Blog Archives
Fitzpatrick, Neil – Neil Jam #7
Neil Jam #7
A great silent issue and it’s the first time you get to see Willis as a superhero. You really don’t need words with those huge eyes… $2
Fitzpatrick, Neil – Neil Jam #5
Neil Jam #5
A “talking” guitar who falls in love! A cute rabbit who gets kicked around! Robot! Bird! Giant black eyes! You know, I was going to review every issue, breaking down the finer points, but then I realized that pictures from this incredible series will convince you more than I ever could. You’d think that kicking cute creatures around would get old, but you’d be wrong. I was thinking that this wasn’t one of the better ones and then I remembered the guitar. Pretty much all the stuff I got at SPACE (this and everything after it up to #9) is worth getting. $2
Fitzpatrick, Neil – Neil Jam #4
Neil Jam #4
Well, the good news is that at least two more of these have been put out. The bad news is that this guy is still doing these himself when one of the big independent publishers should have noticed him and given him a lot of money by now. Or whatever passes for a lot of money in the small press world… Anyway, the world of Neil, for the uninitiated, consists of a series of characters who all share giant black eyes that take up most of their faces. Some of the stories are a page or two, but they keep the same underlying theme for the whole comic. Mostly tales of violence and confusion with a complete inability for most of the characters to relate to one another. A funny and creepy book, those giant black eyes pretty much hypnotize you by the end. It kind of has to be seen to be believed (keep checking, I’ll get this scanner working one of these days), but I can tell you that I’ll be ordering as many of the other issues as I can afford.
Conrad, Peter (editor) – Swell
Swell Now Available! $7.95
Another day, another random mish-mash of an anthology. I really had high hopes for this one too. It’s edited by Peter Conrad and here are just some of the names in it (don’t you hate it when people do that? You know that they’re always leaving off the lesser-known people for no good reason): Sam Henderson, Neil Fitzpatrick, Jesse Reklaw, Keith Knight, Carrie McNinch, James Kochalka, John Hankiewicz, David Lasky and Ted Rall. It’s an OK book, but very few things stand out when you get done reading it. The Sam Henderson and James Kochalka stories weren’t even funny, and those are usually a sure thing. Keith Knight, John Hankiewicz, Neil Fitzpatrick and Ted Rall were the highlights for me. Everything else was somewhere between pretty good and unremarkable. It’s cheap at $7.95 and you can’t beat that lineup, but… eh.
