Blog Archives
Ullman, Robert – That’s Just Super
That’s Just Super
God bless Rob Ullman for always having something new whenever I see him at a convention. That’s not true for far too many people, but he sure seems on the ball about these things. This is the silent tale of an unnamed superheroine trying to get the affection of an unnamed superhero. The superhero fights a giant monster (looks sort of like the giant monster from the cover to Fantastic Four #1) and the superheroine comes to the rescue, as a wonderful fight scene ensues. You also have unrequited love, public perceptions and Arrested Development thrown in, all making this one solid mini. I’m going to guess this is $4 because of the serious production value put into this comic, but that’s just a guess…
Ullman, Robert – Old-Timey Hockey Tales #1
Old-Timey Hockey Tales #1
Anybody out there miss hockey? I sure do. It’s easily my favorite of all the major sports (although it can’t really call itself a major sport in the US these days) and this is right around the time of year that the playoffs would be heating up, which really sucks. Anyway, enough about me. If you’ve read the rest of this page you know that I love Robert’s work, and if you just read those last few sentences you know that I love hockey, so how do you think I feel about this book? I’m just thrilled to see that it’s “#1”, meaning that there’s more on the way. Do a hundred of these Robert! You’ll corner the market on hockey comics for when it comes back and has a popularity explosion! My only problem with this is that it was short, but I still learned a lot about Terry Sawchuk, Bill Barilko and Maurice “Rocket” Richard. Actually, I learned more about the 1955 playoffs and the riot than Rocket Richard, but why quibble? Great stuff here, contact info is up there, $2!
Ullman, Robert – Lunch Hour Comix #1
Lunch Hour Comix #1
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen a book from Robert (not like he hasn’t been making them, as he has a few new ones listed at the back of this one, I just missed them), and he’s one of those people where I automatically like it when I see it and he has to lose me from there. Sorry to the comics people where I start off neutral, which is most of them, but if you put out enough great books you get up their on that pedestal from me. This is his attempt at a daily diary strip. Yes, it’s been done to death, and yes, it usually just shows that the daily life of these people is fairly dull. So what? Anybody out there reading this heading up an expedition to the Antarctic or something? I’m fine with dull daily routine, and it you need more than that, well, you probably stopped reading this when you saw “daily diary strip” anyway. Subjects in here include marriage, buying a house, walking the dog, voting, the day after voting, music, drinking, hockey, and, of course, comics. This is a pretty hefty book at $4.95, and it also has some older diary strips he did back in 2002 and a few strips from his friend Bill Burg. A bit dull at times, granted, but the insights made up for the lack of excitement in some of the strips. Oh, and he also did each of them in less than an hour, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Contact info is up there, or you could just go to the Alternative Comics site and get it there, along with more other great comics than you could shake that stick at…
Ullman, Robert – Grand Gestures
Grand Gestures
It’s about time this guy got published. I should just say that it’s $3.95 and you should go buy it, but you probably want to know what it’s about or something… Fine. There are three main male characters. One of them is in love with a girl who works at a bookstore and takes some interesting means to get to know her, one of them is an unapologetic womanizer, and one of them is trying to get out of his relationship but just can’t work up the nerve to leave. The thing about a book like this is that it has to make you sympathetic to these characters, even when there’s not that much to be sympathetic in their characters. Without giving anything away, he pulled that off beautifully with everyone in here. Trust me when I say that if you are now or ever were in your 20’s and confused about women in some way or another, you’ll get a lot out of this book. Females could probably easily identify with some of the trampled women in this comic too, although probably not in a good way. My only problem with this is that he’s calling it a graphic novel on his website and it’s only 48 pages long. Call me a stickler for detail if you want, but that’s just too little. Graphic novella maybe? How about just “comic book”? I like that one…
Ullman, Robert – Signifying Nothing: The Collected From the Curve 1994-1998
Signifying Nothing: The Collected From the Curve 1994-1998
I’ve been hoping that Robert would put something like this out. As far as I know his earlier work is out of print, so it’s great to see the early work of someone who I think is going to be a major voice someday, and he’s already pretty damned good right now. He wears his influences on his sleeve in a lot of these strips (sometimes you see Adrian Tomine, sometimes Evan Dorkin, sometimes Dan Clowes, and his art has always reminded me of Jaime Hernandez), but you can see his own voice starting to come through. I sampled one of the more disturbing strips I’ve ever read from this book and I defy any heterosexual male to not feel like shit after reading it. It’s something that we can all relate to, and… well, just read it. The rest of the book is kind of mixed, some good and some bad. More bad than good, and with none of the strips being more than a few pages long, there’s not much time to hate anything anyway. There are only 500 copies of this floating around out there, so you’d better send him $5 soon (contact info above) to get your copy.
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #7
From the Curve #7
You know, somebody told me years ago to put dates on these reviews and I never bothered, figuring it would be too much of a pain in the ass. 8 years later, I would like to just say on the record to everybody who recommended this: you were right. It would have made things a whole lot easier now, on 2/2/10 (better late than never, right?), to know exactly when these reviews were coming from. The last two issues of this series clearly came from 2001-2002, as that’s when I lived 2 and a half hours from Chicago. As for the rest of it, who knows? I could go back to each individual update page and check the new reviews for each date, but I got tired just typing that sentence. Doing that for every day over the last 8+ years… well, forget it. So how about this comic? Rob is actually represented pretty well on this page, as I got my first issues of his comic right around when I was putting this website together, but I did manage to miss this one. If I’m remembering this correctly (and I wouldn’t bet any money on it) this was the last issue of the regular series From The Curve, after which he did a number of assorted projects, and it still making comics today. This issue is mostly a collection of short pieces, including a tribute to Charles Schulz, p-mail, wasting his time at a big box computer store, waking up in the early morning and the genuine confusion associated with it, why we look at a kleenex after we blow our nose, going to a very tiny comic show, getting to a late movie when the driver doesn’t know what he’s doing, his failed attempt at a stream-of-consciousness mystery, a depressed dog, dreaming a better evening than what actually happened, and leaving Richmond. It’s a solid issue, and one more reason for me to lament the fact that so few mini comics from back in the day are still available in any format these days. Why, in my day… well, in my day these were pretty hard to come by too. OK, forget that part. You should check out his newer books though, and at least he had the decency to put out a collected edition of at least some of his comics. $2
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #6
From the Curve #6
I’ll get to it in a minute, but I’ve sampled here what I think is what autobiographical comics are supposed to be. That’s saying a lot, sure, and I’m not saying that this is the single best page ever, just what other people writing about their lives should aspire to. Got it? This one has a hockey story, Robert getting stood up (sort of) at a bar, the Hulk watching football, and a frustrating situation at work. Predictably (for me), the longer stories worked better than the shorter ones. Not that there weren’t a couple of funny moments in the one pagers, but I would have rather seen him develop the “date” story more or just expand a few more stories in general. I can tell that this guy is going to do great things eventually, I’m just impatient waiting for him to get around to it. Put out more comics! By the way, #7 is out. I’m just bitching because #8 isn’t out yet… Contact info is all above here, $2 for this one.
Ullman, Robert – From the Curve #5
From the Curve #5
Mini comics by the numbers, and if you think I mean that in a bad way, you haven’t been reading many of my reviews. This was great. A story about meeting a girl dancing and having nothing to talk about, not being able to draw, open mike night at the cafe, being addicted to coffee… I love stuff like this. Lucky for me there are at least 7 issues out. Look, I rarely make it to Chicago Comics, what with living 2 and a half hours away and not having a car, so when I do go I’m usually kind of limited in what I get, purely due to finances. This is one of those that I wish I had just taken a chance and gotten every issue they had. I guess it’s not the most innovative thing in the world, and it probably won’t win a ton of awards any time soon, but it’s honest and obviously heart felt, and that’s plenty good enough for me. Send this guy some money, huh?
Ullman, Robert – Traffic & Weather
Traffic & Weather
Well, whatever else I can say about running this website for almost 8 years, it has succeeded in one of my more selfish goals: getting free comics from some of my favorite creators. That’s right suckers, you all thought I was promoting small press work, trying to spread the word about all the talent out there, when all I was doing was secretly trying to find a way to stop paying for comics. Once I break through to the fancypants at Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and Top Shelf my plan will be a complete success! Ahem. This comic reprints a weekly local strip Rob does (which you can find here), and these things should be much more common than they are. Rob talks about his beloved Pittsburgh teams, his annoyances with traffic, buying crappy Christmas lights, the rising price of food versus the lowering price of gas, getting great seats at a Cub’s game, a broken caller I.D., cheap lousy haircuts, getting a bit too much into football games, a perfect day with the family, almost mowing the lawn for a lazy neighbor and finding out that his small child actually travels quite well. It cheapens the strips to put them all in bullet point form like that, as Rob has always had a keen eye for pointing out the little things, and is probably at his best detailing these quiet little moments of family life. Here’s hoping he keeps that weekly strip in an economy where many papers are slashing their comics section (often their cheapest and most viewed section, but nobody ever accused current newspaper executives of being good business people), as there’s some great stuff in this little collection. I’m not seeing this on his website (but if he didn’t have any copies available he probably wouldn’t have sent one to me), but here’s guessing that it’s, oh, $2.50
Ullman, Robert – Crustacean Frustration
Crustacean Frustration
You can probably guess a bit about this comic from the cover and that wonderful title: there’s going to be trouble between that chef and a lobster. It’s true, that’s how things start, as what appears to be a king enters a restaurant, requests a lobster, and the nervous chef has all sorts of trouble catching the lobster. In the end he fails, and if that was the end of the comic it would have been another mildly amusing silent mini, but Rob takes it way past that. The chef loses his job due to being unable to feed the king and sinks into a spiral of depression and drinking, always funny when involving a cartoon chef with a giant moustache.  While out drinking he sees his old nemesis the lobster, only now the lobster is the owner/manager of a vegetarian bar and grill. Unable to take this, the chef goes and and gets a gun to finally get his revenge but, much as I would like to, I can’t bring myself to ruin the ending.  Laughing out loud is always the sign of a winner to me, and this comic definitely fits the bill. It’s worth checking out, although I should point out that you should probably get this alongside at least a few of his other minis. I should mention to anybody who gets annoyed at that little “read more” bar after the reviews that I pretty much have to do that now due to the immense size of some of these pages. Rob has piles of minis below the fold, so if you’re one of those people who never click on that you’re really missing out. No price tag, let’s go with $2.
