April 24, 2010
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Marbled Up: Instant Comic
I always love the follow up issue, especially when it comes out years after the first one. What’s the artist been up to? Was the promise/crappiness of the first book fulfilled? Well, I liked this one too, but a lot of it wasn’t even done by Matt. Seth Tucker, Mark Paulsen and Walter Piper all contributed stories, making this feel more like an anthology than anything else. Matt seems to have gone through a lot of changes since the last issue came out, giving him a chance to get some perspective on how things really are. I’m usually a little irritated when the author makes a comic directly addressing the audience, but Matt had an awful lot of good points about life so I can’t really be annoyed with him. It’s even more of a hodge-podge than the first issue, but it’s still good. The fancier cover makes it $3 this time around, but check it out, it’s worth it. Contact info is above, or you can send him money at: 145 N. Park Ave. Lombard, IL 60148.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Marbled Up #1
Ah, a local (central Illinois) boy. There aren’t too many of these around here. Something about the water that prevents people from doing quality comics, I don’t know the real reason. Anyway, this is a collection of stories, and it’s pretty good. There are times when he gets a bit preachy and it borders on the cliche, but overall the book keeps up a pretty good pace and the parts that are supposed to be funny actually are. Lots of frantic, anime-style stories with little punctuation and constant action, and a few introspective stories thrown in as well. It’s not all perfect, but most of it works and it’s worth a look. He seems to have a command of the English language as well. I might have seen one spelling error and that was it. E-mail the guy to see if he’s done anything else (I should also mention that this was his first comic, so he can only get better) or just send him a couple of bucks at: 145 N. Park Ave. Lombard, IL 60148. Try the e-mail first though, this book is a couple of years old and he might have moved…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
New Untold Tales
Here’s a collection of various gags from Larned Justin, so if I ever wanted to get a good look at this sense of humor, here it is. I think I’ve figured it out too. His humor is very similar to the Mad Magazine stuff, or at least their style from the 80’s, when I would (very) occasionally look at it. So if that’s your thing, you would probably absolutely love his stuff. Puns all over the place, slightly changed names for the sake of parody, ongoing gags, it’s all there. My problem is that I never liked Mad Magazine, no matter how much people told me that it was classic comedy. Maybe I was looking at the wrong time period, I don’t know. Anyway, check out the sample for a pun overload, that should let you know if it’s your thing or not. Stories in here include Stickman, an outer space accountant, ongoing gags about Noah trying to find two of every animal for The Ark, a very literal interpretation of pirate radio, his version of “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”, and a 19th century detective. Like I’ve made painfully clear by now, it’s not really my favorite kind of humor, but Mad Magazine has been around a lot longer than I have, so I get the feeling there’s an audience out there for this. Contact info is up there, this one is $2.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Charlie Chong in Chong vs. Kong
Oh, I don’t know where to begin with this one. I should point out that although this comic contains all kinds of really stupid racial and cultural stereotypes, he describes it as being “parody through the use of satire, and not intended to offend anyone”. Which is all well and good, and I’m glad that he acknowledged how offensive some of this stuff was, but… Look at the cover. Got it? If you think that’s intriguing, or looks like something that you might enjoy, then by all means check out the website. As for what’s in the book, you have a wise older Asian man, a younger farting Asian woman, a parody of Larry King who gets married and divorced daily, a giant man in an ape outfit… Actually, when I lay it all out that like that it does sound kind of funny. Oh, and I forgot about the lackey with the horrible gangsta slang. It’s $2.50 and I didn’t get much out of it, but the art is OK and what do I know anyway?
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
19th Century Detective #1 (inked by Tim Corrigan)
Larned has decided to get away from the humor side of comics and start working on a good old fashioned detective series, and kudos to him for it. My opinion on some of his older stuff is pretty clear if you scroll down a bit, but I think he may have found his niche with this one. A retired detective named Lane Brain (name left over from when this was going to be a humor series) is called in every now and again, and he’s called in this time to make sure that the killer known as the Graybridge Terror is really dead. It turns out that he is, and it also turns out that it isn’t solved as easily as all that. This is the start of a longer project, Larned mentioned that he already has another couple of issues plotted out. My only problem here was that I was looking for a bit more detective work and a little less mystical stuff, but it’s only the first issue of the series. The art looks great, I was hooked all the way through the story (even if I did have a sneaking suspicion where it was headed), definitely worth a look if you’re into a good mystery story. If you require angst and cynicism with your comics, it’s probably best to move on to many of the other choices available on this website… $3
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Moulgar Bag Digest #1 (with Brent Harada)
Ah, the wonders of the random submissions. This didn’t come with any sort of note or contact information (except the address on the envelope) and yes, the cover really is as fuzzy as it looks. My best guess is that this is called Before the Fall, but if Rusty or anybody wants to correct me I’ll be happy to fix this. This is essentially a sketchbook, although it’s probably vaguely insulting to call images this richly realized “sketches”. The images are sort of a cross between Pat Aulisio and Matt Kish, but these dozen pages or so make it clear that Rusty is very much doing his own thing. It’s intriguing and more than a little bit haunting regardless, well worth seeking out for those of you who stick around comics for the purely visual, slightly bizarre side of things. Which is certainly a category I fall into, as well as many, many other places. As for price, well… $2? Or $3? Somewhere in there.
Note from 6/5/08: Title fixed and other artist added, so everything should be accurate…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Shitbeams on the Loose #2 (edited by Rusty Jordan)
Hey look, an anthology! I’ve never understood why so few of these clearly label who did which pages (some even have page listings for the artist without having the actual pages numbered). This one at least has a chronological listing of the artists, but the nature of this book makes it difficult to tell where one story ends and another begins. Why? They’re mostly highly interpretive blasts of art, that’s why. Still, I’ll give you a list of who’s in this and you’ll most likely be properly amazed and impressed. There’s Ron Rege Jr.(looking less deliberative than I’ve seen him, and I’m a bigger fan of that than I of the mildly sloppy story in this issue (said mostly because the bits of text are hard to follow)), Jason Overby (brilliantly smacking the preconceived notion of what makes a comic strip around), Dave Nuss (with a welcome quiet moment of the Roman soldier who theoretically jabbed Jesus in the ribs), Andrew Smith (puking a tuna melt is the worst), Hector Serna Jr. (I could spend the whole review trying to unpack those images), Brent Harada (with a mildly out of place regular old story about searching for boots in thrift stores), Robyn Jordan (a quiet piece about camping), John Hankiewicz (a breath of fresh, distinctive air in a sea of chaos), Grant Reynolds (with one of his more disturbing pieces, and that’s saying something), Ayo Kuramoto & Amane Yamamoto (please place your review here, this went right over my head), Rusty Jordan (this is where it starts getting really difficult to tell where one artist ends and another begins, I believe his piece is the one with the escaping brain), Luke Ramsey (ditto, I believe his stuff is the series of full page heads), and Andy Rementer (an oddly adorable piece after all this about a man, his bike and their mutual love). Or maybe Andy Rementer is the one who did that utterly horrific back cover? Hard to tell, and that website doesn’t clear it up a bit. Oh well, with that list of stars it’s a hard thing to pass up, and the quality of most of the stories makes it even more difficult. And if you don’t love that cover, well, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you. It is a fairly hefty $9, but it’s put together nicely. You decide!
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Deep Throws Furry Memories
This isn’t your traditional comic. It’s mostly a “deep thoughts” parody from Saturday Night Live, with spelling errors and obnoxious notebook lines all over the place. That being said, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read this year. I know, I’m the guy who bitches all the time about spelling errors, but I really didn’t care in this. The pictures, when they were there, seemed like random things that didn’t have much if anything to do with the text, but who cares? I wish I could scan some of the dialogue but my scanner can’t handle it. All I can tell you is that if you’ve seen short glimpses of Ben’s work but think that it probably wouldn’t hold up if you had more of it to read for some reason… read this and know that you’re wrong. There are links up there to get this wonderful comic, if you enjoy random, nonsensical hilarity.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Gator
In a slight change of pace, most of the stuff I really liked from this issue was the poetry. The story here is that Gator goes to read his poetry at a coffee shop, the leaves and ends up in ancient Canada. There’s not enough money in the world to get me to tell you how this ends, so don’t even try. Go to the Uss Catastrope site to get this and more of his books or just go to his website, which is linked above. Should I say more about it? OK. Didn’t see anything here to change my earlier opinion of the guy, which is that he’s incredibly inventive. I’m just sad that this is the only book of his that I have around to read. I’m sold on this guy, so the only thing left to tell you is: I order you to buy his comics!
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Tomy Dream Energy
First off, honestly, I have no idea what the title of this book is. Kevin Huizenga told me at SPACE that Ben had all kinds of these because he has a job where he can just sit around and draw, so you’d probably just have to e-mail him a description of this one to get it. Luckily, from what I’ve been able to tell, it’s not going to matter which issue you get because this guy is brilliant. I guess you’d have to call this my first big “find” of SPACE, even though I’d heard about him months ago, I just couldn’t find any print comics to get. Go to his website (which is amazing, by the way) to find out which comics are available. It looks like there aren’t many right now, but e-mail the guy and see what happens. Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be telling you why you should read this. Here, how about this:
Kind of messy because he does it at work, like I said, but look beyond it and read the strips. He just has an incredible mind. I don’t think there’s really any way to even synopsize this and tell you what it’s all about except to say that you can probably tell from the sample. Just send him $10 or so and ask him for a bunch of comics, I can’t imagine anybody out there being disappointed. Here’s one more for the road, and at least check out his website, it might be the best comic related one that I’ve seen…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Coming or Going
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Thank Your Lucky Stars #1
Here’s another comic with a bunch of little stories. Actually, it’s more like little scenes than stories, but it was still a good little book. In here you have a woman waiting for weeks to see a man again at a diner, a young man looking in the window of a girl he likes, a plain white tee shirt and a guy who sleeps the day away. Check it out, it’s one of the books that’s now available on my site and I don’t hear anywhere near enough people talking about this guy for my liking…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Sugar Free Days #3: Run Away With Me Now Available! $3
This things get real easy to write when the whole comic is available online (OK, not anymore, apparently). If you want to know what it’s about, or what it’s like, go read it. Simple, eh? OK, I’ll earn my keep a little bit. It’s the story of a young man who has recently died. Everything is kept very simple: dialogue, art, and mood. The afterlife seems like as pointless a place as the living world and William tries to make some sense of things. It’s apparently the start of a larger story and shows some serious promise. Now read all of his comics and see what you think! Go on, I know you have some free time at work or something…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Sugar Free Days #1
Is everything at the USS Catastrophe page great? Well, yes, at least as far as I’ve been able to tell so far. This is another random buy. which I made secure in the knowledge that I hadn’t seen anything really bad on that page yet, and it was a very well spent $2. Some minis are large but take only a minute to read, or you have the tiny ones where you’re done right away, with no clear idea of what you just read. Not the case here. This is a solid book, all kinds of layers to uncover here and a lot just sitting on the surface. It’s a look back at Cole’s (I’m guessing here, he could be making all this up) childhood and his group of friends. Girls aren’t really a factor yet, making this a true childhood book, if that makes any sense. They’re not distracted by chasing girls yet, anyway. The dialogue feels real, everything in the early parts rings of youth. The last story is a more recent one, from a binge and the next day or so, with an interesting moral puzzle thrown in. I’ll be ordering anything else he has on that website as soon as I get a few bucks and I’d recommend that you do the same. Send him an e-mail directly or you can reach him at: P.O. Box 2547 Austin, TX 78768-2547.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
The Gag Reflex!
Is this issue even available anymore? How the hell should I know? It doesn’t look like it from his website, but what difference does it make? I say this because his website is phenomenal. You could spend a day reading all of the comics that he has backlogged on there with no problem at all, and I should mention that this guy is incredibly talented. I’ve been reading his work in anthologies for years, this is just the first time I’ve seen a bunch of it collected in one place. If you can find this, you’re in for a treat. It’s a collection of one page gag strips about things like President Intestine, Twitchy Tom The Alcoholic Surgeon, and Tommy Tapeworm. Funny shit pretty much throughout, it’s $1.50, or you could go to his website and read all kinds of comics for free, or you could subscribe to read a serialized work of his, along with pretty much every other cartoonist in the world who’s worth reading. That’s not to say that if you’re not on the list you’re not worth reading, it’s just a damned fine list of people is all.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
Website
Red Eye, Black Eye
There’s a great, simple setup for this book: Thor, in a very short time span, loses his job, girlfriend, apartment and grandma. Oh, and then there was 9/11. Faced with all of this and at a loss as to what to do next, Thor decides to buy the longest continuous bus pass possible (the Ameripass, something that lets him go wherever he wants in the country for two months) and wander the country. Anybody coming to this book looking for an epiphany or a set of easy answers is in for a disappointment though. Assuming this is all chronological, Thor travels to Boston, Concord, Cleveland, Columbus, Champaign, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Seattle, Eugene, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, El Paso, Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta, Gainesville, and finally back to New York (not to spoil the ending or anything). Along the way he encourages people he meets to tell the best story they have and he does end up with some doozies, no doubt about it. There’s also the constant worry about money, as he has a $1000 check from his old landlord that keeps bouncing and he’s rapidly running out of cash. It’s hard not to relate to the guy throughout this book. His wandering, his searching for meaning (but settling for a good amount of booze and decent company instead), and the question that runs underneath it all: why go back? What’s waiting for him in New York anyway besides his stuff? All told, this is one of the better graphic novels I’ve seen in the last few years. There’s angst, sure, but it’s not overpowering. It’s mostly just an earnest quest to wring some meaning from it all, and he’s confronted more than once with the fact that when it comes to telling the story of “the craziest thing that’s happened to you on your trip”, he draws a blank. It’s the journey more than the destination, and when even the journey is getting you down, well… This is one of those things that should be on the shelf of everybody who reads comics, one of those things that you’ll be able to show to friends who are entirely too cool for comics and still impress them. $19.95 but, as always, cheaper if you go through that Amazon link.
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Old People
OK, let me lay it out for you: Nick Jeffrey is one of the funniest motherfuckers doing comics. Yeah, occasionally a joke falls flat, but when it’s funny, it’s better than most. This one, as the title suggests, is all about old people. As a future old person (assuming the world and my heart last that long), humor about this sort of thing always has to be tackled with that knowledge, and it looks like he has it. The page with the current young stars in 50 years is hilarious, the two strips with Wee Uncle Pettica had me laughing out loud, and the story with the old, fat businessman looking for work was great too, at least until he crapped out on the ending. Loved the bit with the old lady quoting the bible too, proving once again how absolutely insane it is to take everything in that mess literally. Hell, I even liked the (very few) 4 panel strips he had in here. It wasn’t all perfect, and he insisted that I criticize what I didn’t like, so here you go: FIX THE LETTERING!!! Seriously, even I did comics years ago, you just write it in pencil, ink over it, and ERASE the pencil. Simple. That’s a minor thing though, but it’s a constant over the issues of his that I’ve seen. Actually, it’s usually only bad here and there, to be fair to the guy, but… ahem. Also, I didn’t like the story about the old rapper. It’s just like old people dancing in commercials or beating young whippersnappers at races or picking up chicks. It’s been done. I’ve seen it done at least, but I traffic in odd circles. Contact info is up there, why don’t you buy a few of his books to see how funny he is?
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Centerfield
I have to say, I’m impressed. I thought Nick was an incredibly funny guy, granted, but I wasn’t so sure that he had much in the way of serious stories in him. And, as he says in his intro, he may never have another story as worthy of telling in him, but it’s great that he nailed the one he did have. This is a story from his grade school days when he played right field on a baseball team. He hated sports, it’s just that he went to a school with a tiny class and you were pretty much required to be on everything. Speaking as somebody with a graduating grade school class of 13 people, I can relate. Woven into this are glimpses of his father and some of the other people in his school, including a kid named Peter Gorey, who pretty much single-handedly transformed their baseball team into a powerhouse, and Nick was along for the ride. This is mostly a story of his life at the time (and I don’t want to give more away than that, sorry) and this is probably the best thing I’ve read all year. I always feel like a schmuck trying to explain emotionally compelling aspects of stories, so I’ll leave all that alone. This nailed just about everything that was possible to nail, and it managed to do it without coming close to being overbearing or obnoxious, and I can’t think of a higher recommendation than that. Oh, and it was put out by Alternative Comics, so chances are good that you can find it at your local comic store, assuming that your local comic store doesn’t suck. Contact info is up there, it’s really your loss if you skip out on this one…
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Hillbilly Sex: Final Issue (probably #7)
Well, that’s it for Nick, he’s done with comics. And IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT! OK, maybe not really, but it looks like one of the more genuinely funny people working in comics has thrown in the towel due to what appears to be shitty happenings in his personal life and a realization that he’s never going to make a dime from this business. Which, speaking as somebody who barely makes enough money from an online store to even cover the costs of keeping this website running, makes more and more sense all the time. Quitting, that is. Why bother? People seem to appreciate/enjoy the convenience of this website, and they come from all over the world (if my stats are correct) to discover new and interesting artists, but some bottom line does have to come up eventually. I’m rambling, as you probably noticed, but this did strike a bit of a nerve with me. How about the comic, you ask? Darwin Dong comes to a bloody end, Dolph Lundgren has some delightful poetry, Pederabbit stars in Pornographic Children’s Stories, Nick tries not to puss out on suicide, homeless people end up with all the change Nick needed for the bus, Ivan Brunetti has a revealing interview in which we discover that he still kind of hates his life, Deet-Phan and Joe continue to gayly fight crime, The Angry Few are smashed by the awesomeness that is America, and we end with a horrific threesome. There are more than a few of his hilarious newspaper strip comics in here too, and a nice splash page to end things. What can I say, this is depressing. Few enough people out there make me laugh every time, and losing them because of general reader apathy is enough to make me wonder about the whole deal. Good luck Nick, here’s hoping you come back after you somehow become independently wealthy… $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 24, 2010
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Hillbilly Sex #6
Remember, way back in the review to #5, when I told you people to buy his books now before he got all rich and famous? Well, #1-5 are now sold out, so you missed your chance! This is new though, so I imagine you can still get a copy. What’s new? Well, any hint of “longer stories” is out the window. One story is five pages long (Twisted Soul of a Sadboy), one is three pages (Christianity is Retarded), the rest are all either a page long or done by somebody else, and by “somebody else” I mean Jenny Gonzales. If you don’t find AIDS, aborted fetuses and misplaced homophobia at least slightly funny, you should probably take your business elsewhere. If you do have a sense of humor, stories in here include an introspective frat boy, Classy McSnoots, Teenage Mutant Ninja Lesbians, Booblocker 2000, Monster Needs Sex, United States of Abortion, and the hilarity that is Santorum. There are also more newspaper style strips than you can shake your angry self-righteous fist at, but he has completely won me over on this front. Oh right, he’s one of those people who’s always looking for criticism. Let’s see… um, the strip about the Merchandise Man was kind of dumb. Other than that, it looks to me like he’s worked the bugs out. I just flipped through this and couldn’t find much of anything to bitch about. He’s even fixed the lettering! It’s still only $2 and it looks like he’s getting his big break in publishing a book called Centerfield. It better be published by one of the “big” independent publishers, because he’s ready to get some actual cash for this…
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Posted by Kevin
