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Goldman, Steven – Styx Taxi: A Little Twilight Music
Steven’s blog (that seems to have little to nothing to do with comics)
Styx Taxi: A Little Twilight Music
You know, when I got this issue, I thought that there was no way it could work. An anthology issue, with three different artists? Already? There’s only been one regular issue! It seems that the creative team is busy doing different projects, which is fine, but if this is your main thing, you have to spend the time and effort to get it off the ground first! Then I read the comic, and it turns out that they can wander around and take their time if they want to, as they still have plenty of ideas. The first story (Goldman & Dan Goldman) in here is an unspoken tribute about the taxi crew on 9/11, trying to keep up with the dead. The second (Elizabeth Genco & Leland Purvis) is about Charon’s habit of enjoying a street musician perform and his inability to ever leave the taxi. The third (Goldman & Rami Efal) is about babies having babies, with a little death thrown in. The first two were fascinating stories, no problem there, but the third was a bit of a mess and hard to follow. Still, good stuff all together, and this universe gets more interesting all the time. $3, contact info is up there.
Genco, Elizabeth – Weird Sister
Weird Sister
Anthology time! Well, sort of. Is it still considered an anthology if different artists do each story but they all have the same writer and focus on two central characters? Actually, probably not. This is the story of a witch (more or less) and her eventual familiar, the ghost of a dead dog. Sort of Tales From The Cryptish (again that comparison, sorry), but with a witch calling on the gods for help and Elizabeth using Tarot cards to help her plot a few things out. The first story (art by Adam Boorman) is about said dog, who the witch discovers while he’s about to be killed by a gang of thugs for not being a good enough guard dog. The second (drawn by Dash Shaw) deals with the witch catching a man about to drown a young girl who can see his thoughts and has told him how he’s going to die. Finally, the third story (drawn by Jeff Zornow) has the witch running across a young girl who’s in a graveyard, mourning the loss of her junkie/drunk boyfriend, or at least mourning that loss until he rises from his grave. There are also a few sketches in back by Leland Purvis and Brian Wood, so maybe it is an anthology after all. It’s a pretty entertaining pile o’ stories, and I even learned a bit of the basics about witches and Tarot, although not much more than I already learned from watching Buffy. Still, it was interesting to see how lonely life was for the witch and how she still felt compelled to help people and animals. Worth checking out if you’re into this sort of thing, or I guess avoiding if you hate everything related to witchcraft, you model Christian citizen you… $4.95
Genco, Elizabeth – Red (art by Kevin Colden, cover by Miss Lasko-Gross)
Red (drawn by Kevin Colden, cover by Miss Lasko-Gross)
How many of you know the original, genuinely horrific original story of Little Red Riding Hood back even before the Brothers Grimm told the story? This is based in the loosest possible sense on that. I’ve been watching far too much Tales From The Crypt lately, as the twist ending was something I could see coming a mile away (even without knowing about the fable connection until the end), but it’s still a creepy and tense story. A serial killer starts his day lamenting about “the one who got away”, and ends up running into the girl in the street, so he runs her down and starts up a conversation. Right away you get to wondering who is hunting whom, and it’s a bit of a race against time from there. Pretty great stuff all around, and the splashes of red on the inside were a nice touch. Oh, and Miss Lasko-Gross apparently has a memoir coming out from Fantagraphics later this year, so for everybody who’s been wondering where she’s been since Aim, there’s your answer. Oh, and Kevin has done some excellent work here and with some previous pieces in the Mauled! series, which is why he looked so damned familiar. I’m guessing this is around $3…
