New review today for Sueno Loco by Jaime Crespo. Does this mean that I’ll put five reviews up this week? Eh, probably. Maybe not tomorrow night, but if not then most likely over the weekend. Boy, those are a lot of qualifiers…
Update for 9/12/13
September 12, 2013
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Posted by Kevin
Crespo, Jaime – Sueno Loco
September 12, 2013
Sueno Loco
God damn, this is how you do a dream comic. Not that I’ve run across any particularly terrible examples of them recently, but if you keep a dream journal and have been thinking about turning some of them into comics, you should pick up this comic first. There’s plenty to love in that cover, and once you thoroughly absorb that image the comic opens up with Jaime in a mariachi suit working at a Taco Bell. One of those shrill blond older ladies with the awful orange tans comes in and tries to order an “enchrito.” Dream Jaime doesn’t hear her correctly the first time, which causes her to blow up at him. From there it’s a quick spiral down into madness, as an enchirito chant fills up his dream, the blond lady expands into an enormous angry head and Jaime is left scrambling for his dream life. It’s a quick read but it’s beautifully done, so on top of his other comics that I’m thoroughly enjoying now I’m hoping he keeps going on the dream comics too. Granted, there are only so many hours in the day, but here’s hoping Jaime uses as many of them as is humanly possible to keep making comics like this. Well, and Tortilla. And that he finishes up Turk Street Serenade. One of you publishers, give the man a pile of money to make this easier on him! You’d have a ton of great older material to work with just to start… $2
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/11/13
September 11, 2013New review today The Casebook of Elijah Snugs #1 by Sal Sciandra. See? Somehow all this overtime is magically turning into lots of reviews here too. Well, I suppose there are still days to go in the week, so if you don’t hear from me again until Monday then I’ll feel shame, but I think I’ve finally worked out a system.
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Posted by Kevin
Sciandra, Sal – The Casebook of Elijah Snugs #1
September 11, 2013
The Casebook of Elijah Snugs #1
Would you trust a detective who didn’t wear pants who also had a pig for a sidekick? I guess it’s not a fair question to ask, seeing as how this is set in a world where every creature is some form of talking animal, but then why is the guy bothering to wear a trenchcoat and hat? I’m reading too much into this already. This is a fairly basic mystery story involving our hero and a mysterious missing egg. The security system had recently been updated and the only person with access to it other than the owner was the butler, but the owner insists that he couldn’t possibly have taken it. This is very much an all ages comic, but the dialogue isn’t so dumb that you feel silly reading it as an adult. So far it’s also taking itself very seriously for such a fundamentally silly concept, but that’s just my personal preferences in such things shining through. We got a good introduction for the main character (although the pig could still use a little fleshing out), a clear idea of what’s to come and a blessed absence of typos (always a welcome sign in first issues). This could go either way for me, as it may end up too cutesy for me to enjoy, but there were also a few funny bits that seemed to suggest that that might not be the case. My gut says I might not care for this after a few issues, but my gut is pretty damned stupid on a lot of things. And don’t go feeling all high and mighty because your gut is always right, because that’s nonsense. Remember that one person you dated right out of college? Remember how you were so sure about that person? Yeah, that was your gut being a moron. Ahem, I seem to have gotten off track. Sal also throws in a brief two page strip with a decent punchline, so there’s at least a little bit of variety. To sum up I mostly liked the art (that creeped out pig on the last page was fantastic), the writing was maybe too earnest for my taste (but that may be because I’m a jerk), and there seem to be intriguing places this story could go. Luckily Sal sent along the next issue too, so I won’t be left in suspense about it for much longer. And hey, neither will you! Unless this is only review you’ll ever read here, which would be odd, but I’m not the boss of you. $5
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/10/13
September 10, 2013It’s Top Shelf Tuesday again! OK fine, I forgot all about it last week. This week the review is for We Can Fix It! by Jess Fink, which is apparently part of the massive Top Shelf sale.
This means that you can get it for half price (a measly $7.50) if you buy it between now and 9/27. Do it! And buy lots of other comics, because they have all kinds of great stuff and there’s no better time to stock up.
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Posted by Kevin
Fink, Jess – We Can Fix It!
September 10, 2013
Are you one of those people who can’t let go of inconsistencies in time travel stories no matter how many times you’re told to relax about it and just enjoy the ride? Then you should probably skip this one and spend some quiet time thinking about how joyless your life has become. For the rest of us, this is a ridiculously funny/sexy/poignant story. About time travel. Jess has decided (I have no idea of the differences between fictional Jess and real life Jess so I’m going to assume that they’re exactly the same) that she should use her time travel machine to go back and give her younger self advice to avoid some of her more humiliating moments. It starts off with her warning her younger self not to make advances towards the manager at the movie theater, which leads to the two versions of Jess making out with each other. No, this is not even remotely portrayed as an odd thing. Anyway, Jess keeps going back to different versions of herself and offering advice, but her younger selves are getting increasingly fed up about being told what to do (or avoid doing) all the time and future Jess often ends up doing as much harm as good. So, seeking advice, she goes to… even more future Jess. Yes, this book is all over the place, but it’s a delight all the way through, and there’s a pretty great message of what you should actually be looking for if you do decide to use your time travel machine to go back and spy on your past selves. And when I say that it’s all over the place, I should make it perfectly clear that this is plotted as tightly as humanly possible, it’s just that there’s a finite amount of time travel that you can deal with in one story before your head starts to spin. This is one of those books that makes me want to go back and read everything else she’s ever done, as Jess clearly has this whole comics thing figured out and I’m the asshole for not hearing about her sooner. Good luck reading this without getting seriously nostalgic for both the good times in your past and the bad. Yes, the bad too, as there was plenty to learn from those moments, and some of them weren’t as bad as you remember. Read it, love it, and hope that she’s as prolific as she is talented because I can’t wait to see more from her. $14.95
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/9/13
September 9, 2013New review today for Me by Neil Fitzpatrick. So this week overtime starts up at work, and yet I think I’ll be able to get reviews up pretty much every day, just a bit later than usual. Does that make much sense? Nah. But we’ll see how it goes.
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Posted by Kevin
Fitzpatrick, Neil – Me
September 9, 2013
Me
Has the internet and social media ruined auto-bio comics, or have they just made it impossible for anybody to be completely honest in them? Please present your argument in the form of a 300 word essay… oh right, I was just asking a rhetorical question to start this review. This is Neil’s post-breakup therapy, done in the form of a comic. And no, I am not a dick for pointing that out, as he makes it pretty clear in the intro/outro. But what got me wondering about that opening question was the fact that everything he said in here was incredibly vague or general. Sure, he knows what he’s talking about, and his ex knows what he’s talking about, and some friends of both of them do too. The rest of us get to see that he got dumped by somebody who completely broke his heart, for reasons that he doesn’t think are fair, and that if he did tell everybody what she really did then her reputation would probably be ruined. Which is most likely the answer to my question right there, as he doesn’t want to ruin her life. Maybe I’m just spoiled because I read the original Peepshow strips by Joe Matt again recently, and his honesty is so relentless that it’s shocking when compared to more modern comics. Of course, that was back in the late 80’s, where the only people reading his strip were the ones who actively went out and bought Drawn & Quarterly (back when that was the name of a bimonthly (?) anthology series), and it’s not like that particular relationship of his ended well, in large part because he said too much about their relationship. I seem to have looped back around into understanding exactly why Neil did these strips without giving away any of the really sordid details. Oh, and those giant black eyeballs of his? MUCH creepier when placed on a recognizably human face. Anyway, if you’ve been involved in a breakup where you felt like you were the wronged party, you’re going to relate to plenty of these strips, and you’re going to fill in some of the details with bits of your own life where appropriate. If you’re the type of person who has only ever broken up with other people, maybe you should read this to see some of the damage you’ve done in your life, you monster you. $4
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/5/13
September 5, 2013New review today for Stranger Two Stranger #5 by Robert Hendricks. No, my new schedule is not three reviews a week. I’ve been fighting against it but more reviews just haven’t been possible lately. Of course, if that mythical billionaire who loves comics wants to pay me for doing this shit I’d have all the time to write reviews in the world. And I could also tell them the best comics to read! Make it happen, rich people!
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Posted by Kevin
Hendricks, Robert – Stranger Two Stranger #5
September 5, 2013
Stranger Two Stranger #5
You guys are already reading this series, right? This is where my hatred of/general annoyance at social media really slows me down, because all I can do is assume that you’re already reading this. If not, this is a series by Robert Hendricks where he illustrates those creepy/hopeful/soul-crushing “missed connections” messages on Craigslist, and it’s consistently a thing of beauty. Unless you stop to think about these people as actual human beings for too long, because if that happens it might make you despair for the human race a bit. Or not! Some of these tales are purely by people who had their faith in humanity restored because of an offhand comment by a stranger. Of course, other stories involve the graphic fantasies of a guy who just wants to massage the bunions on the feet of a lady before massaging her humped back in bed, but it takes all kinds. Other stories in here include the guy who bought panties for himself (but said they were for his wife), head-banging preventing a possible connection, the race that was not a race, the riddle of the egg and a half, an offer of an umbrella saving the day, the eternal question of dancing or heart attack, giving bad directions (and then hoping to get a date out of it, perfectly illustrating why these ads are such beautiful things), a phone leading to somebody thinking that their butt was grabbed, trying to get in touch with the lady who was taking pictures of dead birds, and the long cigarette. Robert also included a small book he apparently passes out at cons called Depictions, and in this case it was a list of images of children who had been convicted of crimes and their sentences in the late 1800’s. Completely unrelated, but ask him for one of these if you see him. As for Stranger Two Stranger, of course you should still be reading it. Duh! And if you aren’t already reading it, you should be. $2
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 9/3/13
September 3, 2013New review today for I Am My Own Stereotype: The My Small Diary Collection by Delaine. And I just found out that it’s a measly $5 for a pretty hefty collection of her older strips, which is one more reason why you should just buy it already.
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Posted by Kevin
Delaine – I Am My Own Stereotype: The My Small Diary Collection
September 3, 2013
I Am My Own Stereotype: The My Small Diary Collection
Believe it or not, there are still people out there who think that I must know everything about small press comics due to the sheer number of artists listed here and/or the 12 years I’ve put into this site. Granted, that was the idea at first (having one website where you could find samples of the work of any small press comics person), but as comics like this make completely clear, it was always a hopeless effort. This is a collection of strips by Delaine, who started her comic back in 1993 (when she was 23). This roughly coincides with when I started reading small press comics, she seems to have been in the same peer group as my favorites, and, somehow, I missed her entirely. The name does seem vaguely familiar, so I probably saw it on the back page of a King Cat or Naughty Bits, but I never made to next step of ordering her comics. After reading this, I clearly missed out on a lot of great stuff. This is all arranged more or less chronologically, up until 2002. Meaning that there’s a second volume coming, or that this was the extent of her regular work? There are also a dozen or so comics from various anthologies to round things out. Anyway, after all this rambling, what’s the book all about? This is a series of diary strips, mostly six panels, detailing events of Delaine’s life. Her friends, parties, concerts, boyfriends, jobs, all that stuff is thrown in here, but somehow with far less angst than most mini comics. Every time something bad happens it seems to be fixed by the next strip (although this could be mostly because she writes a comment for each strip and we already know that she ended up happy). Subjects include her very early days and the imagination she had even then (we’re talking grade school here), various sights seen at concerts and bars, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends (and what they were up to with their current girlfriends), her obsessions with Pez dispensers and Emo Phillips, drinking, employment, unemployment, and everything that goes into 10+ years of a life. If this all sounds like stuff you’ve read before in other auto-bio comics, well, there’s only so much new ground to be covered there, but that doesn’t stop this from seeming completely fresh and original. It could have something to do with her general attitude of wonder (that, happily, seems to have lasted into her 40’s), or the fact that she never lets anything really get her down. For me a big part of it was that nothing here really felt mean-spirited, even when it seemed like the subjects had it coming. This was constantly smart and funny, and good luck reading this and not coming away feeling like you missed out by not somehow being Delaine’s friend (even if that meant you would have lived in Alabama). Check this out and enjoy. $5
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/29/13
August 29, 2013New review today for A Handful of Groats by Rob Jackson. For once I actually had this written yesterday, but figured it was best to leave John Lewis’ book on top of the page for another day for obvious reasons.
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Posted by Kevin
Jackson, Rob – A Handful of Groats
August 29, 2013
A Handful of Groats
Who likes some good old fashioned mayhem involving knights, mercenaries and castles? Everybody? Excellent. This is the tale of a knight with ambiguous motives who wanders into a small town. This knight goes to the local inn and hears all about the place: it’s being fought over by three people, and their fight is breaking the townsfolk, both financially and physically. So this knight decides that the best way to make a few bucks is by turning these three people even further against each other by killing/kidnapping various members of each group. This is another case where it’s difficult to dig much into anything without giving way too much away, but whether you like your adventure tales grand or maybe not so grand you’ll find plenty to like here. Rob does a great job of plotting everything out intricately while still keeping the allegiances easy for the reader to follow. He’s also come a long way in his depictions of fight scenes, as everything flowed together smoothly from panel to panel. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s really not easy to depict fluid action in a static panel format, and he nailed it. He’s still building an impressive comics library (and he sent along two more books with this, so he’s adding to that library at an impressive pace), and there’s still plenty of stuff in here that just about anybody should at least try out. So hey, if you’re a Game of Thrones fan, but maybe think that that show is somehow not quite cynical enough, you’re in luck!
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/27/13
August 27, 2013It’s the return (for the next four or five weeks) of Top Shelf Tuesdays! New review today for March Book One by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. Yes, this is almost certainly the first time I’ve reviewed a book that’s #1 on the NYT best seller’s list. As it should be!
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Posted by Kevin
Lewis, John; Aydin, Andrew & Powell, Nate – March Book One
August 27, 2013Website (for Congressman John Lewis)
Website (for Nate Powell)
It always amazes me that I can be so wrong about a subject where I like to think I know pretty much what happened. Before I get started I should point out that this is written by Congressman John Lewis, the last surviving speaker Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington. Which you should already know by his name, but if there’s one thing this country is good at it’s forgetting its history. Anyway, I had a number of assumptions about the upbringing of John Lewis, purely based on seeing him speak here and there. For example, I assumed that his parents had been the victims of some particularly awful racism, and this at least partly led John to take his life in the direction that he did. But that wasn’t the case. While I’m sure his parents were the victims of some awful racism (pretty much every black person was when John was a kid), they were very much the types of people who were happy to keep their heads down and try to lead normal, quiet lives. I also foolishly assumed that non-violent protestors just showed up to protests with the patience of saints, but in reality members of the groups would do training sessions where they taunted each other, spit on friends and generally tried everything they could think of to get the other person to lash out. Not everybody could do it, which makes sense, as I don’t know if I’d have that kind of tolerance in me either. Oh, and the law that desegregated the schools, the decision that is considered such a landmark today? It took a good decade before any kind of justice was able to come from that decision, and it wouldn’t have come at all without people like John Lewis. John grew up on a farm and was fascinated by chickens as a kid, getting a little too attached to them (he was on a farm, after all, and things rarely end well for chickens on a farm), but he generally had a good life. His life changed when his uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, which let John see the reactions of his uncle as they drove through several states that were not safe for black people. And hey, there’s no reason to keep them a secret, if you don’t know them already: Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. Gee, what do those states have in common? Anyway, he saw how his uncle visibly relaxed when they finally got to Ohio, and when John got to Buffalo he saw things that he had never seen before, like black people living next door to white people with no problems. This set John on his path, as he knew that he wanted something more for himself than a life on the farm, and the rest of the book tells the story of his sneaking off to school when his parents wanted him to stay home to work on the farm, starting to preach, getting noticed by King and participating in sit-ins at lunch counters at stores. There’s at least one more book in this series, and it was smart of them to release it in stages like this, as even this much racism is a lot to take in all at once. John and Andrew do a ridiculously thorough and engrossing job of telling John’s story, which is something I was a little worried about with two people so new to the comics field. Really, they make it look easy. As for Nate Powell, he outdoes himself again here, and I’m thrilled that he’s finally going to get some small amount of fame and recognition for his work. It’s a fascinating story, and if you don’t know it you owe it to yourself to learn all about it. $14.95
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/26/13
August 26, 2013New review today for Driftwood City by Jason Martin, as my graphic novel reviewing binge continues.
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Posted by Kevin
Martin, Jason – Driftwood City
August 26, 2013
Driftwood City
I’d like to start this off by praising Jason for getting one little thing right that lots of people seem to forget: he puts the dates for all of his strips on their last page. As this is a collection of his favorite strips from his run on Laterborn (with a few more included from anthologies and five new strips if you’re one of the people who already has all of the original issues of that fine series), it provides some helpful context. He even gave brief synopses of where he was at in his life with each strip, so there’s plenty of new material right there for fans of the series. One question right off the bat: was Laterborn #2 so bad? I think that’s the only one that isn’t represented here, but I don’t have that issue so it’s a mystery to me. Anyway, subjects in here include Jason as a hamburger, the “peace on earth” sign that went up after 9/11 and what happened to it when we went to one of our stupid wars, a perfect moment of the Humpty Hump, his story of a teacher that actually inspired him to action in high school (it’s his favorite piece and probably mine too), his first real crush in 8th grade and his theory for why it fell apart, a Friday night in college, his method for letting people know that he was available in his dorm room, how an old teacher dealt with the grief of the death of his daughter, an awkward plea for a girlfriend from the lead singer of a band he was watching, how Dr. Mario brought his friends together, aquarium soaps, a Taco Bell on the beach, the awkward closing of a local book store, the allure of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a few more strips that I’ll leave as a total surprise, as it still makes no sense for me to ruin such things. Jason has a real knack for finding the meaning in moments, and he’s not at all shy about detailing some of the shitty things he did back in the day, as his thoughtless gay slurs from being a kid would prove. You’re bound to find at least one high school/college tale here you can relate to, and it’s more likely that you’ll find several. Give this a shot and, as I’ve been trying to make absolutely clear, it’s still very much worth it if you’re already caught up on Laterborn. $12
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 8/21/13
August 21, 2013New review today for The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States edited by Lauren Barnett & Nathan Bulmer. Great content, but that title needs some work.
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Posted by Kevin
Various Artists – The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
August 21, 2013
The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
Do you like your comics funny? Do you like some or most of the creators I listed in the tags section (right below this post, in big letters, you can’t miss them)? Then this one should be an easy call for you. There, now that I’ve made that case, I’ll go about my afternoon… wait, you want something of substance? Egh, fine. Laurent Barnett does the “Me Likes You” comics (which you should already be reading on a regular basis), and she was one of the editors, so there, that’s substantive. Strips in here include Noah Van Sciver’s fever dreams (both with and without music), funny jokes that aren’t really jokes by Bort, Martha Keavney’s tales of a pet human, Nikki Burch showing us that saying “that’s what she said” too many times will end up with you getting what you deserve, Anne Emond’s cat style, Sam Spina’s ridiculously awesome sex comic, a couple of pages of single panel jokes by Sam Henderson (which should be worth the price of admission right there), Grant Snider’s fears and feats (he had four pages of strips and I don’t want to ruin any of them), KC Green’s depressed fish, Jane Mai’s dream of male lingerie, Nathan Bulmer’s tale of ninja tricks, Julia Wertz’ attempt to get serious and Ian Anderson’s tale of a bear that’s just trying to fit in. But wait, there’s more! And you can discover it for yourself if you buy this. Unless you just have an unnatural hatred for all anthologies, which I guess I could almost understand, but it makes no sense to hate the good ones too, and this is one of the good ones. Hell, just pick three of the names of people who contributed to this, go to their websites and see what there is to see. If you don’t laugh once then I release you from your duty to buy this, but seriously, good luck with that. $10
Comments Off on Various Artists – The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States | Reviews | Tagged: Alex Schubert, Anne Emond, Bort, Box Brown, Dakota McFadzean, Dustin Harbin, Grant Snider, Ian Anderson, Jane Mai, Jeff Lok, Johnny Reed, Julia Wertz, KC Green, Lauren Barnett, Liz Reed, Madeline Flores, Mare Odomo, Martha Keavney, Matt Wiegle, Nathan Bulmer, Nathan Stapley, Nikki Burch, Noah Van Sciver, Patt Kelley, Phil McAndrew, Sam Henderson, Sam Sharpe, Sam Spina, The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor, Zac Gorman | Permalink
Posted by Kevin
