Broken Fender #1
Can I just go out on a limb here and say that I like everything that Top Shelf puts out? Seriously, I’m having trouble thinking of anything from them that I didn’t enjoy thoroughly. This one is no exception, It’s an old issue, I know, and another case of me finding out about somebody well after everybody else has already told all their friends about him. Still, for those of you who missed him (and he’s still putting stuff out, I just bought an older issue), you’re in for a treat. You can read this thing pretty quickly if you want to, but I felt like I should take a break a few times while I was going through it. The sheer emotion on the pages was incredible. It wasn’t easy going from short story to short story when I was getting kicked in the teeth after half of them. He experiments a lot with his art too, radically changing his style for some stories. The tales in here are mostly about loneliness and desperation, which can become cliche pretty quick if they aren’t done well. No worries there. He was apparently good friends with Matt Madden, so he had a great teacher (Matt’s page will be up soon, I swear. The problem is that I only have REALLY old minis from him and I’m waiting until I get some stuff that’s actually still in print). Maybe he doesn’t know how to write a happy ending, but he honestly crams more feeling and heartbreak in every page than anybody else I’ve seen, possibly ever. I’m getting the rest of these from Top Shelf when I order more stuff, and I can’t imagine any of the other ones are worse than his first issue, so you can pretty much pick up any of them and hit the ground running. He apparently wants correspondence to go to Top Shelf (remember, this is from ’97, way back when not everybody in the world had an e-mail address and a web page), and you can order stuff there too. A couple of pictures this time, to show you how much I liked it.
