Blog Archives
Trubble Club – Trubble Club #1
Trubble Club #1
You know, there really are times when it’s pointless to review a comic. It sounds like a cop out, I know, but Trubble Club is a jam comic involving about a dozen cartoonists in Chicago. They meet every Sunday, put together some jam strips, and (I’m guessing here, as the actual information about this process on the website was sparse) put out a new book whenever they put enough material together. Who are these people? Really, this should be all it takes to convince you to check this out: Al Burian, Lille Carre, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Lucy Knisley, Rachel Niffennegger, Bernie McGovern, Onsmith, Laura Park, Grant Reynolds, Becca Taylor, Jeremy Tinder and Marco Torres. If you’re new to this site and these names aren’t familiar to you, plug just about any of them into that search option up there (the full list of artists will be restored one of these days, I swear) and spend some time checking out some quality work. Future volumes, judging from the website, will have other people, and visiting cartoonists will probably get in on the act as well. Honestly, I’m confused as hell about the process here. Every single page is its own story, and it seems most of the time like the next page starts with an idea from the previous page before veering off in its own direction… except for the times when it seems completely new. And I thought for a while that it was one artist per page, but upon closer inspection maybe others are jumping in on different panels. All I know for sure is that this much talent thrown together in a room can’t go wrong, and I hope they keep it up for… let’s see, they’re probably all in their late 20’s or early 30’s… how about another 50 years or so? OK, fine I’ll mention a few of the topics, just to prove how pointless it is to analyze such a thing. An unhygienic stump, Sackley, a doomed giant hot dog, “footsie”, mancakes, and we gotta cook this hog. This is $3 and worth every penny.
Burian, Al – The Long Walk Nowhere
The Long Walk Nowhere
Anybody out there ever go to high school? Yeah? Well,
did anybody out there think that high school was the most horrible
thing ever and that almost everybody who went there was a monster
and came from the worst upbringing imaginable? Maybe you
should read this book. I’ve never seen anything else by this
guy but I hope for the sake of the world that he’s either planning
on putting more stuff out or has stuff out that I’ve missed.
The mini is broken up into three parts. The first part shows
the sheer aimlessness of being a teenager, called “The Metal
Years”. The first thing I thought when I saw the pimply
faced teenager with the hair over his eyes was, of course,
“Hate” by Peter Bagge. Almost didn’t pick it up for
that reason, and I’m certainly glad that I did. This part
arguably works the best, if for no other reason than that it’s so
quiet and you can just fill in the blanks for yourself about what
this kid is thinking.
The second part is called First Girlfriend and I imagine would be
easy to relate to whether you’re male or female. Assuming that
everybody can remember your first girlfriend/boyfriend, and who the
hell can forget that? The other parts of the book allow at
least a little bit of darkness to creep in, but not this part.
It perfectly shows the confusion of this poor boy as he tries to
figure out what he’s supposed to do with a girlfriend. The
third part is mostly the author wandering his neighborhood and
thinking to himself about the town and the times gone by, as he’s 26
and completely aimless, like the rest of the world. Well, the
part that I know, anyway. It’s rare that I can unreservedly
recommend every part of a mini that is split up into a few parts,
but that is the case with this comic. It’s all good. Buy
it.
Reynolds, Grant – Singularity (with Al Burian)
Singularity (with Al Burian)
Ah, here’s another one of those wonderful shorties where, if I talk too much about what’s going on, the whole surprise ending gets blown. This is apparently an ongoing story in The Skeleton News, a newspaper I’ve never heard of out of Chicago, so it’s probably not a surprise ending to a few people. Still, best to stick to the known information. This one starts off with a spaceman of some kind putting a flag on… Mars, maybe? It’s not the moon because we get a shot of the moon in the sky next to the Earth. Anyway, said astronaut settles down to a newscast from Earth, which is oddly cut short by a blast of static… or is it only static? I’m all for mayhem in space, which appears to be what’s coming here, so three cheers to the both of them. Some form of this story published in a format that people outside of Chicago could see would be nice too one of these days, but who knows how many future parts have been published…$2
