Blog Archives
Kiersh, Dave – Last Cry For Help #4
Last Cry For Help #4
At least I think it’s #4 (unless I missed one somewhere, there’s no number in here). More goodness from Dave, Souther, Craig Bostick, Beppu, Ron Rege, Dan Moynihan, Cole Johnson, and one person that I should know but can’t figure out and it’s bugging the hell out of me so let’s just leave it, OK? This is a tall issue with glossy pages, so I have to assume that Dave has made a lot of money recently, so more power to him! What’s there for a reviewer to say about this book anyway? If you like tales of love and loss, then there’s not much better than Dave Kiersh, and this is a collection of stories of that theme from a bunch of the greats, so where could you go wrong? My favorite issue of the series so far, I’m going to guess that it’s $4 because of the fancitude, contact info is all around you!
Kiersh, Dave – Last Cry For Help #3
Last Cry For Help #3
I should almost put this on the Various page because so many people contributed to this one, but eh. It’s mostly Dave and Souther Salazar, as always, but there are also a bunch of other people with contributions of varying size: Saelee Oh, Dan Moynihan, David Heatley, Ron Rege Jr., Todd Webb, Rachel Sumpter and Daria Tessler. It’s 38 pages and Dave and/or Souther still have something to do with 75% of it or so, but the sheer number of artists makes this book much more diverse than the other issues. It’s almost jarring when you get to the 11 page strip by Dave towards the end of the book; looking at the same art for that long doesn’t seem right. The only consistent underlying theme I could find here was the visual poetry that went into every story. The words were universally beautiful, sometimes the art wasn’t, but it was never less then pretty good and it really didn’t matter once you got the messages of the individual stories. I can’t imagine that I have to “sell” the work of these two to anybody, but if I do, this is only $2 and is a great showcase for a lot of cartoonists, with long enough stories so that you can still feel like you got your “fix” of Souther and Dave. I’m sure it’s up on the Catastrophe page, buy it already…
Jordan, Rusty (editor) – Shitbeams on the Loose #2
Shitbeams on the Loose #2 (edited by Rusty Jordan)
Hey look, an anthology! I’ve never understood why so few of these clearly label who did which pages (some even have page listings for the artist without having the actual pages numbered). This one at least has a chronological listing of the artists, but the nature of this book makes it difficult to tell where one story ends and another begins. Why? They’re mostly highly interpretive blasts of art, that’s why. Still, I’ll give you a list of who’s in this and you’ll most likely be properly amazed and impressed. There’s Ron Rege Jr.(looking less deliberative than I’ve seen him, and I’m a bigger fan of that than I of the mildly sloppy story in this issue (said mostly because the bits of text are hard to follow)), Jason Overby (brilliantly smacking the preconceived notion of what makes a comic strip around), Dave Nuss (with a welcome quiet moment of the Roman soldier who theoretically jabbed Jesus in the ribs), Andrew Smith (puking a tuna melt is the worst), Hector Serna Jr. (I could spend the whole review trying to unpack those images), Brent Harada (with a mildly out of place regular old story about searching for boots in thrift stores), Robyn Jordan (a quiet piece about camping), John Hankiewicz (a breath of fresh, distinctive air in a sea of chaos), Grant Reynolds (with one of his more disturbing pieces, and that’s saying something), Ayo Kuramoto & Amane Yamamoto (please place your review here, this went right over my head), Rusty Jordan (this is where it starts getting really difficult to tell where one artist ends and another begins, I believe his piece is the one with the escaping brain), Luke Ramsey (ditto, I believe his stuff is the series of full page heads), and Andy Rementer (an oddly adorable piece after all this about a man, his bike and their mutual love). Or maybe Andy Rementer is the one who did that utterly horrific back cover? Hard to tell, and that website doesn’t clear it up a bit. Oh well, with that list of stars it’s a hard thing to pass up, and the quality of most of the stories makes it even more difficult. And if you don’t love that cover, well, I’m afraid there’s no hope for you. It is a fairly hefty $9, but it’s put together nicely. You decide!
