

1 Meathaus: Go For the Gold 3 Edited by Chris McD Meathaus
Advertisement



Advertisement













2 Pim and Francie Al Columbia Fantagraphics
Al Columbia did three issues of a spooky and pretty comic called theBiologic Showfor Fantagraphics back in the early 90s and also did a record cover for the Action Suits, which was a band made up of people who were involved with Fantagraphics. Then I didn't see new work from him for a long time and people I talked to about him didn't have any idea who I was talking about. It seems like a lot of people who were great at comics in the early 90s like Al, Rick Altergott, or Jim Woodring made some great comics, saw that the world wasn't that interested, and moved on. It's nice of Al to give the world another shot at appreciating the beautiful things he can do. Columbia draws in the style of the early Disney cartoons with a line quality that is rich and comforting and uses black like it was going out of style. Pim and Francie are two innocents who explore a world of depression, death and evil. They repeatedly are killed, attacked and then are fine again. The pages are cropped in ways that cut off parts of the dialogue, some of the pages have been torn apart and taped back together. Most of the art is half finished and confusing. WithAdvertisement

3 Boing #3 Various Jim Stolen
This is a fold-over newsprint zine of awesome drawings by Ben Jacques, Mike Perry, Alex Purdy, Luke Ramsay, Ron Rege Jr., Andy Rementor, and Jim Stolen. They all would fit well within the pages ofKramer's Ergotand with the experimental stuff that is big and good these days. Actually I'm not sure how big it is. But oh me is it good.
4 Dear Andy Kaufman I Hate Your Guts! Lynn Margulies
When Andy Kaufman challenged all the women of America to wrestle him and made fun of them for being weak and stupid they responded by unleashing a giant wave of mail which crashed upon the shores of NBC. All kinds of women wanted to wrestle Andy. Women who hated him, women who loved him, and women whose feelings seem to be a tangy mixture of the two. Andy saved and organized all of the letters and photos he received and now his widow, Lynn Margulies, has released them as the exact sort of book you would want to own.
5 Lobo Highway to Hell #1 of 2 Scott Ian & Sam Kieth DC
Scott Ian from Anthrax is writing a Lobo mini-series and Sam Kieth, who didAdvertisement

6 Electric Ant Issue 2:Exquisite Corpses Edited by Ryan Sands Ryan Sands
This book is good but it's noGFTG3Advertisement

7 Game Informer November 2009 the Game Informer Staff Cathy Preston
I threw this in here mostly to serve as a dividing line between the good and bad comics. Everything after this review is worse than a magazine about videogames. This is actually a pretty good issue. I got it when I bought a wireless router for my 360 at Gamestop. It's got some good reader art that was all crudely but earnestly drawn by hand. I always liked reader art columns in magazines and like that Game Informer carries on that tradition. When magazines started to die, the reader art columns were the first things to go. Also, the staffs and the budgets. I remember when Wizard Magazine was at its peak and had both an envelope art column and a monthly reader art contest. If I had a time machine the first thing I would do is start drawing Evil Ernie, Vampirella, and Spawn over and over again and then send a big box of drawings to Wizard immediately. Nothing I ever accomplish now will ever mean as much to me as the things I will never get to do. I kinda went into a fog there.Advertisement

8 Alec "The Years Have Pants" ( A Life-sized Omnibus) Eddie Campbell Top Shelf
I just flipped through this book trying to remember what it's about again. Alec is about a young guy who works in a factory and people are constantly telling him he's too smart to work in a factory. Then he goes out and drinks which leads to boring stories that he thinks are interesting. Most of the characters blend together I'm on the 91st page and I still can't tell most of the characters apart or get what's to like about them. I also can't tell if there's a story in this 638-page comic or if it's going to continue being a series of boring drinking stories. Campbell's drawings are always pretty good. I've readBacchus, that Batman comic he did where Batman fights a pagan secret society, andFrom Hell. I just haven't hung onto any of his work because I find it really, really, really boring. I also think Harvey Pekar is dull as shit and couldn't get throughLord of the Rings, which I really wanted to like. Just so you know what you're dealing with here.
9 Conceptual Realism In The Service of the Hypothetical Robert Williams Fantagraphics
It's not a retrospective and there isn't a consistent theme amongst the work represented in this book. It's kind of a "checkin' in to see what Robert Williams has been doing lately" release. The answer is that he's been doing some paintings that are softer and less shiny looking than his previous ones, some ink drawings with soft color underneath, some large statues that are bigger than him, and paintings that resemble souvenir postcards but in nightmarish ways. I'm not so crazy about the way he's painting now. I like when his charcters and objects all look hard and lacquered and I like his ink drawings when they're similar to hisAdvertisement

10 Like A Dog Zak Sally Fantagraphics
Zak Sally draws like a dog. Ugly lines, bad proportions, everything looks mooshy and amateurish. I'm pretty sure I've seen comics by this guy that I liked, but this isn't one of them.
11 Essex County Jeff Lemire Top Shelf
I can't get past how bad the art is. It hurts to look at it. Maybe you can look at it but I can't. The guy seems to have trouble with noses and other anatomy so he relies on common tricks that people who can't draw use. It's like staring at an ugly sun.
