2005-11-27 - 5:21 p.m.
MORE REVIEWS
The Unremarkable Tree Frog
by Joey Weiser, 2004
www.tragic-planet.com
Mini-comic
"Tree Frog" continues a genre of indy comics that will probably never die out, and there's probably no reason why it should: stories about boys who are awkward with girls. In this case, Tree Frog lives in a world where a lot of people appear to dress like superheroes. He falls for a girl, stalks her a little, observes her stealing then tries to ask her out.
It's cute, I guess. Who cares, though? Joey Weiser has very nice line work, great porportion and strong senses for both design and space. What's really going on here is he's cutting his chops on easy material before trying something more ambitious.
He's got the talent. This is just practice. Keep watching.
Chromosome Crossroads, Chapter 1: Premise
by Karl Kressbach, 2004
www.mentalnotepress.com
$3.50, comic.
Executive Summary: I'm not going to be reading any more of "Chromosome Crossroads." A) it's just this big mockery of rednecks and hillbillies. B)it's really gross. I don't really get into gross comics.
There's lots of incest humor. Or maybe not even always humor. Sort of commentary on incest culture. I really don't care.
Kressbach has very nice line work, and the best lettering I've seen since Dave Sim quit doing Cerebus. In fact, I see a lot of similarities between Kressbach's style and Sim's. Maybe Kressbach is just being a little more open about his fucked up worldview.
At times, it's hard to tell quite what's going on. For example, it's very difficult to tell what the hell Stupid Uncle Sam was trying to do in the tree when he fell out, but he clearly had something in mind.
Towards the end, the perspective gets completely screwed up. I *think* this is because it switched from an omniscient viewpoint to that of the littlest kid. Not really sure, though.
The characters also have really weird faces that aren't at all fun to look at, and Kressbach completely warps them and distorts them into what can only be described as mush.
Kressbach is talented, but I'll wait until he tries something else and approach it warily. This story will receive no additional attention from me.
Chimera
by Lydia Gregg
24pages, $2.50
www.mentalnotepress.com
No surprise that this one and the last one came from the same press. Ms. Gregg is studying medical illustration down at Johns Hopkins. She's got impressive draughtsmanship, much like her comrade-in-arms, above.
She also, however, has a comparable fixation with grossness. Most of this books covers a story told by a small mosquito called "Disease is a Sexy Lil Bitch."
It makes up for some of its grossout demerits by being pretty educational (if you wanted to know about the malaria germ mating in the mosquito's belly and how the Lancet Liver Fluke moves through a variety of poops. Yuk.
I generally don't like stories that involve defecation.
Another story in the volume, "The Pursuit of Happiness" seemed to be some sort of allegory or metaphor. I think maybe for God or the history of civilizations.
I didn't get it.
I remember meeting Lydia, though. She drew a diagram of a jaw in my notebook. She seemed like a very nice girl. I feel like she and Garth Ennis should hang out.
"Super Soap"
by Jim Coon
Eightball Graphics, Mini $1
www.jim8ball.com
A piece of superhero soap runs around a town preventing mayem, righting wrongs and making sure kids don't curse too much.
The drawings are very slick. Too slick. Too cartoony. The story was not much.
Or Else, No. 3
by Kevin Huizenga
Drawn & Quarterly
Mini-comic, $3.50
Kevin Huizenga is marked out to be the next big thing in our small world of comics. I really like his work. No one has his economy of line. However, he does too much damn slice-of-life. His slice of life work is a mark above most other people's, but his non-slice-of-life work is so much better.
I first went crazy for Huizenga when I saw a few pages of "Chopper vs. Some Random Super'ish Character." These were funny little picture fights where he showed how deftly, how easily he could play with the medium and how imaginatively he could use figures. I absolutely go crazy for these stories.
He gets a lot of pathos out of his slice-of-life stories, but they just don't delight me in the same way that his untrammeled imagination does.
Even the story he illustrates out of Franz Kafka's journal did more for me than, say, the story of the old folks on his street, "Al and Gertrude" and how one day they just moved away. It was artfully told, but I sort of felt like he could have used his time and enormous talent better.
Paping, No. 9
by John Mejias
2003, mini comic
This is an all screen printed book about how the author had his bike stolen and enlisted his elementary school students in finding it.
Not much of a story and they don't find the bike, but he made good use of the screen printing medium. It's cool to see this much screen printed work. If he ever gets really famous, this thing will be worth a shitload.
Megarad Force
by Travis Nichols
I Like Apple Juice Records
Mini
Continuing in the genre of very cute superteam with powers based on weird things and a proclivity just to hang out or play games when they aren't saving the world, "Megarad Force" is a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers parody that is made up of three funny animals with vegetable based powers.
It could have potentially been great if they would have turned left at a key moment in the story. Megarad Force appears to fight a monster spotted outside the city. The monster stops them and asks how they know he's evil. Megarad Force stops in their tracks, but then the monster laughs and starts destroying things.
Yawn. It would have been way better if the Monster would have done something surprising, like trying to convince them his mayhem had a purpose or to explain he was in the area to give a lecture or something. Not so.
In the end, it becomes the umpteenth cute story about a superteam that destroys most of a city while trying to save it.
We're all seen Team America guys, and they weren't the first to do it.
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