Anna Bongiovanni « Optical Sloth

Bongiovanni, Anna – The Offering

January 9, 2012

The Offering

I was wondering what had been going on with the folks from the Good Minnesotan anthologies. I first noticed Anna’s work in the pile of other comics that comprised Good Minnesotan #4 (hey, whatever happened with that Kickstarter fundraiser? Is there a collected edition in the works?) and have been curious to see further work from pretty much everybody involved. This comic tells the story of two young sisters who go off into the woods to meet some witches. The older sister is going because she wants to help the witches, while the younger sister is reluctantly being dragged along for the ride. The older sister decides that she wants to be an active participant in the witchcraft that’s going on and ends up being sacrificed to bring a monster baby either to life or back to life. This freaks the younger sister out more than a little bit, obviously, so she runs away from the witches and comes across another, unrelated witch in the woods. From here she learns a possible method for bringing her older sister back to life before confronting the original witches again. It’s a thoroughly engaging story and that ending is pretty much guaranteed to creep you out. Solid art, enthralling story, there’s not much more to ask for from a comic. My only problem was a technical one, as she didn’t list any contact information inside the actual comic. Luckily she doesn’t have the most common of names and her information is easily found with a Google search (and she included a business card with the comic), but it’s always a good idea to put at least an e-mail address inside your comics, as you never know who’s going to end up reading it. But the actual comic part of it? Yeah, I liked that a lot. No price listed (which is impossible to get annoyed about, as very few people bother with a printed price), so I’m guessing $4 for no good reason.

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Posted by Kevin

Various Good Minnesotans – Good Minnesotan #4

July 30, 2010

Website

Good Minnesotan #4

I’m inÂ a bit of a pickle here.Â You see, the Good Minnesotans responsible for putting this anthology together sent a collection of minis that make up GM #4, all bundled up in a lovely slipcase.Â However, they recently had a successful fundraiser that will let them print this whole pile of comics in (what I believe to be) one volume.Â So my righteous rant about how silly it is to put a table of contents with page listings when there are no page numbers in the comics can’t go anywhere because they will probably have that problem fixed in the final edition.Â That’s fine, there’s no reason to focus on the negative with a pile ofÂ stories like this anyway.Â It will also make my selection of a sample image from each of the 5 minis seems a little excessive (and guys, if this is too many for you let me know and I’ll take most of them down), but I’m trying to give a flavor for the whole thing here.Â I was also going to break this down into five sections, one for each mini, but as they aren’t numbered in any way I’m just going to go with my usual clumpy review.Â Tales in here include some creepy microscopic organisms by Justin Skarhus, The Poo Lagoon by Lupi (sadly, it seems to be a true story), is it a caraway seed or a rat turd by Sarah Julius (I think), Nic Breutzman as a child watching his neighborhood being built and marveling at the quiet at the end of the day, Kevin Cannon’s recap of the men who tried to be the first to reach the North (and South) Pole, a pile of creepy and moody photographs by Buck Sutter, planting mama with the onions by Anna Bongiovanni, Renny Kissling’s silent tale of an alien being tortured,Meghan Hogan’s adventures of crocheted animals, Martha Iserman with the adventures of her stuffed parrot-beaked puffer fish, and some food thievery by Raighne Hogan.Â There is one mini that stands alone as a complete story, by both Justin Skarlus and Raighne Hogan (each taking half the book) about a terminator-ish creature that doesn’t seem to have much of an ability to stick with one target, but that’s probably because I’m imposing that idea onto that character.Â It’s a bizarre pile of transporting vaginas, submachine guns, brain-eating and quiet contemplation.Â You’d love it!Â So, at the end of the day, I don’t know what the final version of this comic is going to look like.Â I hope they can keep the front and back cover of the slipcase, and I hope they manage to number the pages to go along with their table of contents, and I hope it’s clear that I’m not even commenting on about 1/3 of the stories in this to leave some surprises for you people.Â If you’ve seen the past issues of this series you know that “Good Minnesotan” is a mark of quality, and they didn’t disappoint this time around.