Monitor Duty by Randy Lander "STAPLE Part One" Saturday, March 5th was the first ever STAPLE independent comics expo here in Austin. As a supporter of indy comics and an Austin native, I would have gone regardless, but since the guy spearheading things was Chris Nicholas, a good friend of mine, I was even more interested in seeing how things would turn out. As it happens, things went about as well as they possibly could have, and what came out of this first show was a packed house, a couple really good panels and a lot of happy exhibitors and attendees. It wasn't just a great first show, it was a great show period, and if you missed it this year, you should definitely make plans to attend next year. Because the show was put together locally by my friend, I volunteered to help out if I could. That included doing some promotion through the comics shop I work at, and volunteering at the door, but my main contribution was to say yes to one of Chris's mad plans. That mad plan? Anyone at the show could give me something to review, and I promised to review it here on the site. This is how I wound up with a bag stuffed full of comics to review at the end of Saturday. I'll be working my way through them over the next couple of weeks in a series of special columns, and this is the first one. AEROS #4 by Moises Delgado (Dual Instinct Productions) Format: Minicomic Price: $2.00 Reading Aeros #4 was kind of like walking in on the middle of a foreign movie with no subtitles. That's partly my fault, as it's clear that a fair amount has happened in issues one through three, and the "What has gone before" synopsis gets the gist but really doesn't give a clear picture of everything as much as reading those issues probably would have. However, it's also down to Delgado's storytelling style, which is somewhat confusing, both in art and script. It's clear that he has an epic story in his head with a pretty big cast, but in this issue, it just comes across as somewhat unwieldy to me. There are some neat ideas sprinkled in here about the mechanics of blood magic, but without any sort of clear context or definition of the characters, it's mostly just interesting noise to me. It seems that Delgado had a writer on previous issues, but has taken over as writer and artist both... ironically, it's more his art than his writing that gave me problems in this issue. There's definitely potential in there, especially in that Delgado can really put expressions in his characters' eyes, but the placement of the figures and the storytelling is a little stiff, and so we get fight scenes where characters seem to be posing in a series of stock slow motion shots or, in the case of one guy who is supposed to be leaping into battle, looking like they're floating in midair. APATHY & WORLD SALAD Format: Minicomic Website: palfloat.com There's no creator credit or price on these comics, but that seems fitting, as Apathy and World Salad are both mini-comics that don't really seem to have much interest in structure or in making sense. Apathy is essentially a riff on Cathy (talk about your easy targets), but the humor is more of an absurdist, almost dada, approach, wherein the central gag of Cathy uncensored by the family-friendly newspaper syndicate is rolled out. The beginning of funny gags are here, what with Cathy doing drugs and cursing, there's just no point to be found anywhere. Tearing Cathy to shreds should be easy, both for its general lack of funny and its outdated view of women, but Apathy never really gets anywhere near any of those notions, instead settling for the obvious ridiculousness of putting these words in a familiar comic strip character's mouth. World Salad is a little closer to striking my funny bone, with a variety of one panel gag strips featuring stick figure art and gags that fall into the category of "if you say random things, they're funny." Some of them are, some of them are just strange, and in general, both of these comics are the sort of thing that, if handed to me by someone in the street, would cause me to back away slowly while reaching for some sort of weapon and/or a cellphone cued up to 911. BERSERKER: THE WILD HUNT #1 by Jens Altmann & Harris O'Malley (Studio Underhill) Format: Comic book Price: $2.95 Website: www.studiounderhill.com Ever since I first saw Highlander, I've had a soft spot for the notion of immortal creatures co-existing with mankind. Highlander was hardly the first or last to do this, and Berserker is as much or even more about the sort of mythology/modern world co-existence of Sandman or Books of Magic as it is about the immortals warring in the streets of Highlander. Whatever comparison you want to make, however, the basic idea of Berserker is a really good one: That the Wild Hunt of Celtic mythology stalks doomed souls in the modern age, and their immortal foe seeks out a mortal who can help him to kill them once and for all. From this strong premise, Altmann crafts a pretty good first issue with multiple story threads, including a skeptical homicide detective, a homeless man who has lost it all and thus becomes the perfect weapon against the Wild Hunt and a nice mix of modern-day realism and wild fantasy. O'Malley's artwork is a style that I have found stiff in the past, and I'm still not always completely happy with it, but he does really nice work on the shadows in this issue, giving the Wild Huntsman and his dogs a scary, otherworldly look and putting a lot of emotion and resonance into the scenes between Duncan Hart and Honest Eckart. This four issue mini is off to a good start, and I'm very interested in seeing where the story goes from here. COLLECTED #1 by Thomas P. Reidy III (Monkey Comics/Goathead Publications) Format: Minicomic Price: $2.50 Website: www.goatheadpub.com Collected is a 32-page one-man anthology, featuring five stories of varying genre and approach. Overall, I have to say that I was pretty impressed. "The Doll: Forgotten Paradise," the opening story, is a silent story that pits a mysterious not-quite-human woman against beautifully designed robots with a lot of silhouette and gray toned effects, and I was struck by how good Reidy's art was on this opening sequence. There's terrific mood and menace and some really nice action choreography. I also dug the two "Freakish" stories, which present a pair of "regular guy" type hitmen ala Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction and put them on a couple of cases. Reidy's dialogue is funny, and the juxtaposition of regular guy talk with devils being assassinated and loan recipients being threatened even funnier. The other two stories, "Broadband My Ass," are less defined, but seem to have something to do with dream logic. I did get a big kick out of the caption that opened the first story, and indeed the whole weird notion of a guy winning a rap contest against a bunch of robots, and there are some similar "what the hell?" funny moments in the second story, but I couldn't quite get what the hell was supposed to be going on overall, so these stories were my least favorite of the collection. Still, Reidy's art is good throughout and in 32 pages he offers up plenty of interesting ideas and fun moments. Well worth a look. DEATH SWAMP by Toby Craig (Little Engine Studios) Format: Graphic novel Price: $20.00 Website: www.ithinkican.com I've previously reviewed Monster Engine, the small press anthology that Toby Craig spearheaded and participated in, and I found it weird but pretty good, well worth a look for indie comics aficionados. Since then, I've seen more of Toby's stuff and gained a much bigger appreciation for his art style, on display in three-times-a-week strips posted on his website and in his other comics, such as Death Swamp. Death Swamp is, to use a familiar word again, more than a little weird, but it's also really good, in no small part due to Craig's art style. It's a gray toned style that looks like it is done with a brush as much as a pen, with some very striking imagery. The tale of Death Swamp is the story of a boy dreaming his way through his own dreams and those of others, and there are some very creepy moments (the discovery of his father without a face is a very effective moment in terms of art and pacing) as well as a very believable rendition of dream logic throughout. I'd be lying if I said I entirely understood what happened in the pages of Death Swamp, but it's an interesting experience, and the artwork is beautiful. DRIVE by Nate Southard & Shawn Richter (Frequency Press) Format: Graphic novel Price: $11.95 Website: www.frequencypress.com I'll start off with a disclaimer: Nate Southard is a friend of mine. I see him pretty much every weekend, and he's the guy who introduced me to the wonder that is the Flametrick Subs and Satan's Cheerleaders, so the guy has lots of credit in the bank with me. He's also the writer of Drive, which happens to be a damn fine graphic novel. Nate says that I pitch it better than he does at this point, so here's the basic idea: It's the story of a cabbie, and a guy gets in his cab, puts a gun to his head and says "Drive." The story is about what happens after that. That's how I'd pitch it. However, at Staple, when someone compared the book to the Michael Mann flick Collateral, Nate came up with a line I liked even better, which was "Yeah, it's like that, if Jamie Foxx had outsmarted Tom Cruise in the first twenty minutes and the rest of the movie was about what happened afterwards." However you describe it, though, Drive is a really fun, fast-paced little crime story with a side dish of romance on the rocks, troubled friendships and a lead character who is just too dumb to know when to quit and too smart to just get offed by the corrupt cops or the hitman who cross his path in this story. Richter's artwork is hit and miss with me, as I like his general storytelling (the car chase/shootout is great) and see a lot of potential in his style, but his characters look a little bit strange, almost deformed, to me. They're solid enough, but their expressions always seem kind of frozen and limited. Fortunately, the art, combined with the solid dialogue, is good enough to convey the emotions of the story, which are as much about being a screw-up in life as they are about what to do with a bag of illicit drugs that landed in your lap by coincidence. MANGLED STARE #1 by William Rodriguez (Hatsume Comics) Format: Minicomic Price: $5.00 Website: mangledstare.hidoshi.com Mangled Stare is my least favorite kind of indy comic to review: One that is obviously a very personal, heartfelt labor of love for the creator that I just couldn't connect to at all. I always feel bad giving a negative review, and I feel worse when I know that I'm criticizing something so close to a creator's heart... but Mangled Stare just didn't work for me. Rodriguez's story, based around the lives of a married couple, their son and the husband's best friend, has all the feeling of being semi-autobiographical and then given a tweak of wild fantasy for humorous effect. So we get strips that are part domestic humor ala any number of newspaper strips and part superhero/geek parody. It's not a bad formula, but the gags just aren't there for me, and Rodriguez's pacing is just kind of weird, like the stories won't really fit in the three panel story format but he tries to force them into them anyway. His characters and settings are cute, even endearing, but I didn't really find them all that funny or clever, and all the gags read like the kind of thing I've seen before. Rodriguez's art style, on the other hand, is one that I really like, a cartoony super-deformed look that has all the capability to carry humor effectively, if only the stories were stronger. POLITICALLY INQUEERECT #1 & ENDERSTATED by Dylan Edwards (Studio NDR) Format: Minicomic Price: $2.50 & $1.50 Website: www.studiondr.com I've always thought that being a gay Republican was kind of like being a black Klansman. While Politically Inqueerect doesn't shed any light on why a gay man would be a Republican, though, what it does do is present a pair of "Gay Republicans in love" who are both a cute, believable couple and great characters for a series of humor strips about day-to-day gay life. There's one particularly funny gag where one of the guys' sister expresses worry to her husband that she's not sure she wants their kids exposed to her brother's lifestyle. "What if they come away thinking it's okay to live him and Todd?" Of course, she's a hippy liberal type who is afraid her kids will turn Republican. Funny, clever and played with subtlety rather than the Will & Grace "look, we're gay! It's hilllarious!" schtick. What's kind of interesting is that Edwards takes a shot at evolving the strip in the last 8 pages of this comic, telling an 8 page story instead of one page strips, and I actually found that the characters and relationships seemed deeper in the one page strips. The 8-pager has its moments, including some funny bitchy moments when Archie verbally eviscerates an administrative assistant, but Edwards has tighter control of pacing and less wasted panels in the one page strips, at least so far. At any rate, Politically Inqueerect is a funny, honest look at the life of two gay men that succeeds on just about every level. Enderstated, on the other hand, is a collection of short stories about the pain of trying to find love, the difficulties of being a lesbian, an annoying pedant pedestrian and more. It is hysterically funny, maybe even moreso than Politically Inqueerect. Every strip made me laugh, and the two-pager of a lesbian trying to discourage a persistent guy admirer is a particular highlight, with a hilarious punchline. PORNOCOPIA by Patrick Joseph (Engine A Publications) Format: Minicomic Price: $2.00 Disclaimer time again: Patrick Joseph is another friend, someone who I've talked comics with quite a bit when he used to come into my comics shop on a weekly basis. Of course, we generally talked about pretty mainstream stuff, from Vertigo to Geoff Johns's work, and Pornocopia is very much off that particular beaten path. It is three stories about the sordid side of sex, whether it's the random glory hole experiences of a lonely traveller, a frank conversation between friends about casual sex or the disturbing tale of a man who tries his hand at being dominated. I confess that my interest in porn comics is driven by some prurient interest, so the almost exclusively gay content of these stories didn't really do much for me, but the actual construction of the stories is interesting enough to keep my attention at any rate. Joseph's art style can best be described as experimental, especially in the photoshop filter/fumetti style of the opening story. But the art isn't really the draw of Pornocopia, it's just a somewhat rough storytelling tool through which Joseph can relate some very honest, even uncomfortable tales of human sexuality. Despite what you might expect from the title, Pornocopia isn't humor or wank material, instead it's a pretty engaging examination of sex, which despite its casual characters comes across as an almost academic examination of the subject at times. SONAMBULO IN GHOST OF A CHANCE, MEXICAN STAND-OFF & STRANGE TALES by Rafael Navarro (Ninth Circle Studios) Format: Comic Books Price: $3.00-5.00 Website: www.sonambulo.com Sonambulo is an indy comic I've been meaning to check out for some time, and now that I have, I regret putting it off for so long. Navarro is someone who works in animation, and you can see a similarity in his style to other animators like Darwyn Cooke, although his art style also has a healthy dose of Kirby's energy and the strong shadows and use of ink as Mike Mignola. In short, the book looks great. The stories were the biggest surprise, though. When you hear that the story is about a masked Mexican wrestler turned private eye who can see into people's dreams, the last thing you probably expect is that it will be played fairly straight and not for comedic value. But Sonambulo's influences are not just the lucha libre, but the stylish narrative of Hammett and Chandler and the weird adventure tales of Stan Lee. Sonambulo is a great two-fisted tough guy, and the cases that Navarro pits him up against, featuring zombies, ghosts and cultural monsters of Mexico, have a unique and yet familiar flavor to them. One of the few books that I could recommend to both the modern day crime fan and those who dig on old school Lee and Kirby, Sonambulo is a smart, stylish and above all really fun read. SOUL CHASERS #2 by Carlos A. Samudio, Daniel Garcia & Christopher Tupa (Hopper Comics) Format: Comic Book Price: $2.95 To be honest, I'm always a little skeptical when a small press creator decides to tackle superheroes, because it's a genre with a lot of tough, polished, full-color competition from the major companies. Soul Chasers has a Biblical element that sets it apart, but it is very much in the superhero genre, and it compares poorly with the many competing books about young superheroes from DC, Marvel and Image. However, that's not to say it's a bad comic, by any means. Samudio packs a lot of content into each issue, and while his dialogue doesn't sound entirely natural to me, I did like some of the situations he has come up with, including dropping a normal school kid into the midst of all this "revelations/superpowers" weirdness. Unfortunately, while no one could complain about Samudio following the "decompressed comics" trend, he's gone too far in the other direction, and he's got so much going on that it almost feels more like you're reading a synopsis of ideas rather than a comic spun out of those ideas. Slowing it down a tad, and concentrating on "realing up" the characters in terms of dialogue and interaction rather than just in having them wear street clothes and go to school, would help a lot. Just as I feel Soul Chasers has a way to go on story, I also feel like the artwork needs some refinement. Garcia's basic storytelling is solid, which helps a lot, but the character designs aren't terribly exciting, and when you've got rich story material like a war in heaven and demons fighting superheroes, it's a shame that the visuals are just kind of vanilla. There's also a lack of consistency in anatomy and perspective (the monster at the end changes bulk and size several times), but that's the kind of thing that will come with time and practice. Email Randy Lander comments about this review.