By Mary Karaplis/Mei Ktiny-vices.com
Late again? What's my excuse this time? Why, Mass Effect of course, the science fiction RPG from years ago. I needed to finish it! Needed! (And I actually did, I am going travelling for the rest of the summer in just a few days, so if I didn't finish it now I wouldn't finish it until September. And I was right at the end guys! I had to stay up until 4am to defeat the evil aliens and help the good aliens and...)
I can't even give this comic a bad review if I hated it (though I didn't), because the artist was nice enough to draw a token for Magic the Gathering for my friend and I when we were at the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival a while ago. Corporate ghost!
I think it involves some sort of talent to get three paragraphs and an image into a review before even saying anything about the thing you're reviewing. Well, maybe "talent" is the wrong word. Sometimes I wonder why anyone ever reads this blog...
Фиды
By Matt Aucoinroastmutton.blogspot.ca
This looks like it's going to be a week of comic anthologies! This time it's a solo effort as Aucoin presents a number of pinups and comics with no apparent theme. The opening piece Godman (the one with the mermaid) is subtitled "A Wild Romp Through a Messed Up Dreamland", and doesn't make a lot of sense as I think it might actually be based on a dream. The main character just goes from event to event with connections that don't make any sense, and really weird stuff being treated as totally normal. It's kind of strange, but then dreams often are.
Next there are a couple of "teen romance" comics. One of which is about someone who's kind of horrible, and one that is about someone you think is horrible up until the ending. I preferred the latter, as I'm not really a big fan of reading about people doing jerk-y things. There are a number of other comics, from seemingly true worm rescue stories, to a bizarre historical piece about US independence.
dumbzine.blogspot.com
Aw snap, I missed an update yesterday for the first time in a couple of months. And as I'm just starting to write this at 11:59 pm on Tuesday it looks like it's going to be two days late. Still! There will be three reviews this week. Promise : )
So why did I forget to update? Because of Magic: The Gathering. Yeah, super nerdy, but if you expected anything else from me I'm not sure if you've ever actually read this blog. Magic is super fun! And as I'm not interested in having "competitive" decks I can have totally terrible/ridiculous theme decks. My friend just sent a library-themed deck and it is pretty wonderful/hilarious/horrible. I played my roommate three times yesterday and I don't think I managed to damage her once. But it's still so great to play (I mean, I am in library school after all).
Um, so yeah, this comic! It's an anthology, but it doesn't list who any of the creators are. Showing my utter genius it was only the second time through that I realized that each comic was down by a different person. This is despite their radically different styles. Sigh. Did I mention I only got four hours of sleep last night?
By Dan Archerwww.archcomix.com
So it seems like for the last little while I've been reviewing a lot of things I don't really care about. I'd say it might be reflective of my mood in general, but then along comes a comic like this and I remember why I have this blog in the first place: this comic is great and I never would have heard of it if someone hadn't sent it to me.
Archer's work falls into the history/journalism section of comics that seems to be rarely used, and even more frequently ignored. I guess maybe left wing political comics aren't going to have a huge audience (but I can always hope). These comics all succeed on what I assume is the point of their creation: they educate the reader by telling them about something they (or at least I) didn't know about before. I learned about real events, different types of organizations, political viewpoints, and more.
By Eroyn Franklineroynfranklin.com
I can't say for sure why this zine is named as it is, but I feel it reflects the content of the comics inside. Not that they're about characters doing things they know are bad ideas (well, some of them are), but more an admission from the author that even making these comics is a poor idea in the first place.
The comics inside here seem so...negative. And I guess they're supposed to be funny (and some of them sort of are), but I'm clearly not in the right mind set for this sort of thing right now. Comics about how nobody cares about you, drunk people passing out on the sidewalk after throwing up and making out, pregnant kids getting kicked in the stomach, laughing at someone saying "I love you", a character talking about giving their wife black eyes; It's all just...not what I want to read right now. Or ever for that matter.
Urgh, where are the comics about dinosaur robots shooting laser beams?
By Ianto Ware (this zine is like eight years old, so who knows if that email address works)
Huh, it's been a while since I've reviewed a perzine. So many comics! I went back to the UK to visit my parents at Xmas, and one of the things I did while there was look through a bunch of boxes of stuff I'd left with them. One of them contained the remnants of all of these comics that my friend Jen had sent me a few years ago. Clearly that would not do! I have to review everything! So I put them in my bag to bring back to Canada, and a fair number of the reviews over the last few months have been of those comics.
But this (despite being old) isn't one! No, I picked this up at the Roberts Street Social Centre because I thought the way it was bound with a giant metal clip, and designed with multiple layers of different cardstock for the cover made it look really neat. Weirdly, I ended up reviewing another zine earlier this year that was also by Ware and from what seems to be about the same time as this one.
By Ertito Montana
www.zona00.com
I'm generally a pretty big fan of "fighting fiction" as I call it. I've read a lot of super hero comics, played a lot of video games where I shoot (or otherwise fight) other people/things, and enjoy watching action films. One style of action film I enjoy quite a bit are the ones that come out of Hong Kong and China. I've enjoyed these for years, and have watched a bunch in the last month. (Also, Vampire Warriors is kind of hilariously terrible.)
Even when they're terrible I kind of enjoy them for existing in a world completely unlike reality. The only people who exist are people who can fight, and they fight all the time! And they're so serious about it, as though who is the better fighter is the only thing that's important in the world.
By Eroyn Franklineroynfranklin.com
This is a brief art zine that features drawings of the ground and landscape from a four day, 45 mile (72km) hike along trails in Washington state. Let me begin by saying "that sounds like something I never want to do". While I enjoy nature a lot, and really hate when it is destroyed by ever expanding human settlements, I am generally okay with it existing somewhere else and never (or rarely) visiting it. Sometimes I think that's probably better for the environment in general. For a really awesome and moving documentary about how humanity effects nature you should check out Bear 71. It kind of blew my mind, both in regards to its content and the way it told its story.
Edited by Martin Applebywww.inpursuitofexpression.com
Reading the introduction to this lit anthology I realized I was the wrong person to review it. Appleby writes that "The theme of this issue is heart break. A subject that most people can relate to and empathise with. I find something extremely cathartic about tales of lost love, of hearts being ripped out and shattered into a thousend [sic] peices [sic]."
And sure, I can relate to heart break, I've been in relationships, they've ended, sometimes sadly, sometimes not. But that doesn't meant I want to read about relationships, functional or not. Romance in fiction generally bores me to tears, and I frequently try to avoid it. I mean, it's not like the concept of romance is a complete anathema to me, I've read stuff that I've enjoyed, but I generally find it trite and banal.
I'm sure all of this makes me seem like a horrible person (or at least a horrible person to be in a relationship with), but it's not like I ignore the idea of romance in my own life. I guess I just find most portrayals of it to not connect with either my experience or my ideas concerning the topic.
By Hazel Newlevant
newlevant.com
The Xeric Awards were monetary prizes given out to comic book self-publishers from 1992 - 2012. Created by Peter Laird (co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), they probably gave out close to, if not over, a million dollars to hundreds of comics creators. They stopped last year, apparently due to the popularity of webcomics and creators using Kickstarter as a means to raise money to fund self-publishing. The Xeric Foundation now only gives out grants to charitable and non-profit organizations (and not comic book related ones as far as I could tell).