April 27, 2010
Website
Super Hero Happy Hour #1
There’s good superhero parody, bad superhero parody and than there’s the kind that makes no sense to people who haven’t living and breathing this stuff for years. This is good parody, sure, but it’s very insiderish. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your point of view, as it’s not like people who don’t read comics are going to pick something up with a title like this anyway, right? Anyway the concept is that a bunch of superheroes are hanging out at a bar after a hard day of fighting crime. More than a few funny lines ensue and there’s something absolutely mesmerizing about the art. It just feels like it’s moving all the time, or maybe it’s all those drugs in the water. A solid effort all around. There’s just one little problem, and this is my nitpicking and leaning towards the negative more than anything else: it’s the first issue of a series. As a novelty it was fine, I’d recommend it to anybody who likes a good parody. As a continuing series, well, I’m not sure if superheroes sitting around a bar and chatting really has that many places to go. I’m sure they have some ideas of they wouldn’t have made a series out of it, I guess it’s just that I have my doubts about its longevity. This issue earned a look by me for the next couple of issues, but I’m going to have an awfully critical eye on this one. Check out the website…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Hello, Again
Three cheers to Top Shelf for doing these yearly-ish sales of a bunch of their stock. Hello, Again is something that I’ve seen at various stores for years, but the $10 price tag for something so tiny always scared me off. All that being said, this is a perfectly wonderful little tale about repeating the mistakes of the past, the power of secrets and the uncertain nature of trying to put things right. This starts off with Willy, our “hero”, having sex with a woman we soon discover is the fiancee of his unsuspecting best friend. He seems slightly tormented by this but is unwilling to stop until a man from his past comes along to talk some sense into the guy. Turns out this is just his conscience speaking in the form of a man he may or may not have killed in a childhood prank years ago, although the reality of the guy is left up in the air by a floating coffee cup. No, I’m not going to explain that any more clearly; read it for yourself if you’re curious. Brian Ralph wrote a nice blurb on the back, appropriate because this artwork reminds me more than a little of Brian. Max makes his own style though, with a lead character who seems physically incapable of any lasting happiness and eyes that are somehow densely expressive while appearing simplistic. It eventually eases towards a happy ending, but nothing is as simple as all that. I was thoroughly impressed by this, hefty price tag or not. You could always get it cheaper at Amazon or just wait for another one of these sales if you’re as cheap as I am… $10
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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Klaberjass Chapter 1
Believe me, the cover looks a lot better than that. It didn’t scan well at all though, so I apologize for that. The comic itself is pretty good, but it’s a continuing story so it’s hard to say too much positive or negative about it yet. It’s apparently the story of a man who has the ability to mold his face to look like whoever he wants, set sometime in the future. There are already a couple of neat touches, like the fact that the names of all the people are all based on their profession, with the movie critic being called Godfather II and the performer being called Victor Victoria. This looks like it must be at least $3, and it’s the kind of thing that is probably going to get better as it goes. I’d wait until a couple of more issues come out so you don’t have to wait so long for the story, but that’s just a personal preference. E-mail the guy or send him money if you don’t like waiting at: 1800 Junction Hwy, Apt. 12-E, Kerrville, TX 78028.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
All Dressed Up and Nowhere To Go
Now that’s just a great cover. I don’t know how many of you love to dig through those cheesy old Tales From the Crypt and Haunt of Fear collections, but this book got all kinds of points from me with the cover alone. Once you open up the book you see the theme continued, with zombies and various dead people all over the place. My main problem here is the fact that I’m biased towards longer pieces and I don’t think anything in here was longer than four pages. An unreasonable, silly quibble, but hey, I’m the one writing this, right? Stories here deal with zombies on the job, cannibal monkeys, illusions and hell. And there are pages just with pictures of zombies here, so you can’t go wrong there. Seriously, if anybody wants a good review from me you should send me a comic all about zombies standing around yelling at each other. Go to his website, he has pretty much the whole comic up there to read, and you can also get ordering information. So overall I guess you could say that I liked the art a lot and wished for a bit more substance in some of the stories, but that it was a fun read. Check out his comics!
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website (broken link, can’t find anything working)
A Collected Comic Book
What a terrible title! Sorry, I don’t like to start these things off on a negative note, but that’s just a silly title. Maybe it’s just me, maybe because I haven’t seen his stuff before I didn’t know there were a bunch of short pieces floating around, waiting to be put into a collected comic book. Snarky on a Monday afternoon, that’s me. Anyway, what about the actual comic? Well, about 2/3 of it is made up of short stories, one to four pages in length, about things like a fake diet, black on black crime, black sitcoms, an average day in his life, how to achieve bitterness, cutting his hair, and the obligatory character from the page coming to life and telling him how much he sucks (although, to be fair, I liked what he did with this one). Then you have a couple of strips with stick figures punching and kicking each other, and that’s the first 2/3 of the book. A few good strips, a lot of stuff that’s so-so. The last 1/2 of the book, however, is a different story. These are one page newspaper style strips, mostly dealing with music, and that’s obviously where his passion lies. Song lyrics, watching records spin, when it’s appropriate to quote rap lyrics, trying to play a Stevie Wonder song from memory, watching music videos as a kid, it’s all good once these strips start. They always say to write about what you know, and it’s obvious that he knows music really well. I’m curious to see a longer story from this guy, it’s obvious that he has some great stories in him. All in all it’s pretty hit and miss, but not a bad book by any means. Here’s a website, what is it with putting a price somewhere on the comic? I’m guessing $3 because it’s a pretty big book, but I honestly have no idea. Keep checking their website, maybe they’ll get that store up soon…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
A Sleepy Head Tale
Here’s a little tip from me to you from the world of comics. If something has a Jim Woodring introduction, the very least you can expect out if is that it’s going to be unique. This book is no exception. It kinds of defies description though. On the surface it a one page newspaper strip with weekly misadventures and the obligatory punch lines. Dig a little bit though and you have the world laid open at your feet and picked apart. Not much here flows into each other. You could probably open to any random page and enjoy it just as much as any other, which can be refreshing after seeing so many continuing stories. The protagonist, Sleepy, hates the world and doesn’t mind telling you about it. He never gets his way though, and maybe that’s the point. Or maybe not, I’m not much into finding the “point” of books. It odd, original, and thoroughly engaging, that much I know for sure. It’s cheap too, so why don’t you read and try to come up with a better description?
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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The Nano Event
Really, I think we all know that the nanobots are going to rule us sooner rather than later, right? Sure, nobody ever talks about it, but a moron could see it coming a mile away. This book is all about their rise to power, using toys that look suspiciously like Pikachu’s to spread their evil seed. This comic is a quick read but funny as hell, all about the nanobots being dispatched in the brain of a man who has parasites attacking his brain cells. He freaks out, flees from the hospital and the nanobots are left to fend for themselves. Their last, desperate attempt to kill the parasites causes problems that none of them anticipated, and saying anything else would be giving too much away. Good stuff, read it. E-mail the guy and see what he has laying around, unless the nanobots have already gotten to you…
Chris Staros over at Top Shelf told me that although the Mini Burger set isn’t available on the web page, you can still order it through their online catalog. Just go to the ordering page, click on #4 at the bottom (additional comments) and write in that you want the Mini Burger set for $19.95. They have it in stock, they just haven’t updated the site in a while. From what I’ve read, it’s worth it. There might be two bad ones in this bunch and a couple of mediocre ones, but the good ones are good in ways that you don’t usually see in this country.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Nathan and the Land of Robots Now Available! $4
Hey look, a self-contained mini comic! Granted, a good number of the ones that use numbers end up being self-contained too, but that’s not on purpose. This is all about a young boy who, being unable to sleep, decides to wander around outside for a bit. It’s a very short walk, as he is abducted by a giant Robowl in a hurry and taken to, as you can probably guess from the title, the land of the robots. This sets off a series of events, all centered around Nathan trying to get home before his mother wakes up. The robot who ends up helping him seems fairly ambivalent about the whole thing, but he ends up unwittingly getting dragged along on this adventure. Matt has excellent descriptions of the cast of characters at the back of the book, as there isn’t much time to learn about them during the journey but they were all unique enough to make me curious. The book looks great (that cover shimmers, if you can’t tell from the scan), and the man is clearly very comfortable drawing a wide range of robots. Might I suggest skipping the humans entirely the next time around and going nuts with the robots? Just a thought. There are also no spelling errors or misprints that I could see, and I shouldn’t even have to mention that, granted, but I thought the people who do things the right way could use a little encouragement, just like the lazy people who don’t care could use a little rage. This is also one of those all-ages stories, as kids could read this as easily as adults. It’s probably aimed a bit more towards kids, but it could go either way, depending on your current level of cynicism and/or interest in robots. It’s worth a look, and I’m curious to see what else Matt comes up with over the years.  $4
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Mystic Visions 1/2
Normally I hate the whole concept of issues being called #0 or #1/2, but as this one was specifically for a convention (and because it works so well as a shortie), I have no problems at all. This is more of a running joke than a comic, as it’s all about a knight trying to teach an ogre to jump out at his command and attack a human. A long misunderstanding ensues (as ogres aren’t too bright), much mayhem ensues, and the ogre is even genuinely rude at one point. It’s a shortie, which means that the running joke doesn’t have time to get old, which makes it a pretty fun comic. It’s only $.50 if you do see it at a con somewhere, or you could just go here and read it all online in glorious color.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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A Rib Roast Book #2
This book has nonsensical stream of consciousness stories that I’m still not sure about long after I put the book down, and there were chunks of it that just didn’t look very good. Still, his last story about visiting his family won me over, and for the few chunks of crappy art there was plenty of great use of angles and perspectives (hey, I’m not an artist, I don’t know the technical terms) that intrigued me. A mini comic or two more to work the kinks out and this guy (or girl, there’s just a letter for the first name) and there could be something pretty cool here. He’s also one of the few people who had a book at Chicago Comics for only $1, so it goes without saying that he should get your support. I don’t know why I have such an easier time supporting so-so books that only cost $1, but there you have it. E-mail him or her to see what else it available and send along some encouraging words, won’t you?
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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Super Iffy
What a wonderfully fantastic comic this is. First off, one look at that cover (with one of the better sub-titles ever) should tell you that you might detect a hint of Jack Kirby in here. If that’s not your thing, well, with the original comics I can get that, but with these later day parodies, all of them that I’ve seen have deserved a look. This is the story of the evil Demi-Urge vs the power of Om, with all of the panels being laid out like that sample down there, with one declarative statement per panel. Oh, and it also has a character named Bart Justice. If all of these things don’t convince you to try to find this, there may be no hope for you, or for all good in the world. Oh, and this is also a part of Shiot Crock #11, generally with threads found around here somewhere…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website (down as of 4/25/10)
Coexisting
Full disclosure here: I think people who take every part of the bible literally are silly, silly folks. There are plenty of good lessons in there and more than a few entertaining stories but, well, some parts contradict other parts, so it’s just about impossible to take literally. People who think that dinosaurs lived at the same time as people and that carbon dating is a tool of the devil, well, they’re just funny. And if you believe all of these things, I’m sure that you’re a perfectly wonderful person, and you’re more than welcome to believe whatever you like over there, and I’ll do the same over here. Deal? OK. Sorry about the unexpected rant, but it seems like irrationality is taking over these days, what with evolution being defeated in a mock trial and Kansas literally trying to change the definition of the word “science” so they can get creationism in schools. This book (remember how I’m supposed to be talking about a comic?) is about Andrew (the author), Carl (his gay friend) and Marcus (a Seventh Day Adventist and homophobe). Andrew and Carl are trying to get a team together for a three on three basketball tournament, spot Marcus playing basketball and immediately want him on the team. The rest of the book (focused mainly on Andrew) deals with the morality of shopping at Wal-Mart and Andrew, who seems to feel the same way I do about the evolution subject, trying to get answers from Marcus about the whole thing. What I love about this book is that there are no easy answers to anything here. Andrew tries to be tolerant about the whole thing, then finds out that he just can’t, then has some serious doubts about how he reacted to the whole thing, but we never get to see exactly how the whole thing is resolved. The sparse, relatively simple dialogue and art really amplify the black and white nature with which the two main characters see the world but, as I said, you’re not going to get a simple declaration of somebody being right and somebody being wrong here. A surprisingly complex book (especially considering I was talking just the other day about how few comics even touch things that are current politically), I thoroughly enjoyed it. Here’s a website, this one is $2.99 and it comes out in July…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Interview
Daddy’s Girl
There are books that you can read in their entirety and have no opinion of other than “eh”. This isn’t one of them, one way or another. This is mostly about a little girl, Lily, dealing with the sexual abuse of her father. Obviously, it affects her everywhere. Her dealings with other boys her age and the world in general suffers terribly from all of her pain. This isn’t an easy thing to read, honestly. Her naked pain (if this isn’t autobiographical she does an incredible job of depicting this atrocity) is hard to look at. Still, it’s an important work, and it’s done really well. The art reminds me a lot of Ariel Bordeaux, although I’m sure that’s just a coincidence because they were both doing comics at the same time (the bulk of these are between ’92 and ’95). In other words, check this out, if you haven’t already. She has a new book coming out soon too, which I’m going to check out just as soon as this one works its way through my system. It’s still hard to believe that there are people in this world like the father in this book…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Dog-Eared #3
There are tough reviews that I do here, and there are easy reviews. This is one of the easy ones. Dog-Eared is another book that I got at SPACE, and it’s a collection of one panel gag strips, kind of like Far Side. What makes this review so easy? Well, for a book like this, there’s not much plot or story to talk about. That means that the strips are either funny or not funny, and I have to say that I didn’t even crack a smile once during this book. Humor is subjective, granted, and I’m sure there are people out there who would find this funny. Whether they’re reading this website or not is something I’m not sure about, but I’ve read enough really stupid and unfunny comics in the newspaper to know that people like that sort of thing. This was a bad, bad book. If you have a morbid curiosity about the whole thing, go to his website and check it out. Hell, maybe the other books were funny, I don’t know. As for samples, I usually pick out the parts of comics that I think are funniest or most well done for this part, and I honestly just picked a couple of pages at random at this one. Enjoy, or at least read it quickly…
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
I’m 21 in 2 Hours
What do you wonder about in the two hours before you turn 21 when you spend 15 minutes on a comic thinking about things? How much money you’re going to have, how the ladies are going to love you, and how much thinner you’re going to be, of course. You know, all the important things. This book looks pretty good and it’s a fun shortie, so I’d say it’s a good compliment to the rest of these Budge books, seeing as how some of them aren’t that great. From what I’ve been able to tell so far enough of them are fun little things like this, making it worth the effort to get the bunch of them. Or you could just buy them individually, I suppose, if you think it’s normal to buy a 15 minute comic on its own.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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English Conversation #1
Note to anybody who may be confused: Dongery’s real name is Flu Hartberg, but Dongery is what USS Catastrophe is calling him, so that’s what I’m going with, even if the comic tends to go by his actual name. As for the comic, if you like cute, off-kilter foreign spellings of English words, you’re in luck! Flu and a few of his friends head off for a trip to a cabin, and this issue mostly deals with them arguing about the 70’s, drinking, smoking pot and hanging out with friends. Oh, and huffing gasoline. How could I leave that out? It’s a shortie but it’s a fun little comic, reading about all these kids without a care in the world, except maybe women and how to keep some sort of a buzz gong. Worth checking out, as this is one of those rare autobio comics where there’s actually stuff going on worth documenting… $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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Peehole #1
You know, I never thought to ask: is “peehole” one word or two? Odd the questions you can ask youself while reading mini comics. This is a collection of one panel gag strips, all done while Jim was at work, and all done on post-it notes. As always, my favorite was the one I used for a sample, your reaction may vary. The book threatens a few times to wander over into senseless vulgarity and, considering the setting where Jim made these strips, it’s a little surprising that the book holds up as well as it does. There is no sense at all in going through these bit by bit and analyzing them, as you get an idea of his sense of humor pretty quickly. Either it’s your thing or it isn’t. OK fine, just to confuse the reader, here are some topics: Hitler’s moustache, looking sexy, Viking love, gravity, a pleading sandwich, and a shaving sasquatch. See? I might as well have said nothing at all, or just made up a bunch of topics. I haven’t been able to find anything else done by the man (although, in fairness, I don’t have the stomach for much time on google looking for “Donaldson” and “peehole”) but he seems to have a solid sense of humor. Maybe something produced outside of work could be great? Or maybe he is only able to bring the funny while in the despair of his job. I’d love a chance to find out, anyway. Worth a look if you can find it, although I do have to warn you that this is from 2005, so I have no idea if that e-mail address is still valid. $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Can of Worms
Is there a buzz out there somewhere for this book that I’m just not hearing? I got it pretty much at random on my pre-order page, mostly because it was from Fantagraphics and I hadn’t heard of it. This is Catherine’s first graphic novel and, if it’s any indication, she’s got big things (or at least as big as they get in the comics world) in store for her. The back of the book calls it “a thinly veiled autobiographical fiction”. It’s about the search for her birth mother, a silent book punctuated by letters and evidence as she gets closer and closer to the truth. In case I haven’t made it clear yet, I liked everything about this book, and I don’t think I say that very often. I liked the cartooniness of her family (in appearance only) compared to the stark reality of everyone else, even if they only had peripheral roles. I don’t think any silent book has ever taken me this long to read either. It would be on my list for best graphic novels of the year, if I kept lists about that kind of thing. If anybody else out there has read this, start to make some noise about it. Go to the message boards and places like that, get the word out.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
Website
Army Ants #22
The lesson to be learned here is simple: always check the issue number of something before you buy it. See, I was trying to get a sampling for as many people as possible with a very finite supply of cash. There were graphic novels available, but I figured they were too expensive and I could get some idea of what was going on by just getting random issue. Wrong. This is part 12 of a 12 part series, if that tells you anything. Michael appears to be wrapping the story up and getting ready for a new one. I’m guessing by the title that there’s a lot of fighting going on, and apparently a lot of macho posturing. Checking around online I found out that this is also an RPG. Whether the comic is based on the RPG or vice versa is something I’m not sure of. Anyway, this is more of an apology than a review, but this appears to be geared more towards gamers than your average mini comic buyer, if such a being exists. Send him money at: P.O. Box 866, West Seneca, NY 14224-0866. Whether or not it’s worth sending him money is something that you’re going to have to decide for yourself. From this brief issue I’d say that it’s not up my alley, but that’s basing an opinion on almost nothing except my natural aversion to gamers and all comics that are gamers-related.
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Posted by Kevin
April 27, 2010
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Plant Life For Human Lesson #4
You artsy types, I swear. Granted, you folks are probably what gets me out of bed in the morning, but for the love of all that is bleak and unholy, please just put a name and a title somewhere recognizable in your books. Make it tiny even, I don’t care. This comic is almost certainly not called Plant Life For Human Lessons #4 (the jumble of text at the end made it impossible to tell) and the person who made this book may or may not be named Johanna Dery. I’m confident on the Johanna part, after that maybe hotmail just cut off the rest of her last name. That’s what I get for getting books this time around that looked great instead of making sure of all the technical info on the inside. Enough of my bitching, how about that comic? It’s the mostly silent tale of a man who has been making a tree bleed to feed the flowers. A local shaman type chastises this man, and a deer laps up some of the blood. Things don’t end well for the deer, but the man from the tree learns a valuable lesson from all this, and an odd transformation. It’s a gorgeous book (or, poor boy that I am, I probably would have skipped it with the $4 price tag), thought-provoking in all the right places. Check it out, and if you e-mail Johanna please ask her if I got the title even close to right… $4
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Posted by Kevin
