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Love And Rockets No. 3The Hernandez Brothers
Fantagraphics
Yeah, Love and Rockets. I know… A'doy.The Hernandez Brothers have been releasing published work since 1981 and although some of their output stands out as stronger than others, they've been on a constant incline. They never treaded water or plateau'd. In fact this issue, the third issue of the third volume, is one of the very best things they've ever done.Gilbert's story starts off with a horrific sci-fi story before switching to Jaime's story, which involves our hero Maggie being observed by a mysterious creepy guy. Then she describes her dreams and goes to an art show where two men she's known are showing. Gilbert's story cuts in again and it's revealed that the sci-fi story is actually an old B-movie starring one of his regular characters, Fritzi. Fritzi's niece is set to play her aunt's role in a remake of the film and after discussing it she goes for a walk. She witnesses real life acts of sex and violence while her father is concerned about her protection. Jaime's story cuts back to Maggie's early childhood, a part of her life that's never really been explored. This story is what the scene on the cover depicts and it's one of most intense and sad things I've seen within the pages of this comic. If you haven't picked up L & R in a while, or got bogged down by trying to keep all the characters straight, this one will pull you back on track.
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: Pterror Over Paris andThe Eiffel Demon Vol. 1
Jacques Tardi
Fantagraphics
A film based on this comic was released in France this past Spring and you can see the lead actress's boobs in the trailer. The French actress portraying Adele Blanc-Sec is so pretty she makes the prettiest American actress you can think of look like a bunch of pigs. And that's not even getting into her tits.In the past year Fantagraphics has released a handful of Tardi's comics that had never been translated into English. Those were all a big deal since he's pretty much the king of French comics. A fair amount of the comics in this volume have been reprinted before, although often smaller, shittilier, and in black & white. This printing is clearly the one to own; nice hard covers, standard BD size, good paper, etc. Also, Fantagraphics is publishing the entire nine volume series. Up to now, no one's ever made it past volume four. We may find out that's because volumes five through nine are lousy or go off on some Archie-style Christian tangent or some other such horror, but most likely all we'll find out is how brutally Fantagraphics crush their publishing opponents.
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Prison Pit Book Two
Johnny Ryan
Fantagraphics
Like Empire Strikes Back, Prison Pit 2 lacks a definite sense of beginning or ending. The first book began with Cannibal Fuckface falling into the Prison Pit, fighting various monstrous foes, and ended with his arm being replaced by a weird little worm that sucked his dick and mindmelded with him This book continues the story with CF returning to fuck up the dickhead who's been causing him problems in an epic and bloody battle.
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Little Lulu's Pal Tubby: The Castaway and Other Stories
John Stanley and Irving Trip
Dark Horse
Finally, Tubby' s solo comics are collected in full color! Like the title says, Tubby is Little Lulu's pal, and when the series was at its height he got his own comics. Tubby is a porky child who wears a sailor's cap and is at the bottom of his friends' pecking order. He means well but is immature and impulsive and has a tendency toward putting on disguises, trying to be a detective, and eating other people's food.
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Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery Archives Volume. 3
A Bunch of People
Dark Horse
Dark Horse acquired the rights to a lot of Silver Age horror comics and they've been releasing them in these nice hardbound $50 volumes with great colors, nice paper, and nice-looking spines for your shelf. I'm a big fanatic for the well-presented book of reprints and I thoroughly enjoyed these comics despite them being mostly ridiculous.I thought the EC horror comics had stories that made no damn sense and were poorly told, but the stuff in this book is absolutely absurd. I'm not bothered by it, I like this kind of stuff. It's just that EC had some of the greatest illustrators ever to hang out in the comics medium. This has Joe Orlando and Al Williamson, but none of the art's going to blow your mind. The painted covers are kind of nice but the applcation is so thick and muddy that everyone looks like an animatronic Disney character.
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Zero Killer
Arvid Nelson, Matt Camp, Dave Stewart
Dark Horse
This is a post apocalyptic story set in Manhattan. Everyone dresses a little like a black-people version of Akira, with many of the characters directly modeled after celebrities. One character looks like a tall Lil Kim and at one point the main character gets threatened by Andre 3000, a young Michael Jackson, and Prince as he looked on the cover of his self-titled record. In this alternate universe the Cold War between USSR reached a breaking point that resulted in America and much of the rest of the world being nuked to Hell with much of Africa being left untouched. Zero works as a sort of errand boy and bounty hunter for the various gangs that have taken occupancy in the Empire State Building, the PanAm building, Chrysler, and the Twin Towers.
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The Man Behind The Nose
Larry "Bozo" Harmon with Thomas Scott Mckenzie
Igniter Literary Group
Bozo the Clown doesn't take any breaks in letting you know how hard working, talented, smart, brave, agile, charitable, and instantly loved he is wherever he goes. This book's pronounced lack of modesty will probably make most readers turn on him pretty quickly and assume that most of this book is a complete lie. I don't want to say for absolute sure, but I know from lies and this book reads less like an autobiography and more like a series of stories that have been told in bars and over lunch with friends over and over again for decades. All the rough parts have been smoothed out, gaps filled in. Larry Harmon, who created the Bozo franchise (although not the character), was a business savvy and industrious guy, but the fact that he's constantly reminding us of this makes me think he's probably a colossal asshole as well.
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The Art of Blade of the Immortal
Hiroki Samura
Dark Horse
Some Western eyes see manga and it all looks the same. Hiroki Samura's abilities are far superior to your standard dime-store manga artist. His handskills don't show up as much in his faces as they do in his anatomy, especially hands and feet. His faces aren't bad. His drawings remind me of whoever does all the art for those Marvel Versus Capcom videogames. Everything's got solid forms and precise penciled linework. His compositions are good. I'm not crazy about his colors or painting. Also I have no idea what Blade of the Immortal is about except it involves a guy who can't die.
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Slice Harvester issue 2: "Upper West Side"
Colin Atrophy
Lifer-punk Colin Atrophy is making a series of zines in which he attempts to review every goddam pizzeria in New York City, which just might be crazy enough to work. I missed the previous issue, but one has to wonder what it will be like when he runs out of Manhattan and has to review the Papa John's by Laguardia or some shit. The pizza review idea is great and helps structure everything in a way that's approachable and allows greater substance to be added at any point. It's also fun for those of you who like hearing stories about people with names like Johnny Dress Pants (formerly Johnny No Pants). I managed to acquire a lot of nick names in my life but never got a good punk name. Probably cause I was more of a nerd. I used to get called Dance Party Nick, Stash Man, Rooster, Space Ghost, Mr. Nick, but none of these really stuck. I was too socially weird or nomadic to hold onto a nickname for long and soon reverted to being Nick Gazin although I always introduced myself as Nicholas. See Colin? You're not the only one using the review column structure as a pretense to writing about other things.
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Creepy Archives: Volume Seven
Varous
Dark Horse Books
Warren used to put out these magazine-sized comics back in the seventies including Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, the Spirit reprints, and possibly other junk too. They all had amazing painted covers and cheap black & white newsprint interiors. Basically, Warren tried to recreate the awesomeness of EC's horror comics with comics like these and failed abominably. They even had ghoulish Cryptkeeper knockoffs like Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie (awesomely drawn by Jack Davis) as hosts.These Dark Horse Archive volumes are E-ticket all the way with nice paper and such, but the comics in Creepy just aren't that great. At the top of the horror comics ladder there's EC, then Steve Ditko's horror work, then those Boris Karloff horror comics, and then maybe this. I want to like them. They're nice blocky objects with Frazetta art on the cover, but they just ain't good.
