April 24, 2010
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Worms #5Â (with art by Kimberlee Traub)
There are probably a few of you out there who have been reading this series thinking “Sure, this is an odd comic on a number of levels, but I haven’t been creeped out enough by it”. Well, your prayers have been answered! The escape from this institution (if that is in fact what it is) continues in this issue, as our heroine listens to the voice of her dead father (who is helping her to escape), makes her way out and then has to deal with the same people who shot at her last time. This time around she seems to have come to terms a bit more with the worms in her system, and it’s all I can do not to give anything else away. Let’s just say that Brian seems to have a gift for taking stories that seem to be going full steam ahead and veering wildly in a completely unexpected direction. Anyway, I’m along for the ride, as clueless about where this is heading as anybody else. That’s assuming you’re already reading this, and why wouldn’t you be? All these tiny comics for that tiny amount of money? Plus the (as close as you can come in the comics world) guarantee that this guy is committed to the comics and will keep cranking these things out, so you won’t get dumped in the middle of a story? Seems obvious to me. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Worms #4 (with art by Kimberlee Traub)
Bits and pieces coming to light, that’s what this series is all about. This time around our heroine has a dream in which her dead father tells her that it’s time to wake up, while she still can. Upon waking she sees that instead of a ceiling above her bed there are storm clouds and silent lightning. One bolt of this lightning hits her IV, which has the odd effect of making her fine with the worms that are coming through it and into her body. It also gives her the energy to try to escape again, which is when her nurse comes in to check up on her. There’s no sense of my telling you much more than that, as there are few things worse than a suspense comic with no surprises, but we do get to see a bit more about the people holding her captive and, perhaps, why that security guard from a couple of issues ago seemed to be bloodless. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: send the man a pile of money so he’ll send you a pile of tiny comics. It’s so simple! $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Worms #3 (with art by Kimberlee Traub)
With a suspense comic it’s best to leave the specifics alone for as long as possible, as that generally ratchets up the suspense, and Brian does an excellent job of that here. We do learn in this issue why the title of the series is “Worms” (at least a little bit), but as for everything else… who knows? Our heroine from the last issue wakes up strapped to a bed, hooked up to an IV. She quickly sees that this IV has worms swimming in the liquid, then she sees that one of the creatures is swimming through the tube to her arm. Things get even more disgusting from there, believe it or not, and we’re left to wait until the next issue (if then) to get some idea of where exactly she’s being held and why. It didn’t take me long to get hooked on these tiny comics, but they’re like minuscule bundles of comic crack. You get a little tiny taste each time of what sure feels like a master plan, unless of course he’s making it up as he goes and has me completely fooled. Worth checking out either way. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Worms #2 (with art by Kimberlee Traub)
This is damned near the perfect tiny suspense comic. Things happened in the first issue of which we’re quickly and efficiently informed in a succinct one page synopsis, then it’s off to the story. A woman wakes up with someone trying to get a gun away from her and quickly finds herself captive in a hospital. Or, at least, she thinks it’s a hospital, although a bit of exploring on her part makes her question that assumption, or at least question that it’s as easy as all that. Kimberlee’s deceptively simple artwork somehow manages to ratchet up the suspense, Brian more than holds up his end with the words (and throws in an excellent cliffhanger to boot), and I’m liking this format of tiny books with one panel per page more and more. What’s this, five of his books reviewed now? I can safely say that anybody who sends this guy $5 or so for a small pile of comics won’t come away disappointed. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Just A Man #3 (with art by Andrew White)
What the hell? Sorry, us “professional” reviewers need to give you readers more to work with but… what the hell? Brian has expertly flipped the motive behind our hero completely around with this issue, and he caught me completely by surprise. In this issue our hero takes off towards the whorehouse, at the request of a man in town who says that his daughter is working there and he wants to get her back. He makes his way to the whorehouse, finds the girl in question, and manages to grab her and head her towards the door… when his wife calls his name. She’s at the whorehouse too, and she has a gun on him. His reaction to this is, well, a little odd. It’s my personal (and constantly changing) rule that everything after the midway point of a book is a spoiler, so I can’t say too much, but this naturally sets our hero to wondering about everything that has happened in the last couple of issues. He has McTeague’s men after him (looking for revenge), men from the whorehouse after him (looking for the woman he basically kidnapped), and then he’s confronted with another moral dilemma when the woman he’s taken says that she is not the daughter of that man after all, just somebody he wants as his own personal whore. This is by far the best issue of the series, and the other two were pretty damned good already. It takes some talent to make a straightforward western revenge story into something else entirely, and Brian did it flawlessly. Check it out, it’s a tough competition but this may end up being his best series of all. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Just A Man #2 (with art by Andrew White)
Hey look, it is a series after all! If you’re confused go back and read the review for the last issue, where I kvetched endlessly about the merits of this as a one-shot versus as a series. Judging from the most recent pile of books sent my way this isn’t his only new series. If the man keeps up this ridiculous pace he might want to put together some sort of index so we can all keep up. This time around our hero has finished off the people who killed his wife and child and is left with an understandable emptiness. Adrift, he goes to sleep on the back of his horse and lets it take him to his next destination, wherever that may be. He’s also on the lookout for some of McTeague’s men who may be out looking for revenge, although he’s at a bit of a loss to explain why he should go on living. He eventually has a reason to live drop into his lap, or at least a way to have a meaningful death, which we’ll learn more about the next time around. Feels like I may have spoiled too much with this one, but the pacing of these makes it a bit too easy to summarize. That’s right, it’s somehow Brian’s fault. Sure, I’ll stick with that. Anyway, my opinion of this series went up considerably now that I know it IS a series, as who doesn’t like a good western about a man on the run? It’s officially worth a look as far as I’m concerned. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Just A Man #1 (with art by Andrew White)
If there’s one thing that Brian needs, it’s clearly another series. As sarcasm doesn’t come across well on the internets, let me just make clear how very sarcastic that was. The man is already a machine, it seems ridiculous to start up another series. More power to him if he wants to keep four series going at once, although it’s hard to tell if this one is going to be more than one issue. This is the story of a simple man who works the land to feed his family until he comes home to find his house on fire. His infant son is dead, his wife is missing, and he has a pretty good idea who’s responsible. I may have my westerns mixed up, but isn’t that the plot from Unforgiven? Except that the Clint Eastwood character at least had a history as a gunslinger. Anyway, a confrontation occurs (sort of), things end, and I’d think this was a one-shot if it wasn’t for the gaping bit of story that remains unresolved.  All told the story didn’t do a lot for me, as it seemed like something I’d seen before, and even the dialogue got cliched every once in a while. Granted, that’s probably hard to avoid with a western, so he doesn’t lose any points for that. Still, that gaping plot hole (I’m trying to avoid spoilers), the lack of resolution with what should be a central character, is annoying. If this is a series, fine. If not, it ruins this as a one-shot. Time will tell, but start with his other series and work your way over to this one. Oh, I should mention that the art perfectly suited the mood of this book, to end on a positive note if nothing else. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Marked #1 (with art by Jeremy Johnson)
Hey, why not one more series? He already has 4 going strong. If you make comics and this guy doesn’t make you think that maybe you should be a little more productive, I don’t know what would do it. Productive and consistently entertaining, all while using different artists for different projects, is impressive no matter how you look at it. In this issue an old monster fighter comes out of retirement after his girlfriend’s sister is brutally murdered at a local park. No, I’m not sure what being a monster fighter entails either, but I’ll bet we learn that over the course of the series. Anyway, he manages to lure the murderers out of hiding by pretending to be a drunk (i.e. dousing himself with booze), but the fight doesn’t go well and he’s forced to take a desperate and drastic action. I get the fact that I’ve been praising all these books for months now, so this probably won’t have much impact, but this comic sings. The cadence of the dialogue, the fight scene (even with it being all scrunched up in this tiny comic, it didn’t suffer a bit), and that ending were all pitch perfect. These comics are all ridiculously affordable, and you’d have a hard time going wrong trying any of them. Today this has the potential to be my favorite of the bunch, but talk to me tomorrow and I’ll go with a different series. That speaks to some serious range, and if he’s able to do another five series at this high level I say go for it. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Seamonsters & Superheroes #3
I hope you’re all happy! Because you didn’t make Scott rich (apparently), this is probably the last issue of this series. I for one miss having individual issues of comics to look forward to. Sure, you still get stories from the comic greats, but it’s mostly in graphic novel form, and you only get to see those once a year or so at best. Exercise some randomness, for the love of all that is holy! Just do a comic about whatever random stuff pops into your head instead of making sure it all fits neatly into a graphic novel! Economically, I know it’s probably not possible, but there’s always mini comics. OK, rant over. This one is about, surprisingly enough, seamonsters and superheros. You have a joke about a head shop, random three panel funnies, an old Jewish man and an alien partner, legos at war, single panel mayhem, death, a planet of clones, and, of course, giant monsters. It’s the perfect example of making a comic out of every single random thing that comes into your head, and I for one couldn’t be happier. Contact info for Scott is all over the place, I think he should be a rich man, but what do I know? $2.95
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Seamonsters & Superheroes #1
Hey, Scott Mills has his own regular series from Slave Labor Graphics! Who knew? A bunch of people, probably, but I rarely get to the comics store these days. This is, as the name implies, a bunch of random stories about seamonsters and superheroes, sometimes together, sometimes separate. This issue is all over the place, frankly, but it’s still a fun book. Stories in here include a regretful ship captain, a quitting superhero, a blob, some dude eating planets, a lover’s quarrel, a superhero on the crappers, the true life story of Scott Mills (or is it?), and stupid aliens. Oh, and more text than you can shake a stick at, although I’m not sure why you thought shaking a stick at something was constructive in any way. There’s also the most detailed description of the next issue that I’ve ever seen (he goes into panel descriptions for certain page, although it’s all in fun) and a description of what it’s all about. In other words, he uses this book to talk about stuff, which is fine with me, as I’m usually curious to see what the guy has to say. It’s $2.95 and well worth a look, I’ll let you know about future issues (although I know #2 is already out). Oh, here’s the Slave Labor website!
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Mars Base Super Trio Now Available! $2
You know what I love? When somebody like Scott Mills, after I’ve already read practically everything he’s ever done, is still able to put out something like this that just completely surprised me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the best mini in the universe or anything, but it is a lot of fun and it’s very different from just about all of his other work that I’ve seen. What you have here is a trio of folks (obviously) dealing with some serious boredom in space.Also, a character with a giant ass and a space anomaly suddenly gaining awareness and looking for a human body to take over. I don’t want to say too much because this is so tiny, but you get the idea. If you already like Scott Mills you’ll probably check this out sooner or later. If you don’t, well, this isn’t like his regular work, just so you know. Contact info is here and there, and this is also available in the online store…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Lunkheads
If you can’t tell by the sheer number of updates on this page, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I like the comics of Scott Mills a whole bunch. That being said, every review I do of him basically starts off with my loving the book, then he has to lose me from there, and he hasn’t really managed that yet. No, that’s probably not fair to all the people who have to win me over, but what are you going to do? This one is about some skinheads (but the good kind) going to a Fugazi show. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. The important part is mostly the dialogue between these, um, lunkheads though, and there’s plenty of that to go around. If anybody out there goes to punk shows, or used to go to punk shows, read this and run down memory lane. If you didn’t, it’s still a fun book that everybody should read, but I am biased. Contact info is above…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Big Clay Pot
Is “this went by way too fast” a valid criticism for a comic? Didn’t think so. If it is, I’m angry at this comic because it only took me about 10 minutes to read it. Still, it’s a great story and there are a lot of things that stick with you when you’re done. It’s the story of a young orphaned girl and an old man who has recently lost his wife in a storm. A coming of age story, if you will. It’s been done before and it’ll be done again, but rarely as well as this. The overwhelming clumsiness of the girl combined with the loneliness of the old man (not that he wants to admit it) make for a poignant duo. Look, I think I’ve made it pretty clear how biased I am towards Scott Mills. I’ve yet to see something from him that I haven’t liked (with the possible exception of Pet Shop Noise, but that was obviously a labor of love and hasn’t been kept in print) and I’d be surprised if he wasn’t a major voice in comics in a few years. That being said, I think he’s improved by leaps and bounds with this one. It a much larger story than I’ve seen from him before, even though it’s broken up (kind of) into little ones. It flows from beginning to end and you empathize with the old man when he has nightmares about losing his wife. Seeing as how we never actually meet her in the comic, that’s a big accomplishment. I could gush about this for hours, so I’ll cut it (relatively) short. Yes, it’s $13 and yes, you can read it in 10 to 15 minutes. But don’t worry, you’ll read it a whole bunch of times and will probably want to loan it out to friends too. It’ll be well loved by all who like comics, I can tell you that much.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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- Space
Here’s what Scott Mills has to say for himself on the back of Space: “Join me on a journey that will likely be considered my most personal, self-absorbed, pretentious and ultimately pointless work” Honestly, my first impression of this mini was that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing and was just rambling throughout. Of course, I bought this with a bunch of other minis out in L.A. and read a whole pile of them in an afternoon, so a bunch of them didn’t get the attention they deserved. After reading this again so I could review it, it turns out that this deserves a second look.
It’s basically the story of a man (Scott Mills, if I had to guess) who’s tired of the crowds on Earth and decides to leave the planet to search for greener pastures. He wanders around the solar system for a little while and eventually finds another planet that reminds him of Earth, but without all the people. Best line of the book: “Now I’m lonely. No one’s gonna want to hang around a guy that hates everyone”. Anyway, his Sweetie has made it to this new world too, and the next thing you know the new planet is overrun with all his children and he can’t find a quiet spot anywhere.
Perhaps I’ve said too much about the story, but you get the idea. I checked for the link after I finished writing this (learning the lesson that I should definitely research this stuff before I write it) and it turns out that this comic isn’t available anywhere that I can find. If anybody out there knows where to find it, write me. It’s certainly worth seeking out, especially if you’re already a fan of Scott Mills. Hey, you can always e-mail him and bug him to put it back in print, right?
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Cells
There are certain artists where you can point to their drawing style and see exactly who influenced them. Patrick J. Lee obviously “grew up” on Adrian Tomine, Dave Sim (the early stuff at least) just screams Barry Windsor-Smith, and Scott Mills was clearly influenced by Tom Hart. It’s easy sometimes to stop there, to put the comic down in the store before you buy it because you think maybe that’s all the artist is doing, ripping the guy off. Lucky for me, if I have any money and I see a mini comic in the store, I buy it and give it a chance. This is the best mini I’ve read in the last year, and I’ve read a lot of good stuff in that time.
It’s a simple story. Two men are in jail, Wendell and Steve, and neither one of them has a hope of getting out. Looking at it again so I could write this review, I see that it’s only 21 pages. The strength of this book lies in what isn’t said almost more than what is. We never see what put either one of these men in jail, although we do see the reaction of Wendell when he is pressured by Steve to tell him. We also never really see anybody else in this prison, having only one sentence by a prison guard. I think it was Scott McCloud who talked about the space between panels and, as much as I disagree with a lot of the things he’s said, he was right on this one. Wendell never really admitting to himself that he had a friend, Steve’s fear of him at times, Steve’s dream and where they must have come from in his life…
.
Anyway, buy this book. I don’t want to ruin anything in this book by talking about it too much. It’s two bucks, it’ll probably take you about five minutes to read and it’s one of those things that you’ll want to show to the people who don’t read comics. Oh yeah, and it’s a Xeric Award winner.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Trenches
If you’re one of those people who just want to know whether or not I like a book, well, I liked this one a lot. I think it’s the best single thing he’s done, with the possible exception of Cells, but it’s hard to put them in the same category when Trenches is a fat graphic novel. It’s the story of two brothers and their commanding officer in WWI, and it’s incredible. The battle scenes are complete chaos, the flashbacks to the two brothers growing up make them both completely real by the end of the book, and he just tells a great story. A lot of people would be tempted to dumb this down or to make it “politically correct” to avoid offending anyone, and I’m happy to report that Scott isn’t one of those people. He talked about this a bit in the interview I had with him about nine months ago, and I have to admit that I had high expectations for it. They were met and then some. Some might think that this is an overreaction on my part, but I think this catapults him right alongside all of the other major accomplished comics artists, if he wasn’t there already. That doesn’t pay the bills, but he should at least get the same critical success as Chris Ware and Dan Clowes. He’s not as snooty, granted, but he can tell a hell of a story.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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The Masterplan
Well, if you’re looking for the opus from Scott Mills, I’d have to say this is it. This book is huge, somewhere around 300 pages (there are no page numbers and I’m not THAT dedicated to getting that exactly right). The story here is that it’s 2040 and a scientist is looking to fix the eventual death of the universe in trillions of years by throwing off the orbits of a few planets and creating his own event singularity. He gets an ex-wife and his estranged brother to witness his acts, but things go horribly wrong and they end up wandering the galaxy together, sleeping for billions of years at times to travel the necessary distances. The science of this seems sound, at least based on what little I know, and it’s a fascinating concept that’s done pretty well. Heck, there’s even a vengeful alien tracking them through space because of their accidental destruction of his world, so there’s even drama a’plenty. My only problem with this is that the people were a bit too unflappable, as they woke up at one point, 40,000 years in the future, and didn’t even stop to mention the fact that everybody and everything they ever knew was long dead. Things like that would have really humanized the story, making it maybe a bit more accessible to people who might be a bit turned off by the sheer science of the thing. I liked it, as I’m hopelessly biased towards his work and think the story more than made up for my quibbles, so that’s bottom line to this rambling. It has a cover price of $24.95 but I got it cheap through that Top Shelf Comix sale, so maybe it’s available elsewhere for a bit cheaper than that cover price, if you were willing to wander online a bit…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust Now Available! $10.95
I remember reading back in high school that Dostoevsky was paid by the word, which is why all of his books were so long. Of course, he’s probably the best single writer in the history of fiction, so it was a good thing that he was motivated to ramble a bit. What does this have to do with Scott Mills? Well, if he got paid by the mini comic and/or graphic novel, he’d be a very rich man. I don’t know anybody outside of James Kochalka who has a larger body of work in the small press business. Luckily he also has some serious range, which is what makes him so unique. This one is about Zebediah, a zombie with a heart of gold. Well, as much as a zombie can have, anyway. Also you have a mad scientist who’s determined to screw up the parts of the world that weren’t already destroyed by the zombies, elves who want to make the world grow again, and a conjoined killer. Oh, and some of the most incomprehensible zombie dialogue that you’re likely to see, but then, how clear did you expect zombies to be? They’re not here to enunciate, you know. Good stuff again, with the usual caveat that it’s a bit expensive to spend $10.95 on something that takes you 5 minutes to read, but it is a really great 5 minutes…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Memory Palace of Rocket
My old timey reviews continue, as this mini comic is from the ancient year 2000. Can you still buy it anywhere? I sure doubt it, and it didn’t look like it from Scott’s website. Hey, at least he’s still making comics. Reviewing these older minis and checking up on what these artists are doing now can be a depressing business, or at least it can be if they’ve given up comics altogether. Depressing for me at least, it’s entirely possible that they’re all much happier without them. This comic is all about Scott’s memory palace, which is exactly what it sounds like: an imaginary place full of his memories. The trouble is that there’s also an evil version of Scott running around this memory palace, and they’re bound to run into each other before the tour (which the good Scott is giving to the reader) is over. It’s a fascinating peek into his mind, as he shows various things from memory or from his imagination. Honestly, I mostly picked this from his old pile of minis to review because of that classic ending, which I am bound not to repeat here in a review. It’s a shame, but what are you going to do? If you can find this I recommend it, but good luck with that. Maybe once the rental program starts up you’ll be able to read it like that… $3
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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The Final Curtain
More old minis from Scott, one of those rare artists who got me interested (and KEPT me interested) in this small press nonsense to begin with. This one is a straight-up science fiction tale, telling the story of a young man who comes from a race so long-lived that he was a mere child at eight millenia. He is given a tour of a certain part of the universe, learns that free will is the key to everything, eventually finds out that the end of the universe is coming, and it’s inescapable. Instead of accepting that conclusion, he uses his science to try and escape from the universe as we know it, and Scott was nice enough to put his story into a comic book. Or possibly he made it all up, as writers usually do. Anybody with a halfway decent screen can see that I got this at Chicago Comics, which is still an essential stop if you’re ever in the area, but I have my doubts that this is widely available in any form. Why? Because small press artists hate their fans and never want their old work to be readily available, that’s why. If all goes well that will be at least slightly changing around here in the very near future…
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Posted by Kevin
