Optical Sloth

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Midville High #12

So, uh, it’s too late to do much about this now, but the inside of this comic shows the wrong issue number. Based on everything on Matt’s website, this is issue #12 of his series. Based on the print on the inside front cover, it’s #11. I’ll be expecting my No-Prize (TM) in the mail. Is that how those things used to work? Anyway, this is only a concern to people like me who already have trouble keeping their comics remotely organized. This issue is a parody of an old Twilight Zone episode (or the remake of the same episode from the Twilight Zone movie, or the Simpsons parody of the same thing, etc.) based on a youthful William Shatner spotting a gremlin on the wing of his plane. The creature always ducked out of sight whenever anybody else looked, so he was dismissed as a crank. Well, this time around it’s a bus ride back from a model UN debate, and it’s not a gremlin actively trying to tear the apart, but instead a… kid hanging from the outside of the window? Look, to get through the good stuff first, I thoroughly enjoyed the cigarette ad parodies,the flashbacks to the start of the debate, and the goofy (but still rising) tension from nobody else ever seeing the kid. But, and this is the part where it may well be pure reader error on my part, it didn’t feel like the story ever resolved. Was it a kid hanging from the window? He looked like one of the kids at the debate, but there was never a moment when he was found hanging and Kyle is left looking like a crazy person. And the punchline of (spoiler, unavoidable, bail out now if you don’t want to know) the dangling kid apparently writing “wash me” in the dust on the outside of the bus? That would have made a lot more sense if it hadn’t been pouring down rain the whole time. I flipped back through this to try to see what I missed, but I’m coming up empty. Overall the parody aspects of this (and that back cover cigarette parody ad) still make the issue worth checking out, but it does seem like the overall story fizzled out a bit. Your mileage may vary! $1

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Midville High #10

Congrats to Matt on replacing (for the moment, anyway) Brian Canini and Nick Forker as the comics creators I have the most trouble keeping up with. In terms of reviews, I mean. If you’re a normal member of the comics reading public, they all make it pretty easy to stay caught up with their work. I’m doing the thing where I randomly grab an issue to review (he’s up to #19 as of this writing), and this time I lucked into a self-contained story. This one is mostly about Kyle, and he’s getting in trouble for seemingly very minor infractions. He’s also being punished by being forced to do yard work for former and current teachers and school board members instead of the usual detention. The comic is a nice slow burn of Kyle putting together the clues, getting confirmation by the other students involved before finally confronting the principal. That takes up the vast majority of the comic, but Matt was nice enough to also include a couple of single page strips (with a groan-worthy pun about a sharpened pencil (which is true of most puns; if you like ’em, you like ’em) and a funny bit about a frustrated teacher who can’t crack his knuckles), some activity pages and a lengthy text recap of some of the happenings around the school. Another solid issue, and at $1 you really can’t beat those prices.

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Midville High #14

Matt was nice enough to send me a few of his more recent comics, so I’m happy to report that A. he has indeed stuck to that monthly schedule, which is the sort of thing that brings me joy and B. he also has a big 300ish page collection of his comics out now, which would be a great and convenient way to get started on his stuff. Which makes it especially odd that I’m still not sure how to get individual issues of his comics, outside of emailing the man I guess. This time around there’s one main story, and it’s simple: the new issue of Bat Chap (with a solid running gag of if it’s Bat Chap or THE Bat Chap) is coming out, and since it’s the death of Bat Chap, it’s going to be worth big bucks one day. But there’s a blizzard, so there’s no easy way to get to the comic store. And thus begins the hero’s journey! Ick, that must be the first time I’ve used “thus” in a review. Anyway, there are plenty of hardships along the way, along with an excellent finale set in the far future that shows just how much that issue ended up being worth. And this might be the first time that I realized that these comics are set in the past, maybe roughly from when Matt was in school? The idea of the death of a superhero being a valuable comic was one big hint, but the existence of a working pay phone (combined with a book of actual yellow pages) sealed the deal. Two other short stories are also in here, one about the adventures of Bat Chap (a very British superhero indeed, with some funny dialogue and objections by the beaten up henchmen) and a brief conversation between the gang about chaos theory and the butterfly effect. It’s another solid issue, and it looks like the next three issues are a three part story, so I’m going to have to start being more careful about just grabbing an issue at random to review. $1

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Midville High #9

Matt’s taken time off comics here and there (go to his website, he’s very clear about the release dates for his books), so it’s heartening to see that he has a release schedule now and he’s clearly sticking to it. Two comics in two months is impressive in the small press comics world, but he’s clearly planning on keeping these monthly, and I don’t see much reason to doubt him. This one is mostly about our hero Kyle getting into a jam of not finishing his third of a joint school project (which leads to the promise of bodily harm from the other two participants if he doesn’t get his act together) and trying to get out of it. Along with many, many jokes, which I guess some people might not like, but I appreciated the commitment to the bit if nothing else (and OK fine, I also laughed at more than a few of the jokes). Anyway, Kyle hears about an old hoax involving a picture of dried up corpses of fairies that were found in the woods decades ago and decides to make that his contribution to the project. But time is running short and, to put it mildly, Kyle has trouble focusing on his schoolwork, which of course leads to some shenanigans by the end. It’s another fun story, and my only complaint about the book is the fake newspaper story on the back cover of the comic. Not the story itself, mind you, just that my copy (or maybe all copies?) ended up so faded that I couldn’t really read it. It’s a minor thing, and it didn’t effect the story, but I am one of those people who watches all the bonus content for things that I like, so I would have liked to have read the whole story. Oh, the problems I have. Check it out why don’t you, give the man some incentive to keep up that monthly schedule! $1

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Midville High #7

Do you know what gets me every time, even (getting pretty close to) 24 years after I started this comics review website? Seeing new comics from people that I first reviewed ages ago, or in this case 2009. Which, yes, is very much “ages ago”. I got a couple of comics from Matt in late 2009 (the review date says 2010, but that’s because that’s when I remade the website, losing a lot of the original review dates and zzzzz), reviewed them both in the same month and seemed to like them just fine, and then can’t recall seeing his name again. According to his website he made two more comics at the time but only released them relatively recently, but this issue looks like it’s hot off the presses. Am I ever going to get around to talking about the actual comic? Yes, right now! On the inside front cover of this comic we see the main characters, and in a single image we get their names and a general personality type for each of them. Bravo, it’s best not to assume with a #7 that everybody has been along for the ride, especially if you’re coming back to comics after so long away. The story here details the way that school worked in the old days, roughly when I was in school it looks like, so that was a little chunk of nostalgia for me. The heart of this comic deals with a poster project, which was essentially an assignment that a teacher could give a student to keep them occupied for a week. If you guessed it involves making posters, well, it’s right there in the name, so don’t congratulate yourself too hard. But our hero Kyle both wants to be a magician (the story also deals with being “assigned” a future profession after taking a test) and is trying to get his hands on some new Funyon type snacks. He makes the poster himself, but he talks his friends into following a lead into the forest about the snacks, and ends up finding something he’d rather not know about them. There, no spoilers. It’s a fun, lighthearted comic, which is exactly what I needed today. Welcome back to comics Matt! Unless you never left, in which case welcome back to Optical Sloth I guess? $1

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Midville High #4

Raise your hands: who was in the band in high school? OK, put your hands down, I can’t see you and you probably feel ridiculous enough if you actually raised your hands. This comic is all about being in a high school band, so I automatically can’t relate much. I can, however, recognize a good story when I see it. This one is all about Kyle, as things start with his section of the band being given extra practice time every day (we learn later that it’s only because Kyle sucks) and Kyle, instead of taking the opportunity to actually learn the bass clarinet, decides to forge his mother’s signature on his practice sheets. His fellow band mates see right through him, and so does the band leader, a man with a hook AND an eye patch. On the rare occasions that a character has both of these deficiencies, I automatically assume that it’s because they’ve jabbed out an eye with their hook. Utterly irrelevant to the story, that’s just where my mind wanders. Anyway, a tutor is enlisted, much practice occurs and if I say much more I’ll ruin the whole comic. As you can read the whole thing for free on his website I’m probably not giving too much away, but I have my own code on these things. So you have a funny and unexpected ending to go along with the good chunks in the middle. It probably would have been better if I’d been in a band in high school, but I’m sure plenty of you can relate and it was a good story all by itself. It’s $1 and there are samples a’plenty at his website.

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Midville High #3

Maybe I should invent some kind of a code that lets the reader know if a particular comic is available for free on the author’s website. In this case: yes, it is, along with a whole pile of other comics from the man. Makes all this rambling I do a bit irrelevant, but that’s never stopped me before! Matt makes it clear in the letter he sent along with the comic that this mini might not be for everyone, as he describes it as “clean, innocent and unassuming”. Cynical as I may have become in my elder years (although, to be honest, I’ve been cynical since puberty hit), even I can’t think of that as automatically a bad thing. Indeed, it’s refreshing. Very few people doing comics seem to see the world as anything other than a bleak, hopeless hellhole, and it can get more than a little bit old when I’m reading at least one of these things every day. This is the story of a group of high school friends: Kyle, June & Barry. They’ve just taken the career aptitude tests, and Kyle gets “farm hand”. I’m not sure what type of a guy Kyle was before this issue, but it sure seems like this is shocking news to him. Meanwhile Barry has some fun mocking his science teacher and June mostly helps Kyle deal with his transformation into a farm hand. It is remarkably wholesome, granted, but he does manage to get some funny lines in there, and it’s not that special brand of obnoxious wholesome. There are, for example, no “awwww” moments in here, nothing that forces you to wallow in cuteness. For the true cynics in the crowd, and I’m sure there are plenty, Matt might be right about this not being for you. Still, it’s easy enough to find that out, what with so much of his work being available for free at his website. As for me, I liked it and, as usual, sampled my favorite page from the comic. Read it and discover your own reaction! $1