the first thing that caught my attention was the title, but the real reason I ordered this book in advance of its release was the name of the creator that spawned it. Scott Mills is an unconventional artist whose crude, indie style may serve as his trademark, but it's his personal, funny and relevant writing that makes him so readable. Mills is better known for graphic novels, so it's interesting to see him tackle an anthology in this more traditional comic-book format. Like most anthologies, Seamonsters and Superheroes has something to offer all readers, but like many anthologies, not all of the segments will appeal to everyone. Overall though, this was a wonderful satire of several genres, and it served as an interesting socio-political platform for the writer.
A superhero rush through the cosmos, not to save the world but to attend to a personal crisis. A sea captain laments his lot in life while he extols its virtues, and a sea monster does the same. Citizens react differently to the appearance of a cosmic being with a penchant to treat planets like hors d'oeuvres, and elsewhere, an artist confesses how he sets aside everything to work on his fall-back plan... a plan that threatened to eclipse his real passion.
There's a refreshingly unique fluidity to Scott Mills's artwork. It's incredibly basic, sort of what one might get if one were to cross the styles of Scott (Southpaw) Morse and Bil (Family Circus) Keane. Some of Mills's work here is rather ambiguous, which sometimes adds to the atmosphere of the story and sometimes makes for some confusing segments. Overall, though, the simplicity of his work reflects an innocence, a sense of wonder.
That's fortunate, because Mills tears apart the super-hero genre by injecting the mundane into worlds of the fantastic. The contrasting tones are thoroughly effective, often making for a rather hilarious result. It's also rather easy to see oneself in the various characters. From melancholy to apathy to romantic desperation, these superhuman characters are thoroughly human and small and flawed.
Visually, the weakest moments in the book are those in which text dominates the page. Mills's crude lettering (and occasionally crude spelling) are a bit distracting, but he makes up for it with his criticisms of the world in we live, not the make-believe settings found in this anthology. He balances his mockery of the oddities of the super-hero and other genres by pointing out the far more goofy misalignment of priorities in the real world with his text-heavy tirades.
