Monthly Archives: March 2014

Update for 3/31/14

Hey look, a new review! For SF v PN from Ryan Cecil Smith, and his title makes a lot more sense if you know what the initials stand for. As for more reviews, I put the call out to a few people, so if they get their comics here quickly I should be able to keep up a relatively normal schedule until SPACE next weekend. You can mail me your comics too, and I’ll talk about them for a bit.

Smith, Ryan Cecil – SF v PN

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SF v PN

Just to clear it up right off the back, the title really means “scientist fighters vs. profiteering nasties.” Which is what you guessed, I’m sure. Anyway, this continues Ryan’s masterful run in this universe, and I am greatly looking forward to the day when all of these fantastic smaller stories are bundled together into a big old book. These little snippets are thoroughly entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so clear that he has a much bigger vision in mind that it’s hard not to come away wanting more. This issue is basically one big old space fight, between the parties mentioned above. The pirates seem to have the firepower, but the scientists have, well, science on their side, and a secret weapon that they may or may not decide to use. So yes, obviously they’re going to use it. What’s the good of having a secret weapon if you don’t use it? If you’re completely new to the series you can safely enjoy this issue, completely unconnected from the rest of the series. If you’ve been following along, then you get a few more tantalizing hints of some of the characters you’ve been seeing in past issues. Check it out and enjoy!

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Update for 3/19/14

New review today for Agara Book One by S. Tyler Stafford. But it’s still not looking good for new review comics at the moment, so it might continue to be a little slow around here until after SPACE. If it’s still slow after that, then you can panic…

Stafford, S. Tyler – Agara Book One

Website

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Agara Book One

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m reading Lone Wolf & Cub again (and if you love comics and haven’t read that series, shame on you), but I’m perfectly content at the moment to let a series take its time in opening up and revealing what’s going on. That being said, the first book of this Agara series came at the perfect time for me. Tyler spends something like the first 20 pages slowly showing this odd alien world and a young alien woman trying to master some kind of mental exercises. She has troubles, the other students get annoyed that they have to start over due to her failures, and a mental battle ensues. From there the story moves to a human man and his teenage daughter. He’s an archaeologist, she’s a mostly indifferent student, and we get to see them go about their days for a bit before he comes across an ancient find that he needs to investigate. Things are slow to get going but, like I said, in this case it’s a good thing, Sure, Tyler could have just said “and that thing over there is ____, while this alien society has been here for ____ years,” but it’s always better to show than to tell, and so far he’s doing a fantastic job of that. And don’t worry, there’s still lots of mayhem here, with some physical fights, some mental fights and some fights that fall somewhere in between. I have no idea how much he has planned for this world, but the mysteries on that first page alone could take a book to explain. The art is mostly gorgeous (although it does look a little rushed here and there) and this is a really solid first book. The one piece of advice I’d offer him is to maybe include a character listing at the start of the next volume, as that can get out of hand quickly in an expansive universe like this. It’s worth a look, is what I’m saying. $12 (also that crappy sample scan is the fault of my scanner, not the comic)

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Update for 3/13/14

New review today for Welcome to Nursing HELLo by Joel Craig, and unless something comes in the mail tomorrow (or I finally get around to cleaning this damned apartment) I’m all out of review comics for the week. I’ll try to post a review over the weekend if possible. Just in case anybody was really curious about exactly what’s in my head right now…

Craig, Joel – Welcome to Nursing HELLo

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Welcome to Nursing HELLo

Just for the record (assuming that anybody is taking a record of this, which is a bold assumption), that title went from being something that might be a typo to a pretty smart summation of Joel’s efforts to quit cursing so much at work. I always assumed that nurses were required to curse at work to help deal with the shit that they had to put up with, often literally, but apparently such words can still offend people who see horrific injuries all day. Anyway, this is another one of those cases where the story was fascinating and his struggle to maintain a connection to his artistic side while being consumed with work hit pretty damned close to home, but technical issues kept dragging me out of the narrative. Partially this is because I’m a firm believer in always getting the basics right in comics, as I’d much rather focus purely on the narrative, but, as always, this might bother me a lot more than other people who don’t read hundreds of comics a year. So, bad news first: some of the individual pages were lighter than others (making a few things tough to read). That’s probably a printing problem and not on Joel. But the word balloons were most likely his fault, and if you’re spilling out of those (or, worse, having the word balloons burst through the walls of the panel for no reason), then it tells me that you were making things up on the fly. Which doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it is the sort of thing that should be corrected for the collected edition. There were also some misspellings that could have been fixed with an editor or a proofreader; not lots of them but enough to get my snooty attention. If this was a terrible comic, these little flaws could have dragged me right out of things, and it would have prompted a thoroughly nasty review. But I really enjoyed the story! It’s all about Joel deciding that he wants to be a nurse after studying the program for his husband, how much he learned in two years of nursing school (which he says should be a book all by itself, and I agree), his interactions with his co-workers and patients, and the basic overview of what happens in his life over those four years. He was aware enough to include definitions for all of the medical terms that he used, but it may have helped to repeat them a few times just to hammer them home. Oh, and he had Madonna to turn to as an imaginary friend a few times, and those conversations never failed to put a smile on my face. I brought up the flaws I saw with this mostly because I think he has all kinds of potential in comics and I’d love to see more of this story, which is mostly his life. But if I have one core message from this website (which I certainly do not), it’s to get the basics right. It makes everything else a lot easier. Even with those little problems this is still a thoroughly entertaining book, and you should still give it a shot. $15.99

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Update for 3/10/14

New review for R.E.H. (Robert E. Howard) #5 by Brian John Mitchell and Adam White. One more month (ish) until SPACE!

Mitchell, Brian John & White, Andrew – R. E. H. 5

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R.E.H. #5

Anybody out there know much about Robert E. Howard, the writer who was most famous for creating “Conan the Barbarian”? Besides that fact, I mean? Well, Brian has put out a series of minis featuring quotes from the man, so it’s easy enough to get to know him a little better. Or at least this one has a long quote from R.E.H., so I’m assuming that the issues I missed also have those quotes. Anyway, this time around the quote revolves around Robert talking about getting fan mail, and how he’d prefer to be a manual laborer who does back-breaking work all day to writing. Writing never came easy to him, and that combined with a complete unawareness of how writing worked to the people Robert interacted with had a tendency to make him a little crazy. I particularly enjoyed his comparing writing to boxing, but I won’t spoil why that was such an apt comparison. It’s a fascinating little peek into the mind of somebody who, I confess, I’ve never thought all that much about.

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Update for 3/6/14

New review for The Van by Matt Reints today. And I didn’t have time to get it, but apparently I have a package waiting for me at the rental office with my name listed as “Sloth.” That should be fun to claim!

Reints, Matt – The Van

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The Van

There are times when I’m not sure if something is meant to be funny or if I’m just taking it too seriously in general, and this is one of those times. This comic deals with a summer job that Matt had fixing wiring. There was a 50 mile drive every day to get to the jobs, and they were always driven by the same guy who seemed to have boundless energy. You may be able to see where this is going, but eventually the company mechanic discovered cocaine in a pack of cigarettes left in the van, but the guy who was asked about this was good friends with the driver, so they blamed some other poor schmuck, who seemed to have his life more or less ruined by his failing a drug test. I’m curious if the guy failed a test for cocaine too or some other drug, but that was never addressed. Anyway, overall this is a lighthearted story about working a summer job with a bunch of pranksters, but then I had to go and get all serious all over it. The art looks a little sloppier than the last issue of his that I reviewed (then again, I have no idea of the order in which he made these comics), with some odd blotches and scratches here and there. Like maybe the art being copied a few times? Hard to say. I just flipped through it and noticed that he copied a panel on two pages, which strikes me as a bad idea for an eight page comic. Anyway, I guess it’s clear that I was underwhelmed overall, but hey, I did like his other comic, so maybe you should check that one out instead.
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Update for 3/4/14

New review for Gag Rag #3 by Jeff Lok. Sorry about another long absence, but I just don’t have a lot of review comics at the moment, or money to buy more. There have to be comics that I haven’t reviewed around here somewhere…

Lok, Jeff – Gag Rag #3

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Gag Rag #3

I’d like to start with a personal note to Jeff, just in case he reads this at some point: all those “do not bends” that you wrote on the envelope? Yeah, they don’t work. I wish they did, and I get why you’d put a bunch of them on the envelope, but my postal worker clearly sees those as more of a challenge than anything else. This could also be a note to other people who send me oversized comics, so there you go. Minis can fit in my mailbox easily, so no worries there. Now that I’ve dispensed with the utterly irrelevant portion of the review, how about the rest of this comic? There’s a lot to love, that’s for sure. Subjects include a running story dealing with God, his cat, Father Time and Baby New Year (in case you’re wondering, the name of God’s cat is “Cat”; the story deals with creation and time and all kinds of things), a dancing dog that leads into the title reveal, the farm (and some of the chickens on the farm), buying the lighthouse, dogs and their activities, and the golden egg. There’s also the highlight of the comic, but I say that because I’m biased: a story about the characters from “Friday Night Lights.” You may not know about the show, or you may not even have tried it because it’s about high school football, but you are wrong, and it really was one of the better shows of the last decade, and Jeff’s story of a night at the house of Coach Taylor was funny in all kinds of way. It also turns out that there is apparently an anthology in the world filled with stories like these, and it makes me sad that I don’t own it. Anyway, the thing I liked the most about this comic was the way that any one of the strips could pop up again later in some brief form. They were all mostly self-contained bits, but these characters are clearly trapped in a comic hell, and it’s delightful to read about it. You should read it too!

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