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de Wet, Jean – Mini Kus #20: Crater Lake
Oh silent comics, you do vex me so. For those of you who are new to the site, I’ve showed my ignorance on the meanings of certain silent comics several times over the 13+ years that I’ve been reviewing comics. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t, and sometimes I think I do but actually don’t. That last option is the most amusing, at least in hindsight. Anyway, this is all stalling so that I can avoid talking about this comic, as I had very little idea of what was happening before I read the back. The comic itself is a series of scenes, told mostly over two page spreads, of several happenings around a town as a meteor shower (?) is happening. Most of these scenes are shown at such a distance that you could plausibly come up with several reasons for why they’re doing what they’re doing and then, to me at least, things ended rather abruptly. The back of the comic helpfully mentions the various things that they’re doing, but I had a hard time going back into the comic and picking out which pages depict which events. It’s still a gorgeous book, but I was more impressed with the ideas going on than I was with the execution of them. Then again, I do have a sporadic and inconsistent dislike of silent comics, so take that into consideration when reading this review. $6
Various Artists – Baltic Comics Magazine #11: Artventurous
Baltic Comics Magazine #11
Huzzah for international anthologies! Getting a comic from Latvia is a sure way to keep me fired up to write more reviews for another six months or so (international artists take note). One note right off the bat: it would probably be a good idea for them to put the title of their book on the cover. In this case “Artventurous” refers to art both being made and not made and the various adventures surrounding different types of art. Don’t get me wrong, that cover is going to grab your attention sitting on a shelf anyway, but that one descriptive word might have helped them pick up another reader or two who was too lazy to open the cover. Anyway, for me a 2/3 success rate is more than enough to recommend an anthology, and this one is closer to 4/5 fantastic/provocative/fascinating, which covers that spread quite nicely. Please note that I’m not going to talk about every single story in here (because then what would be left for you to discover?), but a full list of artists is down there in the tags below the review. My favorites from this boo include the closed loop story by Martins Zutis dealing with The Odyssey, the silent piece by KJ Martinet called “Ideal Form” (I don’t want to give away a bit more than that), the fantastically creepy “Leda” by Betty Liang, the mind-boggling amount of detail in “Necropolis” by Jean de Wet, Jen Rickert’s “The Loon” and its shifts between what is happening in the moment and the flashbacks from its murderous protagonist, Konig Lu Q’s simple (but not simplistic) extra commandments, Roman Muradov’s story that disintegrates into little pieces in the middle, the sheer adventurousness (and never discount the value of a giant robot yeti) of the Mikus Duncis story, the social horror of Olive Booger’s piece, the gleeful mayhem of Elina Braslina’s story, and the plausible paranoia of Dilraj Mann’s story. And this is all without me even mentioning Simon Moreton’s story (who, if you read this website at all, you know is a favorite of mine), which should tell you something about the overall quality of this anthology. Honestly, I should maybe even bump up that 4/5 quality estimate, as even the (many) stories I didn’t mention here usually had something going from them, between the vibrant splashes of color and the various social anxieties based on growing up around art or just trying to produce something of value when so much incredible stuff has already been produced. Pick it up if you get the chance, that’s what I’m saying, as it’s impressive that they’ve made it to #11 and they should shoot for many more. $13
