Update for 2/8/10

New review for Odd Jobs #1 by Eric H., and I haven’t vanished completely.  Sorry about the lack of updates over the weekend, but I did manage to update a few things: that is my actual home address on the right (so send your comics now!), the stupid double shipping charge for comics ordered is gone, and even tinier things have been addressed.  There are bound to be a few big changes over the next few weeks, so if you’re one of those people who is terrified of change of all kinds then you might want to just come back in a 3-6 weeks when everything is settled.

H., Eric

Website

Odd Jobs #1

Ah, the abbreviated last name.  Always fun for a website like mine that at least sort of tries to keep things in alphabetical order.  This is the first book of Eric’s that I’ve seen (unless he put out other stuff with his actual last name attached), but I highly doubt that it’s his first book.  Either that or he was born with an innate knowledge of making comics.  This series (and it better be a series after that ending) is about Chickenbot needing to find some work and heading out to the local temp agency.  He gets to pick from a list, ends up with with the job of Werewolf Hunter, and sets out to complete his task.  Once in the town he asks around about the beast and finds out that it has appeared 20 times and only killed 3 people and that the townspeople are utterly helpless on their own, unable even to clean up the dead bodies until outside help arrives.  Disgusted, he attempts to back out of the job, but due to his terms of employment he isn’t allowed to get another job until this one is completed, so off he goes to confront the monster.  No sense spoiling the rest of it, but I will say that most of the fight, if such a thing is going to occur, is going to happen in the next issue.  The fun in this issue was getting to it, as Chickenbot is consistently entertaining, even if he does seem to have stolen his eyeballs from a character in the Neil Jam universe.  It’s worth a look, although I’ll hold off going all nutzo about it until I see future issues.  No price tag, but with a color cover I’ll go with $2.50 for no good reason.

Update for 2/4/10

New review for another very old book, this time Deep Girl #1 by Ariel Bordeaux.  I haven’t looked at her page here in ages, and saw that I promised a real review for No Love Lost years and years ago.  Maybe I will get around to that one of these days, but it’s funny to see how often I did that and then forgot all about it.  Well, funny to me anyway…

Bordeaux, Ariel

Ariel on Facebook (best I could do)

Deep Girl #1

It occurred to me while writing these old timey reviews that these artists might not keep their work in print because they think it was completely awful, and I’m ruining something by posting these old minis at all.   Then again, screw that.  This is some funny shit.  The art may look a bit crude compared to her later work, but so what?  Do you lose points for not being as accomplished an artist when you first start out (as this was done in 1993) as opposed to where you are 17 years later?  If anybody out there really hates that I’m posting their older work for all to see, they can let me know and I’ll take it down.  In the meantime, I think it serves as a helpful reminder that a lot of these people are still making comics, just in case you’ve forgotten about that.  This was one of the first minis I ever bought, and it definitely set the tone for what I was looking for.  Here was this woman, putting out her first comic, who fearlessly lays herself bare for all (well, the couple of hundred people who bought this) to see.  There’s probably a dozen or so cartoonists who got me interested in this business and kept me interested with how often they put out comics (back then, at least), and Ariel was definitely a big part of that.  So what was in here?  Pieces about her delusions of grandeur (thinking she is perpetually on the cusp of fame as an artist while working as a waitress), how shopping for a bra has always been a miserable experience, Weepy the Wee-Wee, Smile-O-Matic, and your very own monk.  I’m just shouting into the wind here, but if anybody ever wanted to put these into a collection, I think they could sell some copies.  Just one man’s opinion…

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Update for 2/3/10

New review for another oldie, this time From The Curve #7 by Rob Ullman.  I’m doing a bunch of reviews before I move at the start of the month and this is one of them, so I’m just going on faith that the world is still going to be here by Wednesday.

Ullman, Robert

Website

Crustacean Frustration

You can probably guess a bit about this comic from the cover and that wonderful title: there’s going to be trouble between that chef and a lobster.  It’s true, that’s how things start, as what appears to be a king enters a restaurant, requests a lobster, and the nervous chef has all sorts of trouble catching the lobster.  In the end he fails, and if that was the end of the comic it would have been another mildly amusing silent mini, but Rob takes it way past that.  The chef loses his job due to being unable to feed the king and sinks into a spiral of depression and drinking, always funny when involving a cartoon chef with a giant moustache.   While out drinking he sees his old nemesis the lobster, only now the lobster is the owner/manager of a vegetarian bar and grill.  Unable to take this, the chef goes and and gets a gun to finally get his revenge but, much as I would like to, I can’t bring myself to ruin the ending.   Laughing out loud is always the sign of a winner to me, and this comic definitely fits the bill.  It’s worth checking out, although I should point out that you should probably get this alongside at least a few of his other minis.  I should mention to anybody who gets annoyed at that little “read more” bar after the reviews that I pretty much have to do that now due to the immense size of some of these pages.  Rob has piles of minis below the fold, so if you’re one of those people who never click on that you’re really missing out.  No price tag, let’s go with $2.

Traffic & Weather

Well, whatever else I can say about running this website for almost 8 years, it has succeeded in one of my more selfish goals: getting free comics from some of my favorite creators.  That’s right suckers, you all thought I was promoting small press work, trying to spread the word about all the talent out there, when all I was doing was secretly trying to find a way to stop paying for comics.  Once I break through to the fancypants at Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and Top Shelf my plan will be a complete success!  Ahem.  This comic reprints a weekly local strip Rob does (which you can find here), and these things should be much more common than they are.  Rob talks about his beloved Pittsburgh teams, his annoyances with traffic, buying crappy Christmas lights, the rising price of food versus the lowering price of gas, getting great seats at a Cub’s game, a broken caller I.D., cheap lousy haircuts, getting a bit too much into football games, a perfect day with the family, almost mowing the lawn for a lazy neighbor and finding out that his small child actually travels quite well.  It cheapens the strips to put them all in bullet point form like that, as Rob has always had a keen eye for pointing out the little things, and is probably at his best detailing these quiet little moments of family life.  Here’s hoping he keeps that weekly strip in an economy where many papers are slashing their comics section (often their cheapest and most viewed section, but nobody ever accused current newspaper executives of being good business people), as there’s some great stuff in this little collection.  I’m not seeing this on his website (but if he didn’t have any copies available he probably wouldn’t have sent one to me), but here’s guessing that it’s, oh, $2.50

From the Curve #5

Mini comics by the numbers, and if you think I mean that in a bad way, you haven’t been reading many of my reviews. This was great. A story about meeting a girl dancing and having nothing to talk about, not being able to draw, open mike night at the cafe, being addicted to coffee… I love stuff like this. Lucky for me there are at least 7 issues out. Look, I rarely make it to Chicago Comics, what with living 2 and a half hours away and not having a car, so when I do go I’m usually kind of limited in what I get, purely due to finances. This is one of those that I wish I had just taken a chance and gotten every issue they had. I guess it’s not the most innovative thing in the world, and it probably won’t win a ton of awards any time soon, but it’s honest and obviously heart felt, and that’s plenty good enough for me. Send this guy some money, huh?

From the Curve #6

I’ll get to it in a minute, but I’ve sampled here what I think is what autobiographical comics are supposed to be. That’s saying a lot, sure, and I’m not saying that this is the single best page ever, just what other people writing about their lives should aspire to. Got it? This one has a hockey story, Robert getting stood up (sort of) at a bar, the Hulk watching football, and a frustrating situation at work. Predictably (for me), the longer stories worked better than the shorter ones. Not that there weren’t a couple of funny moments in the one pagers, but I would have rather seen him develop the “date” story more or just expand a few more stories in general. I can tell that this guy is going to do great things eventually, I’m just impatient waiting for him to get around to it. Put out more comics! By the way, #7 is out. I’m just bitching because #8 isn’t out yet… Contact info is all above here, $2 for this one.

From the Curve #7

You know, somebody told me years ago to put dates on these reviews and I never bothered, figuring it would be too much of a pain in the ass.  8 years later, I would like to just say on the record to everybody who recommended this: you were right.  It would have made things a whole lot easier now, on 2/2/10 (better late than never, right?), to know exactly when these reviews were coming from.  The last two issues of this series clearly came from 2001-2002, as that’s when I lived 2 and a half hours from Chicago.  As for the rest of it, who knows?  I could go back to each individual update page and check the new reviews for each date, but I got tired just typing that sentence.  Doing that for every day over the last 8+ years… well, forget it.  So how about this comic?  Rob is actually represented pretty well on this page, as I got my first issues of his comic right around when I was putting this website together, but I did manage to miss this one.  If I’m remembering this correctly (and I wouldn’t bet any money on it) this was the last issue of the regular series From The Curve, after which he did a number of assorted projects, and it still making comics today.  This issue is mostly a collection of short pieces, including a tribute to Charles Schulz, p-mail, wasting his time at a big box computer store, waking up in the early morning and the genuine confusion associated with it, why we look at a kleenex after we blow our nose, going to a very tiny comic show, getting to a late movie when the driver doesn’t know what he’s doing, his failed attempt at a stream-of-consciousness mystery, a depressed dog, dreaming a better evening than what actually happened, and leaving Richmond.  It’s a solid issue, and one more reason for me to lament the fact that so few mini comics from back in the day are still available in any format these days.  Why, in my day… well, in my day these were pretty hard to come by too.  OK, forget that part.  You should check out his newer books though, and at least he had the decency to put out a collected edition of at least some of his comics.  $2

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Update for 2/2/10

New review for one more old comic, this time Jape #1 by Sean Bieri.  If anybody out there knows of a place to actually buy any of these old minis that I keep mentioning, I’d love to hear about it.  For the time being, consider it a preview of the rental program that is coming soon, at least assuming that at least some of the people who made these comics would be OK with it…

Bieri, Sean

E-mail

Website

Jape #1

Ah, Jape.  The little funny comic that always, always made me laugh, and still does whenever I see a new collection of comics.  Which is far too rarely, but apparently all these people that got me into this business back in the day have real lives these days, or have just figured out that nobody gets rich making mini comics, which leaves the rest of us without that essential funny.  One of these Japes reached a perfect level of humor rarely seen in the world, and I look forward to finding it in my trip back through these minis, but this one wasn’t it.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still funnier than most things in this world, but it wasn’t that one issue that got lodged in my brain and never went away.  Stories in here include a creepy true tale of mass transit, the fickle nature of women, having somebody else use the bathroom while you’re taking a bath (and lying about the, um, nature of their visit), making interviewees eat a bowl of shit to gauge their reactions, dating the naked model from art class, and reverse discrimination.  I’m started to sound like a broken record, but it sure seems like most of these old minis were never collected, and I doubt if they’re still available.  If they are there certainly doesn’t appear to be any easy way to find them.  Hello Turtle people?  There’s a vast pile of things that should be collected into graphic novel form just sitting around out there.  Start with Jape!  $.50

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Update for 2/1/10

New review for yet another old comic, this time Double Cross #12 by Tony Consiglio.  Like I’ve said, at the very least this exercise in nostalgia has let me update the contact information for a lot of pages that have been dormant for far too long.  Now if I could only find an easy place to order these oldies, if such a place exists…

Consiglio, Tony

Website

110 Perc

I’ve mentioned on this page before that Tony is a hero of mine in the
comics world, right? Just thought that might be relevant in case
anybody thought they were getting an unbiased review. This is the story
of three older female fans of the boy band 110 Perc (I can’t make the
“cent” symbol, sorry). There’s Gerty, the 30ish housewife who’s
neglecting her husband and kids in her mad obsession to collect
everything associated with the band. There’s Cathy, a lonely largish
woman who seems to fill up her life with trivia and keepsakes about the
band. And finally there’s Sasha, probably the only relatively normal
one of the bunch, a 50ish woman who has an annoyed but supportive
husband. These three form the center of a story of celebrity obsession
at the cost of everything else, and the costs for them as human beings.
Gerty ignores her kids and husband until it’s convenient for her, Cathy
lets people at work make fun of her just because it gives her at least a
little bit of attention, and Sasha seems to have been married for ages,
making her husband an unlikely but constant source of hostile support.
The trouble really begins when Gerty manages to get two tickets to the
concert, meaning one of them won’t be able to go, and Cathy snags a copy
of the unreleased new album from the band, 2 Good 2 B 4 You, but
discovers that it’s, well, crap. It’s a great story all around, full of
his usual funnies while still ending up with a deeper message, all while
not coming anywhere near preachy. Which is nice, as it’s hard to take
any story about 3 older women who like a boy band all that seriously.
Kudos to Top Shelf for putting this out, as his work is not nearly
widely accessible enough for my tastes. It’s great stuff as always by
Tony, perfect for any current fans of his stuff and just as accessible
to people who have never heard of the guy. $12.95

Artificial Flowers

What, doesn’t anybody order books online? This is a story that was published originally in the SPX anthology for 2002, one that I thought was just about the weakest of the bunch because of the guidelines. Still, there were some great stories in there, and this was one of them. This is the tale of Bobby Darin. You know, that singer. I’m not sure how accurate all the information in here is but hey. I’ll take him at his word. It’s basically a short version of his entire life, as Tony doesn’t choose to focus on any one time period, and that helps give the story a complete, well-rounded feel. Everybody who’s read the rest of this page already knows that I love Tony’s work and, if you haven’t seen this already, it’s definitely worth a look. Not as good as his more personal stuff, in my opinion, but still good…

Envy

This says in the inside front cover that it’s an “attempt” at a 24 hour comic. Wonder how close it was? For one thing, it’s significantly less sloppy than your average 24 hour comic, which leads me to believe that he came up with idea and then redrew it later to make a decent mini out of it. Why aren’t I talking more about the comic? Oh, come on, you know I like Tony’s stuff. Is there some mystery to what I’m going to say about it? OK, fine. It’s about a man who has a twin brother who’s a superhero, but the other twin is stuck with an unbearably ordinary life. So the ordinary twin decides to kidnap his superhero brother, steal his costume and reap the rewards of fame and fortune himself. Along the way he finds out that he might have some superpowers after all… but the only way to get them is to do good deeds. Great stuff and, like I said, this sure doesn’t look like your average 24 hour comic. $2 maybe? I don’t know, that’s a pretty sweet cover, it might be $3. Ah, just check his website, it’s all over this page and I’m sure there’s info there.

Titanius Now Available! $2.50

What the hell? So is this part of a series, or did I just miss the joke with the ending? Whatever the case, this is another comic about a super hero, sort of. There’s this guy, see, and he tried to rescue his kid from a burning building a while back. He handed his kid through an open window into a pair of outstretched arms, not knowing that he would never see his kid again. This whole comic is about the man, Titanius, in a diner, mostly trying to order his dinner. There’s nothing really resembling an ending, so I don’t know where it’s going from here, but it’s obvious that Tony has a lot of fun with super heroes. And that’s quite possibly the best costume I’ve ever seen. Another funny book, and if I ran the world I’d let him take over, say, Silver Surfer for a couple of years. Think of the possibilities! Oh, and that “T” is supposed to be silver, but my new scanner has failed me for the first time…

Double Cross: More or Less

Could it be? Has the independent comics scene finally woken up to the fact that Tony Consiglio is a lot better than most of the people that they publish? OK, maybe not “most”, but a lot of them. Top Shelf finally fixed that problem with the publication of this book. I think that this is a reprint of stuff from his mini, but it’s all stuff that I haven’t seen and it’s a great story. Tony admitted in an anthology or somewhere that he exaggerates his family a little, but that doesn’t make them any less entertaining. This is mostly about his crappy job and dealing with his girlfriend, her brother and his family, while all he really wants to be doing is drawing comics. These are the simple tales of a dreamer who’s stuck in the same crappy work-a-day world as the rest of us. For those of you who have been wondering about this guy, now’s your chance. This is $4.95 and worth every penny.

Double Cross Assortment

Finally! I’ve been complaining for years that Tony seems unwilling or unable to keep his Double Cross minis in print. Well, here’s about 80 pages of that stuff, all in one handy volume. I’d only seen about 1/4 of this before, meaning that a lot of it is from his older books and stuff that probably hasn’t seen the light of day in years. Don’t take that as a knock on the quality of the work, as this is probably his strongest collection yet. Lots of stories about his job in the deli, a text story about his trip to a peepshow, dealing with his family, a few fiction stories… This is what all collections of older material should be. Does that make any sense at all? I just mean that if older stuff isn’t going to be kept in print, well, it’s not my call, but it’s good to at least keep the really great stuff readily available. It’s $5 and unless you’ve been reading this since he started doing the comic you’re going to find at least a few new things worth reading in here. Go to his website and buy away!

Double Cross #12

Wasn’t this story collected in one his graphic novels?  It seems like I saw this after this comic came out back in 1997.  Well, if it wasn’t it should have been, as this is the essential “Tony working at the deli” comic.  Granted, such a thing would probably not be considered essential by a lot of people, but those are stupid people who have no appreciation for Double Cross and his assorted other comics.  Yes, it’s quite possible that I just called you stupid, and if you took the time to read a few of his comics you might just grudgingly agree with me, before becoming a convert.  The story here is fairly simple: Tony has his day start off with some jerk on the train spilling coffee on him (so he’s going to smell like coffee all day), and is already in a lousy mood when he gets to work.  When he arrives Chris (who he has a serious and obvious crush on) berates him for being late, he is told that he has to wear a hat with a salami on top of it and then the real fun begins: the store opens.  If you’ve ever ordered meat from a deli counter you probably already have had a glimpse of the rampant stupidity of some people, but Tony lays it out in gory detail.  There is also the small matter of somebody stealing money from a register running throughout the story, and the small matter of Tony trying to talk Chris into going out with him.  While it’s not my place to say it, if you were out there hoping for the Double Cross experience, this is the perfect issue to get it.  It’s the size of two minis, so Tony really gets a chance to tell a great story and it’s a damned near perfect “day in the life” comic.  I don’t know if these are available anywhere, but they damned well should be.

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Update for 1/30/10

New review for another old comic: Boom Boom #2 (mini comic version, not the full sized series) by Dave Lasky.  You should really hop in that time machine and check it out.

Lasky, Dave

Website

Boom Boom #2

Here it is, another in what’s turning out to be a long line of “what do you mean this guy or girl doesn’t already have a page here?” posts.  It may have taken me until 2010 to put the guy up on my website, but he was one of the precious few comic artists that got me hooked on this mini comic business.  His adaption of Ulysses into mini comic form was a thing of brilliance, and that probably should have been the comic I posted first, but hey, that just leaves something good for later, right?  This particular issue is, essentially, a birthday card to his dad.  He wanted to do something different for his dad’s 55th birthday, so he asked a bunch of relatives and friends to tell their favorite stories of the man and illustrated them.  He kept things interesting by illustrating these tales in a lot of different styles, including old school Popeye, Matt Groening overbite, and Peanuts, including a few more that I probably just didn’t recognize.  Stories in here include his dad growing up, running away from home and picking cotton at the age of 13, volunteering to discipline some neighbor kids, telling the kids that they’re going to the zoo and having the day fall completely apart, never paying his parking tickets (and eventually getting his car booted), accidentally joining a spa for the elderly, and how he had an endless supply of stories to tell his sons at bedtime.  It’s sweet, it’s funny, and even if you’re too cold-hearted to care about am over-sized birthday card to the guys dad, the variety of artistic styles alone should be enough to keep you interested.  I didn’t see any way to buy these on his website but, as is often the case with these mini comics folk, somebody really should put all this older stuff into a collection of some kind.  It’s a shame to have so much of it be impossible to find trivia at this point.  $2

Update for 1/29/10

New review for Crass Sophisticate #23 by Josh Reinwald & Justin Rosenberg and yes, this is another new comic.  Have I mentioned that if anybody in Columbus needs a computer desk, couch, chairs or a table that they should probably contact me?  Probably a bit late for that by now…

Reinwald, Josh & Rosenberg, Justin

Website

Crass Sophisticate #21

You know, I almost didn’t pick this up when I was looking around Quimby’s, as something about that art turned me off.  Then I saw the “#21″ (and yes, that is always enough to impress me), the cheap $2 price for a fair amount of content, and figured I might as well give it a shot.  And, as is often the case, my initial instinct was wrong, as it turns out this comic is a blast.  There are two stories here, one dealing with Josh and Justin (who are apparently cousins in real life, if this story is to be believed) having a lengthy conversation about which of them likes ham, which of them is a Jew, and why the hatred for ham is so strong with one of them.  Sounds like you would get bored in a hurry, I know (and they wrapped it up with an excellent panel saying that everybody must have stopped reading long ago), but I was oddly engrossed.  The second story is Josh on his lunch break, talking to a co-worker about the happiest time of his life.  It’s sadder than you may have even thought (after seeing the guy on the cover, that is), but grade school humiliation due to a health freak mom packing all his lunches is always good fun.  As for the art (I’m assuming that the traditional comics listing of writer first and artist second is in effect here), Justin, if anything, pays too much attention to detail.  Granted, sometimes things look a bit smudgy, and he clearly tries to cram too much into the occasional panel, but I’m somebody who often complains about the lack of attention paid to backgrounds by a good number of comics artists.  How he got to #21 while clearly spending hours on background art is impressive all by itself.  So there’s an engaging story, art that challenges you to dig around and see what goodies the man put in it, and a hefty pile of story for a tiny price. Yeah, I’d say that you should try to find this.  $2

Crass Sophisticate #23

Huzzah for Google and people searching for their own names!  I don’t know how often that’s been the reason that I get new comics to review, but I’d have to guess it’s been responsible for a solid chunk of them.  There’s only one big story this time around, the tale of young Justin (so maybe he’s the writer and Josh is the artist?) and his realization at an early age that he going to need some kind of help to attract the attention of women.  He sees an ad in a magazine to learn how to play guitar and, as the guitar came included for $30, he went for it.  Naturally, this was only a toy guitar, but he decided to make the best of it and even wrote a song for a girl at school that he liked (who happened to be dating a big dumb jock) and, well, you can probably put together what happened from there.  The interesting thing to me about this story (as the conclusion was fairly predictable, if still funny) was how Justin wanderer around so much during his issue-long flashback.  His cousin wanders into the flashback a couple of times (with his ham), more or less just to liven up the action.  There’s also a really hilarious moment when old Justin goes back to the fateful day, hoping to talk his younger self out of making a fool out of himself, but gets distracted by a phone call.  In the meantime his cousin shows up, also attempting to talk him out of it, but young Justin just doesn’t believe that they’re all going to laugh at him.  Of course, at the end of the day Justin has the comfort of knowing exactly how all those people who tormented him turned out, so at least there’s that.  The comic kind of fizzles out towards the end, as it dissolves into an argument about Arby’s.  Still, on the whole, that some funny shit.  Worth checking out, and I will always be at least mildly impressed once somebody gets their comic over #20.  $2

Update for 1/28/10

New review for My Cat is Satan by Edgar Castro, and it’s also newly available in the store.  Reviews may start getting dicey around here soon, as I have to be out of here by the end of the month.  The plan is to get a few prepped and ready to go before I leave (as now that I’m reviewing old stuff too I’m not at a loss for material), but we’ll see how it goes.

Castro, Edgar

Website

My Cat is Satan Now Available!  $2

Anybody who reads this site on a regular basis knows that I have the same view of cat comics as that of a stereotypical middle-aged woman: I love them.  I start from that position, and unless the comic itself is terrible that’s usually where I end up after reading it.  Just wanted to make that perfectly clear, in case anybody out there thought I was capable of being professional and objective while reviewing this one.   This story (which was apparently done online first, in a page a day type of thing) is about how Satan decides to force people to reborn as pets for their punishment, but all the people rise up and throw him through the pet portal instead.  Satan as a cat is, oddly, not much different from many cats I’ve known and loved.  He (although the cat ends up being a sh, much to his chagrin) latches onto the ceiling, barfs his acidic puke on his owner, stabs the guy in the head and is just generally, well, evil.  Other stories (not so focused on the cat) include playing Mario to the exclusion of all else, a religious guy stopping by, the owner blowing all his money meant for the vet, and of course the actual trip to the vet.  It’s a pretty funny collection, all things considered, but the guy still has some serious trouble with spelling.  And there’s  still some minor trouble with the copier, but at least you could eventually figure out what everything was supposed to say this time around.   It’s worth a look and has some potential as a series, which is all you can ever ask out of these things. $2

Hoju #1 Now Available!  $2

Random submissions are always a crapshoot, and this one started off a bit rough.  If you look up at that top right corner you’ll see the issue number chopped off by the copier; a minor thing until you see that the first story (after an introduction of the characters, which is always a good thing) suffers from the same problem and is damned near unreadable because of it.  Luckily you can still see most of it, as it turns out to be the origin story for a few of the regular characters.  From there things pick up considerably, with the only noticeable errors being spelling and grammar.  Seriously, if this website can do anything for the comics world, I hope it’s to relentlessly point out the difference between “your” and “you’re”, “their” and “they’re”, etc.  Don’t just guess and throw one of them in there, take a half a second and find out which one is right!  It’s probably just a pet peeve of mine, granted, but I always feel like the people who get it wrong just aren’t taking this seriously, which is quite possibly a legitimate position when you think about career opportunities in this field, but if you’re going to spend weeks (if not months) drawing something, can’t you at least fix the easy stuff like that?  Yes, I am in fact always good for a rant on that subject, and Edgar didn’t have mistakes in every panel or anything like that.  He just consistently got it wrong.  As for the content, it got funnier as it went on, and he has a strange enough cast of characters that this could be the start of a very good thing.  Stories in here include waiting to ambush the taco man, sadness about being fugly, turning down a date due to excessive cynicism, taking your creature for a walk in the park, the dangers of windows to a talking bird, finally confronting the real taco man, and finding out the real story of the lonely “taco man”.  Finally there’s the one long piece of the comic, dealing with an accidental zombie outbreak that was oddly confined to only a few people… that they know of.  All kinds of potential here if a few minor things are tweaked.  Oh, and another tip to you youngsters: write your words before the word balloons.  Crazy, I know, but it saves all that word cramming later.  I bring these things up because I care, you know, and because there are enough things that can go wrong in making a comic that it’s good to at least have a firm grasp of the basics.  Also, my lawn was doing just fine before you damned kids started walking all over it.  My curmudgeonly nature aside, this is worth a look.  $2

Hoju #2 Now Available!  $2

I can’t really figure it out.  Am I allowed to say I like something “just because”?  That’s the kind of quality review work you people have probably come to expect here over the years.  Really, there’s all kinds of reasons not to like this.  “Your” in place of “you’re” is really fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoying for me, and Edgar gets it wrong almost every time.  It was used correctly in one panel and it was shocking.  The lettering is sloppy and often crammed into tiny word balloons, with him occasionally having to draw a little addendum balloon just to finish his sentences.  The stories often go nowhere at all, and he thinks “poop” is far too funny.  And yet I was smiling throughout this issue and did manage to get a few genuine laughs out of it.  Maybe he’s just benefiting from my Friday mood.  Stories include a gangsta God greeting an annoyed young man in heaven, Hoju getting his first soul (and finding out how to deal with the ladies), the little creature in Hoju’s head telling him the secrets of the universe, Hoju going to New Orleans searching for answers (and, of course, hitting Mardi Gras), some serious mayhem involving ghosts and making new ghosts, and Hoju chatting with his good and evil sides.  Again, you’d think that all the flaws would have me hating this, but it really was a blast.  Now if he could get all those spelling errors worked out he’d really be onto something… $2

Hojuween Now Available!  $.50

Well, at least the price is appropriate.  Don’t get me wrong, this comic has more than a few fun moments and I actually thought the coloring looked good.  The trouble is that (with the odd exception of the page I sampled) most of the text looked like he filled it in on the way to Kinko’s.  Words are way outside the bubbles, errors have just been scratched out, you can even see him scratching out a letter on the cover!  I’ll never understand why people who spend so much time on the art (and in this case color) can’t spend an extra half hour or so to make sure the simple things work.  OK soapbox, you can leave the room now.  The story is a simple 6 page thing which involves the gang, of course, going trick or treating.  They threaten a neighbor, Hoju runs into an evil clown and a good time is generally had by all.  I probably shouldn’t be so hard on him, as this is from 2002, but it’s such an easy fix: make the word balloons bigger.  Ta-da!  Still, it’s not bad for the price and kudos to him for coloring this thing.  In other words, if you like his other stuff, splurge a little and get this.  If not, try some of his more recent work first.  $.50

Update for 1/27/10

New review for The Pyramid by Kenan Rubenstein, a newish comic, not one of the many oldies I’ve been posting lately.  As I keep flipping back and forth in time, I feel it necessary to keep pointing it out.  Or maybe I’m just trying to get in the mood for the last season of Lost…

Rubenstein, Kenan

Website

Prologue

Here’s another tiny mini from Kenan, done in the same style as the one listed below, with tiny panels opening up into bigger and bigger ones as you go.  This time it’s the story of a longtime crush finally walking over to Kenan and starting a conversation, asking him to go out with her and pick up more beer for a party they’re attending.  Kenan can’t really blame her for a lack of conversation up until that point, as he’s always struck dumb when she’s around, but is pleasantly surprised to be hanging out with her and hopes that (as this is on New Year’s Eve) this is the start of a wonderful new trend.  Anyway, it’s a tiny thing with a great story, as the awkward dialogue is a marvel for anybody who’s ever gotten in over their head while talking to a crush.  There’s even a surprise ending that I didn’t see coming even a a little bit, although in hindsight it seems a bit more obvious.  Still, kudos on that.  Well worth checking out, as is everything else on this page so far.  There’s still no price, I’d still be surprised if it’s much more than a buck.

The Pyramid

Kenan mentioned in his note that this comic takes place right before the events in On The Beach, so in the barest of nods to trying to keep things in proper chronological order, this is where it goes on the page.  Of course, I have no idea where Prologue fits into all that, but it would logically go first, right?  Ah, the wonders of putting these pages together.  This issue unfolds much like On The Beach, as it starts with that little panel (the cover), folds out into a slightly larger panel (the sample) and gets bigger and bigger from there.  The story this time appears to be that of a sudden breakup, as Kenan and a friend are packing all his stuff up to be moved into a creepy storage locker.  There’s a delightfully awkward moment between Kenan and his ex as they say goodbye, then Kenan and his friend get all philosophical while loading all his stuff into the garage.  That probably makes it sound stupid but, as always with this guy, it ended up being more insightful than anything else.  It’s worth a look, and I have to admit to being a big fan of how they’re put together.  This is one of those things that you have to read in printed form, you just don’t get the same effect looking at this on your computer.  $1.50

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Update for 1/26/10

New review for another very old mini comic, as this time its The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake by Tom Hart.  Hey, even if you don’t like these old reviews (I’ve been having a blast), at least I’m finally updating some of the contact information for these people.  Tom’s page has had a dead website listed for ages, but no longer!

Hart, Tom

Website

The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake

The cavalcade of reviews for ancient (at least you could call it ancient in a culture with no attention span) mini comics continues, as I was appalled to notice that there were no minis at all from Tom on this site, just graphic novels.  And it looks like the man never did put all of these into one collection, because he very clearly hates the people who enjoy his work.  That’s my theory, anyway.  Another one is that as most mini comics folks seem to hate their older work, maybe he just doesn’t want any of this older stuff seeing the light of day.  Well, too bad!  This particular issue is a 24 hour comic (if memory serves, and the fact that there’s only a single date on the back cover (5/5/96)seems to back me up) and, well, it doesn’t look all that great.  Hey, that’s what 24 hour comics are!  The story is fairly simple: there’s an old man who digs a ditch for his town, as they need water.  He goes off to complete a ritual that will allow him to fill this ditch with water, but when he leaves his brother takes over the town and starts making demands.  When the old man comes back with an immensely bloated snake (as he’s full of the sea), his brother and the hungry townspeople see a giant pile of food instead and attack.  Tom manages to put a pretty decent moral at the end of the story, as one of his main skills was being able to make the reader think about any number of things.  I doubt if you can find this anywhere (my copy is from Spit and a Half, John Porcellino’s old distro), but all of his old books are worth picking up if you do see them.  $1.50

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