{"id":3766,"date":"2010-05-02T18:21:21","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T23:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=3766"},"modified":"2010-07-22T22:44:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T03:44:31","slug":"various-mallard-anthologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=3766","title":{"rendered":"Various Mallard anthologies – Mallard #3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mallard page on Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

\"mallard31\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mallard #3<\/strong><\/p>\n

What’s the word for an anthology that, although it has its moments, ends up falling pretty squarely in the “meh” category?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not awful, it’s not great, but to call it mediocre seems a bit harsh.\u00c2\u00a0 Mediocre with dashes of brilliance?\u00c2\u00a0 Closer.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, the concept is fine, with Tom England (editor and contributor) pulling together various pieces by friends and strangers.\u00c2\u00a0 First there’s part 3 of a text story by Christopher Leahy, in which the dialogue was amusing (once it got to the dialogue) but, being part 3 of a series, was a little hard to judge from my perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe a recap of some sort for people like me who come in late?\u00c2\u00a0 Fuong Mai Nguyen has a couple of shorties in here, one showing her room and one showing her face throughout the years.\u00c2\u00a0 Hard to work up much enthusiasm for either, but the drawing of her room was at least impressive in its ambition.\u00c2\u00a0 Philip Gyres probably has the strongest piece in the book next, a simple illustrated diary of a middle aged man going about his daily life.\u00c2\u00a0 Dan Dyer has a few three panel strips after this, notable because one of them goes all the way to 6 panels to tell a story.\u00c2\u00a0 Notable to me anyway, because it seems like most people who pick that format feel obligated to never change it no matter the story.\u00c2\u00a0 Mostly mildly amusing, with a few of the punch lines the sorts of things you see coming from miles away, which is the danger of being required to end on a funny.\u00c2\u00a0 Tom England has the biggest (illustrated) piece in the book, a meandering story about philosophy and flying (and swimming) monkeys.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally there’s Claire Simmons with a text story about a young hog who decides to eat the world and the reaction of the rest of the forest to the disturbance.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, and Joe Baddeley has brief panels up throughout the comic that put the “minimum” in “minimalistic”, but they’re mostly funny and a nice break while reading the text pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 As a whole maybe I should bump this up to “pretty decent with flashes of brilliance”.\u00c2\u00a0 Claire’s story was creepy and fascinating, Tom’s bit at least got me thinking, and Philip’s story sounds like me in ten years.\u00c2\u00a0 Based on the currency exchange rate, this is probably around $2.<\/p>\n

\"mallard32\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mallard page on Facebook Mallard #3 What’s the word for an anthology that, although it has its moments, ends up falling pretty squarely in the “meh” category?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not awful, it’s not great, but to call it mediocre seems a bit harsh.\u00c2\u00a0 Mediocre with dashes of brilliance?\u00c2\u00a0 Closer.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, the concept is fine, with Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4017,4022,4020,4018,4023,2292,4019,4021],"class_list":["post-3766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-christopher-leahy","tag-claire-simmons","tag-dan-dyer","tag-fuong-mai-nguyen","tag-joe-baddeley","tag-mallard","tag-philip-gyres","tag-tom-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3766"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16438,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3766\/revisions\/16438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}