Update for 5/17/10

May 17, 2010

SPACE week!  New review for Timmothy’s Halloween Special by Kris Lachowski, as I’m starting off with a little one and working my way up.


Lachowski, Kris – Timmothy’s Halloween Special

May 17, 2010

Website

Timmothy’s Halloween Special

Why would my scanner insist that this comic is yellow when it’s very clearly orange?  It makes no sense.  Ah well, that’s a minor quibble compared to my major quibble for this issue: it’s a free sampler of sorts for the new graphic novel by Kris and Justin Lynch called Timmothy’s Head.  No, I’m not complaining because this was a free sampler with a perfectly self-contained story involved.  I’m raging impotently at the universe because I’ve been reading minis by Kris for years and the man finally has a graphic novel out (he calls it an experiment, I say 84 color pages in this day and age equals a graphic novel), but I got to SPACE very late this year and only ran into Kris because he saw me wandering around and gave me a couple of minis.  If I had actually seen his table I would have picked up a copy of the new giant color comic of his, but now I’m left with the vague feeling of being cheated over something that was entirely my fault.  Dammit.  Anyway, this comic is funny all by itself, and if I knew who this Timmothy character was I’d probably have more interest in learning why he has a giant deformed head.  Turns out that it’s a cautionary tale about taking candy from strangers, which is only partially connected to Halloween, but an excellent excuse to put out an orange comic (that my scanner insists is yellow).  Funny stuff, it’s free if you can find the guy at a con (or maybe if you ask nicely and buy a few of his minis he’ll throw it into your order, I don’t know) and it has me very curious to see what this new “experiment” of his is all about.


Update for 5/16/10

May 16, 2010

New review for Xoc #2 by Matt Dembicki, and I’ll make up for that missed review yesterday some time in the week.  SPACE week, that is, which is all next week unless I run out of SPACE comics, which I very much doubt.


Dembicki, Matt – Xoc #2

May 16, 2010

Website

Xoc #2

OK fine, it’s another great issue of Xoc, I can’t believe how well the man can draw all kinds of different ocean life, blah blah blah.  The important thing this time around is Matt takes time in his introduction to explain the name Xoc (ancient Mayan word for “demon fish”, so most likely the name for shark) and even reprints an original poster from 1569 (the first known (?) display of a dead shark), which has a very interesting interpretation of what a shark actually looks like.  In other words, I learned something before the comic even started.  Kudos!  Once the comic gets underway things heat up considerably: Xoc gets attacked by a group of killer whales, discovers that there’s an old sea turtle following him around (they’re theoretically just going to the same place, and what safer company to be in than a great white shark?), observes a fight to the death between an octopus and a whale (turns out the octopus has developed a few decent defensive moves over the centuries), feeds on a recent whale carcass (saving some energy by not having to kill something), and gets latched onto by a couple of lampreys.  Seriously, I am constantly impressed by the range Matt shows in depicting these underwater beasts.  Quite a few comic artists never break out of their comfort zones (whatever it is that they like to draw, usually people and regular life situations), but unless Matt is a deep sea diver there must be a lot of research involved in putting out this comic, and he pulls it off flawlessly.  I’d say he should pitch this series to Disney for a movie but I don’t think the world is ready for a great white shark “hero”.  Oh well, the comics world gets this all to itself instead.  If you have any interest in the 75% of the world with no people in it, there’s no reason in the world to miss this. $2


Update for 5/14/10

May 14, 2010

New review for Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #1 by Eric H., not to be confused with Odd Jobs #1 by Eric H.  Well, I suppose they should be confused, as Odd Jobs #1 was the first half of Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #1.  Totally different comics though, except for that small fact.


H., Eric – Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #1

May 14, 2010

Website

Chickenbot’s Odd Jobs #1

Are you one of the people who read Eric H.’s Odd Jobs #1, or perhaps saw the review for it on this site?  Well, Eric has decided to put that whole story out in one issue, so this one is #1 of that series as well as the conclusion of the story.  It would have been roughly two issues, if you were curious.  You can read the review for that issue here, but to sum up: Chickenbot goes to a temp agency to make some cash.  He picks the job of werewolf hunter, sets off to a town terrorized by said werewolf and has a series of occurrences that convince him that the people being terrorized are fairly worthless, but can’t leave until (contractually) until he finishes the job.  The first issue (although I guess this is going to be the only issue from now on) ended with Chickenbot confronting said werewolf, but we really didn’t get to see much of the fight… until now.  The rest of the story is the fight with the werewolf (and Chickenbot’s weapons all fail in spectacular fashion), followed in the morning by the fight with the child who is the werewolf on full moons.  No spoilers from me, but that was some funny stuff right there. Eric is putting pages up at his website for free (which is a good thing, as I don’t see any way to order the comics from his website), so if you go there now you’ll be about a third of the way through the second part of the story.  As for the comic as a whole I thought it was great stuff.  His fight scenes were funny and suspenseful (a difficult bridge to walk), and as for the ending… well, how else is a werewolf supposed to be put under control?  If you already read the first issue of this series you’re required to get this to see how it ends, if not, well, the whole story is now in one convenient package, even if it does seem to be tricky to purchase at the moment.  Check out his website and maybe bug the guy, if he sent me a copy then he must have them lying around somewhere.  No price either, but as this is two issues, let’s say $4.


Update for 5/13/10

May 13, 2010

New review for Gold and Black and Gray (all one title) by Gloria Farmer.


Farmer, Gloria – Gold and Blue and Gray

May 13, 2010

Website

Gold and Blue and Gray

I lost the thread with this comic early on and never seemed to pick it back up.  The maddening thing is that I think there was a really great comic in here, but I just wasn’t able to piece it together from what I was given.  Or I wasn’t able to piece it together because on this particular day I couldn’t keep up with it; I’ve been reviewing these things long enough to know that the fault can easily lie with me.  How do I explain this so it makes sense to somebody who hasn’t seen the comic… Well, there’s that sample below.  That’s the first page of the comic.  Go ahead and click on it, read it and come back here.  Done?  OK.  From what I was able to tell, a young man was watching, went outside because he was concerned about his dog, had his dog rip off his face and then turned into the dog, all this being watched from high above.  Huh?  The next page starts with the message “20 minutes earlier”, so the theory is that we’ll go back and have this all make sense, but it ends up making it even more confusing.  The dog is given birth to by a sunbeam shining into a pool (so I guess it wasn’t really that guy’s dog?), an irate Facebook friend transforms into a gigantic tentacled anime rape machine, the naked man on a leash is shown to be another man entirely (?), and the skeleton is removed whole from the fat anime thing.  That’s the tame version of events.  Still, it’s impossible to discount entirely, as her idea to use a fake message board conversation as a backdrop to all this chaos was brilliant (and hilarious).  And did I menti0n that that wasn’t even the main story of the comic?  That would be the first chapter of The Incarnation of Mayonezu Kuchibirum, which makes the first story seem downright linear.  This one has lots of sex, a narrator who knows how the lead character is going to die, a 12th birthday party where fucking the birthday boy against his will is apparently the thing to do, and all of this theoretically takes place in hell (which looks kind of like an apple core, hence the name of the comics company).  Again, impossible to discount, as there’s also a Spanish Inquisition rap in here that is one of the funnier things you’re likely to see.  So what does this all add up to?  I didn’t know what the hell was going on more often than not, but there were also flashes of (the most overused word in the language, but it happens to be true) brilliance.  Maybe this comic didn’t work completely or maybe it was just me, but either way I’m VERY interested to see what Gloria comes up with next.


Update for 5/12/10

May 12, 2010

New review for Norman: Tales From Amazon #1 by Kelly Froh.  How’s your week going?


Froh, Kelly – Norman: Tales From Amazon #1

May 12, 2010

Website

Norman: Tales From Amazon #1

Kelly spent 6 months working as a contract worker for Amazon.com, and this is the first of what she calls “hopefully many” comics about her time there.  She thought it would be cool to work for Amazon but found out differently, and here’s hoping we hear more about the customer service end in one of these minis.  I know my experience with them has been fairly miserable, at least when they get an order wrong (which, in all fairness, has been only rarely).   Anyway, this comic is the story of Norman, a guy she worked with who was a stoner and a recovering drunk who played a lot of video games.  They didn’t seem to have much interaction, but Norman was set off one day by the security guard talking on his cell phone (which was against the rules, but the poor guy was supposed to just “look alert” for his eight hour shift with no distractions).  A brief argument ensued, a firing and a transfer occurred, and the rest of the comic deals with Kelly being forced to testify about the incident and a near-miss years later when she almost ran into the guy (working, ironically enough, as a security guard) at an art museum.  This is a tiny thing but, as it’s told in her style of almost being a letter home (i.e. she’s never afraid to unleash potentially embarrassing details and also does an admirable job of preemptively answering any questions you might have after reading), these tiny minis of hers feel more like a meal than the average $.50 mini.  Usually minis that cheap are strictly for cons or are tiny wordless tales, the few tiny ones from her have been a bargain along with being a great read at any price.  In case you’re currently broke and want some bang for very little buck, this is an excellent place to start.  $.50


Update for 5/11/10

May 11, 2010

New review for Veggie Dog Saturn #3: Jason’s Quest by Jason Young.  That reminds me: people of SPACE, I’m getting to your comics.  This call for rental comics has sent a pile of them coming in the mail, so I’m trying to sort through all that first.  Ooh, I know: next week is SPACE week.  There, problem solved!


Young, Jason – Veggie Dog Saturn #3

May 11, 2010

Website

Veggie Dog Saturn #3: Jason’s Quest

There’s one glaring problem with this comic that didn’t occur to me until I had finished reading it and was scanning the cover for this review: what exactly is Jason’s Quest?  It would make sense with a different cover, but that one makes it look like he’s desperately searching for either love or sex, and this book doesn’t seem to have anything of the sort.  This comic begins with Jason, about to “celebrate” his 31st birthday, freaking out about the fact that the degree he was going for was something that would probably end up making his life miserable (looks like some kind of advertising degree, and Google “Bill Hicks Advertising” to get the perfect quote for that (nothing personal to Jason)).  There was also the fact that “all he had to show for it” was a few comics very few people have seen.  Maybe in a calmer moment he saw that the sum of our lives is not just the things we produce and consume but the effect we have on those around us, or maybe he didn’t.  Works for me anyway.  Jason, on the spur of the moment, accepts an invitation from some friends to go bike riding in Toronto after the semester is over, and the rest of the comic deals with Jason’s lost ticket home, a friend who lost a passport, the other people in the hostel, a naked bike ride (consisting mostly of middle-aged people), and all of the calamities that come with being far from home and without a solid home base.  It’s a hefty thing at 30 pages, there’s a suitably bleak ending, and there’s even a more uplifting message on the color strip of the back cover: maybe sometimes you should take some advice from your cat.  That won’t make sense to most of you and that’s fine, but believe me, his ending message is excellent.  I’ve seen plenty of these travel comics in my years of running this website and this is one of the better ones.  There’s a moment when he “figures it all out”, but there’s nothing preachy about it and it’s the kind of quiet conclusion that’s perfect for this story.  Good stuff, that’s what I say.  $3


Update for 5/10/10

May 10, 2010

New review for Onesies by Whit Taylor, and work continues on making that comic rental thing a reality.  I’m done predicting when this will be ready to go, as I was hoping for the start of May and keep running into more things that need to be taken care of.  If anybody out there is a website designer, has heard about this rental project and has thoughts on how such a thing might work, I’d love to get a second or third opinion.  I think I have it all figured out (more or less), but have had some enlightening discussions with comics creators about their end of things and would like to do the same with the programmer crowd.  Bonus points if you design websites and make your own comics!


Taylor, Whit – Onesies

May 10, 2010

Website

Onesies

Since I complain when people don’t do it, it’s best to start this review with a compliment: Whit put her e-mail and website address right on the back of her comic.  See how easy that is everybody?  Once I can get everybody in the world putting contact info in every book, erasing all pencil lines before releasing their comic into the wild and taking two seconds to check their spelling I can retire in peace.  As that’s never going to happen across the board, apparently I’m never going to be able to retire.  I do have one piece of advice for Whit: put a number after that title.  If this is your main form of making comics (single page strips posted first on her website), then chances are you’re going to put putting out more of these, correct?  Anyways, kudos for the title, as it’s a significantly better description for single page strips than, um, single page strips.  I’m going with onesies from now on.  So how’s the comic?  Pretty funny.  Strips in here deal with reactions to her drawing comics, trying to wrap her head around Facebook, deep thoughts about Disney characters, greatest fears, how everything feels the same at 12:01 on New Year’s Eve, a joke about a Fabio wig (which, in the strip, made no sense to the people the guy was talking to; I feel their pain), her admirable position of refusing to date a man who uses a Bluetooth (and ladies, if you’d all band together on this one the next generation would have significantly fewer assholes), giving up things versus doing evil for lent, deciding when exactly is a good time to start living in the moment, the projected theme of a strip club, whatever happened to Fruitopia, wallowing after a breakup, and what St. Patrick would be like if he was alive today.   So you have the occasional important insight, funny bits spread throughout, and a wide enough variety of subjects that you never get bored.  Seems like a pretty solid recipe for a good mini comic to me.  $3


Update for 5/9/10

May 9, 2010

New review for Yo! Burbalino by Greg Farrell, happy Mother’s Day Mom!


Farrell, Greg – Yo! Burbalino #1

May 9, 2010

Website

Yo!  Burbalino #1

Hey look, another random mini comic!  Greg was nice enough to send along the first few issues of this series, so we get to see him develop as an artist a little bit.  Or I do at least; for all I know whoever is reading this stumbled here by accident while looking for porn.  This is a series of random stories, mostly dealing with a chef and his friend Earl (who happens to be a squirrel).  Their bits include Earl betting Chef Don that his lawn mower was so weak that he (Earl) could safely sit under it, Chef Don making a conceptual pizza for his wife, an actual recipe for chestnut lentil pate (or at least it looks real to me), and Don winning a monkey at a fair and seeing his plans to make money off its dancing fall apart.  There are plenty of other bits in here unrelated to those two as well, dealing with a funny gag for hypochondriacs, why they call Greg Electro Boy (and oddly enough I know exactly what he’s talking about here), an excellent strip called Muffin McGuffin (and if you don’t know what a McGuffin is, that’s what the internet is there for), and Is This Your Leotard.  He even manages to throw in a few funny short strips, which is no easy feat for anybody.  As for troubles, there are a couple of egregious spelling errors (but overall it’s OK, which makes these whoppers stand out even more) and the art looks awful at the start of that lawnmower strip, but that improved pretty steadily over the course of the book.  So, to sum it all up, it’s another first issue that shows some promise, but I won’t be able to see if he realizes that promise until I see a couple more issues.  Odd how it turns out this way so often…  $3


Update for 5/8/10

May 8, 2010

New review for The Fifty Flip Experiment #10 by Dan Hill, and he was nice enough to send plenty of these comics along, so expect to see more of his stuff in the near future.  Oh, and as I’m lacking a formal way to keep you guys updated on the rental thing other than these site news updates, I finished cataloging all the comics that I’m going to be offering for rental that aren’t under the umbrella of one of the comic companies who also gave me their OK.  Believe me, once I get the comics from those two companies listed that total will more than double, but for now, if you’re thinking about giving this a shot, it’ll start off with at least 550 comics of over 100 small press folks available for rental.  Old stuff, new stuff, no matter who you are there will be comics in here you’ve never seen before.  Just throwing that out there, I had to do something to make it clear that work is still progressing on this thing…


Hill, Dan – The Fifty Flip Experiment #10

May 8, 2010

Website

The Fifty Flip Experiment #10

There’s a lot to be said for simple consistency, the continued ability to put out funny, interesting comics on a regular basis.  Dan, at the very least, has that down.  He managed to put out one of these every 2 months for a couple of years there, no small feat in the mini comic community.  This issue was done a little over a year ago and it looks like he’s only put out three issues since, which means that he slipped up a little bit.  Or you could look at it another way: how many small press people do you know that managed to put out three issues of anything in the last year?  It’s a much smaller list than it should be.  On to the comic, as I sure can meander off topic.  This starts off with a pretty funny text piece based on This American Life, Ira Glass and David Sedaris.  Well, I thought it was funny; your mileage may vary based on your familiarity with those people and/or that show.  The comics end up dealing with utter randomness, including the shortest friendship ever, a married couple completing each others’ sentences, some hyper-literary nonsense that has to be read to be believed (I tried summing it up but it’s impossible), apology lines, a unicorn who thinks we need a strong Israel, and Spoons For Hands Man crapping all over everything.  There’s also the chunkiest part of the comic in the middle, and it’s all about a zombie waking up his dinosaur steed, shooting an alcoholic owl and running over Hunter S. Thompson.  All of that only scratches the surface of the nonsensical hilarity of the comic, and it’s only nonsensical for the parts I didn’t understand, but they probably had a deeper significance that flew right over my head.  These random piles of funny have really grown on my over the last couple of years, you should think about getting a few of these so you can see where I’m coming from.  $2


Update for 5/7/10

May 7, 2010

New review for a new webcomic: The Adventures of Ace Hoyle by Phill Provance & Tomas Batha.  Full disclosure here: I don’t normally review webcomics, but they offered to pay me for my honest opinion of the series.  As I was still able to say whatever I wanted and was not reduced to shilling for the strip for cash, I figured that was ethically acceptable.  As for the site in general, I’m doing a review a day again until I can start to get this mound of comics under control, which means weekend updates too.  The call for this rental service has led to all sorts of new stuff being sent here, and I still haven’t even cracked open my pile of books from SPACE.


Provance, Phill, Batha, Tomas (#1-9) & Arce, Edgar (#10-20) – The Adventures of Ace Hoyle #1-20

May 7, 2010

Website

The Adventures of Ace Hoyle: Web comic episodes #1-20

It’s best if I make one thing clear at the outset: I play a fair amount of poker.  I’ve also been known to watch bits of the occasional tournament on television, or at least the overly dramatic parts while flipping channels.  That being said, there was at least one bit of this series that baffled me in a technical way, and I do love to throw some negativity into what would otherwise be a positive review.  How is it that the card hand played in episode 11 and 12 is the “opening hand”?  Didn’t we see our hero Ace Hoyle fold on the opening hand? It was altogether baffling to me, and seemingly only used to get rid of a couple of people at the final table.

Chances are I should go back to the beginning before asking questions about the middle, so for the uninitiated Ace Hoyle: The Golden Thread is a new webcomic.  Writer Phill Provance and artist Tomas Batha put out a weekly comic dealing with the, well, adventures of Ace Hoyle.  Duh.  So far it’s just the one adventure, as the first 20 strips deal with Ace making it to the final five of the big poker tournament.  There’s also some serious funny business going on with a side character and possibly Ace himself, but these things are only hinted at and are left for future strips.  Or at least I hope they’re left for future strips.  If they’re just oddities for the sake of being odd that’s some lazy storytelling right there.  These two do seem to know what they’re doing though, so they deserve the benefit of the doubt on that front.  Instead of going through these one by one (as I never do that for pages of a comic, so why do it for episodes of a webcomic?), I’ll break it down by how certain chunks held together.

Episode 1: OK, this one deserves a mention all its own.  The introduction to Ace Hoyle, he tells us how awesome his life is, and then declares that he’s there to win.  This is the first hint to a troubling conclusion I’ve drawn about the series, but I’ll save that for later.

Episode 2-5: We learn about the other 4 people at the table (Russian twins, a lucky yokel named Hank and Ace’s nemesis from past years called Dick Spadely, although I’m not sure if “nemesis” is the proper term for somebody that Ace seems to beat every year), have some minor drama when Ace just barely makes it to the table before the 15 minute grace period is up, and even the card dealer is given an introduction.  We meet a mysterious lady in blue who tries to call Ace to get him to the table; she’ll come into play later.  Episode 5 also has one of the few artistic rough spots, as that shot of the five players sitting around the table just looks sloppy.  Dick’s face appears to have melted, Hank’s hat is gray instead of its later pink, and Ace has a fish eye.  Again, I point this out because the art is consistently expressive for the rest of the strips, but this chunk looks like it was finished two minutes before the deadline.

Episode 6-8: Probably my favorite chunk of the series so far, and that’s because this deals with an important subject: poker.  We get to see how the lucky new guy deals with being dealt pocket aces (spoiler alert: he’s not good at hiding his emotions), Dick’s tell, Ace’s decision to fold, and the Russians with their bluffing.  My main problem with this is that it fades away to another character after #8 and we’re left wondering what happened.  I get the artistic decision to do so, as they can’t spend the entire strip on every little facet of playing poker, but the choice to leave this hand leads straight to my later confusion of how two players got knocked out on the opening hand while there was every indication given that Ace folded on the opening hand.

Episode 9-10: We meet “the Finegold girl”, the same woman who tried to get Ace to the table earlier, as she gets her ass slapped with mysterious vanishing orange ink and a suspicious man, upon seeing her, says that that “this might actually work better than I expected”.   What’s going on here?  No idea, but we’ll figure that out in the next issue.  Right?

Episode 11-13: We see the “opening hand” that confused me, the forcible removal of one of the losers, and the slow disintegration of another player.  We also see that “the Finegold girl” has a very good idea of how the mind of Ace works, as she watches the hand at a bar and tells the bartender exactly what’s going to happen.

Episode 14-16: The Finegold girl (sorry, if there was a first name given I flat out missed it), a little drunker than she thought, sees the man who slapped her ass and gives chase.  There’s also a little bit of set-up for the final poker hand.

Episode 17-20: Ace and Dick are both dealt pocket aces!  The Finegold girl thinks she tracked down the creep who put vanishing orange ink on her ass!  We get some serious trash talk between Dick and Ace!  And they even had the decency to leave things on a cliffhanger!  Sorry, once I get started with the exclamation points it’s difficult to stop.

So what’s the verdict for the series?  There’s a problem with the coloring, as Hank’s hat shifted from gray to pink and back to gray.  It’s a minor thing, granted, but it’s easily fixed.  Hell, they could go back in now and fix the coloring, or at least do it before this is put out as a physical comic.  On the plus side there’s a fascinating cast of characters and a burgeoning mystery to be dealt with.  Is Ace’s late arrival to the poker table a part of that mystery, or was that just a way to rattle his opponents?   That leads me to my main problem with the series so far: Ace Hoyle.  I know, it’s hard to like a strip if you don’t care for the main character.  Ace seems, at least so far, like a low-rent James Bond.  I’m hoping there’s more to him in future issues, but it’s always hard to identify with a man who can do no wrong.   Still, there’s way too much good here to dismiss it.  Tomas does an excellent job of capturing the emotions going through these poker players at various times in the game, and Phill does seem to have a master plan going for the whole thing.  Overall, I land somewhere around optimistic but not fully convinced.

UPDATE: Turns out Edgar Arce took over for Tomas Batha at Episode #10.  Right around the time that the art seemed to noticeably improve.  I probably should have caught that, what with me being a “professional” and all.  Oops…