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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #26

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Lost Kisses #26

How great/awful would it be to have the ability to travel back into points of your own past? Most people seem to think that they could fix things, but chances are that you would just make things worse. This issue starts with a summary indicating that the hero of the comic is going back to “change the past & save the future”, and this issue starts with him returning to his 14 year old self, while he is tripping on LSD. As he knows his future, he’s able to see that this is a low point for him in a lot of ways (for example, a suicide attempt leads to his not drinking lemonade for a decade because that’s what he used to wash down some rat poison), but he also thinks about his son and her mother, which makes things a bit narratively confusing. After all, he’s his 14 year old self at this point, but he’s also thinking about how he never expected to see his son or the mother again, and how he was wrong about one of them. Anyway, he realizes her importance a bit more as the book goes on, and by the end he has a clearly defined mission for what he is going to do with this ability to travel through his own timeline. I guess future issues will determine whether or not he was correct. Oh, and just because I can’t praise this enough whenever it happens, kudos to Brian for putting a synopsis on the inside front cover. If all comics did that then the world would be a better place. Yes, the whole world! $1

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #25

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Lost Kisses #25

Hm, that is one scattered listing of reviews for this series. I reviewed #5-10, #21 and now this one. The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to read this entire series to get plenty out of individual issues, although I’m guessing that it wouldn’t hurt to have the whole picture. Ah well, maybe I can get caught up at SPACE this year. So this one is all about fictional Brian waking up next to a dead girl that he doesn’t recognize and eventually realizing this is because he has taken a drug to release himself from linear time. The sad part comes in when he realizes that he can’t change the future any more than he could change the past, so this girl will always be dead and will always have died. Other topics include his feelings on anonymous sex, whether or not it would be worth it to save the world (which is a question that doesn’t get asked in popular culture nearly enough), and how living forever would be fine if he didn’t have to feel anything. For most of his series I’d highly recommend getting the issues in order, but for this one it sure seems like you’d be OK grabbing whichever random issues he has available when you see him at a con. Or you could go nuts and throw a pile of money at him, as I don’t think anybody else is offering as many comics for your dollars as he is. $1

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #21

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Lost Kisses #21

Here it is, the comic that started the Brian John Mitchell media empire. Or did he start a whole bunch of minis at the same time? I should really study my history of the guy for when he sets and then breaks the record for most mini comics produced in a year. Get Guinness on the phone! This is the comic that Brian draws himself, so that means stick figures, public domain images and pasted-on faces. Still, these comics are also all about the inner workings of his brain, and that shit is fascinating to me. In this issue Brian talks about his desire to find a safe method to travel through time, and how he thinks he’s done it a few times through seizures but it always ends up being his future self coming to him and not the other way around. He also discusses various physical aids for putting his brain on a different level. I  discovered while reading this one that if you just read the text boxes, then the message comes through clear as that proverbial bell. It just adds to the experience to read the pictures above it, but I liked the entirely new perspective on one of his comics. The comic as a whole is fantastic, as there’s also plenty of theories on how he can unlock the puzzle of his brain and detailed descriptions of his seizures. Yep, it’s another great Brian John Mitchell comic that you should probably read. Water still wet, sun still bright, etc, but hey, I’m still excited about pointing out great comics. Why else would I be writing about them? $1

Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #10

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Lost Kisses #10

Brian, with this issue, asks an important question: when it is OK to tell someone that you love them?  On top of that, what exactly is love, and is anyone ever capable of really loving someone else?  Those happy thoughts form the basis for this mini, so if you’re one of those people who is deliriously happy and in love, this one probably won’t do a whole lot for you.    It starts with Brian noticing that a lot more people are telling him that they love him recently, and he has a point: it’s used way too much.  Then again, as he points out, he is a stoic guy from a stoic family, so maybe he’s just taking the whole thing too seriously.   He also concedes that maybe if he had a wife and kids (a lot of his friends are married with children) that saying “I love you” would probably be second nature.  He concludes by saying that maybe he should give it a chance, or maybe he’ll end up lonely and bitter and won’t have to worry about people telling them that they love him because he’ll have lost all his friends.  Once again it’s an interesting comic, and he really has no right being this productive AND thought-provoking.  Just pick one or the other and save the rest for the other mini comics folk.  I think everybody knows where I stand on these things by now, that they’re very much worth checking out.  He does mention that he’s running out of ideas, but I’ll believe it when I see it…  $1

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #9

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Lost Kisses #9

It’s getting to the point where I should give Brian a separate page for each of his titles to prevent this page from getting completely ridiculous.  He just sent 5 more comics along, one starting an entirely new series, and this page is bulky enough as it is.  Damn his productivity!  Lost Kisses is definitely the most personal of his mini minis, as this time around he talks about how he much he values creativity and artistic expression over economic stability and how this inevitably gets him in trouble with the significant others of his friends.  After all, when he encourages them to do more art, the reason against it is usually because of a job.  The conversation then turns to how much they hate that job, which turns to questioning why they still work at a place they loathe, which is not a direction that most significant others would like the conversation to go.  He goes on to talk about how he can’t seem to talk to these boyfriends/girlfriends like real people, as he always sees them as transitory, which is also how he sees life in general.  Cats, on the other hand, are creatures that he wants to like him.  He also mentions how much more he likes sleeping than sex, and once again generally shows that he is willing to talk about pretty much any personal detail, as he comes to terms with being stuck as a jackass for the rest of his life because changing would be too hard.  It’s brilliant stuff and seems to be getting better as he goes along which, with this level of productivity, means he’ll be Dan Clowes in no time.  These are all a buck each and I just noticed that he sells chunks of ten for $8, for those of you who like a bargain.

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #8

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Lost Kisses #8

I finally found something to complain about with Brian’s comics: they’re so tiny that they can get lost in the general chaos of my desk.  This comic came in months ago, and just now it fell out of a larger stack of comics when I reached for something to review.  As complaints go it’s pretty weak, granted, but I figured some negativity was due on this page, especially as I thoroughly enjoyed this issue.  This is the story of Brian’s ex getting robbed and beaten and ending up in a coma.  He pulls no punches at all in describing his feelings towards her, even going so far as to wish (almost) that he had done it.  If you wanted to complain about the stick figure artwork I guess you could do that, but nobody could fault Brian for a lack of openness.  Honestly, pretty much everybody who’s ever had a horrible breakup (which is probably everybody who has ever dated) has at least thought about killing their ex, but few people are willing to go into this much detail about it.  Brian doesn’t let himself off the hook either, going into some things he did wrong in the relationship and bemoaning his inability to completely move on from this relationship.  As always, this is another solid mini, and people with more organizational skills than me should have no trouble reading these tiny things all in a clump and not losing them around their room…

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #7

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Lost Kisses #7

In case you can’t read the caption, it says “Keys, Phones and Barcodes: What do these things have to do with each other?”  It takes a while to get there, but he pulls it all together in the end.  This is the story of Brian finding some house keys from an old girlfriend, and it happens to be the old girlfriend who he actually bought a house with years ago.  She still owes him $5000, he has no interest in ever seeing her again and spends the issue trying to figure out what to do with them.  The trouble is that the first half of the book is all over the place and I didn’t start piecing this story together until the start of the second half.  He goes from a ringing phone right to a panel about the odd names of grocery stores in other states to questions about how the store located him in the first place.  Reading it over again, I got what he was going for: the grocery store called him because of the bar code on the keyring, but it was awkwardly put together.  He saves things in a big way with the second half though, because what do you do in that situation?  He goes through all the pros and cons and eventually comes to a decision.  Without ruining anything, it turns out he’s a nicer guy than I am.  Brian sent a small pile of minis again this time around, so more tiny fun will be had in the near future.  As for this one, I recommend it to anyone who has ever fantasized about revenge of an ex.  Which is probably everybody…

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #6

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Lost Kisses #6

The king of very tiny comics is back! OK, maybe I’m not allowed to call him the king of tiny comics.  Many people are making mini comics, and many of them are pretty damned tiny, but very few people I know are this prolific while keeping their books this tiny… and still managing to pack engaging stories in the little things.  This issue is a flip book (both by Brian), with one half detailing the reasons he should stay with his girlfriend and the other detailing the reasons he should leave.  He makes a point in the beginning of the mini to say that this isn’t about any specific girl in his life, and I suppose that’s true of the comic as a whole, but a number of panels here just have to be about one person.  Still, it’s not like he’s going to get sued or anything, as these minimalistic images make lawsuits pretty unlikely.   On the negative side, yes, he goes into things that are true of a lot of women, and no, I don’t think it’s misogynistic to say so.  His negatives are lying, a lack of willingness to deal with past emotional scarring, spider veins, her being over her ideal body weight, appearance being more important than reality, having no taste in art, and rogue nipple hairs.  On the plus side, his positives for a girlfriend are intelligence, a sense of humor, better self-esteem, the peace he feels while holding her, good hair, musical skill, and the simple fact that he loves her.  Granted, some of the negatives are pretty petty, and some of the positives are generalities that you see in every dating ad to ever exist, but this is still a fascinating book.  Leave this on the coffee table (if anybody even sees it amidst the clutter) and sit back and wait for all the awkward conversations that are sure to follow.  Like everything else I’ve seen from this guy, it’s well worth a look, that’s for sure.

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Mitchell, Brian John – Lost Kisses #5

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Lost Kisses #5

Yep, that’s about actual size for this comic. It was actually shrunk from a smaller size a few years back and is now right around the size of a pack of matches, but somehow Brian manages to pack all sorts of goodness into this tiny package. This is a short version of the story of Brian’s life, his struggles to keep friends, to distinguish himself from humanity as a whole (although I would submit that a continuing interest in this medium is a good start), and his surprising lack of interest in many self-perceived failings. Turns out (spoiler alert!) that he has something called Asperger’s, so maybe this odd disconnectedness he’s feeling is simply a matter of faulty brain wiring. Honestly, when I see a comic this tiny, the best I’m hoping for is maybe a good joke or two, something mildly amusing because of the novelty format. The fact that he was able to put together an emotionally moving story while still being oddly disaffecting is impressive as hell to me. You can order all five issues at his website for $3.50, or maybe, what, $1 apiece? This is well worth seeking out for anybody who has ever felt listless and directionless, which I’m guessing is just about everybody reading this at one time or another…