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Various Anthologies – Failure

Failure

This is an anthology that’s all autobio stuff, and it’s all about some real or perceived flaw of the author. Naturally, that means I love it. Hey, you should all know by now that I’m biased towards good autobio comics. The first story is by Rose Crowe, whose main failure is her inability to accept praise and good things. Then there’s Antar Ellis, with an average (I only say average because I’ve seen the concept so many times) story about how he screwed up meeting a woman back in school. Jerry Stanford is up next with a depressing tale about addiction, not that there are many stories about addiction that aren’t depressing. Greg Vondruska follows that with a story about rapidly gaining weight, something that I can relate to after too much time in a “comfy” relationship. Last is Drew Weing with a story about being covered in moles (not the underground kind, the skin kind) as a child and dealing with other kids. Lots more to all these stories, of course, but it’s a solid enough book that people should pick it up anyway, so why give anything away? It’s $3, check out the website, I’m sure there’s more goodies there and contact info for everybody…

Ellis, Antar – A Collected Comic Book

Website (broken link, can’t find anything working)

A Collected Comic Book

What a terrible title! Sorry, I don’t like to start these things off on a negative note, but that’s just a silly title. Maybe it’s just me, maybe because I haven’t seen his stuff before I didn’t know there were a bunch of short pieces floating around, waiting to be put into a collected comic book. Snarky on a Monday afternoon, that’s me. Anyway, what about the actual comic? Well, about 2/3 of it is made up of short stories, one to four pages in length, about things like a fake diet, black on black crime, black sitcoms, an average day in his life, how to achieve bitterness, cutting his hair, and the obligatory character from the page coming to life and telling him how much he sucks (although, to be fair, I liked what he did with this one). Then you have a couple of strips with stick figures punching and kicking each other, and that’s the first 2/3 of the book. A few good strips, a lot of stuff that’s so-so. The last 1/2 of the book, however, is a different story. These are one page newspaper style strips, mostly dealing with music, and that’s obviously where his passion lies. Song lyrics, watching records spin, when it’s appropriate to quote rap lyrics, trying to play a Stevie Wonder song from memory, watching music videos as a kid, it’s all good once these strips start. They always say to write about what you know, and it’s obvious that he knows music really well. I’m curious to see a longer story from this guy, it’s obvious that he has some great stories in him. All in all it’s pretty hit and miss, but not a bad book by any means. Here’s a website, what is it with putting a price somewhere on the comic? I’m guessing $3 because it’s a pretty big book, but I honestly have no idea. Keep checking their website, maybe they’ll get that store up soon…