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Poullet, Paulette – Life’s a Cakewalk Comics #2

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Life’s A Cakewalk Comics #2

It’s been a sketchbook-o-rama for the last couple of weeks here, and this one continues that trend. This is taken from more or less daily drawings from 3/1/05 to 4/2/05, with a couple of extra (and hilarious) pages thrown in at the end. Hilarious to me mostly because I can relate to having a cat that tears everything up and is still too crazy to relax comfortably. It’s typical sketchbook stuff, which is a good thing in my book, and the page I sampled about why she does comics and the long list of whiny bitches who have done comics over the years is a wonderful, wondeful thing. Introspection is a requirement for these things, she gets that fact and is still able to pull off an entertaining comic without coming across as too self-obsessed. It doesn’t hurt anything that she actually has interesting things to say, ranging from strips about childhood memories, copying the comic, neutering her cat, sitting in urine on the bus, rock shows, working, the actual logistics of being a woman (and the fact that parts of their appearance are inevitably based on lies), and crappy landlords, among other things.? It sounds like she’s not going to keep up the sketchbook stuff, opting instead to focus more on “regular” comics, which I’d love to see. I liked her piece in the Marvel parody book done by Ed Piskor quite a bit, anyway. Oh yeah, and it’s a hefty read for only $1.50.

Poullet, Paulette – Life’s a Cakewalk Comics #1

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Life’s A Cakewalk Comics #1

Note to anyone who cares about these sorts of things: I reviewed #2 of this series many months ago and am just now getting to #1. So this is more or less a look back at Paulette working out the kinks in her sketchbook style, as I loved #2 and am only so-so on this one. Mostly because it looks like crap in more than a few places, one of the dangers of doing a daily strip, but something she seemed to have under control for the second issue. In this one she deals with sickness, annoying people on the bus, famous people she looks like, her soon-to-be neutered cat, Don Simpson (as he taught a class she was taking, and shame on you if you don’t know who Don Simpson is), an awful Cure video, dancing for the hell of it, and a page of mostly unfortunate attempts to draw Simpsons characters. Plenty of other stuff too, as this is a pretty hefty issue for $1.50, but there’s no sense in spoiling all the surprises. A decent effort, although the second one is better, there’s still more than enough funny in here to make it worth the cheap cover price.

Piskor, Ed (editor) – Marvel Gang-Bang

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Marvel Gang-Bang (with various creators)

If you pick this one up thinking it’s nothing but hot Marvel on Marvel action (sex, that is), you’re going to be sorely disappointed. How you could be disappointed after seeing that cover is a mystery to me, but I’m sure it’s possible. What you have here is an anthology of loose tributes to various Marvel characters and artists. There’s Pat Lewis doing a Spiderman story involving J. Jonah Jameson and Magneto, Anne Moffa showing the day to day life of a few heroes, Ed Piskor depicting Ant-Man as a deranged Bill Nye the Science Guy, Tom Scioli doing possibly the best Kirby tribute ever (and I know that’s saying a lot, but the panels where the action is lost in the eyes of Ikarus are just too much), Mark Zingarelli doing one panel bursts about various characters (sampled below) and Paulette Poullet showing the dangers of Hulk hands vs. Thing hands. As is always the case with anthologies like this, unless you know the subject material a whole lot of this will be lost on you, but if you do know the material (and come on, if you’re reading this you probably know at least some of it) this is a thing of beauty. No real weak piece in the bunch, which is always the bane of the anthology. Oh, and it’s free, so if you can find any of these people at a con or send Ed an e-mail, there’s a decent chance that you could get this fairly easily.