Window #1
There have been several moments in my reviewing “career” of the past nine years when I’ve said, after getting a certain comic or pile of comics in the mail or reading something nice that somebody I really admire said about me that I’d be perfectly content at that moment if the internet exploded and I never posted again. Dave sending me his entire run of Window comics (14 issues!) is one of those moments. The great news for those of you reading this is that Dave also gave his OK for me to use his comics in the rental program I’m (slowly, laboriously) putting together, so you’ll be able to see all these for yourself and make up your own mind. As this is the first issue of his series I was afraid it would go the way of most first issues of series that later became great: shows clear promise, but not all that good by itself. Nope. There are two short pieces in here, and I thoroughly enjoyed them both. The first one deals with a walk through a graveyard with a few of his friends, discussing old superstitions and remarking on all the graveyard oddities along the way. It’s hard to sum up waltzing through a graveyard with friends and have a story relate the magnitude of the unease you feel in such situations, but he nailed it. The second story deals with a group of school children (that Dave seems to be teaching) who come across a dead baby squirrel outside their classroom. They also see the mother squirrel nervously watching the situation and all have their theories on what to do about the situation. They’re both genuinely sweet, understated stories, exactly the kind of thing that got me reading these little books of scribbles in the first place. Well, that and the kind of funnies that Sam Henderson and Sean Bieri make. I’m not sure if these are available to buy any more, but if they are I’d say it’d be around a buck or two. If they’re not available and if you’re patient, you can always rent them from me once the rental service is up and running…
