Van Sciver, Noah – Blammo #8

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Blammo #8

I often end reviews here by pointing out that you should buy the work of whoever it is I’m reviewing that day, because if enough of you do that then that person will eventually be able to make a living purely from their art, enabling them to create exactly what they want to create. Well, after a year without Blammo (he was working on a few other projects that didn’t leave him much time for it) Noah has concluded that he’s better off just working on pages after work when he gets the time. So never mind! Although I get the sneaking suspicion that he’d change his mind if somebody dumped a million dollars in his lap and told him to draw whatever the hell the wanted, but who knows? Maybe he has a fantastic day job. But hey, how about this comic of his? As always, you won’t get more out of your comics dollar than an issue of Blammo. An actual letters page, bunches of stories, there’s even a comic on the back cover for the gentler souls who may have trouble with… well, anything. Stories in here include the origin story for a dog on wheels (a creepy little toy who compels you to tell it your deepest secrets), a young man trying to reconnect with friends after backing away from them during a breakup where both members of the couple had mutual friends, Charles the chicken trying to bring Bill back to life in a series of hilariously hopeless ways, an adaptation of an old Grimm’s fable about the wolf and the fox, a man and his ill-fated attempt to get a woman to date him while he’s wandering around with a tiny grotesque man, a dream of sleeping and waking in an old apartment with serious emotional ties, punks vs. lizards (starring John Porcellino, sort of), and all kinds of strips packed into the final two pages. It’s comics like Blammo that keep me from declaring comics in this form dead entirely. It all seems to be trending towards collections or graphic novels, but this format is much more suited to a comic like this. Hey, there’s room for both. $5