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McGurr Sean & Various Artists – Jury Rigged Comics #3: Adaptations
Jury Rigged Comics #3: Adaptations
In case you were wondering, yes, this comic features adapted stories from other sources. Sean gets into it all in the intro, although he mostly doesn’t mention what they’re adapted from. Ah well, I guess this means I have to judge the comic all by itself and not on the source material, which is how it should be anyway. The first two pieces are drawn by David Beyer Jr., with the first dealing with the unbreakable promise of a samurai and the second dealing with Thor trying to trick a giant into giving him back his hammer. Mythical Thor in the modern day is always funny to me (yes, I know that he has his own comic, but Marvel Thor is just barely mythical Thor) and, much as it pains me not to spoil it, the setting Thor winds up in is even funnier. Trust me on this one. The samurai piece is also fun, if maybe a bit predictable. Or at least it was predictable to me, as I have read all comics and stories ever and it’s all predictable to me. Next up is Ark, done entirely by Sean, and this is what brought it all crashing down, at least briefly (it’s a very short story). There’s an asteroid, see, and it breaks entirely through a planet. It lands on another planet, and everything I say from here is sheer guesswork, as I have no idea what happens next. It looks like it either smashes through many people, killing them brutally, or the asteroid turns out to have been filled with eyes, ears, and other squiggles. If I wasn’t away from home at the moment I’d go back to the issue of Spudd that had this story drawn by another artist to make a bit more sense of it, but my instinct is saying that this story was better off left alone. Marginalia (drawn by Brent Bowman) is up next, and it’s fantastic. It’s the story of a Sean reading a used book in school and not thinking all that much of the notes in the margins until he gets to the very end and, again without spoiling, it is indeed a fantastic ending. It details the story of a brute of a dentist who would pull teeth out by hand, how he married a wealthy woman and couldn’t keep his temper in check. Finally there’s essentially the famous speech from Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, but as told to a toddler, so there’s no cursing involved. It is an engrossing and hilarious piece of work (text, not comic), which makes this book four for five on the really excellent content. I’d say that makes it worth taking a look, wouldn’t you?$2
McGurr, Sean – Jury Rigged Comics: Leftovers
Jury Rigged Comics: Leftovers
That’s usually an instant warning sign, when somebody puts out a book of stories that weren’t good enough to put in the regular series. Luckily in this case they really are still good stories, so don’t worry your pretty little heads about it. First you have the first attempt by the Chinese to travel to the stars way back in the early 16th century (drawn by Adam Walmsley). The art is downright gorgeous and I’d never heard this story before. Then you have the near-war over bridges in Cleveland and Ohio City in 1837 (drawn by David Beyer Jr.). Fascinating stuff again, as how many of us know any of the history at all of our state and/or town? In other words, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a throwaway issue, nothing to see here and please move on. There are stories worth reading in this comic, and that’s all any of us can ask for. $2
McGurr, Sean – Jury Rigged Comics #1
Jury Rigged Comics #1
Here’s another first effort from somebody out of Columbus, Ohio. Must be something in the water out here. Anyway, this is a collection of stories with a variety of different artists. The first one, Snow Tires (with Leon Briones), is about someone selling his car but trying to keep the snow tires when he sells it. I know, it sounds boring as can be, but it’s not a bad story. The second is As Seen on TV (with Rich Molinelli), and it tells the story of a young paramedic who gains some unwanted fame by having a rescue on the television show Rescue 911. The last full story is Mentor: What’s in a Name (also with Leon Briones), which is the story of a young superhero trying to come up with a name and learn the ropes of the business. Then there’s a tiny, tiny preview of Zero Point (I say tiny because there’s one page of art and one shrunken page of script) and an essay about his personal history with comics. For a first effort, it’s not bad. It’s good, when writing, to use “it’s” instead of “it is”, at least every once in a while, just to make it sound like people are really talking, but that’s a minor quibble. There’s nothing here to set the world on fire, but there are three solid, interesting stories, so you could do a lot worse. It’s $2, send Sean an e-mail if you’re interested.
