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Dodo Comics #7

Grant’s back to working on Dodo comics, after roughly two years away. Not that there was a pandemic in the middle of that that might account for a delay or anything, right? Right away I want to mention something he does perfectly here, and that’s the recap. With this long of a gap between issues, and a fairly complex story, (including a fight over potable water and basically the origin story of Medusa), something to remind readers of what happened before is essential. Take note, other comics people with ongoing stories who take long gaps between issues! This one is mostly silent, and it deals with an attempted theft in the temple of Hermes. It’s also ten pages long, which isn’t much space for the story to progress, if you’re wondering if I have any quibbles about the comic. “Want more comic” is generally a good problem for a writer/artist to have, but it makes it tough to review anything specific without giving the whole thing away. So I’ll just say that it moves the story along a bit, and sooner or later this will be one of those series where I read the whole thing in a chunk rather than counting on this lousy memory of mine. Also included in here are a few pandemic strips, from the early pandemical times of 2020. They’re brutal, as far as pandemic stories go. There’s one funny strip out of four of them, the rest deal with the death of this grandma (whose husband wasn’t allowed to be with her when she died because of fears that he’d take covid back to his nursing home) and the death of a friendly neighbor of his. Now I’m wondering if he did more covid strips, but if they’re all this grim they’d probably be a tough read. Not that that’s a bad thing. I’m as cynical as anybody and even I’m shocked at how quickly any and all precautions (and memory!) of the pandemic have vanished. I at least thought everybody would remember that there was absolutely no reason for work meetings to still be held in person, but now I’m just rambling. I’m a bigger fan of his My Life in Records comics, to be honest, but I do think he’s building something here too, so check it out. $3

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Dodo Comics #6

(Note: Grant’s website seems to be down at the moment, so I linked to his Patreon page instead. In case anybody was wondering…)

As far as origin stories for Medusa go, yeah, I kind of always figured it would be along the lines of a woman scorned. Again, I don’t know the actual story of her origin, if she has one and wasn’t always just a lady with snakes in her hair in the old tales. This issue picks up where the last one left off; no recap for those of us who read entirely too many comics and can’t keep this stuff all that straight, but you can pick it up from the context. She’s being led to a new source of water by a snake, finds said source of water and returns to her man, overjoyed. Then the image I sampled below happens, we see the frankly devastating first person transformed to stone, and we get the awful surprise of Perseus (as a Trump substitute) giving a political speech. It’s always alarming to see that ugly mug without a warning. So it looks like that story will continue, to which I say: recap before the next one please! A line or two will do. Things are starting to get complicated. The rest of the comic is a few short pieces about the Florida Everglades, both the animals in them and a brief bit about their history and preservation. It’s intriguing stuff; I didn’t know it and I’ve actually ridden around on one of those fan boats. Not that you become an automatic expert from riding on those boats, but you know what I mean. $3

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Dodo Comics #5

If anybody out there is a student of mythology, I have no idea if this version of Medusa is “correct.” As it’s a myth, it’s open to interpretation anyway, right? Grant has the first part of his series about Medusa in this issue, and we start off with her on a throne, with snakes coiling around her feet. From there we flash back three years to see her in a quieter time. Water is scarce and there are only three sources, each with their own conditions for access. Medusa eventually falls in love with a man who’s in charge with one third of the water, which leads to other women helping out, which leads to guys being assholes about women being in charge. Yep, that has been an awful, stupid constant throughout history. Anyway, I’ve already given away large chunks of the story, but this is the first part of an unknown number of parts, so there’s a lot more of this story to come. Grant’s books are consistently engaging and this one is no exception. I’m curious to see where this one is going, so give it a look if you have any interest in mythology or just happen to like Grant’s other comics. $3

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Dodo Comics #4

I don’t know how people with kids have any time to make comics (I have no kids and barely have the time to review comics), but Grant seems to be making it work. Granted, he says he makes comics “before daybreak, on weekends and while his children nap,” but he’s managed to maintain a pretty high level with his work. He also included another comic that I’ll be getting to soon, which makes him more prolific than lots of comics creators who don’t have kids. Now that I have shamed those people for the lazy folks (who don’t know how good they have it) that they are, how about the contents of the book? Three stories in this one. The first is the story of how the raven and the loon got their colors, and kudos to him for picking two birds with black and white tones for a black and white comic book. Next is his attempt to find the meaningful thing between things, and his conclusion strikes me as more than a bit autobiographical, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. Finally there’s the story of a man who kept a stone in his mouth for three years to teach himself silence, and a quick history of some of the interactions he had during that time. The art for each story is unique and distinctive for the story being told (and I didn’t even notice the family of birds growing for that third story until just now), and it’s just a thoroughly engaging comic from top to bottom. His letter lists it as $4 while the cover lists it as $3, so just stick with the higher price and know that if you’re wrong, at least you gave an extra dollar to a small press artist.

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Dodo Comics #2

Does everybody out there know of Sergio Leone? I know that this is going to sound like a stupid question to everybody over 35 or so (I hope), but I don’t know how much the youth of today know their film history, and christ do I feel stupid saying “youth of today.” Anyway, Sergio Leone directed a few of the more famous spaghetti westerns (and who know what a spaghetti western is… aw, forget it) of all time, and the first story of this book is a silent tribute to his film technique. Before certain dramatic moments, like a gunfight, you’d see a series of quick cuts between the eyes of the gunfighters, the fingers twitching near the triggers, a bead of sweat slowly rolling down one of their faces, all that stuff needed to build tension without having to beat you over the head with it. Grant does a really nice job of conveying that feeling although, if I’m being honest, that last panel was a bit of a mess. Still, everything leading up to it was nicely done. The comic takes a turn from there to deal with the remaining three stories, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. There’s a piece about Grant’s early years with his first nude models (and how one of the ladies loved talking to the college artists with her robe wide open), a comic pantoum story (with tricky reading of the panels required) dealing with going to see an ex singing, and a nice little story with the devil trying to trick a hermit. A nice mix of stories, and there’s even a funny panel on the back showing Grant trying to draw comics while surrounded by his two baby daughters. It’s a solid comic and I’m enjoying his willingness to mix things up with his stories. Hey, that’s why these things have more than one story each, right? $3

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Dodo Comics #1

I go back and forth on the idea of comic creators explaining their work either before or after the comics part of the comic, but it’s probably a good thing Grant did that in this issue. It showed me exactly what he was going for, and I probably would have missed large swaths of if if he didn’t. For example, there’s a single page strip called “The Duel” which is just a bunch of frantic lines. Still, this looked vaguely familiar and, sure enough, Grant explained that it was a page from “Lone Wolf and Cub” with the character removed. With that piece of information you can almost put the characters back onto the page and your head and it transforms it into a significantly more worthwhile piece of art than just a bunch of lines. Other stories include a long (and funny) piece on where ideas come from, visions of fire, the tower of Babel and another piece with just unrelated images (this time for a page from “Akira”). I’m not going to explain what he was going for in every story (I do think his explanations worked better after reading the story instead of before it), but hey, check out the samples on his site to see for yourself. He’s clearly interested in the crafting end of comics and is looking for new ways to go about it. Kudos and more power to him, and he’s certainly off to a diverse and worthy start. $3