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Oxblood: The Untold Legend of Paul Bunyan

I debated putting this one back in the review pile and picking something else, but instead I’m going with using it as a cautionary tale. Y’know, a sort of guide on what not to do if you’re selling your book at a convention. See, I vaguely remember talking to the guy who made this comic, which is why I think it was made by a guy. I could be conflating this with somebody else, so even that could be wrong. But there’s no writer or artist name given, no link to a website or even Instagram, and the name of the publishing company (or just the name they’re using), Rani Comix, didn’t bring up anything in a search. Neither did the title, and since most of the characters are public domain, that didn’t lead anywhere either. But hey, at least now I know that Noah Van Sciver did a Paul Bunyan book too. I’m hoping somebody reads this review so I can fill in the blanks, but for right now it’s the perfect example of what not to do if you’re hoping to get the word out about your comic. Which is a shame, as there were intriguing bits in here. As it says on the cover, this is really more of a zine than a comic, as it’s full of character bios and bits of lore that they’re clearly planning to use for a comic series. I’m only assuming that they don’t have comics already, as otherwise I probably would have grabbed an issue of that rather than this zine. Anyway, we’re given a list of monsters with intriguing names before learning that dragons are rumored to be returning. From there we see how heroes are made, learn what happened to Paul in the past and his current quest, and meet two other characters that are presumably going to be important in the series. Overall a pretty nice teaser, which makes it a real shame that said series is not easier to find. So yeah, if you know who this was, please email me and I’ll fix this review. If not, hey, maybe your Google skills are better than mine. Best of luck!