Ed Moorman's MAYFLIES & SLIDE GUITARS

Mayflies & Slide Guitars: Comics and Poems by Ed Moorman.

http://edsdeadbody.com/index.html

36 pages. Color cover with black and white interiors. 8 1/2 x 11" perfect bound.

On sale here for $5 plus $2 shipping.

I'll get straight to the point. This book is fantastic. Ed Moorman looks way too young on his website to have had any business making a book that looks this good. If I met him, I'd kick him in the knee for being so good then give him a hug for being so darn cute. The book is not perfect and there are some variations in the art quality but I find that it is that sort of thing that makes a self-anthology of a young artist so interesting. The book collects "comics and poems" that range from relationship metaphors that hint in the direction of Chris Ware to matter of fact auto bio to illustrated poems to one page gags. On the title page, Moorman calls the book a "collection of little windows of myself". For a collection of such varying styles you would expect the cartoonist to have some weak spots but he nails most all of it.

The book is quite large, magazine sized and printed on quality paper. If it had a Fantagraphics, Top Shelf or Alternative Comics seal on it you would not question it at all and would be excited at getting it for $5. (Well, $7 if you buy it online.) It actually reminds me quite a bit of Alternative's Rich Tommaso books of which I'm a big fan. The book had a great feel to it and I'm glad to own a copy. Moorman applies some very nice ink wash to some of the stories that probably would not look as nice at a smaller size or with cheaper printing. The book design, the cover design and each comic's design are very nice and the book as a whole has a melancholy yet soothing feel to it. I don't know what the title "Mayflies & Slide Guitars" means but the book fells just like the title sounds.

The Most Important Meal (pictured above) is a clever little slice of life story where the conversation about eggs and toast is a metaphor for the couple's relationship. The drawing is minimal but appropriate. for Kinji is another minimally drawn but heartfelt two page story on grieving. I wish my arms were branches to shelter you is a short auto bio comic that shows both the art and the narrative become more poetic. on touching is a dreamy stream of consciousness recollection of coming of age moments. Paleontologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences is essentially an illustrated poem. Desire is a one page gag strip but it would be more appropriate to call it a visual poem than a gag. All of the before mentioned comics except the one page Desire are framed by "a poem in the margins" called Song for Eleanora. This does a nice job of uniting what could seem to be uneven pieces from a young artist's portfolio into one consistent volume.
Moorman saves the strongest work from the book until the end. I don't know the order in which the collected stories were drawn but it is in the story Sing Into My Mouth where Moorman's art and storytelling seem the most mature. This ten page story is beautifully drawn and well told. It is a simple story of two young girls sneaking out at night at that last possible moment of youth where it is still okay to veil one's nakedness and insecurity behind a blanket of innocence. I love Moorman's character design here. It reminds me of some of Sam Kieth's more cartooney characters but the ink wash provides a different kind of warmth and depth. In just ten pages Moorman makes these characters seem real and leaves me wishing there were a hundred more pages of the story.
Obviously, I recommend this book. It is one of the favorite things I've received in the mail since starting file under other. I also recommend you visti Moorman's website. You could kill an hour or so in many less interesting ways than checking out the webcomics and art available there.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Vojtko and Krauss's BUG INFESTED COMICS #5

Midnight Fiction Presents Bug Infested Comics #5 by Bob Vojtko and Richard Krauss.
Published by Midnight Fiction.
http://www.midnightfiction.com/
7 pages (the cover makes 8). Full color cover and interior pages. 4 1/2 X 5 1/2".
Available here for $2.00.

Bug Infested Comics #5 is representative of a format of comics that are almost their own sub-genre of mini comics; small, pocket sized, short, cheap and equaling the comics equivalent of a business card. I like this type of comic and make them myself. They are very practical because they can be made on the cheap and that allows you to pass them out in much the same way you would pass out a business card. Like a business card, much of the point to the thing is to redirect the reader to the website but with the added bonus of a few jokes. As far as this type of comics go, this is one of the best looking examples I've seen. It is well designed and has full color inside and out. A very polished looking little book. Two bucks seems like a lot for a comic of this size but the shipping is free so I suppose, really, you are paying for the shipping. If one were to be purchasing a few other Midnight Fiction books I think the cost would balance out. Not to speak for them but I'd suspect they would sell this book at cons for closer to $1. Still, full color printing isn't the cheapest way to go. I myself would have gone the black and white route and sold the things for fifty cents to a dollar but, then again, my cheap foldies don't looks as good as this book.
As far as the jokes go in this particular comic, it's just not the type of thing I'm into. I have enjoyed my fair share to Mad and Cracked magazines and that style of humor but it is the longer pieces I get the most out of. All of the strips here are bug related gags so if you think bug jokes are funny, then this is the book you've been waiting for. Basically, if you laughed at the above posted cover image then you are this comic's target audience and should buy five copies.

Bug Infested Comics # 5 contains three page length strips from Richard Krauss and one four page comic from Bob Vojtko. Krauss demonstrates a very nice cartooning style consistent with what you would expect to find in Mad or the Nickelodeon magazines. His strips look really nice and are at least as funny as some of today's newspaper strips.

Vojtko's four page story is also a good looking comic. The style (sampled above) is very cute and would fit in nicely in any kids comics mag. The book itself is so short it is unrealistic for me to try and give you, dear reader, an accurate assessment of either creator but that is kind of the point of these things. The book provides just enough of a sample to lead me to the Midnight Fiction website where I find that Krauss has been involved in comix self-publishing since about the time I got my first Luke Skywalker action figure and that Vojtko's comics have appeared in Hustler Humor, Harvard Business Review, Nickelodeon Magazine, Highlights for Children, The Lutheran, and Woman's World. I've seen Midnight Fiction promoted around the internet and I appreciate what Krauss is doing with it. It seems to be founded in and dedicated to a real appreciation to this type of comedy comix without a lot of pretense. According to the about page, the site updates every Saturday and you can find new comics, reviews, blog entries etc. If humor is your thing, it is worth the visit. Business card comic, mission accomplished.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

T. Avery's DIRTHEADS 2 & 3

Dirtheads issues 2 and 3 by T. Avery.

http://www.cheatingatsolitaire.net/

Issue 2 is 19 pages. Black and white cover and interior. $1.00.

Issue 3 is 10 pages. Color cover and black and white interior. $2.00.

Both issues are 8 1/2" x 5 1/2".

Available for sale here.

From reading the comics and visiting T. Avery's website, I get the impression that the Dirtheads comics originate as webcomic strips and are then collected into minicomics. As far as the minicomics go, it reads more like a TV sitcom than a comic strip. This is fine by me. In fact, I may be this comic series' target audience. I love sitcoms. Not so much the insert-stand-up-comedian-into-suburban-family-life kind of sitcoms but the sitcoms where the characters-are-in-a-situation-that-is-comedic kind of sitcom. The situation is pretty simple and not entirely original but it is something I can relate to; pseudo intellectual guys that are too old for grad school and bong hits spend most of their time pondering their failed relationships and failed careers instead of, you know, getting a life. At around age 24, I got a life, but if I hadn't, I fear I would be this comic. One of the characters even shares the same financially worthless major that I had. (The website even has several strips on bookselling. Something I did for over six years. And since I'm in the linking mood, the world needs more Doom Patrol fan art. Can't get enough Doom Patrol fan art.)

Issue 2 is presented in faux newspaper style like the Onion. The faux headline reads "Area Man Meets Area Woman". It is that kind of mundane cliche life around which the comedy is based. I find cliche's fascinating because they are usually based in the fact that everyone one makes the same clumsy mistakes in life. When executed well, like Avery's riff on picking up a girl in a cafe, the cliches can be pretty funny. But, like even some of the best TV sitcoms, not all of the jokes are hits. Some of the slackers-on-the-couch dialog scenes are a bit forced and obvious but the characters are likable enough to carry it to the last panel's punchline. The comic's ending stays in the faux newspaper style with a clever comics version of an op/ed piece.

The third issue of Dirtheads has a color cover but a bit less substance. There is a funny story about getting a haircut for a job interview and another about the woes of a single stoner with three masters and a doctorate on the way. The strips I like the best are those where the slackers actually interact with women but this issue has less of that than issue 2.

Both in webcomic and minicomic form, Avery's pacing and comic timing are strong. It may be just a side effect of collecting strips together as a comic but the strips work as short little scenes and the beats hit just right. Like many decent sitcoms, Avery alternates between groups of characters quickly without lingering too far past each scene's punchline. As I said in my review of Rappaccini's Daughter, I really like the way Avery draws faces and it works well for this study in the comedy of the mundane. It may be hard for me to be objective because, as I said earlier, I may very well be this comic's target audience, but I would be glad to see many more episodes, err, issues of this series.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

T. Avery's RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter by T. Avery.

http://www.cheatingatsolitaire.net/

23 pages. 8 1/2" x 5 1/2". Black and white cover and interior.

$1 available here.

Before I get into the merits of T. Avery's comics adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, Rappaccini's Daughter, I want to take a paragraph or so to talk about the mini comic as object/product/thing etc. This comic is produced in what I think of as the standard minicomic style. Black and white copies on 8 /12 by 11" standard copy paper folded in half add two staples and bingo bango you got comics. Most of your better copy stores have machines where you can just use the booklet option to knock these kind of minis out pretty quickly. You would think that at this point all Kinkos machines would just have a minicomic/zine button on them but alas, Kinkos seems to have gone rapidly down the toilet since the second FeEx took over. But, that is a different discussion. Now, take a look at the cover image above and you will notice at the bottom a little ghost line the photocopier added to Avery's comic free of charge. Thanks copy machine! These little lines are hard to avoid unless you get a well maintained modern copier. Hah! Like that's going to happen. All of my first minis have those lines all over them. It's frustrating. What I (and I think many other people) have learned to do is to set the image size for the copies either toward the top or the bottom of the page and then use a paper cutter to wack off the part of the page that has the ghost line. It it s a little bit more work but it gets rid of those distracting lines.

Now, in regards to this specific minicomic by T. Avery, ignore everything I just said. I don't at all fault this minicomic for having those lines. Why not? Well take another look at the bottom of the cover and you will see that Avery sells this comic for $1.00. This is a well drawn 23 page comic for one buck. If I were at a con, I would buy as many of this type of comic as I could find for a dollar a piece as long as I still had dollars in my pocket. If Avery had taken the time to cut off the edges and get rid of extra white space and ghost lines and maybe added two or three colors to the cover would it look better? Yeah. However, at that point, he would probably have to charge $3 to $5 and at that point, I and/or the average customer starts getting more picky about which comic they will buy. As an owner and lover of minicomics, I appreciate nice multicolored precisely cut minis but as a poor customer, I'm all about page count per penny count.

While I'm on the topic of the books looks, let me say this cover does have a nice design to it. The four squares of flowers and the font give it a literary kind of vibe well suited for the contents of the book.

As for the comic itself, Avery has taken on a petty impressive challenge here. He has adapted Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story Rappaccini's Daughter into a 23 page comic. I've never read the story so I can't speak to how true to the source he stayed but the book feels authentic. The settings, the costumes and the language certainly feel of their time. Speaking of the language, there is a lot of it. This is a dialog heavy comic. Avery uses a computer font for the lettering. I prefer hand lettering but I don't blame Avery for his choice here considering it probably would have taken longer to letter this comic by hand than it did to draw it. The dialog is a little hard to read at the size it is printed. I see this a lot in minicomics where the artist draws in a standard 7 to 9 panel layout that would look fine in a standard pamphlet comic but it gets a little scrunched when reduced to minicomic size. If the pages were broken up to page 4 to 6 panels per page you could enlarge the image and make it easier to read. Again, I'm not going to fault Avery here because, less panels per page in this case would double the page count, possibly double the price and possibly loose cheap customers like me. It is a delicate balance trying to create comics in the way that is most comfortable for the artist and at the same time take into consideration the format in which it will be printed.

Avery's art holds up better than the lettering in this comic. I really like the way Avery draws and his character design. It leans toward the traditional illustration school of cartooning but it also surreal. Kind of like Ron Lim meets Peter Chung. The linework on Avery's character's faces is very interesting to me. The thick rendering of the lips and eyes makes it feel like the characters are wearing masks. This is very appropriate for the drama and deception in Hawthorne's story. Avery also puts a lot of detail into the costumes, settings and backgrounds. This creates a claustrophobic feel in each panel which is consistent with the story's theme's of the inescapability of one's desires.

In short, this is a well drawn adaptation of an interesting story by Nathaniel Hawthorne and it's only a dollar. You can't really ask for more so let me repeat myself again and make clear that my criticisms of the production are really only there because this is a minicomic blog and I wanted to take some space to talk about some common things I see in minicomics. Not at all to imply that this is a common minicomic. I liked it a lot.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

EDIT 03/22: T. Avery was polite enough to mention (without pointing fingers and laughing at me) that his lettering is indeed by hand. Dear readers, I am a rube. I walk the halls of minicomic knowledge head held low in shame. I hope we can still be pals.

Hogan, Smith and Skarhus GOOD MINNESOTAN #1

Good Minnesotan Episode #1 featuring Meghan Smith, Raighne Hogan and Justin Skarhus.

Published by dot dot dot ink press.

http://good-minnesotan.blogspot.com/

good.minnesotan@gmail.com

27 pages. 8.5" x 7". Black, white and grey tone cover on "Elli Poo" paper. Black and white interior pages "printed on 100% post consumer recycled Wausau Papers".

$5.00 cover price. On sale here for $7.00.

From the last page of the comic: "Good Minnesotan is a comic/sequential art compendium. The focus of the collections will be experiments in story-telling through the printed form with an obvious keen look at comics all over the board. We give a hard push on the local crowd and those just cutting their teeth on the medium."

That is a pretty lofty manifesto for the first issue of a mini comic but the Good Minnesotan gang seem to be on track to pull it off. Any time a comic uses the word "compendium" you know you are in for some heady stuff. The dot dot dot ink press gang have put together a good looking book with an emphasis on visual design. Of the five stories presented in this collection only Revenge Fantasies (written by Justin Skarhus with art by Raighne Hogan) bears much resemblance to traditional comic book story telling and even it has a pretty avant garde visual style.

All of the art is ambitious featuring a lot of mixed media work with aggressive variations in tones.
Raighne Hogan's story Cookie demonstrates some strong character design but the story was a bit hard for me to follow. It felt more like a series of images from a music video than a comic.

Hogan has a lot of range though and seems to be unafraid of experimentation. My favorite art in the book is from his stories Teddy Bears and Time Travel and Portraitist (a sample of which is above). These pages remind me a lot of Dave McKean and of the work David Mack has been doing over the past few years. Each page existing as it's own art object but still communicating enough narrative to give it the feel of a good mystery or riddle unfolding with the turn of the page.

Hogan's pages alone are worth the price of admission as far as I'm concerned but Meghan Smith also provides a eerie yet charming little story that would fit right into Tim Burton's world. Smith's art is quite polished and would make for a great little creepy children's book. Smith also provides a great looking wrap around cover for the book but unfortunately my scanner is too small to capture the whole thing.

As a whole, I would say that the Good Minnesotan gang's visual strengths outweigh the storytelling at this point but it is only a first issue and as far as first issues go this one is a gem. It looks good and the "Elli Poo" paper feels good. The feel of the paper matters a lot to me when deciding which mini comics to buy at a convention or in those wonderful few shops that support minis. I'm also encouraged by the fact that this thing exists at all. I love the idea of a regional anthology. I love the idea of these talented folks getting together and making a book come to life. I hope they keep it up.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Brad McGinty's WYSTERIA

Wysteria issues 1 through 4 by Brad McGinty.

Published by Cute Girl Demographics.

5.5 x 7.5''. Color covers. Black and white interiors. Aprox. 24 pages each. $3 each.

http://www.bradmcginty.com/

The Wysteria (or Wisteria) plant can bee seen all over Snellville, Georgia, the former hometown of cartoonist and animator Brad McGinty (and the former home of Me McSelfty). It is a climbing and spreading plant and without the pretty purple/blue flowers, it would just be a bothersome weed. Apparently, the flowers of some vines are edible and can be used to make wine. However, some are toxic and if you eat them it will cause diarrhea, abdominal pain and vomiting. Wysteria is also the name of a street in Snellville. It also means something to the fans of some TV show but really, who watches TV?

Brad McGinty may have taken any or none of this into account when he came up with the idea to title this mini comics series Wysteria. I don't know. I never asked him. My first and only thoughts about the title were that wysteria is a whimsical kind of word and that I expected it to be a whimsical kind of comic. What I do know is that in the first few pages of the first issue the main character, a nameless anthropomorphic bird guy who I will take the liberty of calling Bradley because (a) Brad's name is Brad and (b) the bird guy looks exactly like this kid I went to grade school with who's last name was Bradley... whew, that's a long sentence. I'm winded already. Anywho, anthropomorphic bird guy, now called Bradley, begins his adventure by placing a flower on the side of the road on his way home. Is it a wysteria flower? I don't know. Maybe I'll ask Brad when I see him at Fluke. So, Bradley goes home and finds a note from his neighbor on his door. Bradley looks at his neighbor's door with scorn and proceeds to go this his own apartment. Bradley then plants himself in front of the tube, eats his dinner from a carry out bag and promptly has an attack of what appears to be abdominal pain and vomiting. Maybe some diarrhea too but Brad spares us the horror of seeing that drawing.

Bradley's life seems pretty miserable. There is an allusion to a pet that is no longer around. There is a stack of notes, presumably from the neighbor, that Bradley has neglected to do anything about. Bradley tries to go to bed but cannot sleep so he gives up on his solidarity and decides to pay his neighbor a visit. Bradley becomes even more disheveled when he notices that his neighbor has a flower just like the one he placed by the road earlier. Bradley is drawn to the plant and breathes in it's aroma. This triggers a near death sort of vision quest and thus the adventure begins.

Bradley suffers a grotesque death but sheds his skin and is reborn as a primal man/totem hybrid.



Over the first four issues of this series, our hero will embark on a fantastic journey through intestine/brain like TV monitor jungles, ancient ruins, exotic forests, ominous temples and pits of despair. It becomes a very primal kind of story. I don't mean that it is primal in a basic or simple way. The story is quite imaginative. What I mean is that Brad presents a very Jungian kind of primeval/archetypal world and tells the story, not in a minimal or simple way but in a pure and unburdened way.



One of the obvious devices Brad uses to create this purity is to abandon dialog.
The entire series is presented without words. I can't speak for Brad as to why he made this choice but I think the result is an emphasis on the symbolic nature of the storytelling. Silent comics can be a novelty and I often think their creators choose that path just to see if they are up to the challenge of telling a story without the crutch of narration. With Wysteria, Brad exceeds the challenge and I really can't imagine how dialog would enhance the comic. Brad is creating a world here that is an abstraction of reality allowing the reader to translate every scene and even every panel based on their own intuitions, free of being directed what to think by dialog or narration. The abstract world and the heaviness of the silence force a more intimate connection with the character and the story if for no other reason than that you are forced to think more about each panel's meaning than you would be if you had the context clues of text. Silent comics can be a challenge to follow but Wysteria has the right combination of pacing and dynamic art to keep you engaged.



The art is fantastic and is probably what has kept me reading and re-reading it. Brad has a huge range. Scenes range from the lushness of Disney's Snow White to the psychadelic madness of Zap era Robert Williams or R. Crumb. Brad's inks are bold and fluid but can also be appropriately abrasive during scenes of violence. There is a consistency in the characters and the world he creates here that you seldom find in mini comics.



At this point in the review, I will put on my arm chair psychologist's hat and analyze the themes that dominate this comic series during Bradley's odd vision quest. (Editor's note: The armchair psychologist's hat is an orange boller with a brown feather. It smells of pipe tobacco and does not exist.) The most obvious theme is birth and rebirth. This repeated metamorphosis in the series is often heralded by floral imagery. The relation between the flowers and sex or vaginal birth is about as subtle as a Georgia O'Keeffe painting so I didn't need the psychologist's hat to catch on to that. The theme I'm more interested in is the character's inclination toward isolation and self destruction. At the beginning of the story, it is obvious that Bradley is a loner. He has lost a pet at some point and there is sadness there and it is apparent he would rather avoid any potential future sadness by ignoring his neighbor. After his transformation into the totem thing and his entrance into the abstract vision quest world, Bradley befriends a lizard/bug creature but his defensive instincts cause him to lash out at the creature.



But this is a story about transformation and rebirth so Bradley gets chances to redeem himself. With each chance he becomes a better friend to the creatures around him. After several rebirths, Bradley eventually becomes a much more enlightened character even taking on noble and heroic qualities in his fight against a demon/wizard/priest character.


Not to turn all Joseph Campbell on you but I think this series works as a substantial study in storytelling itself. Brad has broken down the hero's quest in to its most essential archetypal elements. It is almost a story about storytelling itself. What is a story? The character/situation starts out one way and ends up another. The end. The character exists and then changes. Failure then redemption. Birth then rebirth. It make sense that our hero in Wysteria transforms into a sort of all-culture all-religion looking tribal mask totem creature because the story itself is about stripping away the charcter's flaws and reducing the character to his purest/primitive form while the storytelling is a study in the most essential basics of visual storytelling. The establishing visual and then the changed visual. And aganin to clarify, I'm not at all saying that the story or the storytelling are simple, on the contrary there is a lot to look at and think about here. I've read these comics several times and take something different from them each time. Purity is the word that most often comes to mind.

I'm told that Brad plans to complete this story with issue number six and I have no doubt that the entire story will eventually be collected as a graphic novel. Still, I suggest that every mini comic fan try and get their own copies of the individual issues. Each issue is a very attractive book on it's own. Brad uses a nice three color pallet for each cover. He uses color photocopying over nice paper stock to appropriate the look of a screen printed cover without the inconsistencies and messiness of screen printing. The cover design and art are very strong. I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite cover.

You won't find many mini comics or comics in general that look better or feel better in your hands than these books. Perfect size, attractive covers, nice bold printing on the interiors... Brad McGinty knows how to make mini comics. He also knows how to pack them with quality content. Issues one, two and four all include some great supplemental standalone comedy comics that showcase Brad's range. These comics are very different from the tone of the Wysteria story so I'm not sure if they would show up in an eventual Wysteria graphic novel. Either way, they add to the value of owning these as individual mini comics. (Issue one includes one of my favorite of Brad's stories, Millionaire Hobo in: Days of Future Cashed.)




Brad McGinty has made a lot of great mini comics in a short amount of time. I highly suggest you visit his site. I know the site is still semi-under construction so if you don't see a link to buy his comics, just send him an email. Brad is not only a cartoonist and comic maker but he is also an animator and regularly posts some very interesting behind the scenes samples of his many projects. It is definitely worth a look.


Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith