April 23, 2010
Website
My Word! (with John Porcellino) Now Available! $2
Missy and John teamed up on a fairly unique mini comic here. They each came up with 5 words for the other person and that person had to draw five comics. I don’t think I’m giving away a thing by telling you the words: postage, camel, decision, honey, sidewalk, sick, bedtime, violets, catsup, and fly. Who gets which word? What do they write about? Those questions can only be answered by reading this, as it’s fairly silly to give something like this a regular review. Even if your black, black heart prevents you from loving Missy’s work because you think it’s too cute or something, I can’t imagine needing to go to a lot of effort to convince anybody to read anything that John P. has ever done. It’s a fun and occasionally melancholy book, what more can you ask for? $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Cloud Picnic Now Available! $2
Yes, in case you were wondering, this book is exactly as adorable as it appears from the cover. This is the silent tale of a couple of sock monkeys, floating along a river on a a flat smiley face, meeting another couple of… things. Mostly featureless dolls, vaguely shaped like humans. Then they all run across their friend, a solo teddy bear, who decides to climb to the top of a circular slide. This circular slide leads the bear to land on a cloud which, in turn, leads to the cloud picnic. This was apparently also made on Super 8 film (possibly on that website), which I’m curious to see. As for you and this comic, do cute things frighten or alarm you? If so, this should probably be avoided. If you have a healthy capacity for “Awww”, then you won’t regret checking this out.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Too Negative #3
Hey, here’s a perfect test to see if my new scanner makes any difference. #2 was scanned with the old scanner, #3 was scanned with the new one. See any difference? Here’s another good one from Jenny. I love how she adds all kinds of tiny things all over the margins of the page. It makes you examine everything, which always leads to a more complete experience, although that does look stupid now that I’ve typed it. Oh well. This one has Bin Laden too, and Dahlia attacking him with a model of the World Trade Center. Oh, and Eminem was involved. Add the page I sampled and some birds attacking a giant hot dog and you have another pretty good comic, although this one seemed shorter for some reason. Maybe the one long story? Whatever the case, it’s still only a buck, so what do you care? Contact info is up there, you know what to do…
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Fancy Froglin’s Sexy Forest
If you’ve ever wanted to see James Kochalka naked, buy this book! Seriously, I’m not going to scan the picture because I’m pretty sure it’s only for paying customers, but he’s totally nude, dude. As for this book, maybe I’m just looking for more mature stuff from James after his incredible work with his sketchbook diaries, but this whole thing is as childish and silly as it could be. You know, maybe you should try getting drunk before reading. I think that would help the humor a bunch. People who have bothered to read the rest of this page know that I’m a huge James Kochalka fan, so I’m not going to say that I hated this book. I’m simply going to to say that I didn’t like it as much as his other stuff. OK? If you’re looking for a story synopsis, I’ll do the best I can. Fancy Froglin wanders around a lot, either with a boner or trying to get his boner back, while talking to Some Bunny, Uncle Funky and Butterfly Guy. It’s $12.95, which is a pretty hefty price for a book that’s so quickly read, but you know what you’re doing when you buy a Kochalka book by now. It’s worth getting just to see the incredible coloring job that was done to this, but as far as content goes, I think he’s done better work. Contact info is scattered all over this page, you know what to do.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Too Negative #2
Who doesn’t love mayhem in a comic? If the answer is you, maybe you shouldn’t bother with this one, although you’d be missing out. For the rest of us, this is a welcome and extremely intelligent kick in the pants. It’s mostly about a girl called Devil Dahlia. This isn’t just a collection of wacky adventures though, or I probably wouldn’t have liked it this much. There’s a story about Dahlia trying to convince her friend Killbaby that he’s gay, one about her new roommate, one about Bert from Sesame Street riding a bus with Bin Laden, a relative epic about stabbing herself and ESP, a day in the life of Killbaby, a piece about exorcisms and some doodles on the back cover. Good stuff all around. This is only #2, but it sure looks like she’s been doing comics for a while, if the art here is any indication. It’s only $1, check out her website or just send her an e-mail.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Spudd 64 #4 Now Available! $3.50
I’m going to give you both of my opinions about this issue, just to confuse everybody. That’s right, I said both of my opinions, as I can’t decide if I should go deeply pessimistic here or totally optimistic. The pessimist in me thinks it’s a terrible sign that, on the fourth issue of a series, Matt has already called in friends to help him out with an issue, for art and for some stories. The optimist in me can also see this as a great sign, as the sheer number of people involved (Steve Black, Leighton Connor, Coly Kegley, Tim McClurg, Sean McGurr, Dara Naraghi, Kyle Wallace and Tom Williams) indicates that Spudd is taking off big time and all sorts of folks want to put their interpretation in before it turns into a huge behemoth of a series, loved by all small children and furry animals. The truth of the whole thing probably lies somewhere in the middle of all that, as usual. What about the actual comic? There are all sorts of full page spreads, mostly by Matt (but not all, by any means), but the main story in here is written by Leighton Connor and drawn by Matt, about Hafez first leaving his people and his brother starting a long search to find him. He also goes into greater detail later about some of the deities involved in the Spudd storyline, which is what’s making me lean towards my optimistic view that he has this whole huge story planned out already and this “jam” issue is a blip on his path to fame and fortune. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fun issue and will serve as a good reference point in the future when this stuff gets (more) confusing, but, speaking purely for myself here, I’ll be happy to see a regular sized issue of Spudd 64 done totally by Matt to keep things humming along at their proper pace. If, two issues from now, we get a “best of Spudd” issue, I’ll know that the pessimist was right all along, but I have genuinely high hopes for this series…
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Concepcion
This book beautifully addresses a question I had over the past summer: how many religious people have actually read the whole Bible? I managed it, thanks to taking some time off of work this summer, and merciful Minerva what a mess that was. This is the story of a woman who is getting older and is losing all the people around her so, in an attempt to comfort herself, reads the Bible. She sees that God, as portrayed in the good book, is more than a little bit of a prick. As such she starts to question all of her assumptions about death and the afterlife, and this comic tracks her as she takes a shower and tries to sort it all out. I thought it was fantastic, as I always love seeing religion as a whole intelligently discussed like this. And really, whatever your beliefs are, that’s fine, it’s your life. But if anybody could tell me how the story of Job as it’s written isn’t God being a vindictive jerk just to impress Satan, of all “people”, well… $2
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Victims At The End Of The World: Free Preview
God bless the free previews, I wish more people did these things. All Rickey had at SPACE this year was a graphic novel (if I’m remembering correctly, which I’m probably not) and this, so all of us poor people can still check out his stuff without having to spend a bunch. Actually, looking at his website I can see that the graphic novel is only $6, so apparently I have no excuse at all. So how about that comic? It’s the story of a bunch of dolls who have been thrown away and come back in their own world, similar to ours but not exactly the same. This short preview deals with Algernon, a suicidal furry doll who helps his friends at the expense of his own well being. In other words, he’s a pushover. A friend, Bartleby, comes into Algernon’s house right as he is about to kill himself and asks for help with a project. Most of the story is in the head of Algernon and there are no word bubbles to be seen, which is a welcome change. It’s almost impossible to criticize a comic for being momentarily pretentious when the publishing company is called Pretentious Comics, so I’ll leave that alone. It’s an intriguing peek into what may be a great graphic novel, or what may be a whiny, long-winded piece of crap, although that second option would really surprise me from what I saw here. My only problem here is with the art, which is simplistic to a fault, as the characters seem to live against a flat gray background. It’s the kind of thing that may grow on you or not, and as always a trip around that website would probably clear a lot of things up for anybody who is curious.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Dirtbag #7
Do I have to write a review? Look, I think this guy is incredible. The page I sampled here is just about dead-on, at least in my experience. Granted, he didn’t say it, but he had the wit to draw it and put it in his comic. If you’re a male and you’ve ever been confused about females, his comics are bound to help at least a little, if for no other reason than you can find out some things that you shouldn’t do in certain situations. It’s supposed to be the same color as the cover but I wanted to make sure you could read it and that it wouldn’t be a giant-size file, so here you go.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Dirtbag #5
I think the best way to describe Dave would be “graphic poet”. If he leaves anything unsaid, he sure hides it well. I just get the impression that everything he has is going into these pages, and that makes for some compelling reading. This issue is more of the same of what we’ve come to expect from him: tales about loneliness, girls and trying to fit in anywhere in the world. I think he should be rich and famous, but that’s because I’m biased. It probably wouldn’t suit him anyway, because why would he feel compelled to make comics if he was content? Anyway, everything I’ve seen from him is really close to essential reading, and this one isn’t any different. Get as many issues of this series as you can and see if you’re disappointed. Go here to get his stuff, as well as just about every other mini you can think of.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Quaaludes #4
This is a hard guy to track down, at least as far as the internet is concerned. I managed to find an e-mail address, but that’s it. Apparently he’s in Non #4 and Lowjinx #2 also, so you’ve probably seen his work somewhere. This one is from back before he was “famous” in 1998, and it’s the tale of Tracey Gold (from Growing Pains) falling in love with Hugh O’Conner (from The Young Poisoner’s Handbook) and vice versa. A quick read, it still shows a little bit of what this guy is capable of. Kind of looks like he uses a regular pen and just scratches out some of the backgrounds, but that’s probably not true. The name I’ve seen him compared to the most is John Porcellino, and that’s a good comparison. It has the same feel of teenage hopelessness and a sense of not fitting in with the rest of the world. Both of those things have become something of a cliche in mini comics and it takes a real talent to pull them off without becoming obnoxious, and Dave fits the bill. You can find some of his book over at the fantastic USS Catastrophe page. He was nominated for an Ignatz in ’99 for best new talent and I’ve yet to see a bad story from him in any of the various places I’ve seen his work. This one is quick but good.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
A Last Cry For Help
I regret to inform you that I have no idea which issues of Last Cry For Help make up this comic. I looked and looked online (and found it at Amazon and Bodega Distribution) but nobody seems interested in listing where the individual bits of this came from. Ah well, what difference does it make? Unless you obsessively follow everything Dave has done over the last ten years, at least some of this is going to be new to you. If you scroll down you’ll see that I’ve read plenty of what he’s done and at least half of it seemed new to me. Or maybe it’s just because I read most of this stuff four years ago and have a lousy memory? In any case, from what I’ve been able to gather this is essentially a ten year retrospective of Dave’s comics, with one page stories thrown in with about a dozen longer bits. Mostly the best of teenage awkwardness, with stories involving a young girl not really wanting to be making out on the beach, two young guys getting drunk and smashed their parent’s car, a pregnant woman stuck in prison, the merits of fantasy life versus actual life, drunken dancing, a lonely waitress, a humiliating Halloween and more than a few sexy nurses. If you haven’t read Dave’s stuff I can’t think of a better introduction, and if you have this is damn fine collection. Few people out there cover awkwardness and loneliness better than he does, all while never veering completely over into whiny self-indulgence. $10
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Squish
One of these years I’m just going to get a graphic novel from Rickey and be done with it. Of course, that’s also assuming that I’m going to make it to SPACE one of these years with a pile of money. This mini has a tiny original comic and then a preview (done in screenplay format) or his latest book, The Death of Ginger Fierbusch. The comic is the brief story of a young woman who, while on the phone to her father, squishes a bug. After doing this she goes on about how it makes her feel bad to kill bugs, how maybe some other higher being in the universe will decide to squish her one of these days for no reason. It’s gets a little maudlin, her dad gives her a bit of a pep talk, and there’s a delightfully awkward ending. As for the free preview, the screenplay format maybe wasn’t the best way to show the new book, but if he didn’t have any actual preview pages done it’s better than nothing. It’s the story of the two best friends of Ginger Fierbusch, a local drag queen and podcasting sensation (do those exist?), trying to make sense of her death. It has potential, clearly, but there really wasn’t enough here to pass any judgement one way or the other. Next year at SPACE I’ll pick it up and see for myself, until then who knows? Check out his other books first (as there’s much more to them), but this is still worth picking up for his short comic if you see him at a con. $1
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Steven’s blog (that seems to have little to nothing to do with comics)
Styx Taxi #2 (with Rami Efal)
Not really sure what to call this, so I’m going with “#2”. If that’s completely wrong, here’s hoping somebody gets back to me. As for this issue, well, Steven went with the artist I liked the least from the anthology (Rami Efal) and had him do both of these stories. I didn’t like him because his art just isn’t my thing, all shadows and odd angles. These aren’t fast-paced stories and they’re not really meant to be, I don’t think you should have to work this hard to follow what’s going on in the panels. Just my opinion, of course, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who will love this. Frankly, Styx Taxi is a great example for the troubles of the small press comics world. If he had done even ten issues right off the bat, maybe “Styx Taxi” would be recognizable enough to warrant an anthology and another book with only two little bits of stories. It was (and is) such a great idea, I was really hoping to see more. Instead there’s just one absolutely perfect issue, one pretty good issue and this. The stories in here are fine, one about an old lady who dies in the middle of reading a story ro her dead relatives, the other about a young man who doesn’t have anywhere he wants to go when he dies so he invites the cab driver to dinner with him. Also in here are bits from a projected novel that were pretty entertaining, if it comes together. Look, this is pretty far from a bad comic book, it’s just that I saw this book as really taking the comics world by storm, but instead it’s been 4 years or so with only 3 issues put out, and Steven is going back to grad school soon, so I doubt if there will be a ton coming here in the near future. It’s just frustrating to get into a series and then have it either dumped or put out so slowly that you can barely remember hat the point of the whole thing was in the first place. Which is more of a reflection on the sins of the whole industry than this one comic, but here’s hoping you can at least see what I’m trying to say here. if you have a comic with the potential to be this good then, by god, why not start cranking out the issues?
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Steven’s blog (that seems to have little to nothing to do with comics)
Styx Taxi: A Little Twilight Music
You know, when I got this issue, I thought that there was no way it could work. An anthology issue, with three different artists? Already? There’s only been one regular issue! It seems that the creative team is busy doing different projects, which is fine, but if this is your main thing, you have to spend the time and effort to get it off the ground first! Then I read the comic, and it turns out that they can wander around and take their time if they want to, as they still have plenty of ideas. The first story (Goldman & Dan Goldman) in here is an unspoken tribute about the taxi crew on 9/11, trying to keep up with the dead. The second (Elizabeth Genco & Leland Purvis) is about Charon’s habit of enjoying a street musician perform and his inability to ever leave the taxi. The third (Goldman & Rami Efal) is about babies having babies, with a little death thrown in. The first two were fascinating stories, no problem there, but the third was a bit of a mess and hard to follow. Still, good stuff all together, and this universe gets more interesting all the time. $3, contact info is up there.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Steven’s blog (that seems to have little to nothing to do with comics)
Styx Taxi
Small comics creators, take note: this is how you put together a comic. The contents are a matter of taste, as always but this is aesthetically perfect. No glaring spelling mistakes or grammatical errors, lush, involved backgrounds all over the place, and a complex story all help this out tremendously. A book like this helps itself out just by getting all the basic things right, as that’s a lot of things to complain about just taken off the table… and it’s the easiest thing in the world to fix! Sorry, rant over, but bravo to these two. The story here is that cab drivers from beyond the grave are competing to get the most fares, and whoever wins gets 12 hours on Earth. If that sounds ridiculous, I’m asking you to give this a chance, as this book asks a lot of interesting questions about life and death, as well as the choices we make about both. What would you do if you had two hours after your death to revisit the world? Would you see your wife, regardless of what that would do to her? Would you try to kill the person who killed you? Or maybe you’d just mope about it? This book looks to me like nothing less than a labor of love, and it shows throughout. The writing is provocative, the art is flawless, and did I mention that this is their first book? Ridiculous, and a lot to live up to for the next issue (it’s projected to be a series of one-shots or graphic novels, which is perfect for this concept), but I can’t wait to see them try. Contact the artist, it’s $2.50. Seriously, you really should.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
The Eye Hand of the Carolinas
Hey look, an Andrew Goldfarb book that doesn’t deal with any of the 1000 sorrows! This is a short mini about a pair of conjoined twins (or two people sharing one circulatory system, not two different sets of people) who can’t stand each other. While fighting to the death they see that creepy thing from the front cover, who looks directly into their souls. Because naturally, you’d think that something that looks like that would be the thing that would bring two brothers together. As always with Andrew, the art in this book is gorgeous, with all sorts of little things scurrying around in the shadows. If you’re afraid of those hefty $3 and $4 price tags above but still want to check out his stuff, this $.50 cheapie is the perfect way to go.
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Ogner Stump’s Automotive Sorrows Now Available! $3
More wonderful sorrows here, although fans of chronological order are sure to be outraged, as the sorrows hop all over the place. I believe that sorrows #46-77 are represented here, although some of them are subtle enough to be practically invisible. Again, without the visuals you’re missing the vast majority of the fun, but a few of the topics are car crashes, mechanics, knee injuries, sunburns, and hostile aliens. Also included in here is a delightul poem about an old woman who kills any guests that come over for a cup of tea and a brief autobiographical tale about a monster that Andrew sees late one night. Everything I’ve seen so far from Andrew has been a visual smorgasboard of creepy goodness, and this one is no exception. Anybody who loves comics and skips these things is doing themself a disservice. $3
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Ogner Stump’s Hawaiian Sorrows Now Available! $3
Just in case you’re keeping track of the actual number of 1000 sorrows that have been completed, this comic has #26-45. So Andrew should be done with all of these, if that is in fact his plan, sometime shortly before he dies naturally of old age. Maybe it’s best not to think about the mammoth nature of this theoretical project and instead take the sorrows as they come. With the full knowledge that just listing these is useless without your being able to see how they’re represented in comics form, here are some of the topics: insects, bus stops, trains, ghosts, envy, ticklishness, and ritual human sacrifice. I said something along the lines of “demented brilliance” in the last review of Ogner Stump, and despite my not getting the point in most of the rest of the review, I’m sticking by that line. The book is gorgeous and haunting (seriously, I defy anyone to read one of these comics and not have at least one of the characters pop into your dreams at some point), and I’m tempted to quote about half the lines in here just to prove that point. OK fine, I’ll confine myself to one: “Your uncoiled innards will spell abundant appeasement to our mango deity!” $3
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Posted by Kevin
April 23, 2010
Website
Ogner Stump’s One Thousand Sorrows Now Available! $4
I’ve been sitting here for about twenty minutes now, trying to put my thoughts about this book into some semblance of order, but I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s just not going to happen. For anybody out there who likes bizarre, gothic comics (Jim Woodring, Richard Sala, and Edward Gorey, to name a few that fit in at least one of those categories): you have a new hero. Seriously, this is an almost flawless work of demented brilliance. Ogner Stump is a guy who has all sorts of horrible things happen to him, from plague to haircuts to apes to islands to defecation to rock and roll to… I could go on for a while here, but I think you get the idea. The thing is that all of these chapters have the most innocuous titles, like “Eggs” or “Employment”, but there’s nothing remotely normal about any of it. Enough about that, check out his website for samples of things too if you don’t believe me. The rest of the book is various short stories which, while lacking the sense of cohesiveness that the Ogner Stump stuff has, are still wonderfully insane in their own right. There’s a story about a floating head and another one about a truffle tree. Look, just get it. It’s $9 for about 150 pages of insanity and, if that’s your thing, this is perfect. If that’s not your thing, loosen up a little…
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Posted by Kevin
