Jordan, Rusty – Duane’s Big Walk

March 2, 2026

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Duane’s Big Walk

One tricky thing about reviewing older comics is that I sometimes have no idea what the creator is up to these days. I liked Rusty’s books back in the day (it looks like the last time I reviewed one of his comics was in 2013), but lost track of him a bit and ordered this from the Spit and a Half shop recently. Now according to my usual cursory internet search it looks like his most current website is a Tumblr page that was last updated a decade ago? Eh, let’s just go with the theory that I’m missing something obvious. Besides, that Tumblr page does have images from this particular comic, so at least it’s relevant. Oh hey, I should also talk about the comic a bit, right? This one starts off with a brief story about Duane walking and talking with his bird pal Christian, trying to figure out what he’s doing with his life and what it all means. From there we go to a… I guess you’d call it Claymation if it was an animated short, but since it’s a comic it’s a series of staged pictures with malleable dolls, about a woman who’s giving a news report about a string of murders, but who may have lost the plot a bit on who exactly she’s reporting to. After that a trip to the bar is required, where the news woman runs into an old boyfriend, Duane tries to pet a bird and the band singer has a rough time of it. There was a nice through line on all of these stories, mixed styles and all, and hey look at that, it turns out that I still like Rusty’s comics. It’s a measly $5 and in stock at John Porcellino’s shop, give it a shot why don’t you?


Jordan, Rusty (editor) – Shitbeams on the Loose #2

April 24, 2010

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Shitbeams on the Loose #2 (edited by Rusty Jordan)

Hey look, an anthology!  I’ve never understood why so few of these clearly label who did which pages (some even have page listings for the artist without having the actual pages numbered).  This one at least has a chronological listing of the artists, but the nature of this book makes it difficult to tell where one story ends and another begins.  Why?  They’re mostly highly interpretive blasts of art, that’s why.  Still, I’ll give you a list of who’s in this and you’ll most likely be properly amazed and impressed.  There’s Ron Rege Jr.(looking less deliberative than I’ve seen him, and I’m a bigger fan of that than I of the mildly sloppy story in this issue (said mostly because the bits of text are hard to follow)), Jason Overby (brilliantly smacking the preconceived notion of what makes a comic strip around), Dave Nuss (with a welcome quiet moment of the Roman soldier who theoretically jabbed Jesus in the ribs), Andrew Smith (puking a tuna melt is the worst), Hector Serna Jr. (I could spend the whole review trying to unpack those images), Brent Harada (with a mildly out of place regular old story about searching for boots in thrift stores), Robyn Jordan (a quiet piece about camping), John Hankiewicz (a breath of fresh, distinctive air in a sea of chaos), Grant Reynolds (with one of his more disturbing pieces, and that’s saying something), Ayo Kuramoto & Amane Yamamoto (please place your review here, this went right over my head), Rusty Jordan (this is where it starts getting really difficult to tell where one artist ends and another begins, I believe his piece is the one with the escaping brain), Luke Ramsey (ditto, I believe his stuff is the series of full page heads), and Andy Rementer (an oddly adorable piece after all this about a man, his bike and their mutual love).  Or maybe Andy Rementer is the one who did that utterly horrific back cover?  Hard to tell, and that website doesn’t clear it up a bit.  Oh well, with that list of stars it’s a hard thing to pass up, and the quality of most of the stories makes it even more difficult.  And if you don’t love that cover, well, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you.  It is a fairly hefty $9, but it’s put together nicely.  You decide!

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