Brown, Box – Everything Dies #2

August 18, 2010

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Everything Dies #2

If this series doesn’t win some small press comics award, I’m turning in my fake membership badge.  He has apparently put out a few other comics, but I rarely see stuff this polished and this perfect.  So what’s there to write about when I have no complaints?  Well, how about the good stuff?  Note: it helps if you read the first issue of this series (two of the pieces come directly from the first issue), but he still manages to make them self-contained.  The second part of the modern re-telling of the Book of Job was again a thing of brilliance, as Job gets increasingly baffled by his continued problems, seeks advice and eventually meets God himself (and it never occurred to me how much of a let-down that conversation must have been for Job (if he had actually existed or talked to God (or if God existed))).  Ah, my first triple parenthesis.  I’m so proud.  The other part of this book that puts all other comics to shame with its scope is the adaptation of how various religions view the end of the world.  If you read the first issue you remember that he did this with how all religions view the beginning of the world, so it only made sense to go here.  No matter how knowledgeable you are about all this, I guarantee that you will learn something new.  Whether it’s the utter insanity of the Sunni Islam sect believing that Allah will kill all humans only to immediately bring them back to life to be judged, the Mormons believing that 1000 years of missionary work will follow the destruction of the wicked (who would they be preaching to exactly?), or the simple science of the Big Crunch, this is as close to flawless as a comics story gets.  There are also two pieces about the monk and his pupil, but I’m leaving those stories (that would be the highlight of most other minis) to your imagination, as everybody should already buy this anyway.  Yes, I know I say that often, but I mean the hell out of it this time.  Trust me, you’ll be sorry when he’s famous in a few years and these minis are completely out of print…  $5


Brown, Box – Everything Dies #1

May 3, 2010

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Everything Dies #1

Once again, I should give thanks to the internet for leading random people to send me their comics for review.  Sometimes I take it for granted, and sure, I wouldn’t be getting them if I wasn’t willing to review them and all, but the sheer amount of stuff I’ve gotten over the run of this site that I never would have heard of otherwise is staggering.  I have no idea of the history of, um, Box, but this comic shines like something that’s been a long time coming.  That can’t be true, as he also sent along #2 of this series, so clearly he’s already just that good.  There are two main parts of this comic that I’ll get to in a second, but I have to hit the highlight (in a book full of highlights) first: his story of the creationism myth of all sorts of world religions.  There’s Voodoo, Zulu, Mormonism, Islam and Sikhism, not to mention oddities like Maidu and Scientology.  Granted, you could call all religions oddities and you wouldn’t get much of an argument from me, but you get the idea.  His matter-of-fact descriptions of these stories are brilliant without ever being condescending, a difficult task given the subject matter.  His whole comic is suffused with religion, again in a way that manages not to annoy a committed hater of nonsense (i.e. religion) like myself.  The rest of the comic is split into two bits: a monk student asking questions of his master and a modern version of the Biblical story of Job.  The story of Job is fantastic, as many parts of it are taken word for word from the Bible, but everything has been moved to a modern setting.  The questions from the monk are spread out throughout the issue, and serve as welcome breaks from the other pieces.  I can go either way on that sort of thing, but every last one of these was insightful without seeming pointless or cloudy.  It felt like this book was packed but yep, those are the parts of the comic.  They go together beautifully and I’m fascinated to see how he follows this up.  Just a real gem of a comic.  $5