Dawson, Mike – Cabaret Comics #1

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Cabaret Comics #1

I’ve had really good luck with the random comics that people have sent me in the mail so far. I don’t think I ever even exchanged e-mails with this guy and boom, there’s a comic waiting for me in my mailbox yesterday when I get home. And a damned good comic at that. I guess you’d call it a tale of relationships. The book is broken down into two parts. Part one is about a man and his “relationship” with a high school girl and the second part is about this man’s roommate and his sexually adventurous girlfriend. This worked a lot better than I thought it would, frankly. Flipping through the book before I read it, nothing really hit me over the head. I thought it might be an OK book but that would be it. This guy managed to hit me over the head with the goodness in this book and it’s a good thing he did.

You could say that the first part is a little weak, I guess, if you really wanted to nitpick. We get to see nothing of the relationship or how it happened, just what happens when his friend starts making fun of the girl for being in high school. Still, the confrontation and what happens afterwards is great. I really like his way of running the word balloons together and cutting off a lot of what’s said, it adds to the general chaos of some of the conversations. The second part of the book is disturbing as hell. It shows why the second couple showed up at the restaurant at all and why they were in such a big hurry to leave and a lot of it’s wordless. I’m becoming more and more of a fan of that type of comic. It leaves so much more up to the imagination and the skill of the artist, and guys like Mike can certainly pull that off. This one is $3 and it’s a welcome addition to anyone’s collection. Good stuff, and I hope he does more soon.