Wolf, Bart – Cosmic Static

July 8, 2024

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Cosmic Static

What do you think about if your consciousness never leaves your dead body? Terrifying to even think about, isn’t it? The concept of this one is fairly simple: an astronaut has been sent out to try to find another habitable planet in the universe. It didn’t work out, and he ended up dying and then drifting through space for who knows how long. But the company he worked for didn’t want those valuable memories to disappear if the astronaut died, so they implanted a chip to keep his memories intact. This chip also kept his consciousness intact, which, you know, yikes. The human brain can go to all kinds of dark places in this sort of helpless constant awareness, and it’s grimly fascinating to see and read through it. Let’s just say that you’re unlikely to end up with a good opinion of a species that would leave you in this state, especially since the whole point behind it was because they had already ruined their original planet. Still, there’s not much of a story here without some forward momentum, so we get to witness the orbit decay for this poor sucker and we get to see what happens next. And hey, if you’re curious about that, this is the part of the review where I tell you to read it for yourself. As a concept, it’s entirely too plausible that a future corporation would force their workers into this situation, and it’s more than a little plausible that several corporations are already working on it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, so give this one a shot why don’t you. $8 (and it comes with a sticker, in case you want an image of a corpse drifting through space on your backpack/book/whatever)


Wolf, Bart – Grocery Bag Grotesques

January 30, 2024

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Grocery Bag Grotesques

Anybody who’s stuck around this website for a period of years (I’ve been around for 22+ years now, but who’s counting) knows that I do love it when an artist that’s new to me sends me a pile of their books. There can be drawbacks, sure, because I always start by reviewing one random example from the pile, which can lead to snap assumptions about everything else in the pile, and… ugh, I can see it, the rambling is clear to me now. Reigning myself in, the point is that I picked this one because it looked recent and it seemed self-contained. That and a few of the other ones had a picture of a literal unflushed toilet on them, and after this many years of reading small press comics, that sort of thing just leaves me tired. But hey, how about this particular comic? This is a series of drawings, mostly what it implies on the cover (“grotesques”), with various horror images and scenes thrown in. These images are accompanied by blocks of text, musings really, about various aspects of life and the world. A little tricky to review, but the man is a solid artist and a few of his thoughts got me stroking my chin thoughtfully, so I’d say it all worked out. Subjects in here include a horrible prank he used to play on a mailbox as a kid, aging and realizing the truth about the time you wasted, not looking at yourself too closely, putting too many fish in an aquarium, and a whole lot of free floating despair. So yes, I’d say this book is worth checking out. As for me, I enjoyed the first book in a new and random review pile. Does this mean that I’m going to go back and review the poop comics? <Sigh> Yeah, I’m probably going to review at least one of the poop comics. $8