Monthly Archives: April 2011
Update for 4/8/11
New review for Brain Dead Phylum #1 by Kyle Nolan. The scanner isn’t new, but it’s an older one that a friend didn’t want and it appears to work OK. Keep an eye on those samples and let me know if they look like crap, OK? Assuming this thing doesn’t explode too I’ll be back to a full week of reviews next week, with one up over the weekend too if all goes well.
Nolan, Kyle – Brain Dead Phylum #1
Brain Dead Phylum #1
This is one dirty, dirty comic. No, not like that, you perverts you. The story takes place mostly in a sludge pit, and Kyle went to the trouble of making the place look as dirty and grimy as possible. The story, such as it is, deals with two very stupid robots essentially having an extended conversation. They get into a ship, press random buttons for a bit and end up crash landing. I’m not sure if it’s possible for me to reveal spoilers with this ending, but paradoxically I can’t say more about it without revealing spoilers. Let’s just say that the characters are very aware of their situation and the next issue could be downright hilarious. Or terrible, as it’s only one issue and it’s impossible to say. I did like this one, as the bits that were intended as funny mostly were actually funny, which is a rarer occurrence than it should be. I’m also detecting some strong Pat Aulisio influence at work here, and as someone who has been reviewing Pat’s work since the very early days of the website, that does make me the internet equivalent of a proud… uncle, maybe? I’m not sure what analogy would make sense there. My basic point is that I’m happy that at least one artist is taking some tips from Pat’s style and running with it. Unless Kyle has never heard of the guy and this is all in my head, that is. The rambling point of all this is that this book is worth a look and it’s damned good for his first full length mini comic. Encourage the lad with your dollar! $1
Update for 4/6/11
New review for Late One Night by Brad W. Foster, another comic that’s also available in the store and a clear indication that I still don’t have a new scanner. Still, I’m as sick of writing about it as you are of reading it, so it ends this week one way or another. Apparently a scanner is not going to fall out of the sky all by itself and solve my problem…
Foster, Brad W. – Late One Night
Late One Night Now Available! $.50
This may be a rare comics find (although I didn’t find it so much as Brad mailed it to me), as it appears to be the first 24 hour comic ever. Hell, it’s even less than five hours! When did Scott McCloud start all that anyway? This is from 1986, so probably right around the same time. Of course, this is eight very tiny pages, so I don’t know if that would fit the criteria for a true 24 hour comic. Eh, it amuses me to think about it anyway. The story for this one is that Brad had a page that was going to run through the printing press anyway for another comic, so why not split it up into eight parts and make another comic out of it? The back cover also indicates that this is #1,847 of his products, if you count all the posters and cards as one each, and he put this out a very long time ago. I don’t care how you slice it, that’s serious productivity right there. Anyway, the strips are mostly a series of images like the one sampled below, and that sort of thing gets all the joy sucked out if it from critical reviewing. I did enjoy the one four panel strip dealing with logic, so keep an eye out for that one if you have a spare $.50. Not that the rest of it was bad, just by its nature it was something of a “blink and you’ll miss it” comic. So… yeah. Make up your own damn minds! $.50
Update for 4/5/11
New review for Herman the Manatee Gets Hit By A Boat Volume 1 by Jason Viola. If you were wondering, no, the scanner is not working, I just took a couple of images off Jason’s site. I hate doing that, so you should buy his comic to assuage my guilt. The bottom line is that tomorrow is going to be a day of looking around for a decent scanner. What fun!
Viola, Jason – Herman the Manatee Gets Hit By A Boat Volume 1
Herman the Manatee Gets Hit By A Boat Volume 1
You’d think that a strip that almost always ended with the main character getting hit by a boat would get boring in a hurry. It threatens to get boring but Jason does an admirable job of turning it around before it goes off the rails. The art is fantastic, which is almost a shame as there really isn’t a lot to show most of the time other than a manatee, some fish or possibly a surface view. It’s comics like this that make me think that I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss web comics. Well, it’s not I dismiss them out of hand, it’s just that I get so many physical mini comics that it would be impossible to get into reviewing web comics too. If you were wondering, yes, this is the exact same reason why I don’t review zines. Anyway, I should probably mention a few of the comics, even if I have already given away the ending for most of them. Herman is lured up to the surface by a song, bubbles, different asshole fish and a fortune cookie. He tries a few different methods to get around this problem, each with varying degrees of a lack of success. We also see a bit of Herman’s early days, and from those it’s a wonder that he ever gets out of whatever he uses as a bed in the morning. There’s also a smartly done parody of the work of both George Herriman and Edward Gorey to liven things up when it starts dragging a bit. Jason sent along three more volumes of this series, and it may or may not get terribly boring over the long term. Either way, this first issue is worth a look, and if you don’t believe me then his website should have more than enough samples to convince you. $3
Update for 4/3/11
New review today for Cheetahs Never Win! #3 by Steve Reeder, and I think this is it for the new batch of scanned images. Tomorrow I’ll try to get the stupid thing working again and will either A. be successful B. not be successful and buy a new scanner or C. not be successful and give up the comic reviewing business for a life in a cabin somewhere. Check tomorrow to see what happened!
Reeder, Steve – Cheetahs Never Win! #3
Cheetahs Never Win! #3
In case you were wondering exactly when my scanner died AGAIN, it was right after I managed to scan this cover. No sample image, in other words, and no website to look at sample images. Why? No idea. If there was ever a comic that was perfect for a website with plenty of free samples, it’s this one. This comic is mostly a series of single panel gag strips, with stories never running longer than a few pages. There are some groaners in here, but overall I thought this was a funny pile of strips, and I do occasionally have issues with the single panel format. To describe these strips very simply (but to not give them quite enough credit), these are essentially funny messages involving animals or inanimate objects that you might hang up in your office cubicle if you didn’t mind the shock of your co-workers over all that profanity. A few of these strips (and I’m going to leave most of these a mystery, as nothing kills comedy faster than critical analysis) involve a message in a bottle saying “Fuck You,” the mental process of a fish as he escapes death by hook, or the secret life of pencils in various states of use. It’s significantly more funny than not and this is a hefty pile of strips for $5.
