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Tessler, Daria – Music of Changes

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Music of Changes

Is it ever possible for randomly produced art to be genuinely random? Are even coin flips truly random when looked at from an objective distance? What happens when art is mass produced using these methods and protesters are added to the mix? Those are some of the questions you’ll be asking yourself while reading this, or at least you will if we share a brain. Otherwise, don’t let me tell you how to react to art. This one starts off as a tour of the facility where these artworks are being produced and we get to see the great lengths that are followed to ensure that the art is a random as possible. From there the protesters are introduced, and their contribution to the artwork is devastating. From there I don’t want to spoil the whole thing, but four drink recipes are included, so even if you’re a soulless monster who gets nothing out of this comic, at least now you have four new drinks to try! As for me, I was engrossed by this story and think it had quite a bit to say about order, chaos, and the benefits/drawbacks of both. I’ll just leave you with a quote from a disgruntled protester that says it all: “Blast! We increased the amount of uncertainty on the Earth again.” $6

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Kiersh, Dave – Last Cry For Help #3

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Last Cry For Help #3

I should almost put this on the Various page because so many people contributed to this one, but eh. It’s mostly Dave and Souther Salazar, as always, but there are also a bunch of other people with contributions of varying size: Saelee Oh, Dan Moynihan, David Heatley, Ron Rege Jr., Todd Webb, Rachel Sumpter and Daria Tessler. It’s 38 pages and Dave and/or Souther still have something to do with 75% of it or so, but the sheer number of artists makes this book much more diverse than the other issues. It’s almost jarring when you get to the 11 page strip by Dave towards the end of the book; looking at the same art for that long doesn’t seem right. The only consistent underlying theme I could find here was the visual poetry that went into every story. The words were universally beautiful, sometimes the art wasn’t, but it was never less then pretty good and it really didn’t matter once you got the messages of the individual stories. I can’t imagine that I have to “sell” the work of these two to anybody, but if I do, this is only $2 and is a great showcase for a lot of cartoonists, with long enough stories so that you can still feel like you got your “fix” of Souther and Dave. I’m sure it’s up on the Catastrophe page, buy it already…