April 27, 2010
Website
Grand Gestures
It’s about time this guy got published. I should just say that it’s $3.95 and you should go buy it, but you probably want to know what it’s about or something… Fine. There are three main male characters. One of them is in love with a girl who works at a bookstore and takes some interesting means to get to know her, one of them is an unapologetic womanizer, and one of them is trying to get out of his relationship but just can’t work up the nerve to leave. The thing about a book like this is that it has to make you sympathetic to these characters, even when there’s not that much to be sympathetic in their characters. Without giving anything away, he pulled that off beautifully with everyone in here. Trust me when I say that if you are now or ever were in your 20’s and confused about women in some way or another, you’ll get a lot out of this book. Females could probably easily identify with some of the trampled women in this comic too, although probably not in a good way. My only problem with this is that he’s calling it a graphic novel on his website and it’s only 48 pages long. Call me a stickler for detail if you want, but that’s just too little. Graphic novella maybe? How about just “comic book”? I like that one…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Signifying Nothing: The Collected From the Curve 1994-1998
I’ve been hoping that Robert would put something like this out. As far as I know his earlier work is out of print, so it’s great to see the early work of someone who I think is going to be a major voice someday, and he’s already pretty damned good right now. He wears his influences on his sleeve in a lot of these strips (sometimes you see Adrian Tomine, sometimes Evan Dorkin, sometimes Dan Clowes, and his art has always reminded me of Jaime Hernandez), but you can see his own voice starting to come through. I sampled one of the more disturbing strips I’ve ever read from this book and I defy any heterosexual male to not feel like shit after reading it. It’s something that we can all relate to, and… well, just read it. The rest of the book is kind of mixed, some good and some bad. More bad than good, and with none of the strips being more than a few pages long, there’s not much time to hate anything anyway. There are only 500 copies of this floating around out there, so you’d better send him $5 soon (contact info above) to get your copy.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
From the Curve #7
You know, somebody told me years ago to put dates on these reviews and I never bothered, figuring it would be too much of a pain in the ass. 8 years later, I would like to just say on the record to everybody who recommended this: you were right. It would have made things a whole lot easier now, on 2/2/10 (better late than never, right?), to know exactly when these reviews were coming from. The last two issues of this series clearly came from 2001-2002, as that’s when I lived 2 and a half hours from Chicago. As for the rest of it, who knows? I could go back to each individual update page and check the new reviews for each date, but I got tired just typing that sentence. Doing that for every day over the last 8+ years… well, forget it. So how about this comic? Rob is actually represented pretty well on this page, as I got my first issues of his comic right around when I was putting this website together, but I did manage to miss this one. If I’m remembering this correctly (and I wouldn’t bet any money on it) this was the last issue of the regular series From The Curve, after which he did a number of assorted projects, and it still making comics today. This issue is mostly a collection of short pieces, including a tribute to Charles Schulz, p-mail, wasting his time at a big box computer store, waking up in the early morning and the genuine confusion associated with it, why we look at a kleenex after we blow our nose, going to a very tiny comic show, getting to a late movie when the driver doesn’t know what he’s doing, his failed attempt at a stream-of-consciousness mystery, a depressed dog, dreaming a better evening than what actually happened, and leaving Richmond. It’s a solid issue, and one more reason for me to lament the fact that so few mini comics from back in the day are still available in any format these days. Why, in my day… well, in my day these were pretty hard to come by too. OK, forget that part. You should check out his newer books though, and at least he had the decency to put out a collected edition of at least some of his comics. $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
From the Curve #6
I’ll get to it in a minute, but I’ve sampled here what I think is what autobiographical comics are supposed to be. That’s saying a lot, sure, and I’m not saying that this is the single best page ever, just what other people writing about their lives should aspire to. Got it? This one has a hockey story, Robert getting stood up (sort of) at a bar, the Hulk watching football, and a frustrating situation at work. Predictably (for me), the longer stories worked better than the shorter ones. Not that there weren’t a couple of funny moments in the one pagers, but I would have rather seen him develop the “date” story more or just expand a few more stories in general. I can tell that this guy is going to do great things eventually, I’m just impatient waiting for him to get around to it. Put out more comics! By the way, #7 is out. I’m just bitching because #8 isn’t out yet… Contact info is all above here, $2 for this one.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
From the Curve #5
Mini comics by the numbers, and if you think I mean that in a bad way, you haven’t been reading many of my reviews. This was great. A story about meeting a girl dancing and having nothing to talk about, not being able to draw, open mike night at the cafe, being addicted to coffee… I love stuff like this. Lucky for me there are at least 7 issues out. Look, I rarely make it to Chicago Comics, what with living 2 and a half hours away and not having a car, so when I do go I’m usually kind of limited in what I get, purely due to finances. This is one of those that I wish I had just taken a chance and gotten every issue they had. I guess it’s not the most innovative thing in the world, and it probably won’t win a ton of awards any time soon, but it’s honest and obviously heart felt, and that’s plenty good enough for me. Send this guy some money, huh?
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Traffic & Weather
Well, whatever else I can say about running this website for almost 8 years, it has succeeded in one of my more selfish goals: getting free comics from some of my favorite creators. That’s right suckers, you all thought I was promoting small press work, trying to spread the word about all the talent out there, when all I was doing was secretly trying to find a way to stop paying for comics. Once I break through to the fancypants at Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and Top Shelf my plan will be a complete success! Ahem. This comic reprints a weekly local strip Rob does (which you can find here), and these things should be much more common than they are. Rob talks about his beloved Pittsburgh teams, his annoyances with traffic, buying crappy Christmas lights, the rising price of food versus the lowering price of gas, getting great seats at a Cub’s game, a broken caller I.D., cheap lousy haircuts, getting a bit too much into football games, a perfect day with the family, almost mowing the lawn for a lazy neighbor and finding out that his small child actually travels quite well. It cheapens the strips to put them all in bullet point form like that, as Rob has always had a keen eye for pointing out the little things, and is probably at his best detailing these quiet little moments of family life. Here’s hoping he keeps that weekly strip in an economy where many papers are slashing their comics section (often their cheapest and most viewed section, but nobody ever accused current newspaper executives of being good business people), as there’s some great stuff in this little collection. I’m not seeing this on his website (but if he didn’t have any copies available he probably wouldn’t have sent one to me), but here’s guessing that it’s, oh, $2.50
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Crustacean Frustration
You can probably guess a bit about this comic from the cover and that wonderful title: there’s going to be trouble between that chef and a lobster. It’s true, that’s how things start, as what appears to be a king enters a restaurant, requests a lobster, and the nervous chef has all sorts of trouble catching the lobster. In the end he fails, and if that was the end of the comic it would have been another mildly amusing silent mini, but Rob takes it way past that. The chef loses his job due to being unable to feed the king and sinks into a spiral of depression and drinking, always funny when involving a cartoon chef with a giant moustache.  While out drinking he sees his old nemesis the lobster, only now the lobster is the owner/manager of a vegetarian bar and grill. Unable to take this, the chef goes and and gets a gun to finally get his revenge but, much as I would like to, I can’t bring myself to ruin the ending.  Laughing out loud is always the sign of a winner to me, and this comic definitely fits the bill. It’s worth checking out, although I should point out that you should probably get this alongside at least a few of his other minis. I should mention to anybody who gets annoyed at that little “read more” bar after the reviews that I pretty much have to do that now due to the immense size of some of these pages. Rob has piles of minis below the fold, so if you’re one of those people who never click on that you’re really missing out. No price tag, let’s go with $2.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Apollo Astro #6
Now that’s a long time between issues. Looking at Jack’s website, he’s up to #9 in this series now, although it looks (at least from this one) like there’s not much of a continuing thread holding it together. This issue, for example, is three stories strung together, much as is usually done in the “mini comics” world. Not sure where I was going with that so I’ll just quit while I’m still slightly ahead. First up is a poem about working and still clinging to some of your youthful ideals, or at least still being able to remember those ideals. Then you have a wonderful wordless story about a… um potato who loses a leg and tries desperately to get it back without being able to say anything. Finally you have the strongest piece in the book, a story about a girl who’s trying to remember why she’s on a bus going to visit a boy she got to know during summer camp and piecing it together from a photograph. Not that she has amnesia or anything, she just wonders how well memories hold up to real life, and the winner there has a tendency to be memory. Another really good issue, if a bit dated at this point to be putting up on the website. Hey, I’m just reading it now, it’s new to me… $4
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Apollo Astro #5
I love getting that second issue from a creator that I liked the first time around. Sure, the first one I read was good, but what about other work? Was the early stuff as good? How about later issues, did he/she keep it up? I’m happy to say that this issue was much better than #4, and I liked that one just fine. There are a few shorter pieces in this, but the bulk of it is the story of a boy as he grows up in a town where he’s told to stay away from the “bad people”, but by the time he’s in high school there are bad people everywhere. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody who hasn’t read it, but the scene with the 13 year old boy came as a complete surprise to me, even with the hints thrown in with the fingernails. That’s a sentence that makes no sense to the people who haven’t already read this, which is fine because you should read it. I still don’t know about his earlier issues and, after his introduction about how much he’s changed and how that’s reflected in the comic, I’m not sure that I want to. Some of the dialogue is a bit stilted here and there. That’s about as much of a complaint as I can muster. It’s $3, contact info is above, check it out! Oh yeah, and I liked the smaller stories too…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Apollo Astro #4
It’s really odd to go from reading the new Mr. Show book right into a serious tale (sort of) about high, school, but I’ll give it a shot. High school stories are a dime a dozen, granted, and it takes a little something to make one stand out. This one’s good enough to qualify. It’s the story of Harry Pearson, a sophomore who makes robots and has a huge crush on a girl who’s dating a cartoonist. Already different from the norm, because the vast majority of these stories are written from the perspective of the cartoonist. I like a lot of little things about this comic. The way he programs his robots to call him master, the fact that the girl he likes is as much of an asshole as the the guy she’s dating, the radio interviewer making fun of him afterwards. Pretty much everything works here. As far as the art goes, it’s hard not to compare him with Alex Robinson, both in look and in the general tone of his stories. I don’t know if he’s read Alex’s stuff, but the art is eerily similar. Anyway, well worth a look, and I’d like to see how he does shorter stories. Lucky for me, he has other issues in print… Send him an e-mail to see what else he has around.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Possibly not his actual Myspace page, but too good to pass up
Anti-Matter Zine #1
How disappointing. Not in the quality of the actual comic, as it was probably a little better than The Face on Mars (and scroll up there and read the review if you don’t know what I’m talking about). There’s just no kitsch value in this one. What you have here is a pretty basic comic about… making a comic. Except it’s called a “zine” throughout, but that just depends on which word you want to use. And I’m still not sure if Aaron did this one too or if it’s a bunch of people doing these Ancient Wisdom comics, so if anybody has any clue please let me know. Anyway, it’s tiny, it’s cheap, and the contact info is the same as above if you’re curious, but I was very bored with this one.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Possibly not his actual Myspace page, but too good to pass up
The Face on Mars
This comic reaches a whole new level of absurd. I have a few things from him from SPACE and the other two are pretty bad minis. He seems to idolize Matt Feazell, which is fine, but you have to have a story in there somewhere. I was going to review one of those books and mention how random it was and the fact that you can’t even read some of the chunks of text because the copies are so bad, and then I ran across this. It’s his theory of why there is a face on Mars, and it’s a doozy. The mini actually has very little to do with Mars and a lot more to do with the Bible and the ark. I’ll bet you didn’t know that there were dinosaurs on the ark, now did you? And that they were called dragons by primitive cultures? It’s funny because most Bible-thumpers that are strictly literal in their interpretation say that fossils were put there by SATAN to trick us. This guy insists that not only were they real, but they all traveled during the “great flood” on the ark. Oh yeah, they were babies, that’s how they all fit. I guess all that evidence about them never existing side by side is a hoax. This book is $.50 and, honestly, worth it. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t mind occasionally laughing at people and not with them, this is for you. I haven’t read anything this ridiculous in years. If anybody out there has read any of the old Jack Chick comics, you know what you’re in for here. You can write him at: P.O. Box 24894 Detroit, MI 24894. Here, read the part about the dinosaurs for yourself. Just try not to buy it after you do…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
The Dick Troutman Handy-Dandy Pocket Guide to Successful Suicide
This is a work of sheer genius. It’s not technically a comic book, I guess, but there’s no way in the world that I was going to leave this off my page. It’s exactly what the title suggests: a guide to committing suicide without screwing it up. It takes a dark sense of humor to really enjoy this, but if you’re lucky enough to have one of those, this is the kind of thing that you’re going to want to buy 10 copies of just to make sure you keep one when all your friends start borrowing them. All kinds of ways to kill yourself are covered: hanging, drowning, drug overdose, explosive decompression, animal attack… The descriptions for all of these are brilliant. He alternates between bullying and understanding, and outlines all the pros, cons, and effectiveness of the methods, along with whether or not you can have an open casket and how messy your death will be for whoever has to clean up after you. Frankly, I’m astonished that something like this can exist in a world as PC as this one, but we’re all lucky that it does. It’s $5, and forget whatever I said about any other comic on this site. This is the one that you should get immediately, and there’s no way that you’ll be sorry.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Street Angel #1 (with Brian Maruca)
Sometimes I like things a lot better in theory than I do in practice. This one has ninjas, an evil genius, a sassy ass-kicker (Street Angel, of course), and a plot to destroy the world, but it just didn’t keep my interest. Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were wonderful. The ninjas refusing to fight because they knew they were going to lose, the evil genius’s reaction when he loses (and if you didn’t know that, shame on you), and the Bald Eagle were all wonderful. There’s also a playful sense running through this, nothing is taken that seriously. Maybe it’s just because I read this in clumps (kept getting interrupted) and this does seem like just the sort of thing that I might love a few issues down the road… but so far I don’t. It’s $3, contact info is on the title or elsewhere on the page.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Outfitters #11
Is it OK to just call a book awesome and leave it at that? Anybody who reads these things regularly knows that that’s not a word I use very often, but there it is. This is a silent book about a group of folks hunting down Sasquatch. There’s a fight scene at the end with the surviving member of the group and the Bigfoot that has to be seen to be believed. This comic is an absolute blast and, as anybody who read the other review (#4) can see, a complete departure from the other comic of his that I’d read. I still have three more of his comics to read, so there’s probably going to be a “Dick Troutman day” where I review all of them soon. Until then, judging by the covers at least, all of these Outfitters books are different and this one is completely worth the $2 to check out. Contact info above, more is on the way once I get through with the rest of the SPACE stuff…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Outfitters #6: Sucks
At first glance, this looks like all the characters of Archie comics vs. Charlie Brown, with a lot of relationship antics thrown in. After reading it, yeah, that pretty well sums it up. I have no idea what was going on in the other 5 issues of this series. I suppose that’s a good thing, seeing as how I missed them, but if it was like this one every time it probably got old. “Sucks” is the Charlie Brown look-a-like who gets his locker door jammed every day, with pretty much everybody in the school either in on it or not giving a shit that this was going on. The main character, Ruggo, is dating a girl who’s slowly starting to see somebody else, but he’s still having sex with her. I should mention that this is set in high school so there’s probably no reason to expect emotional maturity in these dealings, so he’s got that part right. Anyway, the problem is that this Ruggo guy is such a prick that I didn’t really care what happened to him. His relationship isn’t going that well. So what? He still gets to have sex with the girl and with another random girl who discovers that he’s “available”. A lot of petty, silly stuff, which is just like high school. This is an interesting book, and it’s probably only me who was annoyed to be looking at Archie characters the whole time. That’s probably just the way he draws and I’ll give him a complex or something if I keep this up. Check out the website or just e-mail him to see how you can get this ($2) or back issues maybe.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Optic Nerve #9
Wow, this page is so old that it’s blue! See, if I really knew much about maintaining this website I’d be able to change that back to what it’s supposed to be without much trouble. Anyway, you can read above about how much Adrian has (at least partly) been responsible for my getting into independent comics in the first place, so I won’t go on about that again. And this story is the first of three parts, so I can’t go on about his infamous inability to end stories in a satisfying manner. Basically all I’m doing here is alerting anybody reading this who didn’t already know any better that he has a new book out, as it’s been 2 years since the last one. He says that there’s a big collection of various and unpublished stuff coming out this year, and he says that he’ll get the next issue out much quicker, but I don’t know, that’s what these people always say when they’re really late all the time. That’s one thing I honestly miss from my days of reading all the Marvel crap: the anticipation. You really can’t build anticipation for Adrian’s latest work, or Seth’s, or Joe Matt (good lord, especially Joe Matt) because you have no idea when they’re coming out. Granted, it’s always a nice surprise to see something new from one of these guys, but I miss the anticipation of knowing when something new was coming out and being able to plan around it. Cerebus was great for that, before it got completely self-indulgent and ridiculous at the end, although in fairness I still haven’t managed to read the last 30 issues or so. Where was I? Oh yeah. This comic is about a relationship that’s in trouble, on both sides, and the reactions on both sides. Couldn’t have been more simplistic if I tried, and you have to know there’s more to it than that, but I’m not going to talk anybody into liking Adrian Tomine at this point. Either you like him or you don’t, and I think this particular story has the potential to be really great. It’s $3.95, click on the title and forgive my unrelated ranting…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Sleepwalk: And Other Stories
His regular series has been kind of hit or miss. Some of the stories are fantastic (the one with the twins in particular), and some of them are just OK. Still, there are enough good stories in here to make it worth getting.
Until I get around to reviewing these, if ever, maybe you’re curious about where the phrase “to fly off the handle” comes from. From A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions:
This Americanism first got into print about a hundred years ago, meaning, as it does today, to lose one’s self-control suddenly, or, as in popular parlance, to lose one’s head. The latter was the literal meaning, for the allusion was to the head or blade of a woodsman’s ax, which, if loose upon the helve, was likely to fly off dangerously at a tangent anywhere along the swing of the ax. John Neal seems to have been the first to record the forerunner of the present expression, for the earlier usage was just “off the handle”. Neal, a novelist from Portland, Maine, visited England when he was thirty, and while there published, in 1825, the novel, Brother Jonathon; or the New Englanders. In this, speaking of a surprise attack upon an Indian village, one of his characters says, “How they pulled foot when they seed us commin’. Most off the handle, some o’ the tribe, I guess.”
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini Comics
This was the first mini comic I ever bought, at the suggestion of a lovely comic shop worker in Frankfort, IL. I know, there aren’t too many of those, but it’s a good thing that there was one there because she opened me up to a whole new world. Since I became a mini comic freak after reading these, it’s probably a safe bet to say that these are some of my favorite stories of all time. His allergy to peanut butter still makes me laugh every time I think of it, and there are just a lot of great, insightful little gems in here. Oh, and I sold my run of his mini comics on eBay recently for something like $80 in a fit of extreme poorness (strangely enough, I have another set somehow), so thank you, Adrian Tomine!
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Wasted Potential: Gold
I think this is just a sampler, as it only has 7 strips in it, but it’s a good sampling of his work. I don’t know if I’m just mellowing out in my old age or if Ray’s getting better (or maybe a combination of both), but I really liked this bunch. Strips in here included Ray doubting himself, trying to explain his strips to his sister, and defending his decision to go into cartooning to everybody else. As I said, it’s a tiny little sampler (maybe even free?), so there’s not too much to be said about it, but it as funny, and what more could you ask for? Contact info is up there, I know he has plenty of other comics available if this was only an SPACE freebie or something…
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Posted by Kevin
