Conrad, Peter (editor) – Swell

April 23, 2010

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Swell Now Available! $7.95

Another day, another random mish-mash of an anthology. I really had high hopes for this one too. It’s edited by Peter Conrad and here are just some of the names in it (don’t you hate it when people do that? You know that they’re always leaving off the lesser-known people for no good reason): Sam Henderson, Neil Fitzpatrick, Jesse Reklaw, Keith Knight, Carrie McNinch, James Kochalka, John Hankiewicz, David Lasky and Ted Rall. It’s an OK book, but very few things stand out when you get done reading it. The Sam Henderson and James Kochalka stories weren’t even funny, and those are usually a sure thing. Keith Knight, John Hankiewicz, Neil Fitzpatrick and Ted Rall were the highlights for me. Everything else was somewhere between pretty good and unremarkable. It’s cheap at $7.95 and you can’t beat that lineup, but… eh.


McNinch, Carrie – The Assassin and the Whiner #11

April 22, 2010

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The Assassin and the Whiner #11

I was starting to wonder if I would ever find any more of these issues. This is a few years old, granted, but I think she’s still working. This is one of the single most depressing comics I’ve read. She moved to Maryland to be with the woman she loved, only to find out that that woman didn’t really want to be with her most of the time. She gave up everything she knew and this issue is about her dealing with that fact and trying to accept that things just weren’t going to work out, no matter how much she might have liked to believe otherwise. Not that it’s all sad, as there are a few random strips that have nothing to do with her relationship. There’s one about her finding out that an old classmate is a porno star, one about her feelings on porn, a couple with her just walking around town thinking and her trying to adjust to living in cold weather for the first time in her life. Every single one of these that I’ve seen has been a treat and this one was no exception. E-mail the woman and get as many of these as you can, which should be a lot considering that she only charges $1…