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Vice Blog

NICK GAZIN'S COMIC BOOK LOVE-IN #21

Hi Comic Booksters!

There has been lots of comic book news lately. Here's a short list of the stuff you need to know.

1. The Thor and Green Lantern movies both look like they'll be sucky.

2. Nicholas Cage's stolen copy of Superman #1 was recovered.

3. There are Brave and the Bold toys in Happy Meals right now and they made figurines of Bat Mite and the Spectre that are pretty boss.

4. I'm working on a comic with Nathan from Wavves and people have been chatting about that.

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5. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, made a painting for a charity relating to the newspaper strip and it's the first new art of his that the general public has seen in 16 years.

6. Some dumbasses have been trying to make an American live action version of Akira and everyone is already deeply pissed off and offended. Supposedly Tetsuo is now named "Travis."

7. There's a new comic based on Suicidegirls.com. They spend the whole comic chatting about their tattoos and piercings with other body mod enthusiasts.

8. An animated direct to video movie based on Batman: Year One is happening. Very psyched about this.

9. There's a new Peanuts comic that was created after Sparky's death. That's not OK. Peanuts isn't Garfield. Schulz never used assistants, ghosts, or anything. Doing this just fucking sucks.

10. Dark Horse Comics recently laid off a lot of people. They've been producing a lot of very pricy reprint books recently which were probably not selling so well. Fantagraphics is doing pretty well with Peanuts, Popeye, and Prince Valiant, but Dark Horse has been reprinting comics that, although good, just don't have the same demand. Why buy a 50 dollar collection of Doctor Spektor when you can get the original comics for about two dollars apiece on Ebay?  What's a real shame is that Dark Horse was supposedly about to start putting out Ninja Turtles comics drawn by Ross Campbell, and the images that have been floating around look stellar.

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Anywho, enjoy the reviews. Here are ten comics listed from best to worst. Some incorporate short interviews with the cartoonists. 

Sincerely,

Nicholas Gazin

(Send all review submissions to Nick Gazin C/o Vice's New York office.)
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#1
Love From the Shadows
Gilbert Hernandez
Fantagraphics

Love From the Shadows is a pleasantly confusing new graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez, celebrated talent monger and one of the celebrated Hernandez Brothers. Yes, those Hernandez Brothers. Love From the Shadows is the third comic he's made which is supposed to be one of the B movies that another of his characters, Fritzi, starred in.  So it's a little odd from the get go. The world that Fritz lives in can be a little strange to begin with but we know going into this book that it's a fictional story set in a fictional story. To add to the weirdness of that is the idea that Fritz, the attention seeking perpetual victim, is supposed to be playing three of the roles. She plays a woman named Dolores, Dolores's Sonny Bono looking brother, and the father of the two siblings.

We see a dark haired woman wander around her own house looking unhappy and then having some sex with a silent and disinterested man. Some cultish observational goons ask her questions about her appearance and won't leave her alone. While hiding in her basement to avoid the cult members she finds a door to a tunnel and goes through it. When she comes out her hair is a different color and she is possibly in the past or she might be someone else. We see her interact with her brother, whom she is close with and her father who they both loathe. We see that their father entered a cave that he had once warned them about and came out cackling and insane. They discuss killing their father and Dolores goes for a swim during which she meets a silent child who gives her passage to another place in his boat. She becomes involved with phony psychics and defrauds some wealthy people. The story is spooky and confusing in ways that aren't boring or stupid.

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Gilbert is one of the best people out there at telling stories with dream logic and this one bonks you over the head with it, so if you are a nut for dream logic then this book is right up your dream alley. This book reminds me very much of David Lynch's movies Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. It also reminds me of Carnival of Souls. It might even remind me of those things too much. I'm not sure yet but I have yet to read a comic by either Jaime or Gilbert Hernandez that made me feel bored, cheated, or like I wasn't given something to think about at the end. Gilbert's art is simple but never generic.

It may be a supreme act of missing the point to want to ask Gilbert questions about his new book, but I asked Gilbert some questions about his new book. I did my best not to get him to explain the symbolism.

Nick Gazin: In Love From The Shadows you have characters transforming into each other and issues of confused identity. I saw an interview on The Comics Journal site calling it "Lynchian." What do you think about this?
Gilbert Hernandez: I've used "Lynchian" myself to describe a story I'm doing because it's an easy handle. If I said "it's like, you know, weird like a dream but it's not, or is it…?" it's not so easy to grasp. Love from the Shadows is Lynchian partly because that type of story isn't done too often these days, and I've always been drawn toward them. It's almost a child's view of adulthood except with hot chicks you get to touch.

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What about the similarities between Love From The Shadows and Mulhooland Drive or Lost Highway's particular storylines? The idea of one character changing their hair and possibly being two people or one person actually turning into someone else were both in Lost Highway. 
I've done the identity/gender switch before in Birdland and Hernandez Satyricon, but maybe the Lynch way is an unconscious influence. I never realized Lynch often uses a blonde and a brunette to tell his stories until I read it somewhere recently.

This book is supposed to be a movie starring your character Fritz and co-starring her one-time husband. Are these stories intended to provide greater depth and insight into Fritz's character, or do you see these more as a way for you to tell different kinds of stories and still link them back to the L & R Lubaverse?
Fritz is a character that rarely shows who she really is inside, and the characters she plays reveal bits of her we can't normally see. She's not necessarily passive aggressive, but there's a lot of anger and viciousness that comes out in her roles. Fritz has become my favorite character to write and draw because she has no restrictions to where I can take her. And she's willing to go the distance. One theory on this is that she is secretly supremely jealous of the attention her better looking, one time much bustier sister Petra got when they were teens, and then when her prettier, bustier half-sister Luba showed up later, Fritz was determined to get that attention at any cost. Fritz never knows when to quit and will embarrass herself if necessary. She gets away with the over the top va va voom because otherwise she radiates so much class and intelligence. Of course, we won't see a lot of that in her films, but it's in her "real" life.

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How conscious do you want the reader to be that this story is intended to be a B-movie? You don't show boom mikes dropping into frame or any continuity errors, but you do have Fritz remain in a bikini for much of the movie. Was this intended to be a conscious choice by the filmmakers in order to exploit Fritz? Would you have made the same choice?
I've done stories where a female character wears the same sexy clothes throughout changes of local in the story, but I tried to do it relatively realistically; the bikini in Love from the Shadows was because Fritz lost weight for the part and wanted everybody to appreciate her 40-ish, still sexy figure. Dude, she's nuts, I'm not shittin' you.

Fritz has the last word on the exploitation of her body; the more men see her as a sexual goddess, the more she likes it. And you'll see as she gets older, she'll be upping the ante beyond any restraining. The trick is maintaining her gifted poise.  Totally nuts, I'm tellin' you.

How many more of these comics based on the non-existant film career of Fritz do you plan on making? I heard that you were planning on completing all of the films that have been mentioned. 
Yes, actually the books I will eventually do are only a portion of her film/tv career—the subjects worthy of a graphic novel. I plan to do a book on her entire career as an actress, which will be an illustrated index.

Is the order of the release of these books important?
Yeah, I'd prefer to do them in order, but Love from the Shadows is actually the 10th book in the series, not #3. I did it before the actual books 3 and 4 which are the MARIAM. books 1 and 2, but I wanted more time to work on them.

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Do you have a name for this series?
My pet name for them is The Fritz Film Series.

Do you see each book in this series as building on the themes of the previous ones?
Maybe a little bit, but they mostly reflect on the passage of time for Fritz and where importance lies in subjects according to her career's rise and fall; she started late for a sexy star—in her early 30's.

The cover shows Fritz on the beach looking away in a way that allows male viewers to get a real eyeful, and then we see this invasive male shadow coming out of the corner. Is the idea to make the viewer feel like a creep? Was the intention to create a literal visual that related to the title?
The design was simply a classic image for a sleaze book. I try not to use such an obvious sleazy image on an L&R cover or on my other books because that's not the message I'm trying to send for my readers. The Fritz books are unapologetic sex/crime stories . They just tend to be the focus of my comics output these days. Guess I have to put out something non-sleazy soon before it's too late!

And that's my mini-interview with Gilbert! Go check out his new book or his whole career. 
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#2
Take A Joke
Johnny Ryan
Fantagraphics

Johnny Ryan's one of the best and only people making funny comics these days. Chris Onstad seems to have fled the comics world and I sincerely hope he's OK. Charles Addams died a few decades ago. It seems like most of the funny comics that are made these days are either intended for children or made by people who are only as smart as children. Unfortunately Johnny's funny days are mostly in the past now. With FUCUSSLE he wrapped up his run on Blecky Yuckerella and with this book he puts to bed any future releases containing his series Angry Youth Comics. Johnny is now thoroughly entrenched in continuing his series of Prison Pit graphic novels. Prison Pit is an amazing comic but I miss Johnny's old funny jazz with the same anticipation that I look forward to his grim prison jazz.

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Johnny Ryan's comics career has three notable stages. His early comics, which he made for zines and were later collected in Port-A-Johnny, were rough in execution. The characters still had somewhat realistic proportions and it made them a lot more shocking. In Johnny's second major phase he figured out how to draw slick, funny cartoony drawings and tell weird awesome jokes. Johnny plateaued with that stuff and I think people were starting to get weary of his shtick. I don't know if he cares what people thought, but I do know that once you master something it gets boring. Johnny's modern comics are dark and based more in a mixture of Lovecraftian horror and certain manga sensibilities.

What's in this book is the bend before the break. There's one light story in which Loady and Sinus go to dig up Santa Clause's grave, Loady has an orgy with condiment prostitutes, and Sinus ends up in hell, which turns out to be a graphic novel library. It seems like Johnny has turned to the dark side and is trying to make comics that are more upsetting. In AYC #12 Boobs Pooter murders everyone in the world and sells it to a giant space roach to use as a cum rag. In AYC #13 Loady and Sinus are back and it starts out funny but ends with Loady torturing children with American Psycho-style creativity. AYC #14, the final issue of the great series, is another long Boobs Pooter story, which I will not ruin for you. I'll just say that when I read the final panel I unintentionally let out a stunned, "Whoa…"

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I feel like Johnny Ryan probably relates to the Eminem song "Rock Bottom," especially the line, "There's people that love me and people that hate me. But it's the evil that made me this backstabbing, deceitful, and shady." I asked him a few questions.

Nick Gazin: What's up with all the From Beyond style monsters in your comics now? Were you raped with a VHS copy of the movie or something?
Johnny Ryan: Yeah.

Why'd your comics get so dark? Are you mad at people for thinking you're a one note joke?
Just mad.

Are you ever going to do comics about Loady McGee again?
I dunno. Probably not.

Why not? Are you sick of him?
No. Things just change, bro.

And that's my mini-interview with Johnny Ryan!

#3
Lose #3
Michael Deforge
Koyama Press
Back when Dan Clowes made Eightball he made each issue a beautiful and special object with zero wasted space. The covers would be beautiful, the letters column and indicia would be beautiful, and the comics themselves would be spell binding and mind bending. You got the sense that no part was a chore and that he wanted to make everything as beautiful and high quality as he could. Michael Deforge is doing a similar thing with his comic series, Lose.

It's insane how much comic you get for five dollars. The cover is worth puzzling at for a while, It appears to be some sort of nightmare mountain hobo village. I'm staring at it a little more and thinking that it looks like Tokyo.

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Inside the nightmare continues with a one page horror fantasy/ auto-bio comic about Deforge being an intern in New York while the visuals show him in some post apocalyptic nightmare.

Then there's a funny page of drawings of weird tongues.

Then there's a two page comic about an improv class that turns scary and ends with a reference to this.

Then there's a twenty page comic called Dog 2070 about a lonely and angry ex-husband who has a strained relationship with his awful kids. It's great.

Then there's a five page silent comic about reproduction done in surreal sci-fi ways called Manananggal.

Then there's two pages of ant comics in which ants discuss their problems and the horror that is their lives.

Then there's a page called "Youth" about sticky babies.

The final page has a bunch of short strips that are directly self-referential.

The back cover is a very strange and funny self portrait of the author.

Here's a little interview I did with Michael.

Nick Gazin: What's going on on the cover? It reminds me of Tokyo, post disaster.
Michael Deforge: I've been drawing a lot of settings with densely packed garbage and debris over the past year. I thought drawing this cover would help get it out of my system (it didn't).

When did you become aware of Eagleman?
Holy crap, you know what—I didn't even make that connection until you just mentioned it. My buddy, Chris Eliopoulos, showed me that video a while ago, along with a bunch of other regional Chicago commercials he grew up with. He actually did some illustrations based on them, too.

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Dog 2070 is pretty great. Can you tell me anything about it? Is it based on people you've known or a prediction of your own future? 
Thank you! The characters in that comic weren't specifically based on anyone. There are a lot of autobiographical elements to that story, but it's not like the family in the comic at all resembles my actual family.

Have you been thinking about having kids lately?
Not really—I don't really think about it either way!

Why is your comic called Lose?
I thought Lose was an appropriate fit for the tone of the stories I tend to draw, while still being vague enough to not limit the types of comics I might want to draw down the road. 
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#4
Drawings From the Gulag
Danzig Baldaev
Fuel
Taking a gander at the drawings in this book is like peering into hell. In many ways it's far more brutal than anything Bosch ever painted, because instead of demons torturing people, it's other people, and unlike the Dutch Master's Garden of Earthly Delights, the horrors in this book are all real.

The book begins with a photo of a person I assume is the artist/author and this text underneath it:

"Danzig Baldaev was born in 1925 in Ulan-Ude, Buryatiya, Russia. The son of an "enemy of the people," he was subject to repression in Communist Russia and sent to an orphanage for children of political prisoners. After serving in the army during the Second World War, he came to Leningrad in 1948 and was ordered by the NKVD to work as a warden in Kresty—an infamous prison—where he started drawing the the tattoos of the criminals. He was reported to the KGB, who unexpectedly supported him, realising the status of a criminal could be determined by deciphering the meaning of his tattoos. His work enabled him to visit different reformatory settlements across the former USSR, where he witnessed many of the scenes published in this book."

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And oh man, these scenes. This book makes the concentration camp scenes of Maus seem quaint and enviable.   Mass rapes on prison ships, creative and sadistic torture of all types, oodles of dead children, sexual humiliation and slaves, people being eaten alive by dogs and ants and it only gets worse.

The drawings are all very well done and stylistically similar to Crumb's modern crosshatching drawings, although much scarier. 
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#5
Cat Rakham Loses It!
Steven Wolfhard
Koyama Press

This is a genuinely cute and funny little comic about a cat who lives by the shore with a lisping squirrel pal. One day a cat with a revolver attached to it's back with a belt shows up. Somehow this other cat is able to fire this gun, possibly by telekinesis, and he briefly assumes Cat Rackham's identity. This book is 30 pages of pure joy and goofery. The drawings are simple but more sophisticated than the cover might make you think.

Koyama Press has yet to make a shitty thing. I'd like to give Anne some business advice,"Stay small, be the best."
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#6

Weapons of the Metabarons
Alexandro Jodorowsky, Travis Charest, Zoran Janjetov
Humanoids
There are a lot of very "with it" people in America who have made screen grabs from Holy Mountain into their computer desktop images, but a lot of those same folks would reel in nerd revulsion to know that Jodorowsky is also a popular sci-fi comics writer. He and Moebius created a comic universe, referred to as the "Jodoverse," in a comic series called the Incal. Many of the concepts in the Fifth Element were taken from this comic series. There have been several spin-offs and mini-series set in this universe, all written by the venerated film maker.

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The primary artist of this book, Travis Charest, used to work on a crummy comic called Wild C.A.T.S. and I was always aware that he was too good for it. I recently read that he doesn't use references or do advance sketches which makes sense because he is hyper-skilled and has super confident lines. Travis's work in this book is all painted, which is nice, but not quite as great as his black and white linework. Although there are a few panels that are absolutely beautiful the painted artwork often feels cramped, like it should have been reproduced larger. There may be too much detail on the page.

This is the first story set in the Jodoverse that I've ever read and, it's fairly straightforward, told with confusing sci-fi language. The Metabaron, some sort of space president, kills his father in a rite of passage and then has to conquer certain enemies and obtain mystical weapons. One of the foes he must face is a mirror version of himself, by the way.

I found the story a little confusing due to the science fiction talking and my total unfamiliarity with the other comics in this comics continuity but it was still pretty fun to look at. I guess the completion of tasks is a little like El Topo but it feels more like a videogame with unclear rules. Why isn't there an El Topo videogame? There's a videogame called No More Heroes which is largely inspired by El Topo but not visually. Anyway that's the best I can do to review this thing.
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#7

Taking Punk To The Masses
Jacob McMurray
Fantagraphics
There have been lots and lots of punk history books floating around for a while. You've got Please Kill Me focusing on late 70s New York and England's Dreaming about the British punk scene. There's also the lesser books like We've Got the Neutron Bomb and American Hardcore. There's We're Desperate, which is just photos of people in cool clothes, and there are a smattering of books focusing on specific bands. This one features some information about the New York and LA scenes, but it's pretty Seattle-centric and mostly about grunge.

As music history books go this is kind of like a giant special issue of Mojo magazine, or maybe it's more like an exhibit catalog. It's entertaining as hell if you already care about this shit, but it's not heavy reading. The left page of each spread is a recently taken photo of a magazine, poster, instrument, or piece of clothing, and the right page is a couple of paragraphs and a bunch of quotes from people talking about that thing or who it belonged to. If you want to see photos of Kurt Cobain's guitars then you're in luck. There are many, many nicely taken photos of Kurt Cobain's guitars. I'm teasing a little because I think this is a goofy book but I like it and you probably will too.

This book rules. It is very, very fun to read if you care about this stuff. I am not trying to tell you that this book isn't a good, easy read. There's something really silly to me about a full page photo of this shirt Kurt Cobain wore on the cover of Spin, lit dramatically like it's the Shroud of Turin. It's a nice shirt and if I went to your house and you pulled it out of your closet and were like,"This shirt? Kurt Cobain wore it on the cover of Spin." I'd say,"Whooooa, that's amazing." I probably wouldn't punch you and yell "It belongs in a museum!" It's not the Cross of Coronado.

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See for yourself:

There's some genuinely cool shit in here. Flyers and photos and quotes and stories. I'm at odds with myself. I dig this music and I dig this aesthetic, and the book presents all this shit well but punk's not about memorializing things, to me. I'm a nerd too and I love to organize, catalogue, and archive shit, but I also like to let things go. I feel like if Kurt Cobain saw this his response would be ,"Why are you worshiping my old T-shirts?"

I might be overthinking this. If you bought Fantagraphics book about punk movies and have an interest in punk or the Seattle indie rock scene then you'll love this thing to death.

#8
The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd 
Benjamin Marra
Traditional Comics
Ben Marra passed me this at MoCCA. My roommate saw this in the bathroom and seemed like he couldn't decide if he was amused or offended. It blew his mind.

This comic is an action thriller about New York Times columnist, Maurreen Dowd. She is attacked by government assassins who want to silence her, and she has to balance an action-packed life with her career. She also mentions that she's going on a date with George Clooney on almost every page. I love Benjamin Marra's stiff art, shiny shading, and intentionally stilted dialogue. Gangsta Rap Posse is still my favorite of his comics. Night Business is pretty great too. Why Maurreen Dowd, though? Why? I asked Ben myself.

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Nick Gazin: Why'd you make a comic about Maurreen Dowd?
Benjamin Marra: Tough question. I guess I was compelled to make the comic because of my deep appreciation for Ms. Dowd. It all started when I saw her photo on the NY Times website back in the early 00s. I started reading her column regularly, and I read her book, Are Men Necessary. I drew a couple illustrations in my sketchbook of her and a friend of mine suggested I do a comic about Ms. Dowd. The story started striking my brain like small lightning bolts in an electrical storm around my head, the elements falling into place like blocks in a deft round of Tetris. I just started working on it and then it was done and I published it.

Has she seen this?
I think she has. She ordered a copy and some friends of hers ordered copies with the intention of giving her one. But her public comment on CNN's Reliable Sources was that she doesn't read anything written about her, which she feels can be debilitating like kryptonite. So, she made a comic book joke about it.

And that was my mini-interview with Benjamin Marra!
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#9
Deconstruction For Dummy-Heads: And Other Cartoons You Could Have Drawn
By Sam Henderson
Self Published
Sam Henderson quoted me on the back of one his comics again! That rules! I love being quoted on the back of Sammy's comics. Lately Henderson's comic output has been pretty much just these mini comics with covers that he may be printing on a computer printer. I miss his longer stories like Party Bot, the guy who always forgets his keys and then tries to sneak in the pet door and gets stuck every time. I like his longer comics more than these gags. These gags? Good gags. Good enough for me. But I miss the old comics. I am eagerly awaiting the upcoming collection of all of his Scene But Not Heard comics that used to appear in Nickelodeon magazine.

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#10
The Arctic Marauder 
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics
In this book Tardi goes and draws his own version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Tardi's a drawing and storytelling genius and a quote of me saying as much is quoted in the press release for this book. It's fun to see Tardi draw highly technical fantasy machines, but I think this book had too much text and the wood cut drawing style that Tardi uses here turns me off. Tardi's still great but this book didn't grab me the way his other books have.

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My Week In Bologna
Katie Turner 
Parsons Katie Turner is a Parsons student who made an illustrated travelogue about her journey. It's a great little 12 page color zine and is a cute little read. I met Katie at MoCCA a few weeks back and she handed this to me. It's got immediate appeal and her style could be employed in ads or book design or pretty much anything. She's got a Souther Salazar or Ines Estrada-ish style.

My only thoughts are that it might be worth her while to expand her tools and try doing something similar but bringing one of these cheap portable watercolor kits with her next time.
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#12
Creepy #5
Various
Dark Horse Comics
In the 50s there were great comics published by EC called Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror and the Haunt of Fear. They all began with a pun-spouting happy creep introducing the story and then there would be some nonsensical but beautifully drawn horror story. People loved the fuck out of those comics right up until the government decided they were pornography and forced them to stop. People have loved EC's horror comics forever. Other artists have been attempting to recreate their distinctive flavor now and then for the past few decades.

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Creepy and Eerie were two not very good attempts at ripping off the EC horror formula even though they had great covers and occasionally got some of the original EC guys to contribute art. Jack Davis created the mascots for the magazines and Frank Frazzetta did a lot of their covers, but the content was mostly awful. Some of the stories in the original Creepy would be as short as one page. How can you build up a sense of horror in one page? So the original Creepy and Eerie were kind of a letdown, but this Dark Horse remake of it is actually pretty good. Definitely better than the original.

The first story in this comic is a crummy one drawn by Conan's Tim Truman, whose art really turns me off. The next story is a pretty OK one by DAVID LAPHAM. (Yes, that David Lapham.) David is most known for his series Stray Bullets, which is one of my favorite comics. Stray Bullets was getting more and more intense, but then he had to focus on supporting his family so he wrote some big Batman story arc that I bought but found confusing. There was something in it about podpeople made of dirt taking over Gotham City and the rest was a blur. He also did a mini-series about Daredevil hanging out with the Punisher. I wish he'd get back to doing Stray Bullets someday. God, I love that comic book so much. Still, it's nice to see his beautiful slick black linework and flawed characters again. David Lapham, you are a supreme comics maker and I think people get it, they just don't get how to best use you all the time.

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The third story is a series of true facts about religious cults illustrated by Lucas Marangon, who did the totally awesome Tag and Bink comics. The final one is called Murdicide which is a great title but not such a great story. 
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#13
Colour Me Busy
Keith Jones
Koyama Press
Keith Jones is quite a cartoonist, but for some reason he keeps making other stuff. He made stickers of stuck up animals and now he's made a coloring book of stuck up animals surrounded by garbage. Most pages show off some animal wearing people clothes and all the available negative space is full of junk. Some of it's recognizable and some is just weird shapes. I like Keith's drawings but not so much that I would buy a comic of random object drawings.

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#14
R.I.P. Best of 1985 - 2004
Thomas Ott
Fantagraphics
This book of scratchboard drawn comics goes from one short and predictable tale of the macabre to the next. Each comic looks nice, but it's just the same damn rhythm every time and it's too predictable to be affecting. We see a scratchy and unhappy looking guy spend three pages putting on his clown outfit before shooting himself in the mouth. We see zombies get out of the ground and go to their jobs at a factory.

Scratchboard is one of the harder ways to create an image and Thomas Ott is great at it. Scratchboard images are made with paper coated in black wax, which is then scratched away. The feeling of scratching away skinny lines into the wax feels pretty great, but the downside is that it's ultra high risk. You make one mis-scratch and you're effed. As I said, Thomas Ott is a master of scratchboard, but his stories are flat, crummy, and attempting to be Kafkaesque. 
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#15
Little Willy Gets A Lickin'
Penelope Gazin
Self Published
My younger sister made this. The plot of this 11 page mini comic is that a kid dreams he is eaten by a door that is like a face and goes through a digestive tract, ending up in an underground cave world. There he meets a person named Queen Nicholas, probably named after me, who has a sexy lady body and a scary man face. Queen Nicholas eats the main character and then the kid wakes up.

It seems like the story was taken from the movie Forbidden Zone. The text is hard to read, the color choices are poor, the linework is sloppy and lumpy, and the drawings are inconsistent. I think she might be trying to rip off Jon Vermillyea, who in my opinion still hasn't found his own voice. It's like a fifth generation dubbed VHS tape or kids produced through generations of incest.

My advice to my sister is:

1. Draw from life and use a pencil.

2. Look at older cartoonists and artists, not just the people who are popular now.

3. Practice making shapes that appear to have volume. A good way to do this is to practice drawing your hands over and over again.

4. Practice drawing parallel lines and concentric curves. Once you're able to do this competently try graduating from dark to light as you do it.

5. Experiment with different color combinations. Don't use colors whose values are close enough to black that they appear to be black when you squint your eyes.

6. Try to be more careful when you use Photoshop. If you shrink things down and put them next to things you didn't shrink down the inconsistency in line thickness looks crummy.

My sisters animated cartoons are pretty likable though.

Here's one that won some awards.

Here's one that was a quick assignment but I like it.

And here's a music video she made for her boyfriend's band.

NICK GAZIN