West, Max – Sunnyville Stories #4

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Sunnyville Stories #4

One of these days I might actually pick an opinion about this series and stick with it. Feels like I’ve been all over the place on this one, and I do wonder how much of it is just my mood on any given day. On this day I thoroughly enjoyed this comic and hope that Max finds a happy niche for himself in this crazy business. On past days I could get nitpicky about the little things, which would kill the whole issue. Well, that and I’m generally too cranky to enjoy something that’s so good-natured for long, but that’s more of a personal failing. Enough about me rambling away the start of yet another review, what about the comic? This tells the story of a pair of sisters who bring a toaster oven in to the local store for repair. They’re told that it’ll be at least a month until they get it back and learn from their parents that the owner of the store is sad because he got into a fight with a kid he considers his nephew years back and they never managed to make up. From there we get a cautionary tale from another town resident about the dangers of waiting too long to make amends before things start winding down. Yes, even now I’m not going to throw spoilers at you, even though if you’ve read past issues you know that a bloodbath is almost certainly not the ending. One thing I’m really starting to appreciate about Max’s comics is how well he uses his set number of pages. He always gives himself plenty of room to work with, so even though the backgrounds can feel a little thin at times he has time for all the conversations between family and friends that would occur around a town problem like this, while even throwing in bits here and there to advance the characters. And I vaguely recall having issues with sloppiness in past issues, but that wasn’t a problem here. Everything looked nice, no unerased pencil lines for lettering, and this time around the story was able to win out over any minor quibbles. If you are looking for a bloodbath then you have a wide range of options out there, but this comic isn’t one of them. It’s a nice, quiet all-ages book with a decent message. Yeah, I’m almost certainly going soft. So sue me… $4