Porcellino, John – King Cat #70

June 18, 2010

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King Cat #70

20 years of King Cat!  Holy crap.  I’ll have to try and not think about the fact that a chunk of people reading this weren’t even alive 20 years ago.  As an anniversary issue is the perfect time for nostalgia, if memory serves (and it often doesn’t) my first exposure to John was in King Cat #38, the issue where he talks about the life and death of his dog and the role it played in his life.  I was hooked instantly and went back and got as many of the older issues as I could find which, sadly, wasn’t all that many.  There still hasn’t been anything approaching a definitive collection of his work, probably because he’s ashamed of some of his older stuff, but I’m always all for putting a body of work out there, warts and all.  Everybody reading this already knows all about King Cat, of course, and all of you have sent John money for his comics at least once by now.  Hey, he’s even started Spit and a Half back up, and if you never heard of it and get nothing else out of this review, click on that link to see a wide selection of incredible minis that John somehow has the time to distribute himself.  So how about what’s in the book, am I ever going to get to that?  I kind of figured that a positive review was a given at this point, but since you insist, stories in here include how he’s given up drinking (but would like very much (at times) to give up the giving up), how maybe the pace of the suburbs is best for him after all, some adorable neighborhood animals, getting his wisdom teeth out because his insurance was about to run out, a dream and a bag of chips, Do the Pete Duncan, and a follow-up on Square Head John from issue #67.  As usual, that’s not all, as there’s also his top 40 list (expanded this time around), some one panel strips dealing with cats and a few other stories that I didn’t mention to leave you some surprises for when you inevitably order this comic.  You do like to be surprised, right?  And you do like great comics?  The man’s been doing this often thankless, poverty-inducing job for 20 years, send him some money out of love and gratitude, why don’t you?  I can’t think of anybody who deserves it more.  $3

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/17/10

June 17, 2010

New review for Freaky Shit by Aaron Norhanian, and I just don’t get an excuse to curse in these updates often enough.

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Posted by Kevin

Norhanian, Aaron – Freaky Shit

June 17, 2010

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Freaky Shit

Full disclosure time: Aaron sent me a couple of copies of this comic as “insulation” for the couple of extra copies of Bad Energy he sent along for the comic rental business (still working on it, but holy crap is it taking longer than I thought).  He didn’t think very highly of this comic, in other words, and any negative things I say about it have to be taken with that caveat in mind, along with the fact that it’s from 2006 and he has done substantially better work since.  OK, so what’s it about?  It’s the story of a janitor who’s also an evil genius.  He develops a ray gun that allows him to steal the intelligence from all the smart scientists in his lab, making himself smarter and smarter every time.  What’s the catch?  There are two of them: this ray, once it takes the intelligence of the scientists, turns them into brain-craving zombies (are there any other kind?), and the side effect of all this ray gun activity is a tumor in the head of the janitor.  Oddly, this doesn’t bother the janitor as much as you’d think, but if I say much more about this I’ll spoil every bit of it.  I will say that the ending was clearly one of those “I give up, I have no idea how to finish this” type of things.  It is a fairly amusing comic overall, maybe worth a look if you enjoy the rest of his work, but overall he’s right: this is far from the best thing he’s done.  If you love mad scientists or Aaron’s work give it a look, otherwise I’d suggest some of his more recent work, like Bad Energy.  No price, but judging from his opinion of this book I’d say Aaron would be willing to let you have it for cheap…


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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/16/10

June 16, 2010

New review for Yasha Lizard #3 by Kristina Stipetic, and it looks like I’ll be heading out of town this weekend instead.  Or not, as these things are subject to change. Tell you what, just keep doing what you’re doing in regards to checking this site for new reviews, and I’ll keep putting them up, just possibly not every single day that you’d like to see them.  Deal?

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Posted by Kevin

Stipetic, Kristina – Yasha Lizard #3

June 16, 2010

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Yasha Lizard #3

Kristina made quite an impression on me with her last mini comic (Yasha Lizard #2, I didn’t see #1), so she had a lot to live up to in the next issue.  She pulls that trick off without a hitch, as this issue goes off in a completely different direction and is as excellent as the first issue in a completely different way.  This is still ostensibly the story of Yasha Lizard, but that seems to be a cover to talk about other topics that are on Kristina’s mind, in this case architecture.  An innovative designer is trying to revolutionize the industry and the old guard stands haughtily in his way; something of a recurring theme in civilization.  He builds a series of buildings that are meant to house worker families for the low rent price of $1.  Yasha manages, with a friend and an egg, to convince the landlords that they’re a family, they get the cheap apartment, and quickly find out that they’re in the middle of forces way over their heads and helpless to do anything about it.  This comic looks gorgeous, as she certainly has that end of things down, and I love the idea of making all these issues self-contained but held together by that bare thread of the title character, who usually isn’t even shown until the “real story” gets a proper introduction.  She says in the afterward that she has something “more serious, less polemical” in the works, but only after the next comic of this series, which is going to deal with evolution.  As that subject is still, shockingly, a subject of controversy for some of the dimmer bulbs on the planet (probably the ones who didn’t get the hint when Touchdown Jesus got struck by lightning and destroyed this week), I can’t wait to see her take on it.  Still no price, I’m still guessing $3 until I hear differently.

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/15/10

June 15, 2010

New review for It Sure Is A Super World! by Kenn Minter & Clarence Pruitt, and I’m probably heading out of town tomorrow for a couple of days, so I may or may not be able to get a review up before I leave.  That offer for free comics for web design help still stands, by the way…

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Posted by Kevin

Minter, Kenn & Pruitt, Clarence – It Sure Is A Super World!

June 15, 2010

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It Sure Is A Super World!

I wonder if anybody has ever written a long article detailing all the different divisions in small press comics fans.  Maybe The Comics Journal got around to it at some point, but I mostly couldn’t stand that magazine even before they priced themselves out of my range anyway.  I’m asking the question because it’s obvious from that cover that this is a superhero parody (and a good one) and was curious if such a thing turns off a segment of the small press comic reading public before they even crack open the book.  The main story deals with Incredolad, whose “secret identity” has long since been figured out by everybody in his town, and he is completely oblivious to this fact.  While hanging out with friends in his secret identity a girl starts drowning, so naturally everybody is telling him to save her, to get his stupid costume on and fix it, but he spends to much time trying to convince them that he isn’t Incredolad that the girl ends up drowning.  This does not go over well with his friends or her parents, and he makes matters worse by underestimating his own strength in trying to deal with her father.  Hilarity ensues, if you think angry mobs are hilarious.  Other stories include a piece on a group of teen heroes who turn much of the populace into vampires (featuring the worst “street” accent I may have ever seen in comics, and with all these pasty white artists and writers (and reviewers), that’s saying something), the story of the Love Lantern (who carries around the heart of Aphrodite in a jar to help her fight crime and meet men), and a story about a Superman and Batman stand-in going to see their psychiatrist (dealing with “Superman’s” being able to hear every cry for help from around the world and “Batman’s” inability to have a mature relationship).  It was a funny collection of stories, unless you’re one of those people I may have just made up who hate everything remotely related to superheroes.  $3.49

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/14/10

June 14, 2010

Yep, I didn’t post an update yesterday.  Maybe I’ll be able to make up for it during the week, but as I’m probably heading out of town for a few days this week I kind of doubt it.  Maybe next week I’ll have time for double review days.   Oh, the new review today is for Yo! Burbalino #2 by Greg Farrell.  And I’ve probably already mentioned this, but if anybody reading this is a fan of comics (duh) who also has experience with web design, I’m looking for help with the comic rental system I’m trying to set up.  I can make it worth your while in comics, or possibly some sort of lifetime membership in the comics rental program.  Sound intriguing?  E-mail me why don’t you.

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Posted by Kevin

Farrell, Greg – Yo! Burbalino #2

June 14, 2010

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Yo! Burbalino #2

Poetry warning!  OK, so most people probably don’t need that warning, but with a very few rare exceptions poetry doesn’t do a thing for me, and Greg packs this sucker with poetry.  Comic stories in here include a creepily revealing dream (involving Greg’s mother, him popping out of a giant vagina (in the same panel no less), and his insecurities about his place in comics), an awkward reunion with an old friend, some slapstick with a bunch of people trying to move a box using a bicycle, the theft of his headphones from his work, and a phone call from his mother to tell him about his old dying dog that turns into an extended rant/freestyle poem about the state of his life in general.  Oddly, even though I didn’t think much of the other poetry, I loved this last story.  Maybe because it wasn’t the kind that tries so hard to rhyme that it comes across as forced and awful?  Yes, that’s entirely possible.  His other poems are weird as hell (dealing with eating dynamite, being flaccid after sex, tips for eating a horse, acne, a past Halloween, cheetah lover’s lament, and sweeping), so that makes them more readable in my eyes, but just barely.  Greg, assuming these stories are meant to be about Greg and not some hypothetical fictional stand-in, complains a few times about being annoyed that he’s so preoccupied with the ladies.  There’s an obvious solution here, and something that would make those poems instantly better: start a band and turn them into songs.  Ladies will flock to him (based on personal observance and every television show ever), and poems that might sound like doggerel become deeply meaningful when sung by a heartfelt crooner.  You’re welcome!  So is the poetry enough to turn me off of the comic?  Nope.  The comic stories were fantastic, and that last one with his mom on the phone pushed the comic firmly back into the “worth taking a look” category.  $3

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/12/10

June 12, 2010

New review for Seeds by Marek Bennett, because I needed something light for my Saturday.  Back to grim and gritty next week.

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Posted by Kevin

Bennett, Marek – Seeds

June 12, 2010

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Seeds

People of the future, there’s one way for you to be able to tell that I was writing this on a Saturday (unless I finally get my act together, go back and put the posting dates on all these reviews): because I picked a small wordless mini about a family in the country shoveling off an ice pond instead of picking any of the other pile of comics I have to review (like that one on the Honduran coup I’ll be getting around to next week).  Not to take anything away from this, but I needed something light and breezy and Marek fit the bill perfectly.  This is, like I said, a story about hijinx while clearing off a pond for skating.  The title does make sense, but you have to wait until the end of the story to learn why.  This comic is, frankly, adorable, with the small kid trying to get out of the house without his hat, the prancing dad who’s trying to keep his freezing kid entertained, the mother coming to try and restore a semblance of order, and the Flintstones-style birds that help out by chopping wood while the family is away.  Hm, maybe I would have been better off with the Honduran coup, that sounds too sweet to be believed.  It kind of is, and I sometimes get my cranky on and bash comics like this, but not today.  Today I just thought it was sweet, and I’ll leave the heavier stuff for a later day.  No price, but I’m guessing one moonbeam.  Aw, I couldn’t leave without at least getting in a tiny snide comment, could I?

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/11/10

June 11, 2010

New review for Unicorns Changed My Life by Derek R. Croston, happy weekend everybody, I’ll most likely still manage to get a few updates posted if you’re interested.

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Posted by Kevin

Croston, Derek R. – Unicorns Changed My Life

June 11, 2010

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Unicorns Changed My Life

I really shouldn’t like this comic.  There are at least a few reasons I could point to for that reaction that I should have had but didn’t.  There’s the backgrounds (dots, fuzzy clouds and four strands of grass in a field, lazy things like that), the fact that I could see pencil lines poking through for some of the wording, and the fact that the cover artist was not the inside artist.  Still, those sparse backgrounds worked, the pencil lines were few and far between, and again, the simple nature of the artwork worked just fine for this.  It’s probably because he’s didn’t misspell a thing, that’s probably what gets him off the hook with me.  Or the fact that this comic was just a pile of fun, and I wasn’t expecting that after seeing the cover.  I figured grim, macho murder a’plenty, but that wasn’t the case.  Things start off here with an odd cast of characters in what appears to be a support group: a centaur, a harmless ghost, an archangel, a grigori, somebody who was once the leader of Iris (whatever that means, and if you’re going to put a “*” in your dialogue please don’t forget to follow up on it), and our hero, the first vampire in the world.  He was basically just born with one giant tooth, but that still got him chased out of town.  He had to hunt to survive, and once he started hunting unicorns he got immortal life.  There’s more, including a really fantastic ending, but I don’t want to blow anything.  If this all sounds grim, trust me, it’s not.  There’s a smart-ass vibe running through this comic that elevates it to something more than the usual fare.  I’m not saying it’s the best comic in the world, as it’s still plenty raw, with at least a few easy fixes for the next issue to make it better.  Still, it was fun, and that counts for a lot.  $1

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/10/10

June 10, 2010

New review for Summer Goes Slowly by Greg Vondruska.  Long-time readers may recognize that name, as he was one of the mainstays in the early days of Optical Sloth but I hadn’t seen anything from the guy in years.  Turns out he was working hard the whole time, and he sent a chunk of new comics along recently to prove it.

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Posted by Kevin

Vondruska, Greg – Summer Goes Slowly

June 10, 2010

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Summer Goes Slowly

A mark of an excellent comic is that it can change your opinion while you’re reading it.  This one starts off with a few four panel strips, which immediately set off alarm bells for me (if you don’t often read this site, I’m usually not a fan of that format), but immediately shifts into longer and more meaningful stories.  The premise is simple: these are stories from Greg’s childhood (the scattered stories range from 1978 to 1988).  One other thing that got on my nerves right away was how the action shifted all over the place, as he would tell a story from (as he went from ’82 to ’79 and then back to ’82 again), but as the book went on I became convinced that Greg made the right call.  This isn’t an autobiography, after all, it’s a collection of important stories from when Greg was a kid, and chronological order is far from the most important thing.  I still could have used some sort of intro that mentioned Greg’s age so I could go back and see exactly how old he was for each story, but I was able to more or less figure it out eventually.  So, quibbles aside, how was the book?  I loved it.  If you’re looking for some awkward stories about teen and pre-teen years, you’re in luck.  The piece where Greg asked a girl at church if he could call her over the summer (she reluctantly agreed), where he called her 13 times in two days but never heard back, is a rite of passage for just about every young boy.  See, young Greg, it turns out that girls (and eventually women) will often say that they’re willing to go out to you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings by saying no, instead preferring that you make a fool out of yourself for trying, as then you’re supposed to figure it out for yourself.  See, there’s nothing that can hurt your feelings about that set-up!  And no, such a thing never happened to me, why do you ask? <cough> Anyway, other stories in here include a first kiss (?), seeing the news of Reagan getting shot, seeing Jimmy Carter lose, showing off riding with no hands on a bike and getting a hairline fracture (another male rite of passage), tasting the cat food, drawing comics The Marvel Way, Dr. Who, getting called out on his Mom washing his hair before school, bird crap on his leg, a snowball fight, cheaters at frisbee, getting into a “fight” over defending a girl’s honor, and making it to the end of a bike race.  This is a hefty book for that cheap $4 price, and you’re just about guaranteed to feel some nostalgia reading over these stories.  Well, unless you’re a child, in which case you can point and laugh at the silly old people.  $4

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/9/10

June 9, 2010

New review for Just A Man #4 by Brian John Mitchell & Andrew White, as Brian continues his ridiculous pace of putting out comics.

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Posted by Kevin

Mitchell, Brian John – Just A Man #4 (with Andrew White)

June 9, 2010

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Just A Man #4 (with art by Andrew White)

One of the many reasons I caution people not to take these reviews too seriously is that I do them every day.  Well, I try to do them every day, but I come pretty close.  As that’s the case, I’m reading these in all sorts of moods, and I’m sure there have been times when a crappy mood has translated into an unfavorable review, something I take every precaution to avoid, but there’s no way I’ve been anywhere near 100% successful.  I mention all this because I had a negative reaction to the last issue of Brian’s Marked series, which was odd because I’ve been a fan of pretty much all of his other series (including the first issue of Marked!).  So was it my mood?  The comic?  Road construction pounding in my ears while I was trying to type?  I’m not sure, but will have a chance to revisit it when the next issue of that series comes out.  Either way, I still absolutely love this one.  This time around our hero has just discovered his wife (who he thought murdered in the first issue) is still alive, and that the “daughter” he has been sent to free from whorehouse is not the man’s daughter at all.  Our hero frees another whore and gives her some new cash to start a new life and has a confrontation with the man who hired him for his “daughter”, so we’re still going to have to wait at least an issue to see what’s up with his wife.  Fine by me, I’ve been enjoying every bit of this and am fine with him keeping it going for as long as possible.  I’m a sucker for the hopeless gunman trying to get his revenge on the people who wronged him, and if things aren’t as cut and dried as we’ve been led to believe, well, so much the better.  Things are rarely as black and white as depicted in most western stories, and the shades of gray are a welcome addition.  I’m assuming you people are already keeping up with this series, but if you’re not and if you wanted to check out just one of his books, I’d go with this one.  Or Lost Kisses, I love that one too.  Or Worms, that’s creepy as hell.  Or maybe XO… $1

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/8/10

June 8, 2010

New review for The Solar Brothers Volume II by Matt Kish.  It was supposed to be a review for a comic by somebody named Chris Monday, but he didn’t put any contact information in his book and apparently Chris Monday is a famous person of some kind, so I wasn’t able to find anything about the guy.  Don’t let this happen to you, makers of comics!  Always put some sort of contact information in your books, or people like me will just chuck your comic aside in disgust!

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Posted by Kevin

Kish, Matt – The Solar Brothers Volume II

June 8, 2010

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The Solar Brothers Volume II

What do you call a comic that isn’t a sketchbook but also isn’t a comic with any sort of linear story?  Let me know if you come up with something, because that’s what this book is.  Here’s how Matt describes the contents: “being a record primarily of the extra-planetary inhabitants of the pre-main sequence ternary star system AB Doradus”.  So, in other words, this is a comic with Matt doing what he does best: drawing completely random but somehow vaguely connected creatures that could not possibly exist in this world but quite possibly should.  Is that too long to use a description of his work?  Probably.  Personally, I miss his Spudd 64 story, but he seems to have gone in the direction of this and drawing an image for each page of Moby Dick (and you should really click on his website to check that stuff if ever read Moby Dick, he has over 250 images up already and it seems to be increasing steadily).  Usually there would be something here remotely resembling a review, but for this I got nothin’.  I can’t get enough of his artwork for whatever reason, so picking this up at SPACE was a no-brainer for me.  If you feel the same way about his stuff then it’ll be an equally easy choice for you.  If not, well, maybe you should try it out, either through this or some of the old issues of Spudd 64.  I had trouble picking the sample image, which is the only seal of approval a book like this needs from me.  No price, so I’m going to go with $4.

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Posted by Kevin

Update for 6/7/10

June 7, 2010

New review for Billy the Demon Slayer S2 #1 by Hayden Fryer, and yes, it does seem possible that he’s watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  So?

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Posted by Kevin

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