April 22, 2010
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Carl is the Awesome Volume 2
Oh what a happy day it is when I get another volume of Carl is the Awesome in the mail! Just in case there was some suspense on how I was going to review this for some reason, that should end that. This is another set of 4 minis (#5-8 this time), and these have a bit more substance to them, with more dialogue and occasionally more panels. First you have Carl and his band recording an album with his awesome band.Then a “challenge of the sexuals” between Carl and Carl from the French universe, to determine who was awesome enough to remain. #7 tells the story of Carl’s start in show business as a sex worker, followed by him wanting to be taken seriously as an actor and resorting to avant-garde shows. Finally with #8 there’s the obligatory issue on how to deal with small press conventions, with the notable exception that this one is actually useful and has some really essential tips. The bottom line here is that you’re missing out if you don’t check these out somewhere, either through the website or picking them up at cons. Or through the online store, unless they sell out in four seconds because they’re so awesome. Sure, I may be sick of this shtick by the time Volume 50 rolls around, but for now I can’t wait to see more and to wait for the inevitable live action “Carl is the Awesome” movie…
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Worthless Comix #6
Six years or so of doing this website, and I still love the random submissions. This one from David is a bit of a mixed bag, but there’s still more then enough good stuff in here to recommend it. It starts off slowly (and a bit awkwardly, frankly) as it goes back and forth between talking about his old girlfriend, why they broke up, and then throwing in a scene where they were still dating. It picks up in the second half of the book where he has short pieces dealing with an awful job, dangerous questions, why it’s worthwhile to go to jail, an itchy monkey, the dull adventures of the invisible man, and fish thoughts. The art varies wildly throughout the book, ranging from sloppy sketchbook stuff to clean, thick black lines, and even the darkness of the copied pages varies a bit. Still, there’s plenty of interesting thinking going on here as well as a few genuinely funny pieces, which is what still qualifies to me as a good mini comic. No price tag here, but what with the color covers and all I’d guess $3.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Deviant Funnies #2
The first issue of Deviant Funnies gave you a variety of stories, the second issue gives you… the Wizmantles. This family consists of the Gummo (the narrator and “normal” one in the bunch), Zeppo (an aspiring wrestler who wants very much to be hardcore), Tuna (the slutty sister), and the parents, Shemp and Gertie. The issue starts off with the news that Gertie, who’s in her early forties, is pregnant. Some of this is based on Ed’s real life parents (at least judging the diary strip at face value), as he comes across their posting for swingers on the internet and gets to see his mom in a thong. Gummo decides to follow them out on a “trip to the doctor”, and it just gets more horrific from there. The whole thing concludes with a great letter to his parents, chastising them to be more careful with keeping skeletons safely in the closets. How much of this is truly based on his parents being swingers and how much is artistic license (assuming, of course, that the diary strip is nothing but the truth) is, frankly, something I’d rather not know. The important thing is that it looks fantastic and it’s a hell of a story, any similarities to real life are better left assumed and not spelled out… $3
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Casual Sex
What goes through the head of a single guy who spends a good chunk of his day wandering around a college town? Isn’t it obvious? This is a fairly cute (although not too cute) example of a day in the life of such a man, from waking up thinking about sex to going to work and thinking about sex (until some fat guy orders a hamburger) to wandering around town thinking about sex to going to a bar at the end of the day and trying to find somebody to actually have sex with. I don’t think there’s even a four word sentence in this whole mini but really, how many words do you need to get this point across? His obvious crudity gets his easily rejected at the bar until he finally, drunkenly gets somebody to take him up on his offer… and gets a lot more than he bargained for. Mark got the idea for the story, not surprisingly, just walking around Milwaukee, but I did find it interesting that this took a year and a half to put together after he got the initial concept. Anyway, it was a fun little romp with a mildly disturbing ending, just about all you could ask for out of casual sex. No price, but… $3?
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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City Under Sand
One thing David managed to nail in this (supposed to be) 24 hour comic is his excuse for not getting it done in time: he was busy. Ta-da! That and he had no real plans to do a 24 hour comic; he just started drawing on the subway one day. Still, he managed to get it done in a week, which is no small thing for a color book. At times this does look like it was done on the subway, as there are heavy, scattered lines all over the place in the first few pages, requiring the reader to step back and really examine the panels. Or you could take the cynic’s view and say that they look rushed, but I think there’s a very clear plan behind them. This is the silent story of a man who walks through the desert, makes his way to an underground city and gets on the subway. Things don’t go very smoothly from there, but I’m certainly not going to give it away. As for what was going on here, what kind of world was this, who was the walking man, these are all unaddressed, which is fine for a one-shot like this. Sometimes it’s better to have to come up with your own reasons for why everything is happening the way it is. All told it’s an intriguing book, which is all you can ask for out of this sort of thing. No price, but due to all the color I’m going with $2.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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King Cat #62 Now Available! $2
#62! Now that’s a number all the small press folks in the world should try to reach. In my humble opinion, of course. This issue has a text piece about his move (he’s in San Francisco now), a comic about kites, one about getting out of bed, a zen story about a twisted nose that I still don’t get (I’m a bit slow at things like that sometimes, I’m sure it’ll hit me at 3 in the morning or so), his always essential “Top Forty”, hijinx with a beard that I can relate to, and a quiet, lovely tale about eating at work. And a few odds and ends, sure, but I don’t think this title is something that I have to “sell” you on, so pick it up and discover the rest of the stuff out for yourself. Also, if anybody out there has a million dollars laying around, please send it to him so he can quit his job and do comics all the time. Contact info is up there, buy some of his comics if you’re looking for a peaceful thing in your life.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Life-Like Tales #1
Did I say the word “meandering” in the last review? Well, I’m going to say it again. This is a meandering tale about Jack going to a wildlife refuge. It’s a bit weak right off the bat. He does mention he did a large part of this without even thinking about publishing it, and it shows. Luckily for all of us the book changes completely once he gets out in the wild. It’s just him remarking on little things that are happening, and it’s really a great piece of work. There’s not really much of an ending here, which suits the book just fine. There’s a complete lack of pretension here that saves the book. It would be easy for him to go out there and make all kinds of pithy comments, but instead he just goes out there and draws stuff, while making a few asides. Well worth a buck. Contact info is up there, as far as I can tell most of his comics are only $1, so you could probably get a chunk of them if you sent him a five or something…
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Tales From the Flat #4
Well, you just spent the first three issues of your series setting up your characters, giving them all distinct personalities and motivations. What do you do for #4? Stage a huge fight scene, of course! Last issue ended with our heroes going into the kabob shop, trying to figure out the story behind the hand in the deep frier. The newest hero, Fred, has a little trouble using his powers and/or being a productive member of the fight, so the whole issue is mostly Vicky vs. a giant demon. The end of hostilities was a bit of a cop-out, but I love the series so much so far that it’s something that’s easy to let slide. Other than that, not much really happened here, except they were kind enough to set things up in the end for future issues. After all, you can’t live on mayhem alone, right? Again, I have no idea on pricing, but as this is a single issue instead of a collection… $3?
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Tales From the Flat Collected Edition Volume 1
I love it when a comic completely makes my week. Generally speaking it hasn’t been a good five day stretch around here, but I was only about 5 pages in when I started to forget about everything else in the world, and by the time it was over, well, screw the rest of the world, at least things like this exist. This is the story of four people sharing a flat and their daily adventures. Sounds dull, right? Forget it. One of them turns out to have a super power, they already have somebody fixing to be a nemesis (you can tell by the beard, nothing has been revealed yet), there’s an evil cafe worker who’s cooking people, and just the faintest hint of a killer robot. The first few issues (this collects 1-3) are really about getting these people set up with their own distinct personalities, and Laurence and Oliver do a terrific job of it. We get to see which ones are the comic freaks, which ones are the gamers, and which one is the responsible one of the bunch, because how would anything get done if there wasn’t a responsible one? There’s also a lovely extended sequence dealing with assholes in a movie theater, and who can’t relate to that? This was a blast to read, through and through, and you can’t ask for more than that. Generally speaking I read these as I review them, to keep them fresh in my head, but it’s going to be tough waiting a few weeks to see what happens in #4-6. The only issue here is that I don’t know a thing about currency conversion, although I do know the dollar is generally worthless at the moment, so… $5 or so? It could be twice that and worth every penny, but I’ll bet they’ll be more than willing to lead you through it if you go to that website listed above…
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Zine 55 #1
OK, I’ll admit it, I mostly got this comic for the cover. Come on, look at that and tell me it’s not funny. The inside is a little less funny, but still solid overall. It starts with a meandering piece about… um, his life, and filling up panels. Works a lot better when he’s working on self-reflection than it does when he’s commenting on his inability to fill panels, but that only lasts for a page. Then you have a couple of sketchbook pages of his trip to the dentist, followed by Baby Floot Poot, a large baby who destroys everything in its path in humorous fashion. Over-the-top slapstick, not really my favorite type of humor but done pretty well here. Then there’s a story about toast and a couple more random pages, and there’s your comic. I liked the ramble in the start of the book too, as he said the only reason he did it because he always liked it when other people talked about themselves. E-mail him to get a copy or see what else he has, it’s pretty cheap at $1.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Rubber Necker #3
Once again, I read the last issue too long ago to have any idea of what's going on in the main story. That's the main problem with buying the individual issues, I guess. If I wasn't living out of boxes (and so very, very lazy) I'd dig out the other two issues and put them all together. One of these days! Anyway, I wasn't as impressed with this one as I was with #2, but I was tremendously impressed with #2, so don't take that as a major step backwards or anything. There's the third part of the main story, Drop Celing, in which our hero follows a young woman to an art class and tries to deal with his crazy mother. I don't mean "crazy" as in "wacky", I mean just plain crazy. Then there's The Little Things, a wordless story about a young man and his daughter enjoying some "quiet" time together. Good lord, was that a pun? Oof! Then the last story is Overpass, a story that was originally in Expo 2000, but it's a good one to throw in here for fans of his work who might not have seen it. It's about a man who designed an overpass for its artistic value and has spent decades in seclusion before finally agreeing to an interview. A solid book at $3.50, this is still one of the very few series out there that everybody should keep up with.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Rubber Necker #2
The thing about regular series like this is that it's usually hard to tell if they're worth the trouble right away. That's the pessimistic view, of course, as You could always just assume that a good first issue means that the whole series is going to be fantastic. You'd be wrong a lot of the time, and a lot of the other times the series just ends right away anyway and what difference does it make? It seems like I had a point with all this but it's slipped away and I'm just digging myself a deeper hole here so... I liked this book. A lot. I'm going to have to dig up this issue when I move so I can read the first part of Drop Ceiling, but this part holds up really well on its own. Parfum, the story of a man and his journey into his own sexuality, is fantastic stuff. Quite the heartwarming conclusion. It's the kind of thing that you would see on billboards for comics if I was in charge of the world, but I'm not going to scan it here and ruin it for you. "There Was Something I Wanted to Tell You But I've Forgotten What It Was" was an interesting choice for adaptation, but the length of the title prevents me from talking about it anymore. Good stuff all around. I like these new series that have all kinds of random stories instead of just being obviously designed to be a graphic novel in a year or so. Not that I have anything against graphic novels or anything, it's just nice to know that there is a reason to buy the issues.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Catfight Part One
I swear I didn’t crumple that cover up, although you wouldn’t know by looking at it. It looks like MK has a varied array of comics available, which is always a good thing in my book. This one is about high school dynamics, basically, and about a female friend of the gang starting to date, which causes instant panic in the rest of the gang as they’re afraid of losing her. As that does happen most times that dating begins, it’s a legitimate fear. What you need in a book like this is an interesting, diverse cast of characters, and she pulls that off beautifully. I never had any trouble telling these people apart, and you’d be surprised how many titles have trouble with that. The backgrounds are a bit lazy (or nonexistent) in places, but the rest of the story was engaging enough that it was never a big deal. Personally, I can’t wait to see the next issue so I can find out how that lasagna turned out. This is, oh, let’s say $4, give or take a dollar either way. Check out her website! Update (3/2/04): remember the only real problem I had with the book, the lack of backgrounds? Well, MK has put out a revised edition with all kinds of backgrounds. I officially have no complaints!
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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The Masochists
I’ve heard a lot of talk about this book, ranging from it being the best thing ever to unreadable. I’m going to take the middle ground on this one, as there are parts of it that are incredible. The book is split up into three parts. The first one deals with a boy who trades in his nerdy cards to “get the girl”, but he’s also forced to choose between his friends and this new girl. I thought this part was kind of a mess, frankly. There was a good underlying theme there somewhere but it was hard to find. The second part dealt with making music and selling out. Also a bit of a mess, but better. It made a few good points without getting preachy, which can be tough to do. The third part is the reason that people should at least borrow this book from a friend. It’s the story of an overweight girl who’s leading a miserable, nothing life. I felt sick after reading the ending, if that tells you anything. Truly disturbing. So, $14.95 is a bit much fun one story, but what a story! And, honestly, the other stories might grow on me after a few reads, I’m just giving you a first impression here. He has a very unique artistic style. Give him a few years to get the hang of the storytelling aspect of comics and he could be a major talent.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Boswash
Once again, I’m torn. The concept for the packaging of this book is pretty interesting. It’s kind of like a fold-out map type of thing, numbered so you don’t get lost or anything. My copy is already ripped from my trying to zig when I should have zagged while unfolding it. Xeric helped to make this one possible, I think. The story itself didn’t do much for me. A man has a disagreement with his superiors about the boundaries in a war and gets himself “arrested”. That’s the easy, non-giving away explanation anyway. My problem with this was that there just wasn’t any background on any of the characters, so it was hard to care about the guy who was in danger of losing his life. There just wasn’t enough space here to make this good. Still, I’ve heard all kinds of good things about this guy, and he has samples up on his page of all kinds of comics. Give him a chance, just don’t get this issue. I’m planning on finding some more small stuff before I give up on this guy.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Plastic Farm #11
OK, at this point I’m just holding out to read them all together. That timeline in the front does wonders, don’t get me wrong, but I want to go back past the bullet points of who these people are and what’s going on. Many chapters in this, as promised, including that one diner everybody’s at, those cannibals, more clean-up from the trail leading to Chester Carter, that one guy who was waiting for his wife, a rich man who has to do some nasty stuff to get an inheritance, and then back to the diner. If that sentence doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because you haven’t been reading this series, which must be because you hate comics, because this is everything an episodic comic series should be. Big old review for the next issue, as it’s the end of this storyline so I’ll be giving my opinion of the whole damned thing. I know, you can hardly wait, but I figure a good ramble will be in order after re-reading the first 300 pages or so of this saga. Oh, and Dave Sim sends a letter of advice in too, for those of you who were wondering if Dave was going to stick around in the comics field at least. $2.95
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Plastic Farm #6 Now Available! $2.95
Well, here’s the end of my pile of Plastic Farms. Does it make any more sense at #6 than it did at #1? Well, in my traditional wishy-washy way, I have to say “sort of”. Not that #6 is a magic number in any way, and he never said that things would be making sense at this point, this was just the number of comics that he sent me. This one is all about Chester, sitting in a bar and telling the story of his life. It’s actually fairly average stuff, at least for most of the issue: Chester getting adopted, growing up with a normal family, learning about baseball from his foster Dad, and trying to get a girlfriend. Of course, things start getting all kinds of bizarre by the end of the issue, which only serves to get me hooked even more. I think this is a really remarkable series and I think there’s a good chance this guy (Rafer, that is) is going places in comics, especially if he can keep up this pace. This is $2.95, contact info is up there and, while I might advise you to wait for the graphic novel if you want this to make any sense at all, this is really something that everybody should take a look at.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Trigger #4
I really need to think about getting a memory. I read so many comics that continuing stories, like this one, sometimes get hazy when I manage to get the next issue many months later. Still, I remember the gist of this one (I explained it in a very roundabout fashion in the other review) and it picks up from here. The man behind a lot of the strange things that have been happening is revealed and can I just say that this superhero is a real pussy? Sorry, I just wanted to get that out. Well worth a look, although I think I’m going to wait until a couple more issues come out because the story seems to be taking a little while to get started…
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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BOP!
Just to make this clear right off the bat, this isn’t a new story, or a collection of new stories. It’s all the stories from the SPX anthologies, the 24 hour comic I reviewed above, a few pages from the comic over the years, and a story from something called Box Office Kolor Karnival. That last one was the best of the bunch. It was a longer story about Stephen and Jan (and the return of an old girlfriend), and Davie Shermans getting promoted and dealing with his new responsibilities. There aren’t many people out there doing comics who have a better ear for dialogue than Alex, so anything that’s new to me is welcome. Altogether, it’s probably new to most people, unless they’re all as obsessive about getting the SPX anthologies as I am. There’s also a tiny, tiny preview of his new work, Tricked, at the end of the book. He picked a great scene, where Clarice, a waitress, has an ex-boyfriend come into her restaurant with his new girlfriend. Get to work on that book, Alex! Just in case he’s paying attention. Contact info is up there, in case the Amazon link doesn’t work, as the new ones are kind of sketchy.
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Posted by Kevin
April 22, 2010
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Trigger #3
Mike’s e-mailed me a couple of times now, telling me that Western Galaxy was something that never should have left his town and that he has something available that he’s much more proud of: Trigger. I don’t know, I didn’t think Western Galaxy was so bad, but Trigger is a whole lot better. It’s the story of a superhero called Everyman who’s being stalked by at least one person for reasons unknown. The first three issues are just setting this whole thing up, so I thought it was OK to just review one of them for now. I should point out that the first two issues do have short pieces too while this one is all about the main story. Anyway, it’s a compelling, if still somewhat confusing, concept. There are little clues left all over the place and I can’t wait to see if it really does all make sense. I think his art’s gotten better too, really solid stuff. The only thing I can complain about is one of my pet peeves of all small press comics, and that’s the whole “spelling and grammar” thing. Maybe if people just typed the dialogue on something that had a spell-check if they’re not sure of a word, I don’t know. Anyway, this series is definitely worth a look. They’re $2 each, contact info is above, unless you just want to e-mail him and see what he has around…
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Posted by Kevin
