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MOXIE #1
(Produced by Fine Comix. E-mail
Mark Campos to inquire about availability)
Moxie is an anthology put out by the Seattle collective, Fine Comix, the goal of which is to show that the comics medium is indeed an artform. I believe I read another reviewer's opinion that – in reference to their stated objective – this volume contains nothing that hasn't been done before. That may well be true but I believe the point is that some of the more experimental work is new (or fairly new) for the cartoonists in question. Of course, that's only an assumption on my part as I haven't read a great deal of work from most of
Moxie's contributors.
That said, my absolute favorite work in here is the stuff by Dalton Webb, which includes a one-page strip and all four covers. There seems to be a heavy Dave Cooper influence but he's hardly a knock-off (note the front cover, which is a nice contrast to Webb's more cartoony interior work). I really enjoy looking at his drawings (his strip is lots of fun, too) and am interested in seeing more.
Second favorite? I don't know, there's a fair amount of interesting work. It could be Stefan Gruber's "All Sidewalks Say Something in Braille" (wacky cute brut). Or it could be Mark Campos' autobio piece about working in an animation gallery and learning a crazy-sounding Warner Brothers cartoon from his childhood actually does exist. Hell, for all I know my second favorite might be David Lasky's contributions (one a funny childhood story, the other a rendition of the first few verses of Genesis, the approach similar to this treatment of "The Raven" in
Orchid). But, hey, there's even more stuff by Tatiana Gill, Sarah Gavin, Richard Visick, Jessixa, Elijah Brubaker, Davey Oil and Scott Faulkner. I'm looking forward to this group's next effort.
[ Link to this review ]
