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Depasquale, Jason – Ninth Floor #3

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Ninth Floor #3

Another solid issue from Jason. If I had one wish about comics… well, scratch that, there are all kinds of things that I would change about the way comics are perceived. Still, I would love to outlaw the four panel newspaper strip comic. Come on, how many of them are funny at all? Again, that’s my main problem with this comic and, again, they’re not bad at all, it’s just my own personal prejudice. The bulk of this comic is a story about the Marfa Lights, a phenomena out in Texas. Jason seems convinced that they’re just headlights from passing cars, as they’re not that impressive and mostly resemble headlights from a distance. I would hope that people would have thought of that and ruled it out before now, otherwise the conspiracy theorists are a lot dumber than I would have thought. For whatever reason I have this theory that people who believe in conspiracy theories spend a lot of time researching their theories and only going with at least the scientifically plausible stuff. Yes, at times I really am that naive. Anyway, little strips include defective answering machines, lazy afternoons, work, tattoo interpretations and a pet dino. A nice, simple, well-rounded book, well worth a look for a dollar or two. Contact info is up yonder…

Depasquale, Jason – Ninth Floor B-Sides

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Ninth Floor B-Sides

Every time I see stuff from this guy I think of Martin Wagner. probably because of the University of Texas thing. I just checked my page and realized that he isn’t up there yet, and you can bet that’s going to change really soon, but I’m rambling here… Jason DePasquale is who we’re talking about here. This is a collection of stuff from various sources, even though the only thing I had seen before was the back cover . I’m not a big fan of the vast majority of newspaper style strips (you know, the four panel gag format) because most of them are just stupid and, honestly, so are most of these. A few of them are funny though, and that’s mostly all you can ask for from those types of things. The best story in the book is the tale of the horse who was “taught” to stomp his foot in conjunction with numbers written on a piece of paper, even learning to add eventually. I haven’t been in school for a while so I had forgotten the story. It’s a great cautionary tale. Past that, the comic is pretty much a hodge-podge of stuff, some good and some not so good, but it’s definitely worth a look for a buck. That and he says that if you just e-mail him your address he’ll send you free stuff, so how can you beat that?

Depasquale, Jason – Ninth Floor #2

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Ninth Floor #2

You know what I forgot about almost completely? The mini comics that are also zines. You know, the ones with comics and text pieces all mixed together. I don’t know why more people don’t use this format, but almost everything I see these days is either all comics or all text. This one mixes them both pretty well, with a text tale about the death of cassette tapes and his commentary of a muted episode of M*A*S*H mixed in with comics about indie rockers, Jesus cleaning his gutters and trying to escape the inescapable end of wasting your life in an office job. Nothing to set the world on fire, if you want to be negative about it, but everything in here was solid and showed to me that he was willing to try different formats to tell different stories, which is always a plus. Visit his website to see all kinds of samples and everything that he’s been up to, this one was only a measly buck. What are you waiting for?