Agans, Chris & Strauss, Dan – Cigghartha

March 29, 2012

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Cigghartha

See, artists with crappy titles, this is how you make it easy for people to find you on the internet. I did a search for this title and (after I reminded Google that I wasn’t actually looking for “Siddhartha”) only came up with four hits. People who go with untitled books or “my first mini comic by Dan Smith,” take note. This book was hand-made (which you can tell by the string used as binding, among other things) and it’s gorgeous. The description of it is “one man’s spiritual journey,” and that works. This starts off with a man being born as a full grown man, complete with a cigar in his mouth. You may start to see a theme on this front. The man sets off on his own, trying to learn from a mystic of some kind, before eventually finding himself on the street, begging for money. He solves this problem rather deftly and manages to enjoy life for a bit, but those good times could only last for so long and he soon finds himself back on the streets. Well, the forest, in this case, but I can’t say much more without telling you everything. On the whole this book is an interesting search for meaning, and we’re happily not left with much of an answer one way or the other. Which, if you think about it, IS the answer, and it eventually becomes obvious to everybody. Well, it does in my happy version of the world, anyway. This couldn’t be more different in tone than the other book I’ve reviewed from these folks (Seething With Hatred), but they’re both well worth a look. It’s kind of expensive, as hand-making your books will do that to the price, but hey, who needs food anyway? $6


Moscater, Jim & Strauss, Dan – Seething With Hatred #1

March 7, 2012

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Seething With Hatred #1

Now that is one fantastic title. This comic shows the dealings that Jim (just guessing because he’s the writer) has with the various people who rent apartments from him and/or complain about those apartments. He’s a leasing agent, meaning that he interviews people who are trying to get an apartment and takes complaints from people as they pay their rent bills. Everybody in the office hates each other to varying degrees, and Jim sees the dregs of humanity on a daily basis, which is bound to get somebody, well, exactly what the title up there implies. The first story shows the kind of complaints he gets and details his routine, including the part where his methods of escapism end up with the effect of essentially taking away all his free time and depositing him back at work on Monday. Next up is a story about a couple of kids just out of high school who clearly weren’t ready for a place of their own, but they had the paperwork in order and had stellar credit so they were granted an apartment. Parties and drunken orgies occur, and when they finally have to evict them nobody is even remotely prepared for what they find in the apartment, not to mention all the other illegal activities this scrutiny brings to light from other residents. Finally Jim gets dragged into a Homeland Security (!) sting, in which he has to ignore a man tied up in a trunk but ends up with some nice clout around the property. The story of the life of a leasing agent could theoretically be boring, I suppose, but this one has more than enough fascinating stories to make it worth a look. Dan Strauss also does an excellent job of making these people seem at least mildly human when he could have easily turned them all into caricatures. There’s some genuine humanity on these faces, and that back cover illustration showing a busy day at the pool is hysterical. Seethe on, gentlemen, I’m curious to see how many more of these terrible stories you have in you. $5