|
THE NORM MAGAZINE #0
Recommended (7/10)
|
TheNorm.com
"Action Figure"
Writer/Artist: Michael Jantze
"Tex Laramie's Roundup!"
Writer/Artist: Frank Cammuso
Price: $2.95 US |
Action Figure: Michael Jantze has a syndicated newspaper comic strip called The Norm (you can see it online at his TheNorm.com website), and he brings it to comic-book shops this week with The Norm Magazine. Personally, I'd never heard tell of the property before seeing it in Diamond's Previews catalog a couple of months back, and I'm pleased I decided to give it a shot.
Norm is an average guy. He's in his 20s, works in an office and needs to get a life. He's also a big kid at heart, and that inner child is talking to him... literally. A bout of insomnia gives way to a crazy dream one night, and Norm imagines himself running around his office, no bigger than an action figure.
The Norm strike me as a cross between Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes. Jantze's humor has a universal appeal... well, maybe not universal, but young professionals no doubt dig on it. He turns a dreary workday and office politics into something interesting and funny, and he doesn't do so with the surreal approach employed by Scott Adams. There's an honesty at work in the strip that serves as the real source of the humor, and it makes it easy to see oneself in Norm's place.
Jantze's art style is highly reminiscent of the work of Bill (Calvin and Hobbes) Watterston and Chris (Desperate Times) Eliopoulos. The key is simplicity, but Jantze incorporates some nice perspective shots in the piece as well.
The one thing I can't tell about this book is whether or not it's original material or reprinted strips. My hunch is that it's mostly new stuff. The story flows nicely, and there are a number of large panels that just wouldn't work in the newspaper format.
Tex Laramie: This comic is actually a flip book, with half of it serving as a spotlight for Frank Cammuso's bawdy and crude cowboy TV show host, Tex Laramie. The humor is lowbrow for the most part, but it still entertains. Even better is the fact that it pushes the envelope. The contrast of a kids' show host with the innuendo and crudity of this character is entertaining as well. I'm put in mind of Kieron Dwyer's politically incorrect Lowest Comic Denominator, though this isn't anywhere near as... intense.
Cammuso's exaggerated art suits the tone of his script and his characters' personalities quite well. The art is not ordered for the comic-strip form like the other half of this book, and as a result, it reads much more quickly. In fact, I plowed through this half far too easily. Camusso is all about big panels and he avoids subtlety.
Email Don MacPherson comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.
|
