Mazed and Confused by Brad McGinty

Mazed and Confused by Brad McGinty

Black and white minicomic. 28 pages.  Card stock cover. 

Possibly on sale here for an unknown amount. (Maybe you should send him an email and let him know you want one.)

All you need to know about the story in this comic is that the hero goes off to kill a child-eating-minotaur but the hero and minotaur decide to put together a rock band instead. Oh, and they fight Zeus. 

Brad McGinty is a crazy person.  Now, that might be challenging for Brad but it's great for you and I dear reader.  We get to read his crazy comics.  On the Brad McGinty crazy scale this book is about a 9 out of 10.  Not the craziest thing I've seen him do but close.  This book is pretty high on the absurd-o-meter.  The minotaur flies on a machine made out of babies.  So yeah. Babies.  It sounds disturbing but Brad pulls it off as only he can.  Brad is one of the only guys I can think of that can hold together this kind of anything goes story madness.  In lesser hands it would just be too much.  But Brad's unrestrained bull in a china shop cartooning style takes you along on at such a break neck speed that you don't have time to stop and think about how mad it is.  In lesser hands a lot of this kind of humor would seem hateful and obscene. Here it is just joyful madness. 

And I'll be honest. I think I've read just about every panel of comics Brad has drawn. This in no way his most ambitious work.  I've seen him draw better, ink better and write better.  By his standards, this is probably a rush job.  But still, his cartooning chops are so good it does not matter.  He could dash one of these off over a cup of coffee and it still be one of the best comics you will read all year.

Brad's craft is as strong as any one's but that is not the point of his comics.  It's not craft for craft's sake.  It's comics for comics sake. Simply put, Brad McGinty is really really good at making comics. The storytelling, the pacing, the character design, the backgrounds, the drawing, the inking, the dialog, the format, the lettering... all that junk just seems to fall into place naturally for him. Cartooning is a language but he does not just speak it, he sings it, rocks it and yodels it.  So, if you have any money, please give some of it to Brad McGinty and ask him to keep making comics for me.  Oh, I meant us,  Keep making comics for us.  That's right.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith