August 9, 2010
No website or other contact information
Necrocomicon #1
It seems oddly fitting that I picked this comic to review on the nine year anniversary of the site, as there is no contact information readily available for anybody involved and it is the first zine Brian has put together. Hey, that’s what the site is there for, to point people in the direction of comics they wouldn’t otherwise find! The trouble with this one is obvious: there is nowhere to point them. I get the impression that Brian and the other people involved are high school students, which makes me an asshole to critique their stories, but I can live with that. How will they learn if somebody like me doesn’t tell them what they’re doing wrong? First, I’ll get the good stuff out of the way: that is one great title. And the idea of a horror anthology will always, always appeal to me, even if most of them seem to fail in the execution. Brian was also smart enough to put the name of the artist for each story clearly at the end of the pieces, something even the “pros” often forget to do. From here it gets dicey, and this is because of the talents of some artists just starting and the various problems in the print. Brian had a lot to say in his story (and I will get to them all individually), but chose to keep the text boxes small and cram all the words into them. This might have left more artwork visible, but it was at the cost of being able to understand the story. When there are at least three panels that I can’t read the lettering, including the final page of the story, you’re making it too tough on the reader. In most cases all he would have had to do was expand the text box into the solid black of the background. Other stories in here suffered from the dreaded uneven copying, and when some of the art on display was so-so as it was, leaving the text too faint to be read or the art too indistinct to be understood is just going to leave the reader feeling cheated. And seriously, no e-mail addresses anywhere? I guess if these are high school kids they might not want their names associated with this, but there has to be SOME method for curious people to buy the book. OK, now that I’ve bashed the process, how about the stories? Rubble by Anthony Wasilewski was an interesting ancient tale of cat gods and curses, but the last two pages were so garbled and/or indistinct that I’m not sure what happened. Tom Bombadil Got Cut by Quinn Murphy didn’t look all that great at times (squiggly lines don’t actually count as a background), but the idea of Tom Bombadil getting kidnapped and killed by Peter Jackson was funny enough to make up for it. The Siamese Twins’ revenge by Lizzie Baur was also interesting, as it dealt with a man who wanted to know about death without dying, and also had some of the best art in the book (except for the bit with the skeleton of the twins running away from Joseph). Wendy Lotterman’s story about Rick Moranis accidentally making babies being born so big that they literally made the mother explode could have been great, or maybe it was terrible, but I’ll never know because the copy was so faint that I couldn’t read some of the many asides that Wendy put into this piece. Ben Long’s piece about Nazism and a golem didn’t make a whole lot of sense, unless maybe the Jewish kid who killed his rabbi was supposed to be Hitler. Brian’s story has the excellent title Mutant M.D. and probably the best art in the book (he did the cover too), but those clumpy text boxes and the fact that he left it “to be continued” made it more than a bit garbled. Walker Tate’s piece about the Murker was the cleanest of the book, but was only one page, so there wasn’t time to do much. There’s also a H.P Lovecraft story, which would probably be illegal in any format other than zines. So, overall, even if you could find this you’d probably be better off giving it a pass. To any of the people involved in the making of this, I can’t state this strongly enough: don’t get discouraged byme. Tighten up some of the technical aspects, work on making sure your stories are crystal clear to the reader, and this review could have gone a different direction. Above all, NEVER let a reviewer talk you out of making comics. Just make them good enough that said reviewer has to eventually eat his/her words…
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Reviews | Tagged: Anthony Wasilewski, Ben Long, Brian Ehrenpreis, Dylan Fettig, Lizzie Baur, Necrocomicon, Quinn Murphy, Walker Tate, Wendy Lotterman | 
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Posted by Kevin
August 7, 2010
16 The Brauche
Maulden, Beds
MK45 2DR Englang
Dark Dreams
Well, this is a novelty. A comic without a website. That’s not the strangest thing in the world for a tiny homemade mini, when it’s clearly the first comic a person has produced, or when they’re doing something under a pseudonym and don’t want to get in trouble. But this comic is as professional in appearance as they come, even with that minimalistic cover that sucks you right in. Things start off with the winner of the recap Olympics, if such a thing existed any place other than my head. Anyone out there trying to write a decent recap of your series for your inside front cover, hunt this comic down and study it. We learn about Suzi, how her subconsciousness manifests itself in physical (and violent) form whenever she is threatened, how two agents of Order were sent to eradicate this manifestation (named Floid), how one of those agents turned on the other when he felt Floid deserved a chance to live, and how things have been calm for an undefined period of time. Then Suzi took a vacation, got in a bus crash which led to a coma, Floid pushed himself to the surface to wake her up, and Floid has been dormant ever since. That’s a recap! Bravo. It does make the fact that there seems to be no way to order past issues without actually mailing the guy a little inconvenient, to say the least, but at least we know exactly what led up to this issue. This issue begins with Floid coming out for the first time in years, as Suzi is drinking more and more these days after a breakup. Floid sees an odd creature nosing around the apartment, which sets off a chase and a chance meeting with one of those former agents of Order (Guedo). They track the creature down and Floid is tricked into the subconscious mind of a human who is something of a testing ground for other creatures like Floid, which has led to a disintegration of this guy’s sanity. Meanwhile, Guedo takes up the slack by protecting Suzi (as anybody who kills her kills Floid), and winds up going back in time after chasing another attacker. The book follows them both, as Floid’s world gets increasingly bizarre inside of that guy’s head and Guedo struggles to make it back to his own time without being exactly sure how to do so. Actually, that’s a running theme for both of them, as Floid only has the vaguest idea of what he’s doing (but knows he has to do it to get out). So if you like your comics wildly inventive, you’re going to love this one. But wait, there’s more! This comic is funny. Seriously funny, which I wasn’t really expecting to see. Sure, Floid occasionally falls into that British habit of sticking with the “bum” humor a bit past the point where it stops being funny, but overall both characters get more than their fair share of zingers, even though I hate the word “zingers”. If I had one complaint it would be that the action scenes often feel flat, like we’re just looking at a series of poses and not an actual battle, but that’s often a tricky thing to depict. I have no idea how much this costs, but it’s at least 60 pages long. Maybe the fact that it’s all black and white keeps the prices mildly reasonable? Who knows. If I can find the letter that came with this and if it gives more current contact info I’ll change it, but at the moment it looks like you’ll have to dust off the stamps (and make sure it’s the right amount, they raise it all the time) and send the man a letter. Maximize that sample and you should get a pretty good idea if this is up your alley or not…
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Posted by Kevin
August 6, 2010
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Cosmo Straighter #3
Do you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all past small press comics stories and creators, no matter which anthology said stories appeared in? If so, you’re going to find this issue of Cosmo Straighter (I love how Dave just gave up completely on keeping any kind of uniform spelling of the title) a bit disappointing. There are four stories in here, two of which have already been collected (in Mauled #1 and Legal Action Comics Volume 2. And, really, those are the big ones, with the other pieces being only a page long, and I even ruined that a bit by using one of them for the sample. The other page defies description, so I’ll leave it as a surprise for people who find this comic. Still, if you haven’t read those two anthologies mentioned, or even if you have and have forgotten them, the two big stories in here are fantastic. First up is “Meet Komo…”, the story of Sharon Stone using her influence to get her husband in to see a komodo dragon at a zoo and him needing major reconstructive surgery when all was said and done. Pop culture stuff like that often flies right out of my brain, and I had forgotten all about that incident and the mockery that followed. The other story is one I remember clearly from Legal Action Comics Volume 2, and it deals with the “real life” story of an actress who was hired to deal with a real life King Kong in the 30’s… sort of. If you haven’t seen it, again, there’s no sense in me spoiling the surprise. And as those two anthologies mentioned came out many years ago, maybe you haven’t seen anything here and it’s all new to you, in which case you should buy it immediately. If nothing else you get that cover out of the deal, and you really need to embiggen that image and soak it all in. And if you can’t find a copy of this anywhere, at least it’ll be available in this rental scheme I’m working on… $1
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Posted by Kevin
August 5, 2010
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Window #4
One subject that isn’t touched a whole lot in most mini comics is small children. As they’re mostly made by people in their 20’s, this isn’t shocking, but I’ve really appreciated Dave’s stories of teaching and dealing with little kids. It’s a perspective that I don’t get too often, and why read all these thousands of mini comics if I don’t get the occasional change of perspective? The first story of this mini deals with three sisters (nicknamed pork leg, chicken leg and beef leg) and the youngest wants to go outside and play. The oldest asks Dave what to do when a boy looks down her shirt when she bends over, but Dave didn’t seem to have a ready answer (I know I don’t). The youngest goes out and comes quickly back in, crying. Dave finally gets out of her the fact that an older boy was pulling her hair, but it turns out the older boy fell on his head at an early age and has trouble properly interacting with the rest of the world. It’s a quietly effective that shows the lack of pat answers to kids, and once again makes me happy that I’m not a teacher. Other stories in here include a dream of a tiger, an actual tiger (plush), and Dave’s dinner with a Vietnamese (?) family. This dinner is more than a little awkward, as Dave has to break up an uncomfortable argument or two and has that socially awkward moment when he’s offered a tray of cookies and notices a cockroach crawling on one of them. Is it condescending to consider Window a grown-up mini comic? So many other offerings are at various stages of arrested adolescence, and there’s not a trace of that in these books. As far as I know these are still hard to come by, and I am still planning on making these available once I start renting comics. If you want to read these (and you really should). check back around in the coming months for your chance, OK?
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Posted by Kevin
August 4, 2010
Website
Microcosm website
Welcome to the Dahl House
You know what the worst thing about mini comics is, hands down? Not the occasional amateurishness, or basic errors of composition or copying, or how people consciously or unconsciously can lift things from their idols. It’s the fact that the good stuff is so hard to come by, and if you miss it when it first comes out you’re generally screwed. Take Ken Dahl, for example. He snuck under my radar for years until I got a copy of Monsters, and I was completely blown away. Still, there didn’t seem to be a wide array of old minis that I could pick through to see what else I had done, so I let it go, as this sort of this happens all the time. Luckily for us all Microcosm publishing exists, and they were nice enough to put out a collection of work from Ken’s old minis and various anthologies. Somehow there isn’t a bad comic in this collection, and considering the range of time covered in here (at least a decade), that’s astounding. Things start off with a few strips about an elderly punk trying to get by in the world, and then turns instantly political. This is odd enough, as very few comics seem to care much about politics or the actual world these days, and this strip deals with a plane trip Ken took on 9/11/02. It’s a while ago, but us adults in the room can remember the constant fear and paranoia being pumped into the culture. Ken dealt with heavily armed guards, a creepy speech by the pilot, even the whole cabin getting up and singing the Pledge of Allegiance (seriously). Next up is a strip that circles back and eats its own tail, as Ken tries to come up with something meaningful for a zine fest, considers making a comic about farts, and finally lands on making a comic about his inability to make a comic. Eniz (the zine antidote) should be required reading for anybody who makes a mini, as it makes all sorts of important points about making comics, how they’ve been co-opted and all the talented people have fled to the internet (although I like to think a number of them have come back since this strip came out), but why the hell not make them anyway? Other stories include a guy joining the army (with the recruiting officer being the Sarge from Beetle Bailey, another piece filled with rare political observations), Ken’s mildly-but-not-really homosexual experience as a small child, some time travel hijinx, Ken’s obsession with gorgeous women while knowing that he would never want to speak to them for more then five minutes, a creepy stalker, and the quiet joy of watching Asteroids. Then there’s all the Gordon Smalls strips (a thinly disguised Ken Dahl?), dealing with such subjects as frozen bananas, peeing in the shower, swinging at night, how falling in love is a waste of time, and his decision to pick up skateboarding again 20 years after his prime. The cream of the crop of the Gordon Smalls stories is the how to steal food/how to get arrested epic, as Gordon gets put through the prison institution and sees right through it. I feel like I’m cheating by just describing the stories, as each piece is packed with critical observations of the world at large and the basic “point” of these stories is largely just there to let him rant about the world at large. There was a pile of quotes about his work at the Microcosm website, and I have to echo one of them: I don’t understand why some people get famous and others as obviously talented as Ken aren’t universally known. I’m guessing that with this and Monsters both widely available now that is going to change quickly, if it hasn’t already. And it’s a measly $6 for 122 pages? I’ve seen minis that are more expensive. Buy it already!
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Posted by Kevin
August 3, 2010
Website
Blindspot #1
It’s a question at the back of my mind whenever I read a small press comic: just how cynical is this creator in understanding how likely he/she is in making any kind of a living at this? Most of them seem to know that they’re making comics for themselves and a small group of loyal and inquisitive people and will probably never make a living off of it, but then again most of them seem to be (admirably) hoping for the best, that they can eventually make a living off of their art. This question comes up in Joseph’s introduction to this comic, a brilliant little scene that has him standing in front of a fancypants backdrop, explaining to his audience that he is going to be taking them on a journey. Then his roommate pops in with reality, that the backdrop is a sham and that nobody buys individual comics any more and by the time he gets his serialized graphic novel put together, that craze will probably be over too. Ok, maybe that or a variation of that has been done before, but I thought it was a great way to get things started. From there we have his eventual serialized graphic novel called Ace Goddard Livin’ Legend, which is all about a glam rock icon from back in the day who’s been trying to put out a new album for years. As he is now a joke, nobody was interested in such a thing, and the panels the record executive and his assistant spend explaining to Ace that his only chance now is to do a “greatest hits” album and accept the fact that he’s seen as a joke to the world at large. This has all kinds of potential, and I can only hope that he was exaggerating about how long it would take him to put that story together. I checked his website and he’s going to spend the next 6 months or so completing a graphic novel he was working on with Harvey Pekar, so it may be awhile. There’s also only 7 pages of this story in this issue, so it might be a REALLY long time. Other stories in here include a tale about a woman who has been on a string of awful blind dates, a conversation in a record store about whether there is an objective truth in musical taste or if it’s all in the ear of the beholder, a man happily walking into work on a Monday morning getting gradually smashed to bits, a rich asshole at an art show who tries to impress a pretty woman, and Joseph’s tale of trying to break through the wall of comics in the online world and make an impression. There’s also a funny strip on the back cover, but I’m leaving some mystery for you people who want to buy the book. As for the look of the book, there’s not a hint of amateurishness about it. Joseph has clearly been doing this for a long time, or maybe he’s just supernaturally gifted, but there’s some damned fine artwork going on here. Some of the early pages have some unerased pencil lines for the lettering, a pet peeve of mine, but it’s faint enough that I probably wouldn’t even notice it if I wasn’t such a dick about it. It’s worth a look, that’s what I’m trying to say here. $4.50
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Posted by Kevin
August 2, 2010
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The Natural World #3
We’re back to the characters from the first issue this time around, as Damien’s master plan starts coming more into focus. Well, just barely, but I am going with the theory that he has a master plan at work. He even changed the outfits of the bandits from the end of the last issue (he will send you a copy of #2 with the altered outfits if you’re that neurotic about it, although he used a nicer word) because that fits in with his plan for the whole series, and I’m all for that level of foresight. The hermit from the last issue doesn’t make an appearance, but we do learn that Edith (last seen having sex with Reeve in the first issue) is accused of being a witch, Walter is still wandering around the forest talking to himself (although this time he appears to be on mushrooms), and the bandits are essentially 12 year old boys who fight amongst themselves for little reason. The only trouble with a series like this is that it’s hard to build up a complex story when it’s only coming out once or twice a year, but I’m not sure what the alternative is. Somebody like Bill Gates could come out as a fan of small press comics and give everybody who ever made a mini comic $10,000, but that seems sadly unlikely. So we just have to be content with the occasional blasts of brilliance like this, with a creepy and somehow childlike man getting hugged by trees, a man who cheated on his wife trying desperately to convince what is almost an angry mob not to jump to hasty conclusions about a supposed witch, and bandits with a new set of clothes for what I’m sure is a perfectly reasonable reason in the mind of the author. $4
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Posted by Kevin
August 1, 2010
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First Fight
Now here’s something you don’t see every day in the world of small press comics: the story of the author’s first mixed martial arts fight. Take that, everybody who holds the stereotype of artists as awkward nerds! Bryan had always been a fan of fighting, due to the influence of some early fighting movies and the fact that boxing was the only sport he would watch with his father as a child. He had a stable life as an artist with a family, but decided that he wanted to go and do things that he had always wanted to do, so he decided to train for a MMA fight. After training for a few weeks (and appearing to be only so-so at it), his coach told him about a tournament that had a Novices division (people with less than 9 months of training). Bryan had three months to train so he really pushed himself, lost 30 pounds to qualify for a weight division and seemed to improve his skills greatly. So the day of the tournament finally rolls around, and Bryan gets there only to discover that his coach has dropped out unexpectedly at the last minute. He wavers, but decides to stick with it, going out for his fight alone, and if I mention any more I’m going to spoil the ending. I for one didn’t know that there was a class of MMA where striking wasn’t permitted, where the only way to win a fight was through submission holds. That can still be dangerous, obviously, but it sounds a whole lot less brutal than pummeling a novice repeatedly. The man seems to be a professional artist, so it’s no surprise that this book looks as nice as it does, but he really does a tremendous job of illustrating the fight. Every hold and counter looked like actual holds and counters, something that is crucial in a book like this but would have been easy to get wrong. Bryan hopes to go on to more fights, and here’s hoping if he does that he keeps making comics about it, because reading about the whole process here (all the training, advice, how he heard the other coach give his guy advice during the fight) all really flesh out the MMA world and make it clear that it’s not a simple, brainless thing, an impression people could easily get if they’ve just seen a match or two on Spike TV. As for you, gentle reader, if you hate violence there is no blood in this book, so at least there’s that. For anybody who is curious about this world and wants to see what it’s like, this is a great introduction. I’m not seeing a price, but $5 makes sense to me…
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Posted by Kevin
July 30, 2010
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Good Minnesotan #4
I’m in a bit of a pickle here. You see, the Good Minnesotans responsible for putting this anthology together sent a collection of minis that make up GM #4, all bundled up in a lovely slipcase. However, they recently had a successful fundraiser that will let them print this whole pile of comics in (what I believe to be) one volume. So my righteous rant about how silly it is to put a table of contents with page listings when there are no page numbers in the comics can’t go anywhere because they will probably have that problem fixed in the final edition. That’s fine, there’s no reason to focus on the negative with a pile of stories like this anyway. It will also make my selection of a sample image from each of the 5 minis seems a little excessive (and guys, if this is too many for you let me know and I’ll take most of them down), but I’m trying to give a flavor for the whole thing here. I was also going to break this down into five sections, one for each mini, but as they aren’t numbered in any way I’m just going to go with my usual clumpy review. Tales in here include some creepy microscopic organisms by Justin Skarhus, The Poo Lagoon by Lupi (sadly, it seems to be a true story), is it a caraway seed or a rat turd by Sarah Julius (I think), Nic Breutzman as a child watching his neighborhood being built and marveling at the quiet at the end of the day, Kevin Cannon’s recap of the men who tried to be the first to reach the North (and South) Pole, a pile of creepy and moody photographs by Buck Sutter, planting mama with the onions by Anna Bongiovanni, Renny Kissling’s silent tale of an alien being tortured,Meghan Hogan’s adventures of crocheted animals, Martha Iserman with the adventures of her stuffed parrot-beaked puffer fish, and some food thievery by Raighne Hogan. There is one mini that stands alone as a complete story, by both Justin Skarlus and Raighne Hogan (each taking half the book) about a terminator-ish creature that doesn’t seem to have much of an ability to stick with one target, but that’s probably because I’m imposing that idea onto that character. It’s a bizarre pile of transporting vaginas, submachine guns, brain-eating and quiet contemplation. You’d love it! So, at the end of the day, I don’t know what the final version of this comic is going to look like. I hope they can keep the front and back cover of the slipcase, and I hope they manage to number the pages to go along with their table of contents, and I hope it’s clear that I’m not even commenting on about 1/3 of the stories in this to leave some surprises for you people. If you’ve seen the past issues of this series you know that “Good Minnesotan” is a mark of quality, and they didn’t disappoint this time around.
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Posted by Kevin
July 29, 2010
Website
XO #6
It feels like I haven’t reviewed an issue of XO in ages. Granted, that certainly isn’t Brian’s fault, as he continues to crank out these minis at a ridiculous pace. Luckily he’s more than smart enough to put a recap on the first page, so people with spotty memories like me have a chance to get caught up. In the last issue there was the small matter of a murder and what to do with the body, so this issue takes care of all that. It’s less suspenseful than you might think, as the main character is given an address to take the body and goes on his merry way. Nobody seems to suspect anything, our hero gets cover at his work so nothing is out of the ordinary, and all he has to do is take a 12 hour drive down to Miami. Oh, and did I mention that our hero is 16 and has never left the area? After all the murders of the first few issues this one was downright serene, as the narrator contemplates the fact that he could now never become a writer (writers have to write what they know, and he can never risk news of the murder getting out) and wonders what other career he could come up with. By the end of the issue he has a pretty good idea, but why spoil that for you? In case people see the vast body of work that Brian has put out over the last couple of years and want to try something but don’t know where to start, I’m going to suggest going for a full series instead of getting one or two issues of everything. In the mood for a fantastic western revenge story? Get Just A Man. Like to read about failed relationships, or at least relationships that left serious emotional scars? Lost Kisses is for you. How about creepy government paranoia and parasitical invasion? Worms, my good chap (or chapette). Or, if “in over his head but still preternaturally calm about it”, why not try XO? $5 gets you pretty much any of the series I mentioned, and who doesn’t have $5 stashed away somewhere for good comics? $1
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Posted by Kevin
