Stranger Knights #3

 By Bill Volk, Casey Bohn, Mary Soper, and Bryan Stone
www.billvolk.com
bohnhelm.blogspot.com
www.bryan-stone.com

Good job Matthew, failing to scan the cover entirely...

Anyway! This is an anthology of sci-fi, fantasy, and super hero comics, and all of them are pretty good! Kind of surprising given I generally don't care for about half of any anthology I read.

In The Capsule's Promise by Volk, the world is invaded by a murderous alien who wants to kill everyone. Two of the Stranger Knights, presumably some sort of super hero team, are nearby and go to find out what's going on. There's Ninurta Frankenstein who is some sort of weird monster thing made of stitched together body parts (and what looks like half a giant baseball attached to his stomach) who appears to be at least partially based on a Sumerian god of war. However he's much more interested in welcoming the creature to earth and sharing culture with it, and isn't too impressed when they end up in a fight. There's also Little Headphones, the unpaid intern of the Stranger Knights who...shoots people? I think that's his only power. Anyway, I enjoy a healthy dose of philosophy in my fight comics, so I liked this.

The Orb of Shalla by Stone is a fantasy piece and probably my favourite story in the whole book. It features a robot and a cat girl who ride weird dinosaur/lizard creatures, acquire a treasure map, and head off to lands unknown in an attempt to loot abandoned ruins

I enjoy robots in fantasy settings, even if it doesn't make any sense or maybe because it doesn't make any sense. Stone's art in this story is attractive and uses good use of cross hatching and similar techniques to help create depth and contrast. Several pages of the comic are entirely silent, and yet they're easy to understand and follow. Plus there's a weird horned pig thing.

The other two pieces are another Stranger Knights story and a science fiction one, both of which are somewhat superhero-ish. While I enjoyed the stories in both of these, the artwork didn't appeal to me in the same way. But overall I enjoyed this, much as I did the first issue.

Trixie Biker bootleg

By Matthew Craig
thematthewcraig.com

I've reviewed a couple of Trixie Biker comics in the past, and I kind of wish I'd read this one first, as it's a brief origin story for the character. Now I know the vague, and not really important origin for this magically-powered, motorcycle-riding superhero.

The art's not the best, but at least part of that is down to the not great reproduction. Plus it's like five years old, I'm pretty sure Craig's art has improved since then.

Stranger Knights

By Bill Volk, Casey Bohn, and Mary Soper
billvolk.com
bohnhelm.blogspot.com
mandk.deviantart.com

The introductory page of this anthology says that it's a collection of comics about "brave men, women, gods, and radiation beasts who venture into an unjust world and punch those things that need to be punched", so you can probably already guess that I'm going to give this comic a good review.

Despite reading lots of zines and minicomics for this site, I still read a surprising amount of superhero comics (I'm currently rereading Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, hurray libraries!), and I still _like_ superhero comics, even though most of the stuff from mainstream publishers is pretty awful. One thing I do enjoy are indie comics creators versions of superheroes. I've dug the Strange Tales collections that Marvel has put out, James Kochalka's SuperFuckers, and similar books.

Of the three stories in here, the first (pictured below) is written and drawn by Bill Volk and features the god on earth Shamash as he fights infinity robots (yes, that many), teams up with other superheroes, and travels to other dimensions. It really combines a lot of my favourite things about comics, mostly that it is full of bizarre creations, humour, and fighting. This story reminds me of superhero comics I enjoy like Incredible Hercules, Atomic Robo, SuperFuckers, and Invincible (I cannot believe that Robert Kirkman hasn't created a character called Jillhammer yet).

The art is mostly good, and while one of the gods that appears is kind of weird looking, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story.

The second story in this anthology is also written by Volk, but is drawn by Mary Soper. This one is a sort of space-fantasy hybrid whose interstellar princess hero reminded me of some of the magical girl anime and manga I've read. The comic features the princess fighting both dinosaur-men and sexism, and has her using her powers in a pretty cool way to avoid a major battle. My only real problem with it is that I'm kind of sick of rich and idle superheroes and/or royalty being the focus of stories. Screw them! Even if they are fictional. Also the story ends on a cliffhanger, and I don't know how to find out what happens next.

The third story is about a guitar player who's probably into transcendental meditation and stuff like that as he says that "The echoes from that planet are all wrong." The art style in certain panels was interesting to look at, but the overall piece didn't really come together.

But still! Two out of three stories is pretty good for an anthology, and I'd be interested in reading future issues.

Melon Farmer

Melon Farmer 3
By Orson and Zeel
aligon-adventures.blogspot.com
zeel.co.uk

[Yeah! It's my birthday! So to celebrate that (and the fact that someone just asked that I remove the review of their zine that I posted six months ago) here's a review I wrote weeks ago but was unable to post due to internet problems and traveling. More soon.]

When I went to the Brighton Zine Fest earlier this year one of the really neat things they had was a zine scavenger hunt. This was a list of different types of zines that you had to try to collect in order to get a prize. The list included things like "a blue zine", "a tiny zine", "a zine about tea", and other things. However, the organizers wanted to give out the loot bag prizes and would allow pretty much anyone to get one if they made up some decent reasons.

Part of my lootbag was this zine created by a little kid and (I assume) his dad. This is reminiscent of Axe Cop and also a project I was involved in recently that involved redrawing children's characters. I really love the ideas of these projects, as it encourages creativity at a young age.

From what I can tell Zeel drew the panel borders, did toning and lettering, and maybe drew other background background elements. Everything else seems to be by Orson. The art is mostly the type you'd expect from a little kid, with little consistency, and the story frequently doesn't make a lot of sense.

Despite this there is definitely a lot of charm in this comic, and there are some panels (like below) that I really like the look of, as they have a style and energy I really enjoy. There's a lot of charm in the work in here: characters powers being based upon their names (as opposed to vice-versa), diagrams showing the powers and equipment people have. This reminds of what I used to do as a kid, and I think it's awesome that kids are still doing this.

Plus the lootbag also had one of those party noisemakers (with a pirate!), a glow stick thing (which I've broken), a temporary tattoo, and a rad stamp/marker thing.

Trixie Biker: Right Hand Down

By Matthew Craig
thematthewcraig.com

Since I last reviewed one of Craig's comics he apparently hurt his dominant hand rather badly. He hasn't let that stop him drawing comics though, as he drew this one entirely using his left (non-dominant) hand. Holy crap!

This is pretty much just a super-hero comic. The main character fights a supervillain, and has a secret identity, a magic motorcycle, and pixie sidekicks. There's nothing particularly special about any of that, but I do enjoy reading stories where the answer to all (or at least most) of life's problems can be solved by hitting them hard enough. (I just got a stack of more than likely terrible superhero comics out of the library. Woo! You should all go use your libraries too. Some of them even have zines!)

Last time I saw him I talked to Craig about the use of violence in superhero comics, and the way that Alan Moore subverted many of those ideas in Tom Strong. So I enjoyed how one of the pixies defeated a bad guy in a non-violent way. Hurray!

I do find it weird that Craig choose to name his villian Kropotkin, because I can't read that name and not think about Pyotr Kropotkin, well known anarchist philosopher. I mean, it'd be killer if it was a giant, purple monster based upon him, but instead it's just some random scientist who robs a castle. A missed opportunity for sure.

I was impressed with Craig's art here considering how it was drawn. I think it's better than anything I could draw with my right hand! Though part of the appeal could be that there are robo-skeletons that attack Trixie. Robo-skeletons make everything better.

(This review is disjointed.)

One thing I found somewhat weird about the whole comic was the style in which it was lettered. Craig has taken the somewhat unusual route of putting all the text inside of narration boxes. So thoughts, speech, actual scene-setting narration, background information, and everything else appears in the same rectangular boxes. There are different fonts used for different characters, but its still kind of confusing. Plus one bit is in Welsh for no apparent reason.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this more than the last issue of Trixie Biker, shakey artwork or not. I am left with just one question, what the hell is a "jam butty"? Is it just a sandwich with jam in it?

Bostin Heroes

By Matthew Craig, Jack Davies, and Donato Esposito
www.bostinheroes.com

I'm sick, tired, don't really want to update this right now, and people are complaining about me on another website. After a year I'm thinking about changing how this site will be done. But that'll have to wait until next week, and so we charge headlong into another ill-thought out review.

I'm not as a big a fan of superhero comics as I once was, but I still enjoy reading some of them. They're such a large part of the market it's kind of hard to pay attention to "mainstream" comics and not have any idea about them. However, this leads to a couple of points.

If I'm going to read about superheroes I'm probably going to read about ones in the Marvel/DC universes. I've known those characters for most of my life, and, sometimes surprisingly, I still "care" about some of them.

Actually, the above isn't necessarily true. I end up reading a lot of mainstream superhero comics cause that's what's around. Four comics for a pound including the first issue of that recent Image series that's supposed to be pretty good? I guess I'll end up reading Daredevil spinoffs and issues of Supergirl when they are, more or less, free. Mainstream superhero comics are everywhere, and if I don't desperately need to read the newest issue right now you can pick most of them up pretty cheaply.

I'd _actually_ rather read well produced, creator owned superhero comics. I mean, I do have a soft spot for Spider-Man 2099, or whoever, but given the choice between buying an issue of that or Invincible, I'd go with Invincible hands down. However, I'm also like four volumes behind on Invincible, and there are countless other superhero comics out there that are well written and well drawn, meaning that yours has to be really good, or have a clever hook, in order to attract my attention.

The hook in this one is that its set in the Midlands, and it's cute enough seeing monsters smash up Birmingham (I've been there!), but no more or less than seeing Kuala Lumpur be destroyed (actually, I've spent more time in KL...). Rather, the setting of Birmingham really just drives home the sort of weirdness of the UK comics retail industry. Birmingham has over a million people and two comic book shops. The town I grew up in (St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada), has a population of 100,000 people, and yet had (last I was there) something like 2 and a half comic shops. Do more people in North America just read comics? Do people in the UK get their comics from somewhere else? (There is a long tradition of newstand comics here, many of which reprint North American comics.) I just don't know.

Another problem I have with superhero comics is that after reading Tom Strong, and having him talk to his enemeies instead of just punching them, sometimes I wonder why people are fighting giant monsters? Isn't there a better way? Of course, I like monsters punching things as much as the anxiety ridden person who wishes he could punch his way through all of his problems, but I know that in real life it's not like that.

This is long and rambly, and doesn't really tell you much about the comic (it's a labour of love for the genre!). I'm gonna blame the sickness.

Neon Girl Zero

By Dennis Pacheco
pigeonholepress.net

Considering how many superhero comics are out there it’s sometimes a little surprising that I don’t see that many minicomics in that genre. Though perhaps that is all in my mind, and because there are so many professionally published superhero comics I don’t really pay attention to the smallpress stuff. If I want to read superheros I can read Incredible Hercules, or Invincible, or any number of other books that I see and hear about all the time.

This comic is influenced far more by non-mainstream superhero comics, such as Powers or The Boys, than by random Marvel/DC books. Most of the story actually takes place in an apartment, deals with a guy discovering that his girlfriend is a superhero, and features superhero sex, infidelity, and costumes seemingly created to show off upskirts (but ironically so?).

Pacheco’s craft here is all very solid. I love the image on the cover (no doubt a tribute to a certain Incredible Hulk cover), and the art inside is also good. I like the designs he comes up with for the members of the League of Freedom (though the ones that don’t show up in much of the story seem far more interesting), he draws a pretty rad monster, and I detect a bit of Paul Pope-ish influence in some of the art (though I find that in everyone's art).

Still, I really wonder about stories like this and the morality of the characters involved in them. If I was going out with someone and they lied about what their job was I’d feel pretty betrayed, and it wouldn’t really matter how awesome their job was (“You’re a circus performer?!”). I’d wonder about why they lied to me, and what else they lied to me about (something that’s briefly referenced here).

I did find the comic a little mean spirited, which decreased my enjoyment somewhat. But I think that relates more to what I'm looking for in my superhero comics, and not the overall craft itself.

The Superman Stories 2

By Mark Russell
dreadful-blog.livejournal.com
Half size, 60 pages, $5.

Do you know that meme about how Superman is a total jackass? All those out of context panels and covers from ‘60s comics where Superman is feeding Lois Lane to wolves and saying “Haha Lois, I bet you wish you’d never found out my secret identity was Clark Kent.”* and similar? They're pretty hilarious, and the stories Russell has written seem to owe a lot to them, because the Superman that appears in his stories is frequently a total dick.

*I may have just made this up.

This isn’t to say that Russell doesn’t have a firm grasp of Superman’s character. If anything he’s thought through the idea of Superman more than a lot of the people that have written him in recent years. (Though that may say more about current Superman comics than anything else.) His portrayal of Superman as a kind of world-weary guy who’s just doing his job (saving the world) every day until he can retire (never) is pretty effective overall.

And Russell’s Superman does seem to spend most of his time flying around and rescuing people. He doesn’t fight many super villains, instead trying to stop them before they start. The only appearance by one of Superman's comic book enemies is when Lex Luthor goes to his high school graduation.

This book really drives home how many (fictional) people Superman does save. When Superman (he seems to have given up on Clark Kent) marries Lois Lane they go on their honeymoon, but only for three days because Superman has calculated that he saves twenty lives a day, and that by taking three days off he’s let sixty people die. Brutal.

Of course it’s not all Superman rescuing people, as one of the other main characters is Jesus (yes, that Jesus), and he spends time rescuing people too. God also shows up, and there are some angels and scenes that occur in Heaven, none of which I really cared for. I mean, the Jesus who appears is a pretty nice guy (he doesn’t judge people or anything, he just helps them) and the other scenes are written well enough (unlike this review), it’s just that I don’t care. I’ve experienced enough Judeo-Christian-Islamic centred stories for one lifetime and it doesn’t bother me if I never read another one.

Russell explains his inclusion of God and Jesus in his introduction, where he says that as a child he watched Superman cartoons on Saturday morning, and went to church on Sunday morning. Thus he viewed God as a superhero, and felt Superman had theological implications. Yeah, he’s probably right, but I’d rather have more stories about Superman fighting intelligent gorillas.

In addition to God and Jesus, Russell also makes up a bunch of new characters for no apparent reason. If you’re already writing the people that already exist incredibly far out of character what is the point of creating Superman’s grandmother and her obsession with finding a sack of gold (which Russell clearly found far more hilarious than I did)? Just make it his mom, she's already old. And all the other stories about old people! These clearly don’t belong in a book about Superman (insert smiley emoticon).

Despite these complaints this book is still pretty funny and worth reading. The brief portrayal of Aquaman as a guy who thinks democracy is stupid (royalty is awesome!), the introductory piece about how screwed up and boring Krypton was before it exploded (soup is awesome!), and the suggestions people give Superman on how to improve the world are some of my favourite bits. All it’s missing are what every Superman story needs, monsters and robots.