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MONSTER ENGINE!

($6.00, Little Engine Studios)

Review by Mark Campos

Comics are transitioning away from the pamphlet format: the small squarebound book is the next big thing. And here is Monster Engine!, just such a thing, an anthology with full-color covers and nice paper and an ISDN number and all, featuring art by up-and-comers either located in or exiled from Texas. Since anthologies are always a crapshoot, the question is, is this worth your six dollars?

By the numbers: both "Dragon vs. Pumpkin" (Pedro Boyd) and "Art Is Dead" (Brian Canny, Toby Craig) are nicely written, but the art struggles to keep up. The reliable Peter S. Conrad's "Oh, That Dead Guy!" is an existential instant classic. Jim Rugg's adaptation of the book of Jonah is tidily done, contains some striking images, and wraps up neatly in four pages. "Inner Demon" by Dalton Webb shows his stylish, er, style, which in two years will be everywhere at once, I predict. "Bed Bugs" by Todd Webb (no relation) is Kochalka-ish, but it is unclear to me what happens at the end. And Tom Williams' "Goth Karaoke" is a rambling bar anecdote, not as interesting as the other stories but drawn in a more realistic style.

Worth it? Hex yeah.

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TREAD #6
by Greg Vondruska and Robert Young

($3.00 from Greg Vondruska / PO Box 273415 / Tampa, FL / 33688-3715 USA. Web: gregvondruska.com)

Review by Mark Campos

This installment of Greg's solo title contains strong writing, with art to match, wrapped in a serpentine cover. The first story, written by Robert Young, is a Paul Bowles-esque tale of a snake charmer and the abuses he suffers from snakes and men. "You Waited At The Airport" describes a traveler's sense of dislocation during a visit to New York. "Insomniacs and Cockroaches", the first installment of a serial, is incomplete but oddly satisfying, with Glenn Head-like entymological hallucinations. Tread is literate and unique. Grab it, just behind the head there so it doesn't bite you.

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< zine:mom >

MOTHEREVOLUTION #2 (Winter 2004)

($2.00 or trade from Jen)

Reviewed by Christine Douville

Motherevolution is mostly a collection of testimonies from young mothers on mothering and identity, the girlmom online community, learning to breastfeed, etc. There are also two poems in this issue, but what I prefered reading was the creative non-fiction. There are also two great photographs – more of these, please! The visual aspect of this mama zine deserves to be developed a bit. Jen is looking for submissions, so send her your mama art!

I enjoyed reading this zine, but I would probably have enjoyed it more if there had been some kind of editorial or intro… something to link the submissions together. Overall, a nice zine; if you're a young mother who's just given birth to your first baby, this will probably make you feel better and less isolated during the baby blues period.

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THE DIE Vol. 2, #3
edited by Joe Smith

(free, but be kind and send stamps or a couple bucks to Joe Smith / Red Roach Press / PO Box 764 / College Park, MD / 20740 USA. Web: redroachpress.tripod.com)

The Die consistently provides worthwhile reading and food for thought, much of it revolving around philosophy and the State of the Union. It's certainly a bit heady at times (well, for me, anyway) but that's part of what makes it a valuable tool for education. Personal philosophy, for instance, is something that interests me a great deal, yet I've never studied philosophy itself to any real extent. The Die strongly supports independent thinking.

The lead article in this issue examines the meanings of self-sufficiency and self-reliance (particularly as Emerson defined it), how they differ and how they may overlap. The piece was inspired by a lawsuit, of all things, against Nabisco over Oreo cookies and this amuses me to no end. Also in the issue: news briefs relevant to zinesters and other literary types, a rundown of civil rights-related news (this section makes for a nice addition to the latest Zine World), several book reviews (more philosophy), several interesting letters and a couple pages of zine reviews.

The Die's main goal, essentially, is to make you think. I support and appreciate that mission and I think the zine accomplishes it.

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BODY OF GRACE
by Neil Ellis Orts

($6.00 from Neil Ellis Orts / 5401 Chimney Rock Rd. #950 / Houston, TX / 77081 USA. E-mail, Website)

Review by Sean Bieri

Body of Grace is an experiment in juxtapositions – not always a successful experiment, but this comic is unlike any I've seen and that's enough to get me to recommend it. Five stories run simultaneously through the book with panels from each clustered on the pages. Each story can be read straight through, ignoring the others, but the interesting thing is to read them all simultaneously and watch how they react with each other.

As the title suggests the stories all concern the human body and its connection to spiritual or existential matters. One is a highly modified version of Genesis. Another involves a woman inexplicably morphing into her lover's male best friend. In a third an aging dancer talks about how her art and body are changing together. A wordless fumetti-style strip is also included, and a series of figure sketches act as a sort of "bass line" to the accidental song made by the different storylines.

The music analogy is a good one – the storylines act almost like musicians riffing on a common theme but playing different songs. Individually the stories are more interesting than much small press fare, but juxtaposed they sometimes resonate, sometimes contrast, sometimes drift apart and sometimes fall apart. The experiment doesn't quite succeed, but the comic rewards repeated readings – something I wish I could say about more books, let alone small press comics.

If there's a complaint to make it's that Orts' figure drawing can be rather weak, especially for a book with the human body as its subject. But the art communicates well enough and what it says is well worth checking out.

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MIGHTY MITE: THE EARMITE
by Tony Millionaire

($6.95, Fantagraphics Books)

Review by Tom Spurgeon

A project like this one can be traced to the success of Millionaire’s Maakies and Sock Monkey series, from publishers Fantagraphics and Dark Horse, respectively. Originally appearing in mini-comic form, the deluxe children’s book-style edition of the still-tiny Mighty Mite: The Earmite offers up Millionaire’s patented mix of acerbic adult satire and storytelling modes common to children’s book illustrations. The particular twist here is a side-by-side storytelling method that provides parallel plotlines both of which relate to a central incident: the separation and eventual reuniting of a chimp character and his ear mite. Beyond the appeal of having a portion of that story told using lovely, flat color very different in tone than what the cartoonist employs on his Sock Monkey covers, the best thing about Mighty Mite is the casual treatment of time. One sequence seems like it should last a lot longer than the other, and when the two stories re-join at the end the reader is left to choose between a variety of fanciful reasons how this is possible: differences in the way the characters perceive events due to their relative size, perhaps, or simply authorial whim. The good news here is that if Millionaire is going to be one of those cartoonists whose publishers will make use of any and all past projects, his skill is so light-handed and easy on the eyes to make that kind of treatment frequently pay off.

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< zine:personal >



BIG PINCH WORLD #1

($2.00 "or fair trade" from Randy Osborne / PO Box 246 / Fox River Grove, IL / 60021 USA. E-mail)

If you've caught Randy's reviews here at Poopsheet then you know the boy can write. There's some difference, of course, between writing reviews and works of a more personal nature but I'm pleased to report that the zine is a success from this reader's perspective.

Perhaps the most engaging (and crushingly painful) piece is the first, an homage to his late father, with whom his relationship seems to have been filled with sadness and owed much to familial responsibility. A sample:

"Then my own divorce and wandering took me all over the West, to places Dad had been and places he hadn't. I didn't plan to retrace his footsteps. I didn't even know where his footsteps went. I just roamed, like he did, like men often do when they are heartbroken by failure and don't want to stay in one place long enough for it to show."

Following that are several pages of autobiographical vignettes and one short piece of fiction, as well as a few other entertaining tidbits. One thing I genuinely enjoyed about this zine is that I can really "hear" the author's voice. I've been listening to "This American Life" on public radio lately and it occurs to me that much of this zine would be perfect for that sort of treatment (which is, essentially, interesting stories read aloud with musical accompaniment). At any rate, I recommend Big Pinch World and look forward to more.

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