, people of the future? Did I guess correctly?
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Posted by Kevin
Brown, Bryan G. – Slump
August 8, 2016
Slump
(Images were taken from Bryan’s website due to my still-busted scanner)
After spending the last few years reading Bryan’s tales of becoming an MMA fighter, I had a pretty clear guess on what a comic of his called “Slump” would be all about. And, as is usually the case when I make guesses like this, I was completely wrong. This is the story of the death of Bryan’s mother and how he coped with it. The answer, which should be obvious to anybody with human emotions: not well. He was guilty about perceived faults along the way, about not taking her earlier illness seriously enough, and about not spending enough time with her. And he makes a very important point in here, which is why I used the sample image that I did. The “five stages of grief” that everybody talks about are always discussed like they’re linear, that once you get through the last one that you’re free and clear. But anybody who has lived through the death of a close family member knows that any one of those stages can come up again at almost any time. Bryan, for instance, spent weeks reaching for his phone to call his mother about some mundane aspect of his life or a question he had for her, only to realize all over again that this just wasn’t possible any longer. This is a heartbreaking book, but it’s also hopeful, and it doesn’t take any shortcuts to get there. Time helps, a little, and so does input from family and friends. I could see this being a very helpful book for somebody who is struggling with their own grief. And, if nothing else, you could always buy his comic about monsters fighting each other to go along with this one. Two very different ways of dealing with grief, but any relief is good relief, right?
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/4/16
August 4, 2016New review today for A Witch Named Koko #2 by Charles Brubaker. I still have to dig through my old comics to see what reviews I missed entirely the first time around, but in the meantime there are openings for reviews if you want to send your comics my way. Basically no waiting! Outside of my finding time to review them, that is…
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Posted by Kevin
Brubaker, Charles – A Witch Named Koko #2
August 4, 2016
A Witch Named Koko #2
Sorry once again for the lack of sample images, but Charles’ website has you covered if you’re curious. You can also see sample images on past reviews of his comics, but you already knew that. This issue is mostly all about getting to a train station and taking a train ride, so naturally you’re going to get a scene where a damsel in distress is tied to some train tracks. Charles had an innovative solution for getting her free with the least amount of fuss, I’ll give him that. I’ll also be honest here and admit that I didn’t really get the ending, as it seemed like things just petered out after the train got it their destination, but maybe I missed something. There were a few funny bits to this one, as always, but overall it felt more scattered that most issues. Still worth taking a look, but there are funnier issues of his out there to check out. His pace is ridiculous, so when I say that there are other issues out there, I mean that there are lots of other issues out there. Go on, check out his website, see if I’m wrong… $2
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/2/16
August 2, 2016New review today for a new issue of King Cat, #76! By John Porcellino, of course. And just in case anybody in the world reads only this page and not the review, John has set up a Patreon page. You really should give him some money!
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Posted by Kevin
Porcellino, John – King Cat #76
August 2, 2016
King Cat #76
IMAGES WERE TAKEN FROM JOHN’S WEBSITE DUE TO MY BROKEN SCANNER. Sorry about the shouting, but I wanted to make that perfectly clear. In the future there will probably be some way to ID him just through the picture of his hand, which is one of the many reasons I don’t want it to look like I’m trying to pull one over on the guy. That and my 20+ years of the utmost respect for his work. OK, maybe it’s mostly that one. Anyway, look everybody, it’s a new issue of King Cat! I always feel like I should end the reviews there, because what else do you need to know, but that would be cheating. This comes out at a time after when John was dealing with a few serious health issues and had to cancel a few conventions to give himself a chance to heal up a bit. Fun trivia fact for just about nobody: if John had gone to SPACE this year, I would have been his table neighbor, as I was there registering voters for the local Board of Elections. Which would have been a ton of fun on my end, but I’ll take him getting healthy and making comics for another few decades over that any time. Going along with his mood and troubles, this issue is maybe even more contemplative than most, which is saying a lot. Subjects include sketching while waiting for car repairs, seeing an old couple eating from his car, memories of his old and constantly freezing apartment, and several short pieces that are his trademark illustrated poems. There are also quite a few letters, with several familiar names checking in (just in case you’ve been reading comics for as long as I have and wonder what people like Jeff Zenick, Ariel Bordeaux and Jenny Zervakis are up to). He also got a few responses to his Maisie tribute issue in #75, so if you thought you had no more tears left after reading that one, trust me, you’ll find a few more after reading some of these letters. I just reminded my 15 year old cat that she’s immortal, so I’ll stay in denial about that one for as long as is humanly possible. So yeah, obviously you should get this issue. You should get every issue of King Cat. That’s clear by now, right? If nothing else comes from 15 years of this website, I hope that sticks. John is also hurting a bit for money and has set up a Patreon page to try to help with his monthly expenses. Looks like he’s up to 224 people as of this writing, so why not help him out? You can even think of it selfishly if that helps, as if you donate over $6 a month that gets you physical copies of any comics/zines he makes. Help the guy out! Screw giving him just enough to get by every month, we should try to make him filthy rich. $5
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/1/16
August 1, 2016New review today for Once Upon a Time in Morningside by Sean Michael Wilson & Hanna Stromberg. And it turns out that Big Ugly Robot (the publishers of this and many other amazing comics) is now offering six month subscriptions of their books, or a six month chunk of comics from last fall for an affordable $30. I’m not the boss of you, obviously, but I think the best way to experience their books is in bundles, so what better way to do it?
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Posted by Kevin
Wilson, Sean Michael & Stromberg, Hanna – Once Upon a Time in Morningside
August 1, 2016
Once Upon a Time in Morningside
How much would you get out of returning to your childhood home 25 years after you left? Or did you ever leave? Let’s assume for the sake of this theoretical conversation that you did. What would pop back into your mind when you returned? This comic deals with Sean going back to his childhood home (I assume it’s Sean, as it’s described as being “his most intimate book so far,” but I don’t know whether or not every single thing in here really happened to him) and immediately getting looked at suspiciously because he lingered too long outside of his childhood home (the new owner seems like the suspicious sort). From there Sean goes to a quiet place and lets his mind wander, where he remembers about a half dozen things that happened to/around him as a kid. Nothing terribly traumatic, just little snippets of his life that stuck with him over the years. There’s his chance encounter with a kid from the local boy’s home, coming across a pretty great hut in the woods and smashing it to bits (and what came from that), being so proud of building a small brick wall and the reaction of his grandfather, scaring himself with a friend in the woods after watching a movie about Bigfoot (I think?) and the consequences of running face first into barbed wire, getting an unfortunate present at their fort and how little it did to ruin their day, and trying to hang with the big kids on a rope swing. Each of these tales is punctuated by his current thoughts about it, what he learned from it and questions about whatever happened to the other kids in the story, whether or not any of them still thought about that day. There’s also a pretty great outro that ties the whole story together, but I’ll leave that one a complete mystery. Hanna does a fantastic job conveying subtle emotions, meaning that Sean doesn’t have to write a point into the ground when Hanna can show the same point without a word. I’m curious to see more from both of them now, and this is yet another amazing comic from the Big Ugly Robot people. $6.50
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 7/27/16
July 27, 2016New review today for Elbis and the Orphan Daughter of Time by Mulele Jarvis. I have to say, it’s a little eerie writing these updates in the past. Who’s to say what’s happened this week? Eh, probably not all that much. Still, right now the possibilities are endless…
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Posted by Kevin
Jarvis, Mulele – Elbis and the Orphan Daughter of Time
July 27, 2016
Elbis and the Orphan Daughter of Time
Note: all images have been taken from the Big Ugly Robot website due to my broken scanner. Please buy some of their comics to alleviate my guilt. Also because they have a ridiculously impressive record of publishing quality comics, so you could literally just blindly buy a few comics and be in for a treat. I’m a dummy so I started reading this book backwards (or forwards to America readers; at least you can see how I made that mistake), so I saw the dedication of this book before I started the story. It’s dedicated to suicidal people, both the ones who recovered and the ones who went through with it. Mulele himself was suicidal for years, and he’s clearly speaking from experience in here. Also connected to that story is the cat pictured on the cover, how it has been reincarnated and the human that it’s supposed to be helping. Along the way we get to see snippets of its former life, what it loved and how it managed to save its humans from a house fire. Personally, I’d be thrilled to see an entire comic dedicated to the philosophical discussion that the dead cats had in between lives, but I’m a weirdo like that. This is a heartfelt and moving comic, and we should all be so lucky as to have a reincarnated cat watching over us at our lowest moments. Or hell, maybe those of us with cats already do. I’ve always had the impression that my cat would start eating my face about three minutes after I died, but then again she is awfully comforting for those low moments. Anyway, if you’ve ever had any dark moments where suicide seemed like a genuine possibility, for one thing ALWAYS give it some time (there’s no taking back suicide), and this comic may genuinely do you some good. #6
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Posted by Kevin
