Catmull, Ben – Monster Express

April 22, 2010

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Monster Express

Christ, where the heck has Ben Catmull been? I knew the art in this looked familiar, but I didn’t know who did this until I turned it over at the end and saw his name. Has he been doing a bunch of stuff that I missed and, if so, could somebody point me to it? This is the story of a man on a train, trying to have a peaceful train ride. He unexpectedly is forced to sit next to a chatterbox, but can’t seem to leave his car for any reason because there’s a monster on the loose, killing everbody on board. The only action we see is through their train car, with injured (or headless) people running by in a panic while the general calm of their seating area remains the same. His art has a simple charm to it that’s hard to match (what does he use for the shading, watercolors?) and the man can tell a story, so I don’t know what more you could ask for here. It’s short and I’d guess it’s between 2 and 3 bucks, as the packaging is pretty simple. Check it out and get the rest of his stuff too, he’s one of the great ones that I’ve seen in the past few years. Send him e-mail or check out more of his stuff online