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Tales From the Flat #6

And to think I was getting worried about this series turning into one big slugfest. This issue puts things right back onto the solid ground of the first three issues: building up the characters and introducing a new one, Oliver’s brother Toby. There is a brief bit of trouble, as Toby has built up some debt to some shady characters, but the bulk of the issue involves the crew sitting around a bar, with Fred dealing with an obvious crush on Vicky and Toby telling the story of what’s been happening to him lately. 26 pages of this and no, it doesn’t get old. There’s a bit of a conflict at the end (because the world needs cliffhangers), but in all it’s a remarkably calm issue after #4 and 5. I think they’ve hit on a winning formula here, worrying about the characters most of the time and then blowing the shit out of everything every few issues. Of course, the only way I can be sure that they have the hang of this is to do at least another half dozen issues of this series. Hey, I’d pay to see it, and the quotes on the back are getting more and more hoity-toity (at least in comics world) all the time, so the right folks are obviously impressed. Worth a look, and this ties things back together that the whole series is definitely worth supporting.

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Tales From the Flat #5

Hey, didn’t we just have a huge fight scene� Oh well, everybody who read the first few issues knew that something was coming with that giant robot. And one quick complaint before I start: guys, if a character, like say the female character, isn’t in the issue at all, don’t put her on the cover. A minor thing, I guess, but it always bugged me back in the day when Marvel or DC pulled that crap. Anyway, this is another solid issue, although there seems to be some danger of this falling away from the solid character work that they built up to start the series and have things instead devolve into a series of fights. That’s the pessimist’s view, anyway. The optimist in me says that these fights were both handled extremely well and had to be coming after the buildup, so why not blast away at the first opportunity� The neighbor, James, is annoyed when he hears a party happening to which he wasn’t invited. As his way of crashing it he decides to literally crash his giant robot through the wall, resulting in one serious fight scene and one hefty explosion. The pinups from various artists in the back is a nice touch as well, it seems they’re doing a good job of building up a little fan community. I suppose the next issue or so will say a lot about where the series is headed, but for now it’s still smartly written and drawn, not to mention a total blast, so what’s to complain about?

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Tales From the Flat #4

Well, you just spent the first three issues of your series setting up your characters, giving them all distinct personalities and motivations. What do you do for #4? Stage a huge fight scene, of course! Last issue ended with our heroes going into the kabob shop, trying to figure out the story behind the hand in the deep frier. The newest hero, Fred, has a little trouble using his powers and/or being a productive member of the fight, so the whole issue is mostly Vicky vs. a giant demon. The end of hostilities was a bit of a cop-out, but I love the series so much so far that it’s something that’s easy to let slide. Other than that, not much really happened here, except they were kind enough to set things up in the end for future issues. After all, you can’t live on mayhem alone, right? Again, I have no idea on pricing, but as this is a single issue instead of a collection… $3?

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Tales From the Flat Collected Edition Volume 1

I love it when a comic completely makes my week. Generally speaking it hasn’t been a good five day stretch around here, but I was only about 5 pages in when I started to forget about everything else in the world, and by the time it was over, well, screw the rest of the world, at least things like this exist. This is the story of four people sharing a flat and their daily adventures. Sounds dull, right? Forget it. One of them turns out to have a super power, they already have somebody fixing to be a nemesis (you can tell by the beard, nothing has been revealed yet), there’s an evil cafe worker who’s cooking people, and just the faintest hint of a killer robot. The first few issues (this collects 1-3) are really about getting these people set up with their own distinct personalities, and Laurence and Oliver do a terrific job of it. We get to see which ones are the comic freaks, which ones are the gamers, and which one is the responsible one of the bunch, because how would anything get done if there wasn’t a responsible one? There’s also a lovely extended sequence dealing with assholes in a movie theater, and who can’t relate to that? This was a blast to read, through and through, and you can’t ask for more than that. Generally speaking I read these as I review them, to keep them fresh in my head, but it’s going to be tough waiting a few weeks to see what happens in #4-6. The only issue here is that I don’t know a thing about currency conversion, although I do know the dollar is generally worthless at the moment, so… $5 or so? It could be twice that and worth every penny, but I’ll bet they’ll be more than willing to lead you through it if you go to that website listed above…