Friday, April 01, 2005
< comics/x >  SUBATOMICby Patrick Neighly and Jorge Heufemann (136pp book, $16.95, Mad Yak Press) Reviewed by Alan RankinThe first thing you notice about Subatomic is its high production values. The eye-catching cover design, with raised lines converging on the central figure, and the full-color interior art, on slick page stock, combine to put this self-published project in a category with anything by the major comics publishers. The story: Mark belongs to a top-secret agency that monitors American citizens – reading their mail, listening to their phone conversations, watching them from an aerial base high in the sky. Although he’s been raised from birth to do this, Mark starts to question the morality of his job. The one thing his superiors cannot control is independent thought; despite their programming, he begins plotting his escape to an everyday America he has never known. The tale contains familiar elements of The Fugitive, The Prisoner, and Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, along with the more repressive aspects of the current presidential administration. Mark’s tale raises questions about whether domestic security agencies are really after safety or just control. These topics have been explored in many another story, but of course they are always important to consider, and never more so than now. On a more subtle level, Subatomic shows how such an agency disrupts the lives of ordinary Americans - who are just trying to do their jobs and get by - all for the sake of its own agenda. The art by Jorge Heufemann is at a professional level, and colorist Anne Marie Horne receives top billing (as Lynn Varley does in Frank Miller’s books). Writer Patrick Neighly is also the publisher of Subatomic, and while his writing is fine, I’m more inclined to praise his skills as a publisher. With the high quality of its production values, Subatomic is a triumph of the self-publishing art, and gives the many creative folks who are producing their own work a new standard to aspire to.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
Thursday, March 31, 2005
< comics/x >  CHAOS #19 & 20 by Dave Gilbert ( members.cox.net/usurptoe) Reviewed by Mark CamposDavey Oil, project coordinator at Seattle's Zine Archive & Publishing Project ( ZAPP) sighed a little when he noticed the art in these comics had that greyscale dotting around the line art – the art had been scanned before printing. The romance of copier and glue has given way to the scanner and the laserprinter. Which is significant, because if you changed the topical references, changed the caricature of the President from Bush to Reagan, these pages would not have seemed out of place in, say, one of George DiCaprio's minicomics of the Eighties – it's a style that has always been around, and one day we'll be reading this sort of story via micro-optic methane laser. Broad political satire, at its best drawn by Fly and Peter Kuper and at its worst by every kid who drew Bush in a Nazi military uniform with pointy teeth. The balance of these pages are concerned with Chuckles, an evil clown who gets declared an Iraq war hero or something and goes on Jay Leno's show. (George's son Leonardo makes an appearance.) The anarchic Chuckles revels in post-Milk and Cheese mayhem but his adventures are too talky for my tastes. "To Kill a Slot Jockey" and "Titty Vision" (God help me) were pretty funny though. I read this through once, then off it went to the ZAPP Library, where future scholars of the craft of zining will find it if they want to.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
< comics/x >  THE HIP MORTICIAN #1 & 2 by Mark Plaid (50¢ each from Mark Plaid / Ghoulstomper / PO Box 8793 / Toledo, OH / 43623 USA. E-mail) Reviewed by Rick BradfordSee, he's a mortician but he's also a beatnik. Oh, and Jewish. He likes his heroin and gets fired in the first issue for sending a corpse to his funeral without pants (he's a necrophiliac as well). Goofy stuff. I like that logo though.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
< comics/x >   A FEW PERFECT HOURS (AND OTHER STORIES FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA & CENTRAL EUROPE)by Josh Neufeld BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO by Rick Smith ($12.95 and $14.95, respectively; Alternative Comics, Josh Neufeld, Rick Smith) Reviewed by Tim O'NeilThe travel narrative holds a place of honor and distinction in the history of literature, not only as a forerunner of the modern novel but as a significant historical phenomena in its own right. Travel stories, regardless of their factual content (or lack thereof), have long been one of the primary vehicles by which distant cultures and countries have communicated. If the immediacy of their appeal has lessened somewhat in an era of instantaneous communication and international travel, they still retain the unique potential to accomodate cultural rapprochement through a more lengthy and thoughtful explication of mores than is allowed by most abreviated forms of modern communication. The fact that this venerable genre is gaining traction in the field of comics is yet another signal that the medium is slowly but surely reaching the kind of artistic maturity that has been long heralded but less often fulfilled. In theory, graphic storytelling would seem a perfect vehicle for the exploration of alien cultures, but in practice the somewhat self-obsessed nature of alternative cartooning imposes its own restrictions on the degree of empathetic rapport made possible. Neither A Few Perfect Hours or Baraka and Black Magic in Morocco are perfect works. The latter is actually a poor travelogue, and while the former is much stronger it is still flawed. The problem with both is the extent to which the cartoonists' personal perceptions inhibit their expression. I have to wonder how much of my reaction to Baraka is influenced by the fact that Rick Smith is a very poor cartoonist. His grasp of spacial relations is not good, and illustrations of distinctive architectural and geographical attributes – so vital to the travelogue in prose or pictures – are often indistinct and vague. His figures are loose and inconsistent, with indistinct proportions and constantly changing facial features. The book looks a bit like what I imagine Chester Brown aping 1940s-era Jack Kirby would seem like. But the drawings are only a part of why the book is ultimately unfulfilling. There are many pitfalls which the modern travelogue would do best to avoid, and the most prevalent one would be the fallacy of presenting one's reaction to a foreign culture as the actual content of said culture. Smith's perceptions of Morocco are monotonously paranoid and unflattering, with brief flashes of perspicacity placed throughout at random intervals. Smith seems like the living embodiment of a jaded and cynical American tourist – which is probably an unfair assessment, but it is definitely borne out by his unconscious insistence on chronicling every scrap of his own ennui and misapprehension, along with those of his wife and the unsavory fellow tourists they meet on their travels. Empathy is hardly required, but the opacity with which Smith portrays the cultures he visits is ugly. A Few Perfect Hours presents a more balanced, and therefore more interesting view of the traveler's experience. Josh Neufeld and his wife Sari Wilson both come off as eminently likeable people throughout the course of their travels. While again this kind of empathy is hardly necessary, the prospect of spending 100 pages with a pair of assholes as tour guides makes you appreciate their amiability all the more, especially after having finished Baraka and Black Magic. I didn't recall seeing Neufeld's work before this, but a quick examination of the author's bio tells me that he illustrated the Titans of Finance one-shot from a couple years back, a book which I vaguely remember enjoying before filing away and forgetting. His work is more memorable here, and just over the course of these hundred pages the reader can detect a marked improvement in his style. There are very few artists working today in black and white who truly appreciate the art of well-spotted grey-tones, and the later stories in the book highlight Neufeld's clear growth in using greys and sparse blacks to create effective depth-of-field in a two-dimensional panel. Like Baraka, A Few Perfect Hours is as much memoir as travelogue, with all that that implies. The emphasis on the author's own experiences gives the reader an accessable focal point throughout the course of the adventures, but this is a two-edged sword. Although any travelogue is essentially another culture filtered through a separate set of eyes, the constant presence of Josh and Sari in the panels and throughout their adventures keeps the focus squarely on the travelers' perceptions. This is similar, albeit nowhere near as egregious an example of the same kind of fallacy that made Baraka such a confusing book. But does it matter? Neufeld doesn't try to hide the fact that his experiences and adventures are the focus of the book, and not any kind of authorial remove. It is an effective tool except, well, when it isn't, which is when the profound gulf between disparate cultures stymies Neufeld's ability to adequately process and communicate his thoughts. There are a number of moments throughout the book where you wish that Neufeld could just step aside and allow us to observe the proceedings without the benefit of his observations, but that never really happens. Still, there is no doubt that Neufeld has created a distinctive and memorable work. The most impressive facet is the way that the book, constructed out of eight short sketches and a handful of smaller features, builds in scope and intensity. More than merely a collection of stories, we see Neufeld's artistic temperament and his perceptions grow apace throughout his travels. By the time we reach the book's final story, "Cremations, Cubicles & Cant", he has mastered the mixture of travelogue, autobiography and personal commentary which you realize he had been perfecting for the entire volume. It's the best story in the book, a multi-layered narrative that masterfully balances multiple time frames and personal reminiscenses. Neufeld's travels finally allow him meaningful insight into the traditions and ceremonies of his own culture and milieu. Although the ending might seem mawkish to some, the note of sentimentality is well-earned, building naturally from subtle bits of characterization peppered throughout the previous hundred pages.
[ Link to this review ]
(3) comments
< comics/x >  SMILEby Raina Telgemeier ($1.00 from Raina Telgemeier; read the ongoing story at www.girlamatic.com) Reviewed by Mark CamposA short and painful autobio tale from the great Raina Telgemeier. A teenaged Raina lives through two incidents involving her teeth, and even the soothing art can't blunt the wince when the worst happens. Not recommended for the tooth-sensitive, but the rest of you should check it out.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
Monday, March 28, 2005
< comics/x >  SMUT PEDDLER #2 edited by Trisha Sebastian, Johanna Draper Carlson and Carla Speed McNeil (52pp comic, $5.00 from the individual Saucy Goose Press contributors. Adults Only) Reviewed by Alan RankinThese days, with the success of Eros Comics and its imitators, it’s easy to find sex comics that explore every possible quirk, fetish and preference, in darned near gynecological detail. But comics that combine explicit sex with a sharp sense of humor are a rarer breed. Phil Foglio’s Xxxenophile is the leader in this regard, adding a fantasy or sci-fi element to his whimsical tales of hardcore amour. By contrast, Trisha Sebastian’s Smut Peddler is firmly rooted in the real world – some of the stories in ish 2 are apparently based on true encounters. But the many writers and artists involved match Foglio’s wicked sense of fun, as well as his juicy aesthetic. I have to extend further kudos to Sebastian for including a wide spectrum of sexuality: you’ll find committed couples and group gropes; public fantasies and phone sex; gay, lesbian and bi couplings; cross-dressing and body-painting; svelte model-types and full-figured real women. There’s even a story about plant sex...unless I’m wrong, even Eros hasn’t explored that territory. As with any good anthology, there’s a wide variety of art and story styles. My personal favorites: The beautifully detailed “clear line” of Noppie’s “Ermine Cote.” The elegant metaphor and lustful fun of Nicholas Burns’ “Arctic.” (Especially his focus on the clitoris, something men in general are often accused of ignoring.) Sean Bieri’s “Apres le Monocle” reminds me strongly of erotica author Anais Nin, and his centerfold, a naughty nude Twister game, makes good use of the comic’s flip-book format. Burns’ cover is not only hilariously suggestive, it’s a clever pun on the book’s title. I also like Sebastian’s editorial emphasis on the heart of human sexuality. Nearly every story focuses on an established relationship in one way or another, as opposed to the anonymous one-night-shags that populate the Eros books. It’s pretty subtle, and never mushy: you come away from each tale with the impression that these people not only like having sex – they like each other. Adding that human element elevates this above so much of the other hardcore material that’s available – comics or otherwise.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
< comics/x >  VITTLE CHINby Max Clotfelter ( www.maxclotfelter.com. Also available at the Poopsheet Shop) Reviewed by Mark CamposHorrible looking, boozed-up losers infest this minicomic. "Rough" and "trash" are two of the three words that reoccur frequently here (the third begins with an F), and adequately describe the denizens of this American blind alley. Max's ugly style (I should call it "O-gly Style", it's O-gly) frames these mutants and drunks in art that's actually pleasing to look at: careful crosshatching, solid character design – and though Fate knocks 'em down repeatedly, you find yourself rooting for his cast of wasted hicks, cracked-up Lotto queens, overweight high school girls, and Hal, a country rat with a magic banjo. This is a good place to jump into the Clotfelter Experience.
[ Link to this review ]
(0) comments
|
