Friday, September 03, 2004
< resource >
XEROGRAPHY DEBT #14
edited by Davida Gypsy Breier
($3.00 from Davida Gypsy Breier / PO Box 963 / Havre de Grace, MD / 21078 USA. Web: www.leekinginc.com)
Review by Jessica Bublitz
Almost every zine reader has picked up at least one issue of Maximumrocknroll and I think the best way to describe XD is to compare/contrast the style between the the two.
The number of zine reviews is much larger in XD because that's its main focus. There are also some "perzine tendencies" with the inclusion of columns and announcements focused on the zine world and also a little info on each of the contributing writers. MRR doesn't include a look into the writers but does
include disparate columns on a mishmash of topics and more review items including music, so that could be positive or negative for many readers. The most important contrast is the agenda in reviewing. Where MRR's reviews are generally jaded and slam the new but praise the established, XD is very informative as to what the zine really contains plus its style. The reviewers also give constructive criticism when it applies and that's important for the zines' creators and helps the readers make informed decisions.
Most review zines cater to a certain type such as activist or political, music, personal, etc. but there is a good variety and openness to the submissions and the reviewers in XD. This issue features 20 reviewers and each takes on 5 to 17 zines! Also, some zines are reviewed by different people to give them another view, which is a great idea. So while some are reluctant to spend $3.00, there are more than enough honest recommendations for all your favorite genres.
I really couldn't find something I didn't like about XD. This is the only publication I can think of where the agendas of hippies, punks, literary buffs, artists, and everyone in between are seen with open minds. This is a great resource that I'd recommend for those starting to check zines out for the first time and of course anyone that wants to find something new to read.
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< comics/x >
BUD AND THE NEXT MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
by Pam Bliss
($1.25 ppd from Pam Bliss / PO Box 304 / Valparaiso, IN / 46384 USA. Web: www.paradisevalleycomics.com)
Review by Mark Campos
Drawn as part of the recent 24-Hour Comics Challenge. I took part in that, though my story turned out a lot less elegantly than Pam's. Wait .. there's only 18 pages here! Somebody fetch Scott McCloud!
No matter, it's a great story with enchanting art, a truly spooky Mysterious Stranger, and gentle fun for all. The little quarter-letter mini-comic is not dead!
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Thursday, September 02, 2004
< comics/x >
HAW! A Tribute to Sir Ivan Brunetti
by various
(Matthew Seiden)
Review by Rick Bradford
What a great idea this is. I love this kind of thing, especially when it actually makes it to print. Haw! is a collection of convention drawings (SPX 2003 & APE 2004, I believe) based on Ivan Brunetti gag cartoons from his Fantagraphics collection of the same name. A few of the contributions are almost copies of the originals, but most are drawn in the contributing artist's own style (and a few of those are complete reinterpretations). Also, the quality of the drawings varies from page to page but such is the nature of work done amidst a busy convention scene. My favorites are from Kevin Huizenga, Scott Morse (who improves upon the original), Brian Ralph, Ron Regé and Johnny Ryan, but there's plenty more fun by Lauren Weinstein, Souther Salazar, Tom Devlin, Ben Catmull, Jef Czekaj, Sam Henderson and still many more. It's certainly a unique project and I recommend it wholeheartedly. I wish more people would publish their themed sketchbooks and such.
However, by running this review I've been slightly misleading. Unfortunately, my understanding is that this publication isn't actually for sale. [ Update: You can't get it in print form, but you can read it online here. Go!]
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< comics/x >
UBU #1
edited by Hans Nissen
($5.00 US/5.00 € from Hans Nissen / Rautatienk. 1 B 9 / 15100 Lahti / FINLAND. E-mail. Also available in the Poopsheet Shop)
Review by Matt Dembicki
The art in Ubu #1 is wonderfully rendered in an alternative European style, but the stories are this Finnish anthology's downfall. To be honest, I'm not sure if the stories are just nearly incomprehensible or if they are poorly translated. Editor Hans Nissen provides a translation of the text in a small supplement, but it's difficult to follow as you are constantly looking at the art, then at the translation, and then at the art again. In addition, the supplement doesn't note which text goes with which pages. I frequently found myself reading the text for a different story than I was looking at. The translation itself seemed a bit rough at times, often making it unclear what was happening in the stories. But, again, the art is superb and the production is top notch. And you also get a nice Jim Woodring story with no text, so there's nothing lost in translation!
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Wednesday, September 01, 2004
< music >
BANDOPPLER #3
edited by Chris Estey
($4.50, www.bandoppler.com)
Review by Tim O'Neil
This is an impressive magazine. Squarebound, about 8" x 9", with just over eighty pages of material, Bandoppler represents the missing link between semi-professional zine and glossy music mag. There is a lot of hard work and good writing - as well as some so-so writing, some indulgent humor and some bad cartooning – between these two cardstock covers. It would be a bargain at twice the price.
Magazines like these serve as a showcase for all sorts of really cool indie music ads. There are pages and pages of well-designed ads for bands you’ve never heard of or have only read about, with their album covers featured in beautiful black and white. You will never hear most of these bands, and yet to see their album covers is to be reassured that a generation of art-and-design school graduates have indeed found something creative to do in the long evenings following their shifts at Wendy’s. Does it seem disingenuous to be gushing about the ads? It isn’t: these indie labels create some gorgeous print ads, and if you don’t read The Wire, this might be the only time you will ever see an ad for Lujo Records. It looks like someone put a lot of time and effort into it, and it is beautiful.
There are lengthy features on They Might Be Giants and Richard Hell, with shorter features on Nick Cave, Dave Edwards and Craig Thompson (of Blankets fame), just to name a few. The quality of the writing ranges from better-than- Spin (the Thompson and TMBG profiles) to lukewarm blog leftovers (many of the smaller profiles), but there’s an infectious enthusiasm throughout.
When Bandoppler hits, it hits hard. I thought that after all these years there really was nothing new I could possibly read on the subject of They Might Be Giants, and yet Chris Estey and Jason Dodd managed to construct a compulsively readable piece on the band. By focusing on the creation of the Gigantic documentary, Estey and Dodd managed to explore a surprisingly rich facet of the group’s strange and eminently articulate career. Similarly, Dodd’s profile of Craig Thompson was very interesting. It focused on the influence of evangelical Christianity on Thompson’s art, and a canny understanding of this oft-misinterpreted and poisonously insular community made for a revealing piece.
The good in Bandoppler definitely outweighs the bad. The comic strips and spot illustrations aren’t much to write home about. The seemingly endless parade of profiles on obscure bands are grist for the mill with this type of zine, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much. As a music critic myself, I certainly understand the deadening dullness of an endless stream of new bands, but that doesn’t mean that someone won’t get really hyped by reading about Denali or Ion Dissonance.
Zines are designed to let people who are enthusiastic about certain things rant and rave to their heart’s content. This is obviously both a blessing and a curse. Thankfully, Bandoppler's blessings are copious indeed, as there’s enough quality writing to make you forget about the poor.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
< comics/x >
JENNIFER DAYDREAMER: ANNA & EVA
by Jennifer Daydreamer
(80 pages, $4.95, from Top Shelf Productions)
Reviewed by Mike Hunter
The tone and meandering style – in art and narrative – of Jennifer Daydreamer's Anna & Eva makes for a unique comics experience. Guided by a narrator, the flow broken by occasional section titles such as "How Anna Met Her Husband", or digressions such as "Turtle! Story," we wander through the "...fantasy world of Encephalon, a grey wasteland, where costumed people run around in time and space...", as Daydreamer's site notes.
The main setting, as it were, of Anna & Eva is the Circus Zazel, poetically introduced in a long-shot of breeze-stirred tents, but thereafter shown, oddly, with roomy building interiors, though the usual circus accommodations are tents and cramped trailers. While fairy-tale-like in mood (the creator's site contains a hommage to Jung, and discussion of his concept of archetypes, crucial figures in fairy tales), this comic's narrative is hazy, drifting here and there, reaching no defined goal but giving a series of "tastes," quite unlike the vivid and solidly wrought stories in fairy tales. Instead, with the seeming arbitrariness of a dream, we jump settings, characters realistic and not so wandering in and out. Anna (proprietor of the circus) and her husband-to-be barely speak to each other in the course of this book, the consummation of their relationship, as with the situations and fates of most (including a female healer wandering barefoot through a forest, a six-fingered, Mephistophelesian swindler) introduced herein, to be perhaps left for a future volume to develop.
Daydreamer's a gifted illustrator - see www.jenniferdaydreamer.com for her work - and occasionally her renderings in this comic are more fully developed, particularly some faces, drawn with subtlety and sensitivity. Yet most of the art is childlike in its crude simplicity, figures and settings naively primitive, though endowed with charm for all their awkwardness. The story is the polar opposite of an infinitely detailed, watch-mechanism-tight Alan Moore script: allusive, barely-there, yet talent and a refreshingly different creative voice are unmistakably evident. For those who don't mind a lack of substance (the interesting bits and pieces never coalesce) or satisfyingly concluded narrative, Anna & Eva certainly has delicate mood and gracefulness to spare.
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Monday, August 30, 2004
< comics/x >
JESSICA SEES RED
by Karl Wills
($4.00 from Karl Wills / PO Box 105 278 / Auckland / NEW ZEALAND 1030. Web: www.comicbookfactory.net)
Review by Rick Bradford
The "Jessica of the Schoolyard" series is set in what appears to be a private school and stars Jessica, a very bad girl. She's so bad, in fact, that even when she's good she's still bad. Case in point: In this installment, her attempt to protect a blind girl is to stuff her in her locker for safe keeping. At one panel per page, these Jessica minis are quick reads but that fact is fairly easy to overlook because the books are just so beautiful. The interiors are printed in lush, old school full-color, which is gorgeous in combination with Wills' clear-line style. And don't get me wrong, the stories are lots of fun; I just can't help but think it's going to be an even better read once they're collected at some point (which, granted, I'm only assuming will happen). At any rate, I recommend this series. There are 11 books thus far so do yourself a favor and check the website for more info (and enjoy some flash cartoons while you're there).
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< comics/x >
ONION HEAD MONSTER ATTACKS ANT CITY!
by Paul Friedrich
($2.00 from onionheadmonster.com)
Review by Mark Campos
This mild-mannered newsprint mini contains the best page that Paul has ever drawn: a melancholy phone call between two denizens of Ant City as Onion Head Monster and the Evil Sea Monkey battle in the distance: "The winner Attacks Ant City!" "This is not good." "No."
The rest of the book shows how Onion Head Monster follows through on his threat. If you've seen Paul's mindbent comics in Hellcar, you know this'll be a treat to read, and there's an ad for Evil Sea-Monkeys too. "Watch the Miracle of Life as it leaves your body! They might obey your commands!" Fun, fun, fun.
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