New review for Sunnyville Stories #3 by Max West. Say, I’m just now starting to get a bit low on review comics, just on the off-chance that you’re reading this and have a new book coming out that you’d like to send my way…
Update for 11/7/11
November 7, 2011
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Posted by Kevin
West, Max – Sunnyville Stories #3
November 7, 2011
Sunnyville Stories #3
I was optimistic about the last issue, and there still isn’t much technically wrong with this issue, but I’m starting to get the idea that it just isn’t for me. First of all, the words are all spelled correctly and the perspective looks fine, which automatically puts it above roughly half of the comics I see. Max even has a few interesting shots, like the two visible upraised arms of a man who’s coming up over a hill. My trouble is that I’m too jaded for something this relentlessly all-ages. If you’re looking for a comic that’s safe for your kids, yeah, this one is pretty good. And possibly even parents too, I don’t know. This will probably make more sense if I summarize the plot. There are a few kids who are playing too loudly for their mother, so she sends them away to play. They run into more kids, who hatch their own plans. Meanwhile there’s an outlaw group on the loose who steal the detergent that the original mother was waiting for. The law gets involved, the kids dispatch the villains in some Home Alone-esque shenanigans, and all ends up being right with the world. Sorry if that comes across as revealing too much, but once you see “all-ages” you can pretty much count on “everything works out in the end.” Eh, maybe I’m just too damned cynical to be reviewing these things. The trouble is that there are still all-ages book like Nick Abadzis’ Amazing Mr. Pleebus series that I can see clearly as a good kid/parent reading experience, so my heart hasn’t become completely jaded yet. So that’s one more or less negative vote for this issue and one more or less positive note for the last one. Still one issue to go, which becomes the tiebreaker. The art has improved in this issue and Max clearly has big plans, which is what’s important in all of this, not one some guy with a website thinks. If even one creative person lets my reviews derail their planned comic career, I will find them and smack them on the back of the head. Just sayin’. $4
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 11/4/11
November 4, 2011New review for Jerkface Comics #1 by Zack! Empire. Happy weekend everybody!
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Posted by Kevin
Zack! Empire – Jerkface Comics #1
November 4, 2011
Jerkface Comics #1
That does it. Center for Cartoon Studies, I beseech you: if you don’t already offer a course on basic spelling and grammar, please start one up. Pretty please? At the very least make sure that it isn’t lost on your students that their comics can be the most visually pleasing things in the world, but if there’s a spelling or grammatical error on every page then it’s not going to make a bit of difference. Of course, I have no idea if Zack ever attended that school, so it’s probably a moot point, but holy Christ am I sick of reading comics by people who have no idea when to use “your” or “you’re” and seem to get tripped up on every word longer than six or seven letters. I am aware of the fact that this is my own personal crusade, so I’ll stop talking about it already. What about the comic itself? Well, I think Zack is a fairly young guy, so there’s all kinds of potential here. And he seems be be keeping a steady schedule of releasing comics, which is always a promising sign. The main problem is that there are three big stories in here and two of them are about how he usually can’t be bothered to make comics, which isn’t a great sign for his second book. The introduction page (where Jerkface battles with the words in the panels when they get a little too mean) was hilarious, and I also enjoyed the second big story about Jerkface and a friend dealing with an asshole. And it’s not like the stories about his lack of motivation were worthless, as that’s a pretty common staple of the auto-bio genre. The first one dealt with the problem in more general terms (he keeps getting distracted by thoughts of various lady parts), while the second story on this topic dealt with his inability to stick to a to-do list. There were funny bits in both stories, but a limit of one per comic might be a good idea in the future. And some of that dialogue was awkward as hell (saying it out loud and hearing how it sounds can help). Still, a fair amount of funny bits, and the back cover showing the things that weren’t in this issue was also nicely done. A mixed bag, in other words, but promising. Provided that you’re not as stuck on the spelling errors as me, that is, but that kind of thing should improve over time. Right? $3
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 11/3/11
November 3, 2011New review (ish) today for Foie Gras #3 by Edie Fake. Anybody out there know any secret way to get old PC games to play on a new PC? I have some games that I hate to get rid of but it’s just no longer possible to play them. Come on, there has to be enough geek crossover on the comics/PC front for somebody to know something…
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Posted by Kevin
Fake, Edie – Foie Grass #3
November 3, 2011
Foie Gras #3
Do you like random images of different types of foodstuffs being prepared that are accompanied by a strange but compelling poem? Then you have found your comic. My general impression of both issues of this series that I’ve read so far is that they’ve both left me with memorable images and phrases juxtaposed together, but not much of the experience as a whole. I have no idea if that’s a recommendation, but that was my overall impression. This series is damned near impossible to review in any conventional sense, which is why I’ve stuck with my tried and true “ramble until the review is over” method. The images don’t follow a linear order like they would if you were making a recipe, although the words do end up making a point of sorts. Kind of. Fuck, I don’t know. Look, it’s a gorgeous book (that cover jumps right out at you) that mostly flew over my head, assuming that there was a larger point that I just missed. It’s also possible that the lack of a point WAS the point, in which case I’m a genius, but I have my doubts on that one. Still no price, still no clue about a price, so this time I’ll go with $4 as my random guess.
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 11/2/11
November 2, 2011New review for Three #2, which is an anthology edited by Robert Kirby and containing six other artists. Sorry about the missed update yesterday, I was going through everything I own and seeing what still has any value.
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Posted by Kevin
Kirby, Robert (editor) – Three #2
November 2, 2011
Three #2
Are there any homophobes who read small press comics? I’d like to think that the level of open-mindedness needed to read and support small press stuff would weed out those assholes, but just in case there are, I’d like to scare them off: there’s gay stuff in here! There, that should have scared them off, now the adults can talk. This is the second issue of what has been (so far) a damned good anthology with three stories each. All that color doesn’t hurt anything, but it also wouldn’t help anything if the stories were lousy. First up is a piece by Sina Evil and Jon Macy detailing a slightly awkward but also magical night in New York between cartoonists. Our hero the narrator has never been penetrated before, but things are going so well that he has to give it a try, caution be damned. It’s a great story about not being able to properly read the signals and knowing when to hold onto something and when to let it go. Next up is the story by Jennifer Camper and Michael Fahy, and this one gets a little tricky. Our hero meets the man of his dreams, but this man was recently a woman and he still hasn’t had the full surgery to complete the change. Then our hero’s sister comes to town and it turns out that she played a role in the past of her brother’s lover. There’s also a pregnancy in there somewhere but I’m not going to say where. Finally there’s the story by Craig Bostick and Michael Kelly which varies back and forth (with the color coding telling you which is which) between a traveling musician and a male prostitute that the musician falls for. Sort of. Also with violence! Each story is wildly different from the rest, but they all go back to relationships at some level. Sounds like a good recipe for a successful anthology to me. Oh, and if the people who sent me this review copy are wondering, the reason this one took so long for me to review had nothing to do with my usual losing/misplacing of the comic, and was instead due to the fact that this comic was making the rounds among my friends and I couldn’t get it back. So sorry about the lack of a timely review, but it was for a good cause. $6.25
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/31/11
October 31, 2011New review today for Broke by Eric Pugh. Happy Halloween everybody! Oh, and if you weren’t around this weekend, the fundraiser ended on a high note, the website is going to be up and running for another year, and all is well with the world.
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Posted by Kevin
Pugh, Eric – Broke
October 31, 2011
Broke
A typo on the first page? Look, I bitch about poor spelling a lot when it’s called for, which to me is whenever somebody has over three or four misspelled words (the number varies depending on the size of the mini, but you get the idea). The reason is simple: it’s never been easier to check a word to see if you spelled it correctly. Back in olden times, if you were writing a comic that you were then going to distribute through your mailing list, fine, maybe you didn’t have time to trek across town and find a smart person to help you out. Now, though, if you have a question, type the word into Google. If you’re not sure about a word (when to use “where” instead of “were”), there are also sites that can help you out with that. It just never ceases to blow my mind that somebody can spend hours drawing a page, making sure that it’s just right to convey their message, and they then blow through the dialogue as quickly as possible. This isn’t meant to pick on Eric specifically, as he’s far from alone in this category, but it’s just so damned easy to check for the right word. OK, now that I’ve shat all over this book, this is the part where I point out that I didn’t hate it. This comic is about a woman who investigates insurance claims and makes her living selling “insurance investigator insurance” to the people that she’s investigating. She’s in a world of hurt financially, so she takes a bat to her car to try and get some insurance money for it. She is suspected of foul play, naturally, which leads to a confrontation with that bat and her own insurance investigator, then some crazy shit happens and the comics stops making sense. But hey, it was a fun ride up to that point. Eric has a genuinely unique perspective on character positioning and what he wants to highlight in any given frame. Sometimes these choices seemed to interfere with the story, but considering how it all ended that wasn’t as big of a deal as I first thought. It’s intriguing as a whole and I think there’s enough good to outweigh the bad. It’s $9, mostly because it’s a graphic novel. Didn’t I mention that?
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/29/11
October 29, 2011New reviews today for Battlefield #1 by John Yeo Jr. & Dru Daily and Ole by Luis Echavarria. For those of you who were waiting for the final score, you’ll be happy to know that I passed my fundraising goal and all is well with the world. Thanks to everybody who helped, especially the international contingent that helped push things over the edge at the end. To the rest of you freeloaders/people who are too poor to buy comics at the moment, I do sell comics all year round, so there’s that.
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Posted by Kevin
Echavarria, Luis – Ole
October 29, 2011
Ole
Bullfighting! If you have an opinion about this “sport” and that opinion is not “barbaric, cruel and utterly lacking in any kind of a spirit of fair play” then we probably wouldn’t get along. I’m all for some cultural touchstones not being messed with by the modern world, and you may be too, in which case you probably don’t know how bullfighting works. See, it’s not just some guy with a sword who goes out there and takes on a bull. That I could get behind, as who am I to say how some dope kills himself? He could even more or less cover himself in glory for the rest of his short life. No, bullfighting starts off with a few people using sharp sticks to bleed the bull for a period of time before the bullfighter comes out. Once the bull is weak from lack of blood and starting to stagger, out comes the conquering hero! It’s still dangerous, granted, and it does my heart good to see a bull occasionally get a good shot in, but the game is rigged. Anyway, enough about bullfighting, what about the comic? This starts off towards the end of a bullfight, with the matador about to deliver the finishing blow. The trouble comes when that blow doesn’t finish off the bull. So they try more methods, increasingly vicious, until they manage to chop the bull’s head off. And that’s when it starts to get weird. My policy against spoilers prevents me from saying much more, but I will say that I loved where it went from there. Combine that statement with my earlier opinions of bullfighting in general and you may get some idea of what happened. Buy it, love it, give this guy some money already. He’s three for three in his minis that I’ve read so far, with more still to come. No price, so… $2.50?
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Posted by Kevin
Yeo Jr., John & Daily, Dru – Battlefield #1
October 29, 2011My scanner isn’t cooperating again and I can’t get a sample image of the cover small enough to post it here, so my apologies. Is it rude to say that it was a bit of a mess of a cover anyway? Yes, that almost certainly qualifies as rude. Check out their website and you can see a smaller version of it for yourself, but in case you were curious it depicts a battle between the eight characters who are involved in this tournament. Battlefield pits eight people (or creatures, as a centaur and a gorgon are also participating) against each other for the chance to win riches and fame. For the other seven competitors, it’s looking like death. The creators were nice enough to show pictures of all eight characters right at the beginning, but it would have helped tremendously to have short bios of all of them as well to try and get a sense of their motivations and/or what they are. When a character gets killed towards the end I had to pop back to those pictures to try and figure out which one it was, which is not a good sign. This is the first issue of a projected five issue mini series, and it deals with the competitors arriving on the tournament island, fighting off a giant monster (their first test), trying to get some food after not being fed for three days, and the other test where the one character gets killed. Anybody who has lasted this long into the review is probably sure of my opinion by now, but you may be surprised to learn that I kind of liked it despite its flaws. There were boobs everywhere, but they were awkward comic boobs, so it wasn’t that. It may be just that I’m a sucker for a tournament like this, or it may be the fact that I think there’s serious room for improvement here that might actually happen. If you don’t like mostly mythical characters and creatures fighting amongst themselves, it’s safe to say that you can move along. If you have a touch of dork in you and if you can overlook a few flaws, this is worth a shot. They also sent along the second issue of this series and I’m looking forward to it, which I wasn’t sure would be the case when I was about halfway through this. After that one we’ll see where my optimism meter is at… $4
Battlefield #1
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/28/11
October 28, 2011New review today for Watermelon by Whit Taylor. One day left on the fundraiser, still $25 left to go. I’ll do a double review tomorrow to try and rattle the trees one more time for a few more bucks, but at this point I’m coming around to the idea that at least I got close to my goal. There’s still time for me to be pleasantly surprised…
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Posted by Kevin
Taylor, Whit – Watermelon
October 28, 2011
Watermelon
Full disclosure time, for anybody who wonders about this “Whitey” guy who writes all the reviews: I’d had the nickname for probably four years before I had the slightest idea that there was any racial association with it at all. My hair in high school was damned near translucent, you see, so “white haired kid” got shortened down to “Whitey,” and here I am, currently in the awkward mid-30’s phase of the nickname, greatly looking forward to having my hair eventually turn white so maybe the nickname will start to make sense again. And as for why I keep the nickname, have you ever tried to disassociate yourself from a nickname that you’ve been given? Good luck with that. Just felt compelled to throw that out there, seeing as how the subtitle for this book is “and other things that make me uncomfortable as a black person” and knowing that some people were likely to experience some small brain explosions. So how about the actual comic? This is a great peek into the mind of Whit, obviously, but it’s probably an even better primer for people who probably don’t know when they’re being racist. There’s the cover story where she wonders how watermelon got started as a racist stereotype (and her grandma’s theory of “because slave owners wouldn’t give slaves utensils and watermelon was easy to eat” is probably close to the truth), what she does on the beach due to her “natural tan,” the dreaded n-word (who can use it, where it came from, and an unfortunate nickname for another black person in their neighborhood, “Reggin”), the south in general and New Orleans in particular, spending time at the beauty parlor listening to conversations and getting her hair done, black actors and tv shows, studying abroad in Australia and seeing the completely foreign attitudes towards race, black history month and WTF is Kwanzaa? She has an engaging, self-effacing style that makes you love the book more as you go, and I’d be shocked if you didn’t come away from this book having learned something, no matter what color you are. I wish she’d take a bit more time with her handwriting in certain panels, as it’s clear that she’s occasionally rushing it, but kids these days back in my time we walked to school in the rain etc. etc. Still, it’s a hefty piece of work that manages to take a fairly serious subject and make it funny, which is no easy thing. No price, but I’m going to spin the random price wheel… $6!
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/27/11
October 27, 2011New review today for Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini Comic Science Edition. I was going to do two reviews today for the fundraiser, but typing that title out three times exhausted me. Speaking of that, I’m down to two days left to raise $25. I’ve pretty much decided that that’s close enough to renew the website for a year (spoiler alert!), but if I could get that $25 I could also pay my bills on time this month. Not quite as dramatic, I realize that, but I’m also not going to close the website down in a huff if I end up short of my goal.
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Posted by Kevin
Karnes, John – Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini-Comic Science Edition
October 27, 2011
Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini-Comic Science Edition
That is one awful title. Which is a shame, as it had that fantastic Marvel Universe homage cover, and the inside is pretty damned good too (mostly), but title needs an editor. The only real problem I had with the interior was the repeated uses of footnotes which, while informative and occasionally funny, crapped all over the flow of the book. Luckily John mostly quit using them about halfway through, leaving us with a regular old comic book about robots on the moon. Why? “…that’s all robots do. They attack us and break our stuff!” That right there is more than enough to sell me on some robot mayhem. From here there isn’t a thing complain about. One of the characters is a sequentialist (somebody who is convinced that they’re in a comic), but John did a great job keeping that from getting overbearing. The robot fights themselves were fantastic, up to and including some later stuff that I’m not going to talk about to avoid spoilers. There are also a few pages detailing the scientific basis for some of the weapons, which were close enough to seem plausible to me. There was also an entry for space serpents at the end, further mimicking the Marvel Universe idea, and it was perfectly done. Most of the dialogue is witty, which can come as a shock considering the material (robots on the moon!), but I’m somebody who is always happy to be pleasantly surprised by a comic. Now if he can only work on the titles he’ll be in pretty good shape. $1
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/26/11
October 26, 2011New review for Eye of the Majestic Creature #5 by Leslie Stein. For those of you who are into dramatic last minute rescues, there are three days left for me to make that last $25 in my fundraiser to keep the website going for another year. Buy any two graphic novels in my store and you’re bound to get to $25 or so. Who doesn’t want two new graphic novels?
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Posted by Kevin
Stein, Leslie – Eye of the Majestic Creature #5: Sister Carrie
October 26, 2011
Eye of the Majestic Creature: Sister Carrie
See, sometimes the world in general works the way that it should. I just finished reading this issue, so it was off to the internets to check on her website and make sure the address was still valid. I was thinking after finishing it that it was damned near criminal that Leslie wasn’t published by any of the “big” independent companies, and there it was: a collection from Fantagraphics containing her first four issues. Such immediate representations of there being some justice in this world are always welcome. I missed a few issues of this series so I’m not fully clear on what came before (looks like I need to get my hands on that collection), but this issue is combined with text from “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser, which was a novel from 1900 detailing the adventures of a young woman making her way to the big city on her own. The small text blurbs blend seamlessly into the story of Larry (the Leslie-ish (?) main character) as she goes about her daily life of working at a clothes shop with no customers and a boss that she only talks to on the phone. There are also her anthropomorphic household objects, all of which are bored crazy while she’s away at work. Some small press people take a year to make a comic for a variety of reasons (sometimes good and sometimes just due to sheer laziness), but Leslie takes that year to make the damned comic. This is 44 or so pages with nine panels per page, with damned near each panel ridiculously detailed. Along the way Larry picks up the habit of the long-lost art of counting sand from a museum exhibit, goes to bars alone, finds a giant cockroach in her shoe and tries to make “life” a little easier for her depressed household objects/friends. And for a good chunk of the comic there are brief blurbs of text from that Dreiser novel that work perfectly with the story. I’m consistently behind the times on these things, but if there are any people out there who also always miss out on the good stuff, buy that collection from Fantagraphics from her, then come back and buy this comic. Or just buy them all in a clump, whatever works. $4
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Posted by Kevin
Update for 10/25/11
October 25, 2011Sorry about the missed reviews AGAIN, the internet has been all kinds of spotty around here. New reviews today for Window #12 by Dave Lapp and Light Riot Departure by Rio Aubry Taylor to make up for lost time a bit. That means that the fundraiser is down to four days remaining with $25 left to go. So close, but it still feels like a long way to go to me. Go pessimism!
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Posted by Kevin
