March 7, 2013
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History in Ruins #1
This comic is more a teaser than a regular first issue (unless you think that all first issues are teasers for series, which is a perfectly legitimate position to take). Things start off with a heavily acned kid working at a convenience store, coming to the end of his four hour day (he’s forced to leave early because otherwise he’ll go over 20 hours for the week). On the way out, grumbling about his work restrictions, he takes three things that he says will help him with his “home project.” He arrives home, seems a little too interested in the ass of his mother as she works in the garden, and heads downstairs. So yes, you will have to wait another issue to see what the story is behind those ingredients. Or the ass. The comic is certainly a lot more, well, accessible (for lack of a better word) than some past comics I’ve seen by either of these guys. We’ll see whether or not that ends up being a good thing, but it’s off to a damned intriguing start. They were also nice enough to send along the second issue, so I’ll get a better idea of what’s going on here when I review it in a week or so.
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Posted by Kevin
March 5, 2013
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Stranger Two Stranger #4
I keep thinking that Robert is going to run out of material for these comics, or at least that the whole thing is going to start to feel repetitive. Nope, that is not the case, or at least not yet (keep pessimism alive!). This issue has probably the most eclectic mix of the bunch, and I defy you not to either laugh out loud or shake your head at least a few times in rueful amazement. I don’t even want to summarize these stories, as they’re that damned good, but I will offer up tantalizing hints. There’s the poem, the picture and the lack of moral standing as to what happens with it, the end of Craigslist, advice for a new neighbor, the lady behind the plate at the baseball game, how a day can be brightened, when it’s maybe not appropriate to hit on someone in a grocery store, wordplay, the unfortunate side effect of riding a bicycle, responsibility, how did that get there, and a couple of very awkward ways to meet somebody. There, go pick up a copy of this, read it, then come back to the review and see if it makes more sense. Everybody out there has at least one story of The One Who Got Away, or The One I Didn’t Have The Guts To Talk To, or something to that effect. Compare your stories with the ones in here and you’re sure to come out feeling OK about the whole thing. $2
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Posted by Kevin
March 4, 2013
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Adult Babysitting #1
First things first: that is the perfect title for a comic about MarYanna (I’m just going by the spelling of her first name on the cover) and her adventures in bartending. She’s also making badges, and it would be lovely to see bartenders from all over the place start wearing them. Anyway! This is her first comic, which either means that she’s been working on it for ten years or she’s professionally trained, as it’s a gorgeous book in every way. There are four two page color spreads in the center of the book depicting the four seasons and the changing bar crowds that come with each, and they are a thing of beauty. The rest of the book details various conversations/interactions she’s had with drunken and not-so-drunken customers while tending bar over the years and a few drink recipes (although it’s hard to call a beer and a shot a “recipe”). There are a few of the lessons she’s learned along the way, the necessity of assigning nicknames to regulars, how drunk customers are never right, the older rocker lady and her unique bathroom habits, names she’s been called while bartending, an older infrequent customer and his amorous intentions (that’s putting it so much more nicely than just about any other way to describe that scene), a very busy night and the fantastic punchline to it, and the story of a camouflage shrubbery that arrives too late. It’s a hell of a book, and my only complaint is one of omission. She sent a nice letter along with it and she has maybe the best cursive handwriting I’ve ever seen. Granted, comic book convention says that you have to letter your books in more easily legible print, but maybe she could be a trendsetter to start to turn that around. Pick it up, give it a chance, you won’t be disappointed. Unless you’re one of those people who hates booze and everybody associated with it, in which case, other than my general bafflement at your existence, you’ll probably like this one quite a bit too, as it’s not like the drunks are usually the heroes of their stories.
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Posted by Kevin
March 1, 2013
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An Army of Lovers Will Be Beaten Volume Two
Color! If only it was possible to use it in more small press books. Bernie makes good use of it this time around, and things slip more into dreams in this second book. We get to see a lot more of Lichi (the villain of the story? I’m starting to think that nothing in here is as simple as all that), a dream conversation that Buckeley has with his dead children that will break your heart, a bar battle between Lichi and an outmatched dog (that turns into a battle between the dog and an even more outmatched dog), Buckeley’s old house and the current inhabitant, Lichi trying to prod a sentient mountain into assisting him in his vendetta against Buckeley, Lichi interacting in a dream with his younger self, the cows mourning the parts of themselves that never gets used and shines on the hills, and the return of the llama from the first issue and his desperate search for tits. I guess if you wanted to nitpick you could say that not much changed on the real world end of things, but this book was perfect in really fleshing out everybody involved in all of this. Except maybe for Skunk and Beverly, but we did get to see a bit from the early years and I’m sure there’s still plenty more to come on those two. Colors were rarely used, granted, but when they were used I couldn’t picture it being done any other way. The llama in all his battle gear glory, a quiet moment with the stars, seeing Lichi through the eyes of a family that he’s killing, everything was damned near perfect. I don’t want to jinx the guy by saying that this might end up being one of those rare comic series that we end up showing our friends to prove that it is too a real artistic medium, but it sure has that potential. It’s bizarre while making total sense and riveting even though so much is still to be uncovered. I can only hope that his financial support holds out and he’s able to finish this as he wants to, and hey, your buying copies of these two volumes sure wouldn’t hurt. $10
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Posted by Kevin
February 27, 2013
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An Army of Lovers Will Be Beaten Volume One
I reviewed the first issue of this series years ago, and Bernie was recently nice enough to send me the first two collected editions, making up the first six issues of the comic (that’s assuming he’s even putting them out in single issues any more, as he may have decided to just put out the collected editions for financial reasons). In my first review I mentioned that it’s projected to be 12 issues, which may or may not still be true, but these two books should give a solid impression of the series regardless. Right away I have to warn you: if that title strikes you as whimsical, that you might get a lot of chuckles out of a series with that title, that will not be the case. Unless you’re a remarkably morbid human being, I guess. Things start off with our hero Buckeley trying to get some distance from the war he’s fighting. The journey is told in grim but exacting detail, and we see him immediately being sickened by the town he’s arrived in. Bernie didn’t skimp on the level of detail at all here, as even the individual people in the crowd scenes are distinctly individual people (unlike lots of people who draw a few faces in the crowd and leave the rest of it an indistinct mess). Buckeley eventually makes his way to what he thinks is a peaceful place, only to discover that bombs are landing in his resting area. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as this series should be read by any person with an interest in the quiet moments of a pointless war, but from there we get to meet some of the nastier (and nicer, and sadder) inhabitants of this town, Buckeley’s wife (and what she is now doing for a living, not to mention who she’s living with), and various other residents of this town. The third issue is set entirely in a bar (outside of a few flashbacks) and it’s absolutely riveting. We get to see how this war affects people and creatures from a few different walks of life, including the reason why everybody thinks Buckeley is a war hero (and the real story behind the heroism). The details of this universe are laid out bit by bit, with plenty of things still left to be uncovered. I apparently wasn’t fully convinced just from reading the first issue of this series, but reading the first three issues in this collection washes those doubts away. The quiet, deliberate nature of the revelations draws you right in and keeps you there, and I think I’m going to break my unwritten rule about not posting reviews about the same person on consecutive days and will read and review the second book tomorrow. So for long time readers, that should give you a better indication of how much I liked the first book than anything I could say here. $10
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Posted by Kevin
February 21, 2013
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Website where you can buy Lutefisk Sushi E
Tits! The Spiny Northern Maid
Ah, mermaids. Disney ruined how monstrous those creatures could be years ago, but Caitlin is doing her part to right that wrong. Not that’s she portraying mermaids as monstrous necessarily, but I’m getting ahead of myself. The idea behind this book is that a mermaid has been captured and has been held for the last 20 years (mermaids live for hundreds of years, so this isn’t considered to be all that long). There are five other types of mermaids, but the rest of them have been hunted to extinction over the years and most of them don’t look all that human anyway. We learn all this through a class that’s being taught by a woman, and the mermaid falls for this woman right away. While she’s dreaming about this woman later on strange things start happening outside and the playing field is leveled a bit for this captive mermaid. I can’t say much more without ruining things, but this book was nicely done all around, from the behavior of the captive mermaid to the guy feeding her calling her “tits” because yeah, it would probably be that crude. I must be getting close to reading half of this Lutefisk Sushi E collection by now, and the vast majority of them have been well worth reading.
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Posted by Kevin
February 21, 2013
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Website where you can buy Lutefisk Sushi E
In Between
OK, this is a really clever comic. It’s another one from the Lutefisk Sushi E box, and as such it’s damned short, but it didn’t need to be long to make its point. You know all of those stories involving some lone hero on a quest of some sort, how all we usually get to see is a straight line from A to B? This line can be long (like the Lord of the Rings trilogy), but it’s still going clearly from A to B. This comic takes the hero from one of those quests and shows what happens when he goes off track a little bit. He’s still completely self-assured, but his asking a question about “the one I am looking for” to a random stranger makes him seem a little crazy, as it so obviously would. There may or may not be a larger story attached to this and, oddly, for once I don’t care. This is a perfect little moment all by itself, and another fine example of the kind of comic that fits perfectly into a large grab bag of mini comics like this.
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Posted by Kevin
February 20, 2013
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Morbid Dork #1
Note to all reviewers: it doesn’t hurt a thing if you include an illustrated letter with your comic explaining your reasoning for sending me your comic. It doesn’t technically help either, as I do try to review everything that comes to me eventually (and if I haven’t reviewed your book it’s because it’s at the bottom of a pile of comics that I think have already been reviewed, or it fell behind my desk, or it might have never gotten to me at all). This comic is mostly about three college kids who are living together, but this is almost certainly not the comic that you’re expecting from that description. We see right away that these people don’t like each other all that much, and to simplify things they’re called “Asshole,” “Pussy” and “Psycho” respectively. We see the psycho in his day job working at a grocery store (he seems to like stabbing people in the face, and he likes mentioning this fact to everybody he meets), the two “evil” roommates thriving on the misery of others, a discussion on the merits of having a kid (including a nice slow mellowing to that fact by the psycho (Coop), which is tempered by the reality of the situation a bit), and the first meeting between Coop and Jamie (the asshole). Odd that Jamie seems to have grown limbs and a body since those early days, but hey, it’s good to include it for the sake of the longer story. Alex has some odd usages of space in here, as the story about the possibility of having a child has vast open spaces in the middle of the pages and a couple of stories just generally peter out, but overall it’s a damned funny comic with nary a spelling/grammatical error to be found. Both good things in my book! Alex sent along a few other books and I’ll be getting to those in the coming weeks to get a better idea of what this dude is capable of, but so far so good. $3
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Posted by Kevin
February 19, 2013
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California #1
Spoiler alert: we never get to see California. This one starts off a lot like “The Grapes of Wrath,” with a family losing their farm and heading out to California in search of better times. They get into an accident on the way (well, an accident on their part; the truck that runs them off the road doesn’t seem to care about them one way or the other), the dad hurts his ankle and is unable to work, and one of the sons ends up taking a job to pay for repairs. While this is going on another one of the sons has taken to wandering off constantly, into the creepy local woods, and generally seems to have trouble concentrating or helping the family. This daydreaming son (Jake) somehow gains the ability to heal people, so he heals his dad and convinces the family to keep on going to California, leaving the other son (Billy) behind so that he can keep paying off their debt. Jake gets noticed by some religious folks in California, the family earns enough money to pay off their debt and get Billy back, and I’m on the verge of describing the whole book to you. We do start to see some very brief hints of what might be happening in that creepy forest, learn about the very human problem that also exists in those woods, and generally have things nicely set up for the next issue. Out of how many issues? Who knows, but Rob has proven in the past that he’s more than capable of juggling a few different series at once. Worth a look, and Rob has already made enough interesting/ridiculous/fantastic series that I’m on board with whatever he wants to try. And yes, I’ll be here to point it out if the whole thing goes off the rails…
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Posted by Kevin
February 15, 2013
Website where you can buy Lutefisk Sushi E
Hide & Sheik
Here’s an odd technical question: does somebody share the billing for producing a comic when they came up with the concept but didn’t do any actual work on the book? Matt is more than willing to share the credit here, both on the cover and in the bios on the front cover, but I would think that you’d have to contribute something to the making of a book besides offering an idea to officially get credit. But hey, they’re listed together, so they both get listed here together. None of that should take away from what is a delightful story, and yes, that punny title plays a big role in things. The comic starts off with two warring nations finally making peace, with the leader of Pachypersepolis (yes, a land of elephants) and the sheik pictured on the cover sharing a moment to commemorate the occasion. The leader of the elephants shows him their prized “Founding Nut,” explains the penalty for anybody who messes with said nut, and continues on their tour. The sheik, however, is a little alarmed with what he’s just heard and spends an extra minute in the room, which is when a squirrel comes down from the ceiling, Mission Impossible style, and steals the nut. The leader comes back into the room, the sheik is dumb enough to be eating some other crunchy form of food when he tries to tell the elephant about the squirrel, and the chase is on. It has a pretty great ending and there’s the promise that it’s going to be continued somewhere else, so I’m curious to see how that goes. Another good reason to buy Lutefisk Sushi E! Oh, and I also am not at all sure if I got the spelling for Lindsay’s name right from that cover, so somebody should feel free to correct me.
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Posted by Kevin
February 15, 2013
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Website where you can buy Lutefisk Sushi E
Kick Flip
If you just look at these comics in Lutefisk Sushi E as samples for bigger works from the individual artists, this comic worked great. It’s a fairly simple story about an animal that digs up a grave and is captivated by the skateboard that it finds (without knowing what a skateboard is). It’s mostly just this creature doing tricks, with some shenanigans at the end that I won’t spoil, because what’s the point of spoiling a nine page comic? The intriguing parts are that the creature doing the digging looks like a doe with one of those pod coffee makers strapped to its head, and the other creature that comes into the picture later looks vaguely like a black gargoyle. All this caused me to check out her website to see what else she’s done, while I probably wouldn’t have done that if this was just a comic about some dude doing skateboard tricks, so mission accomplished! Oh, and it turns out that she’s done plenty of comics and has something much bigger coming out early this year, and the art in this mini was fantastic, so maybe keep an eye on her, why don’t you?
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Posted by Kevin
February 15, 2013
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Prologues
What a great idea for a comic. Mark, you see, has a much longer story he’s working on called “Kill the Wizard” (so you can get a sense of the genre he’s working on, just in case this cover didn’t give it away), but he wanted to practice on the characters and backgrounds a bit before he really got rolling. So he did a prologue story for three of the characters that are going to be involved in the big story, turning it into a mini comic. Not that Mark is the first guy in the world to do a prologue to a planned longer story, but this comic shows that he already has a pretty good handle on these characters (on their appearances at least; as I have no idea where his big story is going to go I have no way to know about the big picture). The stories in here include a snake trying to sneak up on a gnome, a demon worshipper who succeeds in bringing a demon into the world, and a veteran returning from some undefined battles to an indifferent king. Each of these pieces does a great job of setting all this up, as we see exactly what the gnome is capable of right away, the demon has something that he is obviously looking for, and the jaded veteran has an obvious connection to it. Oh, and did I mention that this whole comic is silent? I don’t know how that would play out over the course of a graphic novel, but it’s perfect for this. The art looks great too, so there’s no reason in the world Mark can’t get going on that bigger story right away. I do have one small complaint, and it’s a nitpick: the creature (and what an odd creature it is!) that gets stabbed by the veteran in the third story? In one panel the veteran is stabbing upwards into its neck, and in the next panel the sword is sticking out of its neck pointing downwards. Don’t forget to pay attention to detail while crafting your epic!
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Posted by Kevin
