Jones, Toby – Memory Foam II

September 25, 2010

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Memory Foam II

Huzzah for Roman numerals!  Here’s hoping Toby sticks with it long enough to get to the Roman numerals that confuse people, as why not bring that back?  A little bit of history never hurt anybody.  That page I sampled below hit home with me, and probably with most of you if you stop to think about it: motorcycles.  While all people who ride them are clearly not assholes, it does seem to attract some of the scum of the earth.  For example, there’s some asshole who drives down my busy street every morning between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m., revving his damned engine at the stop light and most likely waking everybody up who doesn’t have some form of a white noise machine going.  If I could string up piano wire across the road and be guaranteed to just take out him or her, I believe the world would instantly be a better place.  Toby does me one better in his story by “inventing” a device that makes all motorcycles self-destruct once their noise output gets over a certain level.  His comic self was gripped with remorse, but the headlines on the newspaper the next day were priceless: “Countless Jerks Dead:”, “World Better Place”, and “God: ‘Great Job Toby'””.  As with many things, I thought South Park handled motorcycle riders best, and seeing as how they have every episode up at their website for free, you can see for yourself if you’re so inclined.  If you’re going to defend the assholes that rev their motors at every stop light, I’m sorry, but you just don’t have a case.  As for the rest of the comic, it was a pile of great stuff.  There’s Toby wondering what’s going to happen to him in the long run, getting a job at a donut factory (and yes, it’s about as bad as it sounds), trying to make time for all his creative endeavours, standing on principle and not eating a piece of stuffed crust pizza (I agree with his crying girlfriend on that one), phrases he’d love to never hear again, dreaming all day, reading online reviews about himself, not saying “you too” when people say “have a nice day”, and how his younger self would view his older self.  For what it’s worth the guy worries too much, as he clearly has a boatload of talent, seems to have a fantastic girlfriend and, despite being broke, has enough free time to work on things like this comic, and he’s only 22.  The pessimist would say it’s all downhill from there, the optimist would say things are only going to get better, but screw it, enjoy what you have now.  And that is my philosophical thought for the day, the first of a one-part series… $3


Update for 9/24/10

September 24, 2010

New review for Spaz! #3 by Emi Gennis and, as I seem to be getting a ton of comics lately, I will be around this weekend doing reviews.  I have an idea for that still-working-on-it comics rental project that would involve me doing it by myself.  It wouldn’t be pretty, as I have no skills for this sort of thing, but it would be functional and waiting for web help is clearly getting me nowhere.  Would anybody out there be overly offended if the rental service took a bare minimum of work on your end (like cutting and pasting a pile of titles of comics you’d like to receive instead of clicking and having them automatically added to a list) or would you prefer to wait until that mythical day when it’s all done perfectly by a gifted web designer?  This isn’t rhetorical, I’m asking for opinions here…


Gennis, Emi – Spaz! #3

September 24, 2010

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Spaz! #3

Leaky ceiling?  That’s my guess.  Oh hello, you have no idea what I’m talking about if you haven’t read this issue of Spaz.  See, Emi woke up one morning with the top of the blanket wet but the underside dry.  So peeing the bed was clearly out as an option.  Still, she’s left utterly clueless as to what happened.  As her reaction shot upon waking up appears to indicate heavy alcohol consumption, might I suggest something from the previous night as another possibility?  Maybe a spilled drink while the blanket was pulled back, which would leave the underside dry when she drunkenly pulled the cover over her?  Maybe a cat protest of some kind?  If alcohol or a cat are not involved, I’m all out of ideas.  And as for the guy who woke up to a locked safe being open, on its side and full of water, that is very clearly a prank by somebody else who knew the combination. How many other people could there be?  Unless huge amounts of alcohol were involved there too…  Sorry, I’m neglecting a proper review of the comic because this mystery has me fascinated.  I think ghosts are utter horseshit, so there must be some logical explanation, but I don’t get it from the facts given.  So what’s this comic like, other than that utterly engrossing story?  There are a couple of bits called “Shit I Worry About” that is, um, shit she worries about, like various forms of cancer, falling down the stairs, having her cat run away, becoming a spinster, and axe murderers in the back seat.  Then there are a couple of bits about unusual deaths taken off Wikipedia, although the second one is more hilarious than unusual.  Throw in a couple of strips with her talking about sex and being late with Zygote and a demonstration of her holding out for making comics by hand (at least for a little while) and the mysterious story I loved and voila!  It’s a comic!  She has a deal right now where you can get all three issues for $5, which sounds like a steal to me, and you’d be guaranteed to get a pile of great comics.  Assuming that’s your thing, and if it wasn’t why would you be looking around this site?  If you already have the first two issues then I suppose you could get this one for $2.


Update for 9/23/10

September 23, 2010

New review for Aloha by Desmond Reed, and it looks like I’ve had at least one person take me up on my offer to send a chunk of their comics along for weekly reviewing.  I don’t want to do that every day, as I think at least some of the fun of this site comes in not knowing what’s going to be reviewed next (or at least I hope that’s fun for people who aren’t me), but hey, there are seven days in the week, I see no problem with 3 or 4 of them being weekly reviews of the same person.  It’s not like they can produce infinite comics and keep this up for long anyway.  Well, maybe Brian John Mitchell could…


Reed, Desmond – Aloha

September 23, 2010

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Aloha

How exactly does a worm hold an axe?  Sorry, my inner comic geek occasionally busts out, much as I would like to keep it down.  This simply done comic, which should forever dispel the notion that people who can’t draw can make great comics, deals with three worms having a conversation.  Oh, and just so it’s clear, I’m not saying that Desmond CAN’T draw, just that this comic consists of worms, piles of dirt, a flat ground and some darkness.  Anyway, these worms are talking, two of them realize (after the third worm has left) that they really don’t like that guy at all and have no interest in meeting him for lunch tomorrow, and they devise a plan to get rid of the worm.  With an axe.  If you know your science and know what happens to worms when they are cut up the ending will not come as a shock to you, if you don’t know your worm science, well, prepare to be amazed while learning something!  Also, if you’re keeping track, that’s two comics by the guy and both of them have been fantastic.  Not the fancypants, “discover something new about yourself or the universe as a whole” kind of fantastic, just the “that’s some funny shit that I didn’t necessarily see coming and even if I did it was still pulled off extremely well” kind of fantastic.  These things need definition, don’t you know.  Desmond is selling his two comics (The Island is the other comic) as a pack for $2.  I suppose you could maybe badger him into just getting one or the other, but why?  Just buy them both and enjoy.


Update for 9/21/10

September 21, 2010

New review for Bare Knuckle by Pat Aulisio, and because Pat sent me a bunch of comics recently I’ve decided to do Pat Aulisio Tuesdays for a bit.  Hey, if you want the same treatment, just send me 4 or more different comics you’ve done that haven’t already been reviewed on the site.  I’m a big fan of themes like that (and I will admit that “Tempo Lush Tuesday” rolled off the tongue a bit better), but rarely get enough comics by one person to pull it off…


Aulisio, Pat – Bare Knuckle

September 21, 2010

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Bare Knuckle

I have very few rules on this site, but a big one is not spoiling the end of a comic.  I have broken this rule utterly today, as the sampled image is the last page of this absolute blast of a comic.  Why would I do such a thing?  Just look at that image.  If that isn’t the most awesome thing you’ve seen today, you must have had a shockingly awesome day already.  There’s also the fact that practically every page of this short mini has something incredible in it, and you understand my feeling of justification here.  This is, essentially, a video game told in comics form.  The hero (who looks suspiciously like Ultimate Warrior from the old WWF days) starts off punching flunkies, moves on to a bigger boss, lands in a toxic sewer fighting frogmen and an alligator, before finally ending up fighting the boss of the whole thing.  The tacos and turkeys laying around made the comic for me, as who hasn’t played a game with oddly placed food items sitting around to restore your health?  Again, I hope giving away the ending isn’t too horrible of a thing to have done but, if you don’t use that line below the next time you see a fight, there is something seriously wrong with you.  No idea of a price here, but as it’s all in color it’s probably in the $3-5 range…


Update for 9/20/10

September 20, 2010

New review for Blaster Al Ackerman’s Tales of the Ling Master #3 by E.J. Barnes.  Sure, the title is unwieldy, but the comic is delicious!


Barnes, E.J. – Blaster Al Ackerman’s Tales of the Ling Master #3

September 20, 2010

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Blaster Al Ackerman’s Tales of the Ling Master #3

That “#3 of 3” on the cover worries me. This can’t be the end of the Blaster Al Ackerman tales, can it? There must be more of them out there, or new ones on the way?  Frankly, this is a series that is just begging for treatment in an anthology, with a number of different comics writers and artists doing their own take on the character if nothing else.  As for the comic, E.J. warned me that this one was a little more “out there” than most, which is a tall order in this series, but she wasn’t wrong.  It’s often difficult to review these things without giving too much away, and these stories take that up a notch, but I’ll give it a shot.  Stories include a fable about a little boy who teased apples and his eventual meeting with an apple golem, another fable about a canary, a headache and a cigar on a plane, a professional “geek” (the circus kind, not the Bill Gates kind) trying to find out the truth about squid people, and one called “The Blue Catfish.” I don’t want to say a single thing about that one, but due to reviewer obligations I will say that it involves head shrinking, the concept of soul transportation and one of those stores that appear out of nowhere and vanish after you leave.  It’s difficult to detail the demented brilliance of these stories, but if you can’t get behind a guy wearing a stained pillowcase as a hood doling out advice at $5 a pop, often in parable form, and generally when there’s at least some veracity to the utterly bizarre questions being posed, I don’t know how to convince you.  If you like your comics genuinely different, there are three of these readily available that you should pick up as soon as possible. I’m hoping we can turn it into a cultural phenomena and realize my (five minute old) dream of an anthology with various takes on this character and/or the author.  Make it happen America!  $3


Update for 9/17/10

September 17, 2010

New review for The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt by Gabrielle Nowicki, and have you noticed how I seem to be taking a roving day off during the week again?  That wasn’t the plan, in case you were wondering, but I have my doubts that it will stop any time soon.


Nowicki, Gabrielle – The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt

September 17, 2010

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The Curse of the Parsimonious Great Aunt

Who else misses the days when scary stories for kids could get a little gruesome?  OK, maybe this isn’t strictly for kids, but it reads like it could be.  The story here is that a couple of kids are staying with their Great Aunt and she has a plan to sell any candy they get at Halloween to buy potatoes.  It’s never explained that this woman is raising these children, but that seems likely considering that they stay there for weeks and nobody seems to notice that they’re missing.  These greedy kids wanted to keep the candy and they wanted to steal the candy from all the other kids, so they concocted a plan.  They chopped the head off their Great Aunt and dragged her body along (on a sled) behind them to scare kids into dropping all their candy.  The plan worked perfectly, but the kids didn’t consider the fact that people who are wrongly killed in stories like these rarely stay dead, even if they were jerks in real life and kind of deserved it.  Anyway, it’s a cute and creepy book, and something that I would consider fun for all ages, unless of course the parents in question still somehow think that can shield their kids from all the awfulness of the world.  Good luck with that!  Anyway, the worst the kid has to see here is a removed head, and they probably have those things on the Disney channel at this point.  Check it out, it’s never too early for a good Halloween story.  No price listed, I’ll go with $3 at random.


Update for 9/15/10

September 15, 2010

New review for Derek Hunter is a F**k by Derek Hunter.  Shield your innocent young eyes, anyone out there who has managed to never see/hear profanity before just now!


Hunter, Derek – Derek Hunter is a F**k

September 15, 2010

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Derek Hunter is a F**k

I’ve gotten fairly jaded from all the auto-bio comics I’ve read over the years.  It takes something genuinely awful or revealing for me to sit up and take notice, which isn’t to say that something falling short of that level can’t still be a great comic.  Still, Derek apparently generally sticks to more conventional fare, but he decided after attending a few small cons to try his hand with “A collection of short stories that make me look bad”.  Well, he did it.  I should get a few disclaimers out of the way before I get started. “Derek Hunter is a F**k” hurts me to type, as I’m all for saying “fuck” whenever possible, but that’s how the man put it on the cover and that’s how I’ll put it here.  He is also saved (barely) by the fact that all the incidents in this book happened when he was late high school/early college age, and there are allowances for being a fuck at that time in your life.  Finally, the guy lives in Utah.  I’ll concede that he probably had to be a fuck at that point just to survive.  Still…yeesh.  Stories in here include Derek’s foisting off a girl he likes on a friend (then making out with her while the three of them are laying down in the same bed (seriously)), a prank with curdled milk that I understand completely, breaking up with a girlfriend while he was fucking her, insulting a girl he was making out with a party and then his reaction upon seeing her later, and some more or less understandable pranks he played on some tremendously obnoxious college roommates.  Hey, the final tally isn’t all that bad: two are inexcusable, two are pranks (but it might be a stretch to call them “harmless”) and one that falls somewhere in the middle.  He seems like a nice enough guy now, as he’s married with a kid on the way (depending on when this came out), and he’s as honest as humanly possible with this stuff.  He treats making this as a catharsis towards growing up, so more power to him.  If you’re one of those people who need a jolt from the auto-bio world or want to see how one of these is done when the author is really willing to let it all hang out, this is required reading.  $3


Update for 9/14/10

September 14, 2010

New review for Misinterpreted Complications #5 by Nick Soucek, in case you thought I was all out of comics that aren’t from America.


Soucek, Nick – Misinterpreted Complications #5

September 14, 2010

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Misinterpreted Complications #5

Is there a word for something that is wistful, sad and amusing at the same time?  Nostalgiaish?  Ah well, who says a comic reviewer needs a command of the language.  Well, that’s what this comic is all at once.  You can tell by the sample that Nick goes for fairly simple drawings accompanied by wise and insightful writing.  If you’re of the opinion that this is a bad thing, we clearly can’t relate on this one.  Plenty of the strips in this comic are currently up on the main page of his website (along with a couple not included here about the replaceable nature of relationships and the lack of the feeling of self-worth needed to start a new one), so you have no reason to be uninformed about this man.  Willful ignorance, that’s one of my least favorite things in the world, so don’t do it!  Stories in here include gradually ruining a fried egg as a small child, enjoying solitude (but not being at all sure how to get out of it if desired), being insulted by a stupid name for a charity, limitless possibilities shrinking to few, the flawed basis for Sim City, confusion from thumping, and life as a whole.  This is one of those very rare occasions where I actually like the layout of the comics on his website better than the printed layout, as they’re two panels a page here and an organized clump on the site.  There’s not a whole lot in these panels screaming out to be made bigger, so why not pack more content into the comics?  Granted, that is my complaint for many comics that I enjoy, but it makes a special kind of sense here.  Either way it’s an interesting pile of stories, told from a perspective that, even with the general misanthropy of comics readers, isn’t seen often enough.


Update for 9/13/10

September 13, 2010

New review for Tortilla #1 by Jaime Crespo.  So how was SPX?


Crespo, Jaime – Tortilla #1

September 13, 2010

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Tortilla #1

Ah, the benefit of hindsight.  Jaime hopes to get this comic out twice a year, which would be a great thing, as there aren’t enough Jaime Crespo comics in the world.  Sadly, this came out in October 2008 and there hasn’t been a #2 yet (at least judging from his website, but at least he’s working on a graphic novel). There’s still time to get two of these out in two years, and that is about average for the small press world, sadly enough.  And what’s up with that cover title?  The man’s a maestro with the pen and it looks like he wrote “Tortilla” while on a roller coaster.  OK, the complaint department is now closed, as I had no problems with the rest of it.  Stories in here include an inspirational “brawl”, some silent (and not-so-silent) moments from his area, the perfect modern superhero (“Too Fat To Do Shit Man”), and some brief hilarity with Floyd and Ringworm.  There’s also a lengthy text story involving a face from Jaime’s past and how he stumbled into her later in life that is a lot more involved than I’m letting on.  It’s a bit of a horror story, frankly, but I’m damned if I can figure out what Jaime should have done differently.  Then there’s the big comic piece of the book, “Corner Store”.  Jaime was always forced to walk to the local store instead of the closer big box store as a kid, and resented the hell out if it, until one day he happened to see a rum bottle.  What was odd about this rum bottle?  To a kid of around 7, something crucial: boobs!  He alerted the neighborhood, everybody snuck a peek, and there’s even a fantastic epilogue to the story that I’m not going to ruin here.  For once I’m not going to demand that everybody immediately go out and buy this comic, even though it’s fantastic and you really should.  Instead I’ll say that you should buy his graphic novel the second it comes out and make this guy famous.  He’s been doing this for decades (seriously) and deserves to make some serious cash at it already.  Of course, if you have $3 lying around, there are all kinds of worse things you could do with that cash than buy this comic…


Update for 9/12/10

September 12, 2010

New review for Set to Sea by Drew Weing!


Weing, Drew – Set to Sea

September 12, 2010

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Set to Sea

Huzzah for some of the crew from Athens getting a book published by Fantagraphics!  I’ve made it to a couple of FLUKE’s over the years (both times during a rare ice/snow storm in Georgia), and there’s all kinds of talent floating around down there.  The credits in this book revealed that Drew is married to Eleanor Davis, and just look up her name on this site to find some fantastic comics.  If those two have kids they’re sure to have artistically gifted mutants, and I mean that in the best possible “X-Men” sense and not the horribly deformed sense.  Give them a pen and paper as soon as they’re able to grip things, that’s what I’m inartfully trying to say.  When I picked this up and flipped through it at the library I wasn’t sure what to expect, as it’s not all that big and all the pages only have one big panel.  Any fears I may have had were unfounded, as Drew is able to do a lot with those “restrictions.” This is the story of a meandering lug of a poet, a guy who skips out on his bills and mostly just wants to read and sleep.  He is seen sleeping on the dock and is taken captive to be part of a ship’s crew.  The poor guy wakes up when they’ve already set sail so he’s kind of stuck with it, and he quickly gets to see what those poems of the sea he was trying to write were really about.  Pirates attack the ship, he is singled out as the biggest of the defenders and attacked, which leads to some serious rage and a saving of the day.  From there Drew uses the possibilities of the medium to perfection, telling the life story of the guy page by page, somehow pulling the impression of a richly lived life through scattered moments.  And even the “only one panel per page” isn’t a fair cause for complaint, as he manages to tell a little story on every one of them with his attention to detail while often avoiding those pesky “words.” I have no idea if this book will catch on, as it often takes somebody a few graphic novels to really get the attention of the small press comics world, but the man is well on his way with this gem.  And if anybody in the comics publishing world pays the slightest bit of attention to this website of mine, you might want to give his wife a call about putting out a graphic novel too…  $17


Update for 9/10/10

September 10, 2010

It’s Friday and I’m fighting a cold that can’t make up its mind whether or not it’s really going to go after me, so it’s time for an “easy” review.  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Shit Happens by Charlie Touvell.