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3 CAR PILEUP #1 & 2
by various
($2.50 from
Matt Bors. Distributed through Cold Cut.
Mature Readers)
Reviews by Steve Keeter
#1
The first issue of
3 Car Pileup contains three well-illustrated strips by Matt Bors, Dan Custer, and Brian Koshak. Matt Bors effectively uses contrasting black and whites, and a nigh-realistic style in "Two's Company," a situation drama, in which two young women discuss relationships and things... which seems at first mundane, but then leads to a surprise ending. Dan Custer's "Forced Retirement" suffers from a lack of any story at all (a guy is laid off and then gets beat up – that's about it). The artwork is at the same time stiff and sylistic, interesting to look at. The finest renderings in the issue are by Lucas Rager, in the weird and whimsical walking-teddy-bear story, "Koala's Incredible Adventure". Kinda surreal... this little stuffed koala bear makes friends in the city, and sees both the goodness and the darkness therein. Lucas succeeds in making us want to see more, and more is promised, so we'll be looking forward to seeing future episodes in this series. Also included are a few of Matt's political cartoons, which are fine – and guaranteed to offend if your political stance differs from his (but that's the nature of politics, folks, so grow up.).
3 Car Pileup #1 is a solid debut comic, too bad they didn't include any ordering info in the book!
#2
Well, what happened? After such a promising debut with
3 Car Pileup #1, this second issue is a surprising disappointment. Not that it's a bad book, but it just doesn't live up to the promise. The second installment of Lucas Rager's Koala Bear series is a prime example: the characters get together and talk, there's a bit of poignancy, but then the story goes nowhere. And Rager's style changes to a darker, more muddied look that lacks the spark of the artwork in part one. Dan Custer contributes an overly long autobiographical piece in which the main character rants and complains (somewhat like Steve Ditko's oppressive Mr. A comic) about all sorts of stuff – consumer products, Christianity, US history – tipping us off to his liberal mindset early on and then pretty much wallowing in it for ten long pages. But Dan has an engaging, if somewhat slight, cartooning style that almost saves the strip... almost, but then certain panels, like Moses coming down from the mountain with the Commandments, seeing the Golden Calf, and then exclaiming "What the fuck?!" go beyond mere editorializing into gratuitous tastelessness and the strip doesn't really recover after that. Matt Bors fares better with his equally political "Just Another Coming of Age Story," which depicts a (real-life?) altercation between some flippant young punks and a "white trash" family at a swimming hole. In this one, the punks start and end a fight, but the message seems to be violence is bad, if it's someone else doing the threatening, but if it's done by us, it’s good... I mean, what else can one get out of this tale? The punks insult and terrorize this guy's family, the guy threatens them with a gun, and they destroy the guy's truck while he's away. I like Matt Bors' artstyle though; he expresses emotions well, even in a single panel of a guy's angrily staring eye. The best strip in the issue is "The Harvest" by Ed Waara and Brian Koschak, which is a comic adventure about these tiny little warrior guys, hiding out in blades of grass and trying to steal... candy from trick-or-treaters! I guess since this one avoids the politics, it stands out as more innocuous than the other strips, but there is another factor that makes this an excellent comic strip, namely the artwork. It's very boldly delineated, with some strong ink lines, and the figures seem to race along at a very fast pace, leading up to the effective final panel. So there are good moments in this issue, and it is hoped that #3 will offer a return to the form these talented creators are so capable of.
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