Monthly Archives: August 2013
Update for 8/29/13
New review today for A Handful of Groats by Rob Jackson. For once I actually had this written yesterday, but figured it was best to leave John Lewis’ book on top of the page for another day for obvious reasons.
Jackson, Rob – A Handful of Groats
A Handful of Groats
Who likes some good old fashioned mayhem involving knights, mercenaries and castles? Everybody? Excellent. This is the tale of a knight with ambiguous motives who wanders into a small town. This knight goes to the local inn and hears all about the place: it’s being fought over by three people, and their fight is breaking the townsfolk, both financially and physically. So this knight decides that the best way to make a few bucks is by turning these three people even further against each other by killing/kidnapping various members of each group. This is another case where it’s difficult to dig much into anything without giving way too much away, but whether you like your adventure tales grand or maybe not so grand you’ll find plenty to like here. Rob does a great job of plotting everything out intricately while still keeping the allegiances easy for the reader to follow. He’s also come a long way in his depictions of fight scenes, as everything flowed together smoothly from panel to panel. That may sound like faint praise, but it’s really not easy to depict fluid action in a static panel format, and he nailed it. He’s still building an impressive comics library (and he sent along two more books with this, so he’s adding to that library at an impressive pace), and there’s still plenty of stuff in here that just about anybody should at least try out. So hey, if you’re a Game of Thrones fan, but maybe think that that show is somehow not quite cynical enough, you’re in luck!
Update for 8/27/13
It’s the return (for the next four or five weeks) of Top Shelf Tuesdays! New review today for March Book One by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell. Yes, this is almost certainly the first time I’ve reviewed a book that’s #1 on the NYT best seller’s list. As it should be!
Lewis, John; Aydin, Andrew & Powell, Nate – March Book One
Website (for Congressman John Lewis)
Website (for Nate Powell)
It always amazes me that I can be so wrong about a subject where I like to think I know pretty much what happened. Before I get started I should point out that this is written by Congressman John Lewis, the last surviving speaker Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march on Washington. Which you should already know by his name, but if there’s one thing this country is good at it’s forgetting its history. Anyway, I had a number of assumptions about the upbringing of John Lewis, purely based on seeing him speak here and there. For example, I assumed that his parents had been the victims of some particularly awful racism, and this at least partly led John to take his life in the direction that he did. But that wasn’t the case. While I’m sure his parents were the victims of some awful racism (pretty much every black person was when John was a kid), they were very much the types of people who were happy to keep their heads down and try to lead normal, quiet lives. I also foolishly assumed that non-violent protestors just showed up to protests with the patience of saints, but in reality members of the groups would do training sessions where they taunted each other, spit on friends and generally tried everything they could think of to get the other person to lash out. Not everybody could do it, which makes sense, as I don’t know if I’d have that kind of tolerance in me either. Oh, and the law that desegregated the schools, the decision that is considered such a landmark today? It took a good decade before any kind of justice was able to come from that decision, and it wouldn’t have come at all without people like John Lewis. John grew up on a farm and was fascinated by chickens as a kid, getting a little too attached to them (he was on a farm, after all, and things rarely end well for chickens on a farm), but he generally had a good life. His life changed when his uncle took him on a trip to Buffalo, which let John see the reactions of his uncle as they drove through several states that were not safe for black people. And hey, there’s no reason to keep them a secret, if you don’t know them already: Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. Gee, what do those states have in common? Anyway, he saw how his uncle visibly relaxed when they finally got to Ohio, and when John got to Buffalo he saw things that he had never seen before, like black people living next door to white people with no problems. This set John on his path, as he knew that he wanted something more for himself than a life on the farm, and the rest of the book tells the story of his sneaking off to school when his parents wanted him to stay home to work on the farm, starting to preach, getting noticed by King and participating in sit-ins at lunch counters at stores. There’s at least one more book in this series, and it was smart of them to release it in stages like this, as even this much racism is a lot to take in all at once. John and Andrew do a ridiculously thorough and engrossing job of telling John’s story, which is something I was a little worried about with two people so new to the comics field. Really, they make it look easy. As for Nate Powell, he outdoes himself again here, and I’m thrilled that he’s finally going to get some small amount of fame and recognition for his work. It’s a fascinating story, and if you don’t know it you owe it to yourself to learn all about it. $14.95
Update for 8/26/13
New review today for Driftwood City by Jason Martin, as my graphic novel reviewing binge continues.
Martin, Jason – Driftwood City
Driftwood City
I’d like to start this off by praising Jason for getting one little thing right that lots of people seem to forget: he puts the dates for all of his strips on their last page. As this is a collection of his favorite strips from his run on Laterborn (with a few more included from anthologies and five new strips if you’re one of the people who already has all of the original issues of that fine series), it provides some helpful context. He even gave brief synopses of where he was at in his life with each strip, so there’s plenty of new material right there for fans of the series. One question right off the bat: was Laterborn #2 so bad? I think that’s the only one that isn’t represented here, but I don’t have that issue so it’s a mystery to me. Anyway, subjects in here include Jason as a hamburger, the “peace on earth” sign that went up after 9/11 and what happened to it when we went to one of our stupid wars, a perfect moment of the Humpty Hump, his story of a teacher that actually inspired him to action in high school (it’s his favorite piece and probably mine too), his first real crush in 8th grade and his theory for why it fell apart, a Friday night in college, his method for letting people know that he was available in his dorm room, how an old teacher dealt with the grief of the death of his daughter, an awkward plea for a girlfriend from the lead singer of a band he was watching, how Dr. Mario brought his friends together, aquarium soaps, a Taco Bell on the beach, the awkward closing of a local book store, the allure of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a few more strips that I’ll leave as a total surprise, as it still makes no sense for me to ruin such things. Jason has a real knack for finding the meaning in moments, and he’s not at all shy about detailing some of the shitty things he did back in the day, as his thoughtless gay slurs from being a kid would prove. You’re bound to find at least one high school/college tale here you can relate to, and it’s more likely that you’ll find several. Give this a shot and, as I’ve been trying to make absolutely clear, it’s still very much worth it if you’re already caught up on Laterborn. $12
Update for 8/21/13
New review today for The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States edited by Lauren Barnett & Nathan Bulmer. Great content, but that title needs some work.
Various Artists – The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
The Hic and Hoc Illustrated Journal of Humor Volume One: The United States
Do you like your comics funny? Do you like some or most of the creators I listed in the tags section (right below this post, in big letters, you can’t miss them)? Then this one should be an easy call for you. There, now that I’ve made that case, I’ll go about my afternoon… wait, you want something of substance? Egh, fine. Laurent Barnett does the “Me Likes You” comics (which you should already be reading on a regular basis), and she was one of the editors, so there, that’s substantive. Strips in here include Noah Van Sciver’s fever dreams (both with and without music), funny jokes that aren’t really jokes by Bort, Martha Keavney’s tales of a pet human, Nikki Burch showing us that saying “that’s what she said” too many times will end up with you getting what you deserve, Anne Emond’s cat style, Sam Spina’s ridiculously awesome sex comic, a couple of pages of single panel jokes by Sam Henderson (which should be worth the price of admission right there), Grant Snider’s fears and feats (he had four pages of strips and I don’t want to ruin any of them), KC Green’s depressed fish, Jane Mai’s dream of male lingerie, Nathan Bulmer’s tale of ninja tricks, Julia Wertz’ attempt to get serious and Ian Anderson’s tale of a bear that’s just trying to fit in. But wait, there’s more! And you can discover it for yourself if you buy this. Unless you just have an unnatural hatred for all anthologies, which I guess I could almost understand, but it makes no sense to hate the good ones too, and this is one of the good ones. Hell, just pick three of the names of people who contributed to this, go to their websites and see what there is to see. If you don’t laugh once then I release you from your duty to buy this, but seriously, good luck with that. $10
Update for 8/20/13
New review today for Robbie and Bobby Volume 2: Bottomless Coffee and Candy Cigarettes by Jason Poland. Also, I seem to have lost my phone, so if I’m not getting back to you, there’s your explanation right there.
Poland, Jason – Robbie and Bobby Volume 2: Bottomless Coffee and Candy Cigarettes
Robbie and Bobby Volume 2: Bottomless Coffee and Candy Cigarettes
So let’s say that you’re somebody who read the first volume of this series and enjoyed it, as you are a human with a sense of humor. If you were tragically born without a sense of humor, I meant no disrespect, but that’s about the only way that I can picture somebody reading this without enjoying it. Anyway, let’s say that that’s true, but still you’re wondering if you should pick up this second volume instead of, say, stopping at a Starbucks and getting coffee a few times this week. Skip the coffee, buy the comic. Simple enough? This is another collection of strips with subject matter that’s all over the place, and once again it’s funny as hell. That’s assuming that hell is a funny place, which is the assumption I always go with. There’s also a little girl who pops up very occasionally, so the cast is expanding ever so slightly. Not that the stories need it, but she is still a welcome addition. Subjects include (and I’m going to do this in the vaguest way possible to keep away spoilers) flying toasters, puppy cones, God’s grenade launcher, a glitter vaccine, book fights, Bobby getting lost in a supermarket, a pizza car, the ghost in the machine, sad games, fart stencils, hammock revenge, a benevolent tumor, a selfish monster and ghost dinosaurs. That’s a small sampling of the many strips in here, which once again includes a few strips from other artists, and they seem to have universally captured the magic of this strip. I’ve said it many times, but collections of strips like these often trend towards being mediocre, usually for the sheer number of strips involved, as some of them are bound to be stinkers. This has not been the case for either volume of this series, as damned near every strip either had me laughing, vaguely creeped out of both. Read this and laugh! $10 (ish)
Update for 8/19/13
New review today for With Only Five Plums Book 2: This Dark Age by Terry Eisele and Jonathon Riddle. Yep, I’m starting your week off with what will probably be the most grim book of a trilogy about the Holocaust.
Eisele, Terry & Riddle, Jonathon – With Only Five Plums Book 2: This Dark Age
With Only Five Plums Book 2: This Dark Age
This is the second of three volumes, so you might want to at least read the review for the first volume before reading this. Or, ideally, read the actual first volume. Anyway, this time around Anna tells the tale of her life immediately after getting separated from her baby, completely unsure about what has happened to the rest of her family. She mentions that she probably wouldn’t have had the strength to go on if she had known what happened to them at this point, so I can once again assume that it’s not going to end well for them. She talks about the experience on the train, packed in like cattle and unsure of where they were going and what would happen to them when they got there, and of how the older women would sometimes tell stories to pass the time. They eventually get to the concentration camp of Ravensbruck, and she again goes into excruciating detail as to what happened to her when she arrived. This volume actually tells most of the story of the war, as we see her trying to survive her three years in this camp, the various sections of the camp and how people would change when (or if) they came back from them, and her eventual march to an unknown location and fate. There’s even her moment at the end when a decent fictional story would have the heart to end on a happy note… but this, by and large, is not fictional. I still have the third volume yet to go, which contains the details of what happened to Anna’s tiny home town and her family, but I’m going to have to wait a few weeks to work up the nerve to go back into this world. No matter how many times I see them it’s always profoundly depressing to read the details of this era, as it’s unpleasant to think about just how close to savagery humanity is at any given moment and how little it takes to push us over that edge. Not that I’m saying that everybody would have behaved like the Germans in WWII, but there have been more than enough other atrocities committed in the years since that’s it’s clearly not that big of a leap for humans to make. Terry Eisele and Jonathan Riddle do a remarkable job of telling this story, as they’re perfectly content to let Anna’s words speak for themselves while still painting an uncomfortably vivid picture of exactly what she went through. This deserves to be seen by as many people as possible, so please give it a look. $10
Update for 8/16/13
It may have been another short week around here, but at least I’m leaving you with something to savor over the weekend: Pennsylvanians #1 by Bart King.
King, Bart – Pennsylvanians #1
Pennsylvanians #1
Rarely do I just want to make delighted girlish squealing noises after reading a comic, but that’s my main reaction to this one. This is a genuinely original involving a subject that I was starting to think wasn’t even possible to make original any more, but Bart has really delivered here. I’ll try to contain my enthusiasm for a bit and describe the story to you, but know that I’ll probably have a stupid grin on my face for the rest of the day after reading this. It starts off with a couple having a conversation about what they’ll do if they “get one.” Several of their neighbors already “had one,” after all, and they should be prepared in case it happens to them. While watching the news (which is as close as we get to learning the extent of what exactly is happening) the dog of this couple starts barking, and they discover that one of “them” has arrived. This is the moment where a lesser comic would have had the couple freaking out, or panicking, or generally making a spectacle of themselves. But in this comic the moment is met with a “umm…” and “so…” from the couple. This “them” that I’m talking about, in case you haven’t figured it out so far (or can’t tell what he was going for on that cover) is an alien. These aliens have been coming into the homes of people, silently observing both the people and their surroundings, seemingly spending large amounts of time on insignificant objects. These aliens are also both intangible and imperturbable, something that can be extremely unnerving for the people being observed. I don’t want to spoil a single thing about this as everything about it was such a delight, but the slow burn of this series is going to be a joy to behold. The subtle changes of expression on the faces, the effect when the guy’s arm passes through the alien… I’m going to start describing everything if I don’t watch out. Buy this and enjoy, that’s all I have to say. Or you could read the whole thing on his website, but if enough of you do that that he gives up on finishing this series I’ll hunt you all down and punch you, so don’t forget to give the man some cash for this thing. No price listed, but I’m guessing $5.
Update for 8/15/13
Sorry, this week got away from me in a hurry. New review today for Fear of Flowers by Jason Viola.
Viola, Jason – Fear of Flowers
Fear of Flowers
I had to double check the name to be sure, but yep: this is the same Jason Viola who does the Herman the Manatee series. It seems like quite a leap to go from that to a comic with three stories/poems about different types of flowers, but hey, why the hell not? You’re not the boss of Jason and he can make comics about whatever he damned well pleases. Although more of those comics would not be frowned upon. Anyway, this is his take on three flowers, and I learned something new about each of them. There’s the sunflower, kadupul and orchid. I’d tell you the new stuff I learned about each of them, but this is a short mini and that would pretty well eliminate the need for you to read it, not to mention take away the joy of discovering this stuff for yourself. You may be thinking “I don’t care about flowers at all,” and I’d be right there with you, but you never know when this information might come in handy. Maybe your knowledge of the intricate composition of a sunflower is just what you need to wow that annoying boss at work, or to seal the deal with somebody you’re trying to date, or possibly save the world when you’re given a pop quiz about flowers by invading aliens. Knowledge is power! $4
Update for 8/12/13
New review today for Madtown High #3 by Whit Taylor. Why are people forced to work in August? I’ll never understand it.
Taylor, Whit – Madtown High #3
Madtown High #3
This series is getting better all the time. The first two issues may have suffered a bit from “you had to be there-itis” (not a real illness), but this one seemed more universal in its problems. And hey, it’s not a bad thing that she focused so much on things that happened to her in those first two issues, as she is writing these stories about her high school years, but this issue just felt really well-rounded. Does that make sense? Eh, probably not without you reading this, and quite possibly not even then. Anyway, subjects include Whit watching her biology teacher go through a midlife crisis (depression, starting to crawl out of it, getting called out by the principal for the manner in which he was crawling out of it, then vanishing completely), dances and the cliches that happened at each of them (with a great final panel), how they fought back against a Christmas tree that they were forced to put up with near their lunch table (disgusting and hilarious), the mystery of a “poo” on a window and the various people who probably should have cleaned it up at some point, and the fake crush of all the ladies in her group on a particularly creepy teacher and how they used his picture on a birthday cake. This issue is full of funny bits, and once again you’re bound to relate to/cringe at a few of these stories and how they bring you back to your own time in that prison/wonderful early life journey. Oh, and they’re mostly up on her website if you’re too cheap to get the actual comic, but hey, why not throw a few bucks her way?
Update for 8/9/13
New review today for The Golem of Gabirol by Olga Volozova. Happy weekend everybody!
Volozova, Olga – The Golem of Gabirol
The Golem of Gabirol
This is one of those comics that could have used a bit more room to breathe. I don’t mean that in terms of the length of the story, but more in the sense that this should have been the size of a magazine so that the reader had a bit more room to take in all of the little details, because there were bunches of them. The panels telling the story were surrounded (and, in some cases, invaded) by half-seen images of hidden people, leaves, smoke, and a mountain, among many other things. I’ve gotten ahead of myself here. This is the story of man in the 11th century who fell for a woman, but the woman ended up marrying another man. The man who was spurned (although it seemed like he never really even made his feelings known) made a golem with the face of the woman he lost and eventually even made little golem children. This did not go over well with the authorities of the time, but I shouldn’t say much more about it to avoid spoilers. This comic also introduces the notion that the original people who were here were erased when god made the world again, but they live on in the shells of peanuts. Go get a few peanut shells and look at them and you’ll see that a case for that could be made. My only problem with this story was the sheer amount of imagery everywhere, which is pretty much never my complaint, but in this case I had some trouble following exactly where the dialogue was heading (physically, not in terms of the story), which left me scratching my head a few times when something dramatic happened. As always, the most likely explanation is that it’s a failing on my part, but I still think that larger pages could have helped this out. It’s still a fascinating story, and if you’re one of those people who love finding hidden tidbits in art you’re fall in love with this comic. $7
