Monthly Archives: September 2011
Thomas, Grant – My Life in Records
My Life in Records
It’s always a little tricky to pull off music in comics, but I think Grant nailed it here. This one is split into three stories, and the first one is entirely about music. There’s his first record, how certain songs trigger a nostalgic reaction or bring up distinct mental images, the air guitarist gradually moving up to the actual guitarist, all ending in a cacophony of sounds and images. Next up is a story of Grant growing up (Grant must be his middle name, as he’s called Tom in this one). It starts off with explaining the items that meant the most to each of the three brothers, then moves on to drawing in the early Saturday hours and how his only knowledge of Sesame Street was through a record with Bert and Ernie. There are also bits about growing up in a small room with two brothers (then the shock of moving to a house where they all got their own room) and trying to get a few glimpses of television when they visited their grandparents. This is the bulk of the book and it looks like the start of something bigger, and he’s gotten off to a fantastic start. Finally there’s a story about seeing Pinocchio in the theater when he was a kid, how he tried to make a Halloween costume of Pinocchio as he was changing into a donkey, and how he learned the difference between the “good” and “bad” record players. All of this is full, gorgeous color, so for $5 I’d call this a damned good deal.
Update for 9/12/11
New review today for Monkey Squad One #7 by Doug Michel. Remember how I said that there would be regular updates unless the computer freaked out? Yeah. I’m on my backup computer at the moment (backup = hopelessly riddled with viruses), but I’ll keep doing reviews as long as this thing holds out. After that it’s off to shouting about comics from street corners, so Champaign Illinois residents could be in for a treat…
Michel, Doug – Monkey Squad One #7
Monkey Squad One #7
OK, I’m officially converted. I was on the fence after the first couple of issues of this (that I saw, anyway, as I missed the first four issues), but then loved the recent annual. This particular comic is a thing of beauty, and I’m going back and forth on either explaining every bit of this comic or leaving it all to your imaginations. A happy medium would be best, don’t you think? It was mentioned in the last issue that the squad would be escorting a rapper to an awards show. But, thanks to the fact that this comic comes out on a regular basis and Doug has time to spend on such things, we get a few pages of backstory for this rapper before things get going. Then we jump to the gang sitting around listening to the rapper tell his story, and a fantastic ongoing gag begins: this group of kids trying to understand the language of an old white rapper. There’s plenty of comedy gold to be mined from that subject. Then we get to the digestive issues (that I could have done without, but hey, it is a group of kids we’re talking about), a roadblock, and then: zombie apocalypse. Regular readers of the site can stop right now, as that’s generally enough to get my seal of approval, but wait, there’s more! This is where it gets tricky in terms of saying too much, but the conversation about the believability of zombies in movies being turned into zombies while they were in full gear (cheerleader, clown, that sort of thing) never striking them as all that believable was fantastic. Anyway, the whole comic was a good old fashioned blast, and that full page of images of puzzles that they had to solve (all video game staples and cleverly done) now holds a special place in my heart. See, this is why I always tell people whose work I’m on the fence about to please keep sending me their stuff and to try and work out the problems that I point out. Not that I’m a guru at making a successful comic, but I like to think I at least have a few useful pointers on how to make it look more professional. Doug has improved by leaps and bounds in a few issues (not that he was terrible to begin with by any stretch) and now I have one more comic that I love seeing on a regular basis. $2.50
9/9/11
Sorry, but the week got away from me again. I got behind in my work and, as that’s the writing that pays the bills, it has to take precedence. 5 reviews next week at a bare minimum, that’s my pledge. Barring a full computer meltdown it should be possible. I also wanted to mention the current Top Shelf $3 sale. There isn’t a better deal in small press comics. The money from this sale pays for a lot of their yearly operating costs, and you get to have a whole pile of comics for cheap. There’s the cheaper versions of the collections and hardcovers (hardcover copies of the gigantic From Hell and Alec: The Years Have Pants for $25 each), $10 or $8 sales on much more expensive books (if you’ve missed any Jeffrey Brown comics, now’s your chance) and the $3 and even $1 books. You can get the two Hutch Owen collections by Tom Hart for $3 each along with even more Jeffrey Brown comics, and for $1 you can get all of the Happy comics by Josh Simmons, Hey Mister by Pete Sickman-Garner and a few Jennifer Daydreamer books among many other things. Check it out, buy comics and be happy.
Update for 9/7/11
New review today for Window #11 by Dave Lapp. Hey, I took that accidental week off, I should check in with Jeff Zwirek’s fundraiser for a collected edition of Burning Building Comix. Damn, it looks like he’s only about halfway to his goal with 8 days left. Seriously, there are only 41 people in the world willing to give this man some money? This is why us small press comics fans can’t have nice things. Give the man some cash already!
Lapp, Dave – Window #11
Window #11
Dave changes things up a bit in this issue by making the entire thing about one story. That cover page sums it up pretty well, as one of the bigger girls at Dave’s school tries to get a Tamagotchi from a smaller girl and her friend. The smaller girls make it clear that the device isn’t with them at school, things escalate for the poor girl on the cover (things get even worse than that for her), and somebody in authority is finally called in. I was a little annoyed at the lack of resolution until I realized that bullies and beatings like this rarely got satisfying resolutions when I was in school either. Teachers would get both sides of the story, one of those sides would be completely fabricated, and the frazzled teacher would have too much going on to make an accurate call, so they would usually split the difference. Dave wasn’t physically present in this issue, so I’m left wondering how he pieced this together. Did he get the accounts of the girls involved? Bits and pieces from various teachers who observed certain parts of this exchange? Either way it does an excellent job of summing up the chances these kids have of getting things decided fairly. It’s probably best to get them used to such disappointments at an early age, he says pessimistically. These books remain hard to find, but if you can’t they’re generally only a buck of two, so be on the lookout.
Update for 9/6/11
New review for Indestructible Universe #6 by Morgan Pielli. Sorry about that unintentional vacation, I got busy with work stuff last week and then decided to take the holiday weekend along with the rest of the country. Normal posting will resume at this time.
Pielli, Morgan – Indestructible Universe #6
Indestructible Universe #6
Would you like to know exactly how far my annoyance at people who can’t spell extends? Well, not so much people who can’t spell, as they can always ask friends who can spell to proofread their work, or use a spellchecker, or even plug a word into Google to get the correct spelling. When the comic with the terrible spelling is crappy anyway, the whole enterprise is easy enough to dismiss. For a comic like this, it gets a little more complicated. Morgan is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies and studied under Jason Lutes, Steve Bissette, Eddie Campbell and James Sturm. That’s an impressive group of teachers right there, and this book is gorgeous in many ways, from the basic images to the inventive use of panel layouts. But is there no class at that school where they stress learning how to spell? For me that simple act of laziness at best or willful ignorance at worst makes me question the whole comic. Yes, I am aware that I’m getting all worked up over a “little thing” like proper spelling, but it takes a book that could easily pass as a professional comic from Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly and makes it instantly amateurish. Feel free to chuckle if the culture has passed me by on this and nobody gives a shit about such things, but I’ll stick my curmudgeonly ways on this one, thanks all the same. So after that rant, what about the actual comic? Like I said, this book is gorgeous. I’m always up for a smart science fiction story, and this one either has potential to be that or is already there (this is the first issue I’ve read, so I have no idea what happened in the previous issues). The first story deals with some holy men and their task of keeping people from turning into werewolves with lanterns that they carry around, while other citizens get addicted to moonlight and have to be “healed.” There were more ideas in this eight page story than there are in many comics and I’d love to see them expanded upon, if they haven’t been already. The next story deals with the evolution of man and their constant efforts to control or curtail death. Next is a fantastic little fable about a group of animals combining their resources to reach the moon and steal back the piece of everybody that was left there to hold us all back. Finally there’s the ongoing story called Driftwood and, while I loved that “the story so far” page, it didn’t do a whole lot to explain what happened in previous issues. Still, it had another great fable (this time about a bird that outsmarted a hunter) until all of the characters get trapped in a traffic jam, which is apparently a bad thing. Logs are also involved, but I’m clearly not caught up on the story to make a coherent judgment on it. All in all I loved most of this comic, and if there were only a few spelling errors I could get past it, but there were several. If Morgan can do better in that department I think he’ll be an important voice to watch. Well, he’ll be that either way, but I’m not the only person in the world who tunes out when the spelling flies off the rails. At least I hope I’m not, although with the way the world is going it’s entirely possible. No price listed, but this beautiful and hefty book is at least $5.
