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TENT CITY TALES #1
by Sam Costello, Shawn Decker and Steve Collins
($2.00,
Tent City Publishing)
Review by Matt Dembicki
Don’t expect to be wowed by the two stories in this digest-size comic. In fact, they’re pretty clichéd. The first, "Vegas," is about a fella who literally loses his chips at the tables in Las Vegas. He then wanders around the city people-watching and window-shopping. At the end, some passing girls comment on his "nice ass" and he smiles. All is fine with the world! "Vegas" depends heavily on the art to move the story – and it does so fairly well – but it definitely could’ve used more text; eleven of its 13 pages are wordless. Some more text, whether in captions or dialogue, would have made for a richer, more interesting story.
The second story, "Night Shift," centers around a poor couple trying to make ends meet. The husband takes up another job at night, and the writer tries to lead you to assume that it’s something unscrupulous. The writer tries too hard to make it appear the character is up to no good: He packs a gun, puts on gloves and a black ski hat. In fact, all this had the opposite effect: I knew he was probably going to a legitimate job, which is precisely what happened.
Measured against the writing, the art is much better, though it does have its weak spots. Drawing faces isn’t a strength of the artists. But the layout is actually quite good. There were some interesting angles and paneling, which made for a smooth read. The cover was nicely rendered, too. It definitely makes you curious about what’s inside.
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