October 3, 2013
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Minimal Comics
What an absolutely charming comic, and that’s not something I say about comics often. The title really nails the theme, as these are all silent three panel strips. I was a little nervous at first that it would get repetitive, as one early strip is called “Clouds” and it features clouds slowly rolling across the sky, then another early strip is called “Sunset” and it shows a sunset in three panels. You can see why I was getting a little worried, but it turns out that I was way off, and Graeme takes this simple concept to some genuinely innovative places. This will be difficult to talk about without ruining its quiet charm, but a few strips really stand out. There’s “Government,” which shows three different types of politicians (indicated by the colors of the flag they carry) and three consistently angry crowds (indicated by the fact that they always use flags of different colors than the speaker). “Kiss” is just cute as hell and I’m not even going to get into why. “Shy” is beautiful and perfectly done. And there’s lots more, but again, me describing all of these simple strips would ruin the fun of YOU discovering them. Graeme is also nice enough to include a blank page with three panels on it so you can get into the spirit of the comic and make your own strip. Which, honestly, you probably will be by the time you finish reading this. I went from being mildly entertained to hoping that it would go on forever pretty quickly, and I can’t imagine a better endorsement for a comic than that. Not sure about the price, but the guy does live in Japan so it’ll most likely be a few bucks more than most comics. Why don’t you get in touch with the man and find out?
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Posted by Kevin
October 1, 2013
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Colossal #3
Hey look, a few questions were answered this time around! And lots more were asked, and even more questions were left to be answered in later issues. Of course, none of this makes any sense if you haven’t read earlier issues of this series, but that’s on you. Things start off with a brief musical interlude, sheet music and all, showing the trajectory of a bullet as it enters that truck with all the bullet holes from the last issue. As I can’t read music I’m very curious to hear what it sounds like, but I’ll have to check that later. From there we get the birds chatting with the giant robot as the robot tries to explain why he knows about the truck without having what they would think of as a memory of it. He had me convinced, but one of the birds freaks out right away, thinking that the robot is looking to kill them. Which, hey, not the craziest idea in the world, as they still have very little idea of what went on and what role the robot played in it. The other bird (the one on the cover) decides to stick it out, and the rest of the issue is spent introducing the robot to the concept of night, exploring a bag found at the scene, and going off following after what’s in the bag. I loved the playback of the events coming purely from the robot’s perspective, and Jason did a fantastic job of showing how genuinely odd that perspective would be. Things are looking to get interesting in the next issue too, if the road sign is any indication (and no, I’m not going to spoil what it says). This has been interesting as hell so far, and has the makings of being a great series, so check it out why don’t you? $5
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Posted by Kevin
September 27, 2013
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The Steaming Pool
Have you ever read any Edward Gorey books? No? OK, feel shame for a moment, then go read a few of his books to become a more complete human. For the rest of us, this comic is Pam’s tribute to Gorey, and it’s a beauty. It’s also damned near impossible to review without giving the whole thing away, so it’s a good thing I’m not paid by the word. Or at all, really. Hey, I’ve been doing this for free for 12 years! So hey, this comic. The page I sampled should tell you all you need to know about this style, but this thing is ridiculously perfect as a tribute. The dialogue, the fur coat, the one piece old-timey bathing suit, everything was as it should be. Send her a buck to check it out, then slip it into one of your Gorey books. I’m curious to see how much it confuses the next person to read that book, or if they think it might just be an add-on from Gorey himself. $1
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Posted by Kevin
September 26, 2013
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With Only Five Plums Book 3: Life in the East is Worthless
I’m just going to go ahead and assume that you’re already read the first two volumes of this series, as it would be silly for you to read a review of the final volume otherwise. This third volume begins with Anna finally getting back to her home village, where she discovers that it has been completely removed from the map. The Germans didn’t just destroy the buildings and kill the people, they also rerouted rivers, smoothed down hills and generally did everything they could to remove any trace of her old village. Terry and Jonathon do a heartbreaking job of showing how this process was completed based on accounts after the fact, but the Germans also taped everything (this information was used at the Nuremburg trials). This would have been the most heartbreaking thing in any other story, but at this point we still aren’t clear on what has happened to all of the people from this town, especially Anna’s family. This is all revealed, with the men being separated from their families and killed and the children being separated and sent away (and told cruel lies about being reunited with their families). Some of the children were sent to German families and adopted, and in one of the only uplifting parts of this story we learn that most of these children were eventually recovered and returned to their surviving family members. But the ones that didn’t survive, the ones that weren’t adopted… that’s a brutal tale. It’s only human nature to want a happy ending out of an unimaginable atrocity like this, for at least something good to happen to Anna after everything she’s been through, but her story of what happened to her family took any hope for that away. Still, this series should be required reading, and I’m hoping it ends up being taught in classrooms. If you think that humanity as a species couldn’t possibly do something like this again and we should stop remembering this horrible time, look at the state of world affairs. It’s easier than ever to think of different people as “other,” as not really people at all but just numbers, and this will only increase as global warming really kicks in and resources get scarcer. Without some preparation for this likelihood I’m afraid that we’ll be back at a similar juncture in human history sooner than anybody thinks. Sorry to get all grim on you, and I’m hoping that I’m just being unduly cynical, but either way you should give this series of graphic novels a chance. It’s vitally important that we’re not allowed to forget what happened. $9
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Posted by Kevin
September 26, 2013
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Jakey the Jerk #1
I do so love comics that mess with my expectations. As you can probably guess from that title, the lead character is a bit of an asshole, and the first few strips set up a funny (if repetitive) formula. Jakey tries to ask out a bank worker, hits on a lady at a traffic light and gets annoyed when his conversation with a lady in a bar is interrupted. It might have gotten old over the course of a whole comic, but they had me chuckling. The next strip was split in two, with Jakey in one half and the other half featuring an owl who hears from the woman he’s with those words that every “nice guy” hears at some point in their lives. Next up is a slightly longer strip with an argument about whether or not a certain celebrity is dead (with a nice punch line), but then the comic completely changes speeds. The rest of it is taken up with a long story about Jakey being basically hired on as a bodyguard for a woman that he didn’t know was famous. She’s a hippie chick, he’s a gym rat, they don’t seem to have much of anything in common, but Chris takes on a long hike with the two of them and we get to see a gradual warming by the both of them. I wasn’t expecting to see much in the way of genuine emotion here, so kudos to him for successfully straddling that line while also keeping it funny. There’s also potential for the story to keep going, but either way I’m curious to see more of this world. Chris is on a website with a bunch of other artists, so I’m thinking that might be my afternoon right there if they’re all as good as this one. Check it out, get some laughs, enjoy a small goat creature butting some people into oblivion. $3
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Posted by Kevin
September 25, 2013
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The Daily Compulsion #5
How many daily diary strips do you think have existed in comics since James Kochalka started his? Granted, he wasn’t the first person to do it ever, but that’s what seemed to make it a “thing,” so go with me on this one. Out of all of those diary strips, what do you think was the average strip number when the cartoonist did a strip about how they were sick of doing a daily strip? Nathan makes it #10 in this one, but he only did 11 strips, so at least he didn’t drag it out like some people do. Has there ever been a daily diary strip where at least one of the strips wasn’t about the creator being sick of making it? Hey internet, somebody out there must have far too much free time on their hands, get on this please! While we’re waiting for the numbers to come in, how about I talk about this comic for a bit? This is Nathan’s first book in 7 years, meaning that at least two of the strips show opinions that he no longer has (he mentions this in the intro). To me this raises the obvious question of why he bothered to include them at all, but if he’s trying to show an accurate timeline of his life they do come in handy. The first disavowed strip deals with cocaine and how it has messed up different people in his life (which makes me wonder why he no longer stands by it, unless it’s because of that silly conspiracy theory about the Clintons and coke on the last panel) and the second strip deals with why people really commit suicide and how the best way to avoid it is to think a few steps ahead and realize that things will get better. These would have been totally unremarkable if it wasn’t for that intro, but now they stand out a bit. Other strips in here include his regrets about never becoming friends with a guy because they both liked the same girl, the 11 diary strips he made it through when he briefly quit drinking (most of these were pretty good strips, but he didn’t have years to get sick of doing them either), a few different recovery jokes/strips from AA, and a pretty funny bit about Alcoholic Anarchists Anonymous. The best part of the comic is the last story, a continuing piece about how he ignored all kinds of signs about how his drinking was out of control, how he quit for a bit and then fell back into it. Here’s hoping it’s not another seven years until his next comic, as I’m curious to see how that all turned out. Overall it’s a good comic with all kinds of different stories for that old fashioned price of $1, so give it a look.
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Posted by Kevin
September 20, 2013
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I’m a Horse, Bitch
Now here’s the perfect comic for a Friday afternoon. Are you a horse? Do you know exactly how awesome you are? If that’s the case, this comic might seem a little unnecessary to you, but it’s probably best to put your greatness out into the world in as many ways as possible. If you’re not a horse, but think that they are pretty awesome, you’re going to love this one. That title is not a swerve; this is a comic that does exactly what the title says it’s going to do. A horse tells you the various ways that it is better than you, its true feelings about ponies, and the power that it barely manages to keep contained on a daily basis. And… that’s it, really. What, you wanted the meaning of life in here too? Not necessary. This comic is perfect exactly as it is and you should be able to see that. If for some reason you hate horses, I still think you should read this, if only to give yourself one more chance to love them before it’s too late. $2
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Posted by Kevin
September 19, 2013
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Second Banana
How much trust should you place in an older sibling while growing up, especially if that sibling really seems to have their shit together? This is the story of Finn (Tessa’s older brother) taking her under his wing after their older brother left the house. He also left his comics, books and Dungeons and Dragons stuff, which enabled Finn to introduce her to all of it. I’m more than a little jealous of somebody who was able to grow up knowing about H.P. Lovecraft and all of the various monsters from D & D (crikey, the dreams she must have had as a kid), but let’s leave that aside. Tessa’s main problem was that she put total trust into Finn, who mostly didn’t abuse it, but it left her unable to tell when he was wrong (or possibly just messing with her). For example, he told her that putting a light bulb in your mouth would create a vacuum, causing it to explode, sending shards of glass careening down your throat. She believed this right up until college, but it sounds like the other things he taught her came together to make a decent trade-off. Her only regret was that Finn became more skeptical of supernatural things while he grew up and he passed that on to her, and it’s disheartening to see the world only as it is and not as it could be. Eh, she says it a lot better than I ever could, and I’m already getting a bit too far into spoiler territory. I’d just like to add that you’ll get a hell of a lot out of this book if you either had an older sibling who tried to teach you about the finer things in life or if you were that sibling. After all, they didn’t know everything, but they were extremely unlikely to let you in on that fact. There’s also a short piece on the end about the “Dyatlov Pass Incident,” which Emi Gennis actually covered in one of her recent comics. But hey, genuine mysteries like that are always rare and interesting, so it was good to see a different perspective on it. $3
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Posted by Kevin
September 17, 2013
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A Matter of Life
I’ll confess, I was a little worried about this one. “An autobiographical meditation on fatherhood and faith”? Blech. Most of the comics I’ve seen about fatherhood seem to come from the perspective that these people have recently discovered parenting and small children, so the slightest details about each will be fascinating to the reader. Or you may recognize it from its real world equivalent: friends who have recently had children thinking that you want to hear every single “cute” thing that their child has said and done, no matter how mundane. Why yes, I am remarkably cynical about such things, why do you ask? But hey, this is still Jeffrey Brown, so there’s plenty of entertaining stuff in here. This is mostly about Jeffrey growing up, his early days dealing with faith (his father was a minister), and how he gradually just stopped buying into it. This always seems to happen after comparative religions classes, which makes me wonder why those obnoxious fundie groups haven’t tried to stamp them out yet. After all, it doesn’t help their case when kids can learn that whole sections of the bible were copied from various creation myths and stories from older religions. Anyway, this book wanders all over the place, as it also deals with Jeffrey’s relationship to his parents and brothers growing up, how he dealt with being stuck in church on a weekly basis, and his own confusion in how to raise his old kid. After all, he might not want to deal with religion any more, but there’s still the rest of the world to think about. I was a little hazy on his final conclusion on the religion angle, as he did call himself a Christian later in the story, but it seemed like that was only to be friendly to a lady he was chatting with on the street. Who hasn’t been stuck in one of those conversations, where your only options are to lie about your religious affiliation or be doomed to a lecture by a stranger about your choices in life? While this one did seem a bit more scattered than some of his past work, there are still plenty of laughs to be had and truths to be pondered. Not necessarily agreed with, depending on what you believe, but pondered. And if your heart isn’t as hardened to such things as mine is, all kinds of cute moments with his son. This is also in full color, which is such a lovely change of pace that I can pretty much recommend it on that alone. Check it out, think deep thoughts about your own religious choices and parenting decisions! $14.95
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Posted by Kevin
September 16, 2013
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California #4
Anybody who starts with the fourth issue of a series is kind of stupid anyway, but I can’t help but think of at least one poor soul out there who picked this one up without seeing the rest of this series. Maybe they just liked California? Anyway, this poor person would have opened up the comic and seen (on the very first page!) a giant tentacled monster with one eye hovering over a house, a disembodied head bouncing around trying to stay away from the monster, a surprisingly calm family sitting down at a table while the monster smashed the table around them, and the disembodied head bashing into one of people at the table. If this poor soul didn’t spontaneously combust and they made it to the next few panels they would see the head bashing into a few more people at the table and those people vanishing after being struck. At this point I would only hope that they’d stop and go back to read the rest of the series, but hypothetical people can be stubborn. Oh hi, those were spoilers, kind of, for the rest of this series. But they were mostly from the first page of this issue so it’s OK to talk about them. This issues concludes the California saga, and after this one I’d say it’s safe to call it a “saga.” Once again I wish we lived in a world where something like this could be collected and released to wide acclaim, making Rob a wealthy man. But we’re stuck with this world for now, so you should maybe go back and get past issues for this series if you haven’t already. The rest of this issue deals with the horrible monster getting loose in the real world, the missing 200 townspeople, the key to defeating this monster, and the strategies of fighting an invisible monster. It’s a pretty damned great conclusion, all things considered. I loved the creepy teeth in that creature and how they seemed to go on forever, and life continuing to go on as usual so quickly after things wrapped up was nicely done as well. It seems like I’d already declared an older series of Rob’s as my all-time favorite of his (which makes me feel especially stupid for not remembering the name of that series, but it dealt with amusement parts (or my brain has just completely shut down on this topic)), but this one would have to be a close second or third. If you just read the first issue you’d have no idea that things would end this strangely, and that’s exactly how such comics should be done. Check it out and enjoy, and if we all wish hard enough maybe this could magically become a big summer blockbuster movie.
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Posted by Kevin
September 13, 2013
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Tablegeddon #1
Comic conventions! Maybe you’re one of the people who only go to conventions to buy comics and don’t create them yourself, but have you ever wondered about life on the other side of the table? Not really? Well, you really should try putting yourself in their shoes for a few minutes. This anthology has all kinds of stories from conventions, good and bad, from some of the champions of small press comics (if the industry had formal champions, which they should maybe think about doing). Stories in here include Max Clotfelter’s first time working a table when he was a kid, Cara Bean and Sara Carson’s long road to a triumphant show, Kelly Froh’s two worst shows (I hope), Carrie McNinch’s problem with shyness, Rob Kirby’s mostly bad day (but with plenty of good things in it, like the progressive redneck parents), Mark Campos’ ingenious trick to selling original art, Aron Nels Steinke dealing with a friend getting a tv deal while having a slow day himself (along with dealing with an annoying kid), Gabrielle Gamboa’s hilariously illustrated conversations among cartoonists, Justin Hall’s description of finally getting the sale after talking a guy into it for 20 minutes, Tony Breed dealing with putting a book together and the reality of the show, Matt Moses and Jeff Worby narrowly avoiding a beating/murder, Zine Crush trying to get a copy of their zine to the object of their crush without being obvious about it, Rick Worley learning the truth about Dash Shaw, Jason Martin showing the good and the bad and John Porcellino showing us the weather paradox at cons. Oh, and a bonus piece by Kelly Froh (I’m almost positive) showing us the moment at a con when her spirit leaves her body. I’ve seen plenty of comics about convention horror stories in my years of reviewing these things, so I was a little nervous about a whole anthology on the subject, but that was silly of me. This whole thing is full of goodness, and should probably be handed out to obvious first-timers as they walk into cons as a public service. $4
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Posted by Kevin
