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19 November 2008

Candy or Medicine Vol. 5

Edited by Josh Blair. 
Featuring Cayetano Valenzuela, Shannon Smith, Maggie Morrill, Ed Choy Moorman, Rob Moses, Sarah Orchard, Andrew Goldfarb, Daniel Olsen and Steve Rack.
16 black and white pages for $1.  Available here.

Well, first of all in the spirit of full disclosure, I am in this book so yeah, you should go buy it.  As far as my pages go, what is most interesting to me is how my pages look after I've sent them off to another editor.  Being a self-publisher myself I can analyze how well the other editor does putting the thing together based on the knowledge of how my pages looked originally.  I have to say that Blair does a great job and the pages I sent look better here than in my own minicomic.  
This is another solid one dollar comic and I'm really impressed that Blair has edited, assembled, printed and distributed five of these in a year or so.  This has been a really exciting year for minicomics anthologies seeing several put out multiple issues of good quality.  Pretty cool.
This issue has three lovely pages from Ed Moorman.  I really love his drawing and character design.  Somewhere between Dan Clowes and Sam Keith.  This story covers a good amount of distance for three pages but it felt unfinished.  I hope it is a part of something longer that I will eventually get to see.  
Andrew Goldfarb also delivers a nicely designed three pager and Maggie Morrill contributes a well drawn one page comic with a great punchline.  These two stoires represent the short comedy style that is pefect for this kind of small book.  
As always, I look forward to the next issue.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

2 comments:

Josh Blair said...

Shannon,

Thanks for the kind words. If you count the Free Comic Book Day Special, there have actually been six issues this past year. I owe it all to the contributors for their great contributions and their promptness. Also, I set out to publish a quarterly comic and I wanted to stick with it. My background is in journalism, so I need deadlines to live by.

Also, I'm glad you were happy how your comics turned out. I attribute that to the quality of paper I use. It's nothing fancy, just premium Staples brand paper that costs a bit more(about $14 for 500 sheets), but the difference is monumental. For instance, I considering printing the FCBD issue on plain paper to save costs, but when seeing Alberto Pessoa's "Coins" comic on regular paper compared to the nicer paper, there was a world of difference. The washes and gradients looked pixelated on the cheap paper. I'd definitely recommend anyone to pay a little more for quality paper.

RE: mini-comic anthologies, I agree. I've enjoyed (and participated in) Always Comix and Super Fantastic Comix. Also, Threat N Ink is a new one I've recently discovered. Plus there's NMSD, as you've featured here, Dan Taylor's Symphony in Ink and some I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Keep up the great work, Shannon,

Josh

Josh Blair said...

That should say "Super Fantastica Comix." And I forgot to mention the great stuff coming out of the Trees and Hills distro.