Cerebus The Newsletter #14 reviewed at Poopsheet.

Yep, it sho nuff is. Go over to Poopsheet to check it out and while you are there you should just go ahead and sign up as a member of the Poopsheet community. Every time a new person signs up a minicomic gets its wings. Go!

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Ditkomania 72 reviewed at Poopsheet.

I've posted a review of the Rob Imes edited zine over at the Poopsheet Foundation. Check it out.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Fluke 2009 Anthology

Fluke 2009 Anthology
Edited by J. Chris Campbell and Brad McGinty.
Contributor list.
80 page 7 x7" minicomic with screen printed cover and a saw shaped band with Decision Decider coin.
Published (and possibly on sale at) Wide Awake Press.

I'll preface this review by saying that some of my favorite comics folks including myself (I love my work) are in this book so yeah, you go right ahead and buy seven copies. It's a winner.
I'm ashamed of myself for not giving this book a proper review already. I talked about it in my Fluke wrap up post but I want to talk about it a little more before I throw it in the "already-reviewed-box". Plus, it is a definite contender from my best of 2009 list in the anthology category and I can't really put it on the list if I don't review it. (Well, I've done that before but I'm trying to be a better person.) Anywho...
First of all the book is fantastic looking. Frequent file under other readers know that I can't shut up about how great J. Chris Campbell's Wide Awake Press books look. If you want to know how to make a great looking minicomic, this is how. I love the size, the shape the paper color, the paper stock, the cover folds, the coin thingy, the saw blade thingy... it's just great. It even smells great. I keep expecting to hear that other small press publishers have hired J. Chris to design their books.
But enough about the fancy pants production, let's talk about the comics. One of the big reasons this anthology is a year's best contender is that it has both diversity and quality. Every piece is either well executed or entertaining and most of them are both. It has strong auto bio stuff, adventure stuff, comedy stuff and even some nice art comics. Jeremy Sorese has a really charming and beautifully inked story called The Brickhouse. Josh Latta provides a sample of Redskin Rashy which I already covered here. Brad McGinty has a beautifully drawn piece with lumberjacks and a giant. Patrick Dean and Rob Ullman are two of my favorite comics creators and the both deliver some nice stuff. Gregory Dickens provides a really neat semi abstract superhero thing that feels a bit like Ditko or Rick Veitch. Which is to say, very cool.
J. Chris Campbell's piece is a nice catch all for what I like in his comics. (And yeah, I swear to Murgatroyd I'm gonna cover all this minis before I keel over.) It has flawless design, wonky characters, goofy dialects and hilarious jokes but it is also delightfully morbid. It features a cowboy explaining to his pal that he's ready to die. "How about doing me a solid and pop a cap in the back of my head?" Comedy gold.
The piece that stuck with me the most is by Sarah Louise Wahrhaftig aka Sally Bloodbath. It is an auto bio piece about the oddities of the house she lives in. The drawing is minimal. Not as dashed off and busy as Jeffrey Brown's diary comic style or as clean as John Porcellino's but somewhere in between. While the drawing is minimal the cartooning chops are clear. There is not a wasted expression and you really know what the characters are feeling in each panel. Her narrative style is intricate for auto bio. She incorporates a lot of diagram, cut-away and scrapbook kind of ideas into the the narration and thought balloons. It's really clever and super efficient. I picked up another of Sarah's books at Fluke and I'm anxious to blab on and on about it too as soon as I find it in the "to-be-reviewed-box".
Oh, and my comic was awesome!

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Old Man Winter by J.T. Yost

Old Man Winter by J.T. Yost.

Published by Bird Cage Bottom Books.
56 page graphic novel. Black and white with color cover. $6.95.

This book by is published at least in part due to Yost earning the Xeric Award and is a one man anthology book collecting material Yost put out over the past few years. The book is the size and shape of your standard softcover graphic novel/trade paperback and is really well produced. I think the only drawback of this format is that a bookstore customer might see it and assume that it cost somewhere between $14.95 and $19.95 like Marvel and DC's vastly overpriced books. Hopefully the nice cover design will pull them in long enough for them to see that it is just $6.95. This book is well worth the price but not because of the professional production but because of the quality content. I would happily pay $7 for this material if it were just a hand folded minicomic.
I really like Yost's drawing. Just check out that page above. Fantastic right? I see a lot of my favorite guys in Yost's drawings. Joe Sacco, Tony Millionaire, Craig Thompson and just a dash of The Simpsons. His style varies from story to story and that's okay. I suspect that if we see Yost do a longer narrative we will see his drawing chops focused on one look but I like variety in the anthology book. It's a big part of the charm of an American Splendor book for me that each story will look different. One of the things I love about a collection like this that spans a few years is that you can see the artist experiment and try new things.
Yost's writing is also strong. The resounding strength that I see in all of the stories is his ability to humanize each and every character and to allow the characters to have their own voices. It's good stuff and one of the better or at least most memorable Xeric books I've had the pleasure to read.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith