Monthly Archives: October 2011
Update for 10/31/11
New review today for Broke by Eric Pugh. Happy Halloween everybody! Oh, and if you weren’t around this weekend, the fundraiser ended on a high note, the website is going to be up and running for another year, and all is well with the world.
Pugh, Eric – Broke
Broke
A typo on the first page? Look, I bitch about poor spelling a lot when it’s called for, which to me is whenever somebody has over three or four misspelled words (the number varies depending on the size of the mini, but you get the idea). The reason is simple: it’s never been easier to check a word to see if you spelled it correctly. Back in olden times, if you were writing a comic that you were then going to distribute through your mailing list, fine, maybe you didn’t have time to trek across town and find a smart person to help you out. Now, though, if you have a question, type the word into Google. If you’re not sure about a word (when to use “where” instead of “were”), there are also sites that can help you out with that. It just never ceases to blow my mind that somebody can spend hours drawing a page, making sure that it’s just right to convey their message, and they then blow through the dialogue as quickly as possible. This isn’t meant to pick on Eric specifically, as he’s far from alone in this category, but it’s just so damned easy to check for the right word. OK, now that I’ve shat all over this book, this is the part where I point out that I didn’t hate it. This comic is about a woman who investigates insurance claims and makes her living selling “insurance investigator insurance” to the people that she’s investigating. She’s in a world of hurt financially, so she takes a bat to her car to try and get some insurance money for it. She is suspected of foul play, naturally, which leads to a confrontation with that bat and her own insurance investigator, then some crazy shit happens and the comics stops making sense. But hey, it was a fun ride up to that point. Eric has a genuinely unique perspective on character positioning and what he wants to highlight in any given frame. Sometimes these choices seemed to interfere with the story, but considering how it all ended that wasn’t as big of a deal as I first thought. It’s intriguing as a whole and I think there’s enough good to outweigh the bad. It’s $9, mostly because it’s a graphic novel. Didn’t I mention that?
Update for 10/29/11
New reviews today for Battlefield #1 by John Yeo Jr. & Dru Daily and Ole by Luis Echavarria. For those of you who were waiting for the final score, you’ll be happy to know that I passed my fundraising goal and all is well with the world. Thanks to everybody who helped, especially the international contingent that helped push things over the edge at the end. To the rest of you freeloaders/people who are too poor to buy comics at the moment, I do sell comics all year round, so there’s that.
Echavarria, Luis – Ole
Ole
Bullfighting! If you have an opinion about this “sport” and that opinion is not “barbaric, cruel and utterly lacking in any kind of a spirit of fair play” then we probably wouldn’t get along. I’m all for some cultural touchstones not being messed with by the modern world, and you may be too, in which case you probably don’t know how bullfighting works. See, it’s not just some guy with a sword who goes out there and takes on a bull. That I could get behind, as who am I to say how some dope kills himself? He could even more or less cover himself in glory for the rest of his short life. No, bullfighting starts off with a few people using sharp sticks to bleed the bull for a period of time before the bullfighter comes out. Once the bull is weak from lack of blood and starting to stagger, out comes the conquering hero! It’s still dangerous, granted, and it does my heart good to see a bull occasionally get a good shot in, but the game is rigged. Anyway, enough about bullfighting, what about the comic? This starts off towards the end of a bullfight, with the matador about to deliver the finishing blow. The trouble comes when that blow doesn’t finish off the bull. So they try more methods, increasingly vicious, until they manage to chop the bull’s head off. And that’s when it starts to get weird. My policy against spoilers prevents me from saying much more, but I will say that I loved where it went from there. Combine that statement with my earlier opinions of bullfighting in general and you may get some idea of what happened. Buy it, love it, give this guy some money already. He’s three for three in his minis that I’ve read so far, with more still to come. No price, so… $2.50?
Yeo Jr., John & Daily, Dru – Battlefield #1
My scanner isn’t cooperating again and I can’t get a sample image of the cover small enough to post it here, so my apologies. Is it rude to say that it was a bit of a mess of a cover anyway? Yes, that almost certainly qualifies as rude. Check out their website and you can see a smaller version of it for yourself, but in case you were curious it depicts a battle between the eight characters who are involved in this tournament. Battlefield pits eight people (or creatures, as a centaur and a gorgon are also participating) against each other for the chance to win riches and fame. For the other seven competitors, it’s looking like death. The creators were nice enough to show pictures of all eight characters right at the beginning, but it would have helped tremendously to have short bios of all of them as well to try and get a sense of their motivations and/or what they are. When a character gets killed towards the end I had to pop back to those pictures to try and figure out which one it was, which is not a good sign. This is the first issue of a projected five issue mini series, and it deals with the competitors arriving on the tournament island, fighting off a giant monster (their first test), trying to get some food after not being fed for three days, and the other test where the one character gets killed. Anybody who has lasted this long into the review is probably sure of my opinion by now, but you may be surprised to learn that I kind of liked it despite its flaws. There were boobs everywhere, but they were awkward comic boobs, so it wasn’t that. It may be just that I’m a sucker for a tournament like this, or it may be the fact that I think there’s serious room for improvement here that might actually happen. If you don’t like mostly mythical characters and creatures fighting amongst themselves, it’s safe to say that you can move along. If you have a touch of dork in you and if you can overlook a few flaws, this is worth a shot. They also sent along the second issue of this series and I’m looking forward to it, which I wasn’t sure would be the case when I was about halfway through this. After that one we’ll see where my optimism meter is at… $4
Battlefield #1
Update for 10/28/11
New review today for Watermelon by Whit Taylor. One day left on the fundraiser, still $25 left to go. I’ll do a double review tomorrow to try and rattle the trees one more time for a few more bucks, but at this point I’m coming around to the idea that at least I got close to my goal. There’s still time for me to be pleasantly surprised…
Taylor, Whit – Watermelon
Watermelon
Full disclosure time, for anybody who wonders about this “Whitey” guy who writes all the reviews: I’d had the nickname for probably four years before I had the slightest idea that there was any racial association with it at all. My hair in high school was damned near translucent, you see, so “white haired kid” got shortened down to “Whitey,” and here I am, currently in the awkward mid-30’s phase of the nickname, greatly looking forward to having my hair eventually turn white so maybe the nickname will start to make sense again. And as for why I keep the nickname, have you ever tried to disassociate yourself from a nickname that you’ve been given? Good luck with that. Just felt compelled to throw that out there, seeing as how the subtitle for this book is “and other things that make me uncomfortable as a black person” and knowing that some people were likely to experience some small brain explosions. So how about the actual comic? This is a great peek into the mind of Whit, obviously, but it’s probably an even better primer for people who probably don’t know when they’re being racist. There’s the cover story where she wonders how watermelon got started as a racist stereotype (and her grandma’s theory of “because slave owners wouldn’t give slaves utensils and watermelon was easy to eat” is probably close to the truth), what she does on the beach due to her “natural tan,” the dreaded n-word (who can use it, where it came from, and an unfortunate nickname for another black person in their neighborhood, “Reggin”), the south in general and New Orleans in particular, spending time at the beauty parlor listening to conversations and getting her hair done, black actors and tv shows, studying abroad in Australia and seeing the completely foreign attitudes towards race, black history month and WTF is Kwanzaa? She has an engaging, self-effacing style that makes you love the book more as you go, and I’d be shocked if you didn’t come away from this book having learned something, no matter what color you are. I wish she’d take a bit more time with her handwriting in certain panels, as it’s clear that she’s occasionally rushing it, but kids these days back in my time we walked to school in the rain etc. etc. Still, it’s a hefty piece of work that manages to take a fairly serious subject and make it funny, which is no easy thing. No price, but I’m going to spin the random price wheel… $6!
Update for 10/27/11
New review today for Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini Comic Science Edition. I was going to do two reviews today for the fundraiser, but typing that title out three times exhausted me. Speaking of that, I’m down to two days left to raise $25. I’ve pretty much decided that that’s close enough to renew the website for a year (spoiler alert!), but if I could get that $25 I could also pay my bills on time this month. Not quite as dramatic, I realize that, but I’m also not going to close the website down in a huff if I end up short of my goal.
Karnes, John – Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini-Comic Science Edition
Jerks in Space Incorporated’s Latest Mini-Comic Science Edition
That is one awful title. Which is a shame, as it had that fantastic Marvel Universe homage cover, and the inside is pretty damned good too (mostly), but title needs an editor. The only real problem I had with the interior was the repeated uses of footnotes which, while informative and occasionally funny, crapped all over the flow of the book. Luckily John mostly quit using them about halfway through, leaving us with a regular old comic book about robots on the moon. Why? “…that’s all robots do. They attack us and break our stuff!” That right there is more than enough to sell me on some robot mayhem. From here there isn’t a thing complain about. One of the characters is a sequentialist (somebody who is convinced that they’re in a comic), but John did a great job keeping that from getting overbearing. The robot fights themselves were fantastic, up to and including some later stuff that I’m not going to talk about to avoid spoilers. There are also a few pages detailing the scientific basis for some of the weapons, which were close enough to seem plausible to me. There was also an entry for space serpents at the end, further mimicking the Marvel Universe idea, and it was perfectly done. Most of the dialogue is witty, which can come as a shock considering the material (robots on the moon!), but I’m somebody who is always happy to be pleasantly surprised by a comic. Now if he can only work on the titles he’ll be in pretty good shape. $1
Update for 10/26/11
New review for Eye of the Majestic Creature #5 by Leslie Stein. For those of you who are into dramatic last minute rescues, there are three days left for me to make that last $25 in my fundraiser to keep the website going for another year. Buy any two graphic novels in my store and you’re bound to get to $25 or so. Who doesn’t want two new graphic novels?
Stein, Leslie – Eye of the Majestic Creature #5: Sister Carrie
Eye of the Majestic Creature: Sister Carrie
See, sometimes the world in general works the way that it should. I just finished reading this issue, so it was off to the internets to check on her website and make sure the address was still valid. I was thinking after finishing it that it was damned near criminal that Leslie wasn’t published by any of the “big” independent companies, and there it was: a collection from Fantagraphics containing her first four issues. Such immediate representations of there being some justice in this world are always welcome. I missed a few issues of this series so I’m not fully clear on what came before (looks like I need to get my hands on that collection), but this issue is combined with text from “Sister Carrie” by Theodore Dreiser, which was a novel from 1900 detailing the adventures of a young woman making her way to the big city on her own. The small text blurbs blend seamlessly into the story of Larry (the Leslie-ish (?) main character) as she goes about her daily life of working at a clothes shop with no customers and a boss that she only talks to on the phone. There are also her anthropomorphic household objects, all of which are bored crazy while she’s away at work. Some small press people take a year to make a comic for a variety of reasons (sometimes good and sometimes just due to sheer laziness), but Leslie takes that year to make the damned comic. This is 44 or so pages with nine panels per page, with damned near each panel ridiculously detailed. Along the way Larry picks up the habit of the long-lost art of counting sand from a museum exhibit, goes to bars alone, finds a giant cockroach in her shoe and tries to make “life” a little easier for her depressed household objects/friends. And for a good chunk of the comic there are brief blurbs of text from that Dreiser novel that work perfectly with the story. I’m consistently behind the times on these things, but if there are any people out there who also always miss out on the good stuff, buy that collection from Fantagraphics from her, then come back and buy this comic. Or just buy them all in a clump, whatever works. $4
Update for 10/25/11
Sorry about the missed reviews AGAIN, the internet has been all kinds of spotty around here. New reviews today for Window #12 by Dave Lapp and Light Riot Departure by Rio Aubry Taylor to make up for lost time a bit. That means that the fundraiser is down to four days remaining with $25 left to go. So close, but it still feels like a long way to go to me. Go pessimism!
Taylor, Rio Aubry – Light Riot Departure
Light Riot Departure
Haters of science fiction and fantasy, take note: that dragon on the first page is not indicative of the content the rest of the way. This is the story of Rio (it’s called a “fantastical autobiography,” so use your own imagination as to how much of this is true) as he watches people on inner tubes floating down the river, noting that they never take the time to look up at him in the tree. He’s also worried about his girlfriend and whether or not she’s using hard drugs. A strange creature appears and offers to split Rio’s soul from his body, allowing him to exist in the real world while his soul takes a different journey into self-discovery. He accepts and the story splits in two, with soul Rio on the top of the pages and human Rio on the bottom. Human Rio gets the news that he was dreading about his girlfriend while soul Rio gets to try and fly into the center of the moon while avoiding some seriously odd hazards. No sense in my telling you much more about this, as it’ll get spoilery in a hurry (if it isn’t already there), but you could read this comic a few different ways. I see it as a man retreating into himself when he gets the worst news possible, but who am I to say? Maybe he did take that spiritual journey and I’m just a materialistic cynic. It’s worth checking out either way and figuring it out for yourself. $5.50
Lapp, Dave – Window #12
Window #12
For any imaginary reader out there who’s a fan of Dave’s work but hates all that times he spends detailing the most fascinating parts of his teaching experience, you’re in luck! This issue of Window wanders outside of the school and into a strange and rewarding place. It starts and ends with sketches from both Dave waiting for a bus sketching people and Dave sketching trees. Then there are the two stories in between, the first of which is called “Other Things” and should be seen by more people than is possible with this book currently out of print (Secret Acres, Top Shelf, whoever, publish a collected edition of this comic already!). It tells the story of (probably) Dave and a friend after death, with everything hazy, imaginary or undefined. Entertainment and food and based on their imaginings, as nothing is real in this limbo world, and Dave repeatedly regrets never having any of “those things” (floating ethereal babies). There’s no beginning or end, just the two of them wandering around and commenting on the events as they happen, but you’re given the impression that anything that does happen is temporary. Oh, and everybody is a walking skeleton, with skeleton dogs wandering the streets. It’s a fantastic story and I hope it at least made it into an anthology somewhere along the line. The second story is solid too, as it’s back in the real world with a few kids who find caterpillars and decide to capture them to watch for what happens next. That event doesn’t go down like you would think, but good luck not having least a small childhood flashback while reading it. Only two more issues to go in this series and everybody reading this should bug a small press publisher to get a collected edition together. Think of it as your good deed for the day, for which you may be rewarded with the existence of a truly remarkable book.
Update for 10/23/11
New review today for Rosie and Jacinda by Richy Chandler & Zarina Liew, which really should have been posted months ago if I hadn’t misplaced the comic, so let’s all pretend that that happened. Sorry about the missed update yesterday, but the internet was out all afternoon. I’ll post a double update during the week to make up for it. Oh, and that means that the fundraiser only has 6 days left, and I still only need $25. Help me out!
Chandler, Richy K. & Liew, Zarina – Rosie and Jacinda
Rosie & Jacinda
There are times when I feel exceptionally lazy with the whole reviewing thing, and in those times I like to see if the blurb from the creators explaining their comic is accurate. In this case it’s “a teenage romantic comedy with a hint of fairytale,” and yeah, that sums is up pretty well. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that people don’t come here to read blurbs that they could get from any website, so I’ll go on about it a bit. This is the story of Jacinda (a sullen teen who hates everyone, mostly because she’s convinced that she’s smarter than everybody else) and Rosie. Rosie takes a bit more explanation, because we’re led to believe that she may or may not be entirely human. The story of Sleeping Beauty is featured heavily in this book, and Rosie also gets knocked out for a bit after being pricked by a pin. She woke up naturally, leaving the whole thing still delightfully vague. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit, as Rosie is a French exchange student who asks to sit with Jacinda. She then rejects an invitation to sit with the cool kids, endearing herself to Jacinda a bit, and confides to Jacinda that she’s never even kissed a boy (despite a chunk of the male population of the school trying), which cements their friendship. From there they both try out for a play (mostly because it’s a class requirement; Rosie gets a big part and Jacinda gets costume duty) and the rest of the issue deals with them becoming better friends and the various troubles involved with doing a play. It’s very much aimed towards the teenage crowd, and here’s hoping that there’s a female teenage crowd that loves comics, as there probably aren’t nearly enough explosions for most teenage boys. Richy has already proved to me that he’s a gifted writer and Zarina is perfect for this story. The art is whimsical with a slight touch of anime style, but not enough to turn you off if you hate that sort of thing. The coloring also goes a long way to really filling out the art and, again, it’s excellently done. No price listed, but I’m guessing it’s roughly $6. I did mention that I was guessing, right?
Update for 10/21/11
New review for First Fight #2 by Bryan G. Brown. Fundraiser is down to only 8 days left and I’m still looking for that magical last $25 to keep things rolling for another year. I also wanted to mention that I just saw the news about the death of Dylan Williams and can’t express enough what a loss this is for the comics world. It’s a loss that’s impossible to compare with the feelings of his family and friends, which are obviously the most important things when somebody dies, but there were few bigger fans of small press comics than Dylan. Between his own brilliant Reporter series and his Sparkplug comics company publishing all kinds of worthy artists, this is just an awful, awful thing. I know this news is over a month old (I don’t keep up with many websites, sorry), but my condolences to his family and friends.
Brown, Bryan G. – First Fight #2
First Fight #2
Technical difficulties forced me to use images of this comic from a couple of different places online, so my apologies if the quality seems a little off. In this issue I get an answer to my question about why Bryan doesn’t just change the name for each issue (First Fight, Second Fight, etc.): because these comics aren’t about one fight each. In this issue Bryan has his first fight in a tournament and loses on points. That seemed impressive enough to me, because at least he managed to stay “alive” for the whole fight. He watched the rest of the tournament with the rest of the crowd, and grew increasingly thankful that he didn’t make it through to some of the beasts that made it to the end. From there he made his first comic, talked to some folks at a convention about it, then got his own table for a later convention. As most of the questions seemed to focus on when he’d participate in his next tournament, he eventually decided that he was going to go ahead and try it. With training, of course, which is what the rest of the issue shows. One trivial thing bugged me, though: why put in a very obviously fake name for Robert Kirkman (Bobert Birkman and his comic “The Walking Dread”)? He used real names for everybody else, and I think “Birkman” has better things to do than sue small press comics artists who use his name. Baffling, but little things like that stick out to me for whatever reason. Still, no sense getting bogged down by the small stuff, as the bulk of this comic was a lot of fun. If he keeps this up this could be one of those rare crossover hits, as I’m sure a good chunk of MMA fans wouldn’t mind reading comics about the sport. And if it gets too rough on Bryan to continue producing material for his comics (i.e. taking a beating), then he could always follow another MMA fighter and do a comic about him. Just trying to save the man a few brain cells… $6
Update for 10/20/11
New review for XO #7 by Brian John Mitchell & Melissa Spence Gardner. Fundraiser still ongoing, still needs $25 over the next 9 days to keep the website running for anther year. Where else are you going to find small press comics reviews on such a regular basis? Well sure, Poopsheet puts my work here to shame. And there are several other blogs that do an excellent job… ack, better stop now. Today’s fundraising pitch needs some serious work.
Mitchell, Brian John & Gardner, Melissa Spence – XO #7
XO #7
In the general chaos that is Brian’s comic empire (I think we can call it that after a few years of him averaging a comic or two per month), it might be a little tough to know where to start. And for people who wonder about that, might I suggest XO? It sure seems like these issues all stand alone, although I could be wrong about that and he actually has some master plan for this series. This issue starts off innocently enough, with a young man looking at a dating website and wondering if it isn’t time to start dating again. He then flashes back to his last relationship, and we see that he isn’t nearly as innocent as he appears. That Brian, he is a master of such ratfuckery (which, in case you’re dense, is a compliment of the highest order). This man had fallen into drugs, alcohol, and apparently everything else you could think of, so much so that he didn’t even notice that his new girlfriend was actually another assassin (oh, didn’t I mention that the young man was an assassin?) until he woke up tied to a chair, gagged, with a knife in his chest. Things seem bleak for our hero, but there’s always a way out of these situations. Still, his method of escape might have you thinking of him as significantly less than “our hero.” Melissa really stepped up her game as well, as that Breaking Bad-esque shot of the bloody broken chair and the debris around it was a thing of beauty. These comics just keep rolling along. If you’re looking for an alternative to the current BRAND! NEW! #1 comics that the big companies are putting out, how about going with series like these that you can actually afford? The fact that they tell much better stories than the big expensive comics should also help convince you. Or at least it should… $1
