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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