Crespo, Jaime – Tortilla #1

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Tortilla #1

Ah, the benefit of hindsight.  Jaime hopes to get this comic out twice a year, which would be a great thing, as there aren’t enough Jaime Crespo comics in the world.  Sadly, this came out in October 2008 and there hasn’t been a #2 yet (at least judging from his website, but at least he’s working on a graphic novel). There’s still time to get two of these out in two years, and that is about average for the small press world, sadly enough.  And what’s up with that cover title?  The man’s a maestro with the pen and it looks like he wrote “Tortilla” while on a roller coaster.  OK, the complaint department is now closed, as I had no problems with the rest of it.  Stories in here include an inspirational “brawl”, some silent (and not-so-silent) moments from his area, the perfect modern superhero (“Too Fat To Do Shit Man”), and some brief hilarity with Floyd and Ringworm.  There’s also a lengthy text story involving a face from Jaime’s past and how he stumbled into her later in life that is a lot more involved than I’m letting on.  It’s a bit of a horror story, frankly, but I’m damned if I can figure out what Jaime should have done differently.  Then there’s the big comic piece of the book, “Corner Store”.  Jaime was always forced to walk to the local store instead of the closer big box store as a kid, and resented the hell out if it, until one day he happened to see a rum bottle.  What was odd about this rum bottle?  To a kid of around 7, something crucial: boobs!  He alerted the neighborhood, everybody snuck a peek, and there’s even a fantastic epilogue to the story that I’m not going to ruin here.  For once I’m not going to demand that everybody immediately go out and buy this comic, even though it’s fantastic and you really should.  Instead I’ll say that you should buy his graphic novel the second it comes out and make this guy famous.  He’s been doing this for decades (seriously) and deserves to make some serious cash at it already.  Of course, if you have $3 lying around, there are all kinds of worse things you could do with that cash than buy this comic…