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I am the author of Eden (Drawn and Quarterly)
I live in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I write you in regards of a "review" of my book, Mr. Nick Gazin posted on Vice recently.
I think it is ok to say you didn´t like a book. But it is wrong to be offensive.
That´s what you really want to happen? Destroy another author?
Is that the "American way"?
You don´t know nothing about me. Why do something like that?
Pablo Holmberg"While I am sorry that this is how Pablo had to learn about the American Way, did I really destroy this guy? Aren't artists supposed to be struggling with the big ideas and great truths or something? Why does it always seem like comics are full of anxious wimps who can't deal with bad reviews? I'm not saying I want artists to be a bunch of jocks and bullies, it just bums me out when people who are supposed to be seeking truth or beauty have less conviction about what they do than people who cut hair or serve drinks.Well, here are the latest reviews. They're late because I had better things to do. I hope that anyone who feels destroyed by these reviews uses that feeling to either become stronger artists or quit. Send anything you want reviewed to Nick Gazin at Vice Magazine. Things not specifically addressed to me end up in a big pile of stuff that gets picked over by interns.
Love,Nicholas

The Wrong Place
Brecht Evans
Drawn & Quarterly
This is one of the best comics I've seen in years. Each page is beautifully illustrated with gesturally drawn watercolor people who look like candy. The compositions, colors, poses, lettering--it's all perfect. There's something about the poses, situations, and the location of the "camera" in relation to the people that reminds me of Eddie Campbell, although I find his work dull. This stuff is like if you replaced his scratchy little lines and people with a luscious cornucopia of patterns and color.
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Prince Valiant Vol. 3:1941 -1942
Hal Foster
Fantagraphics
Hell fuckin' yeah. New Prince Valiant. Fantagraphics really does these reprints right. While they could easily pump out lazy reissues of the same poorly recolored old strips like everyone else did before them, they actually go ahead and find the original colors and it's like nothing you've ever seen before. Unless you were reading Prince Valiant in the newspaper back in the early 40s. What I said in that last review about every page being like candy goes double for Prince Valiant.
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Pandora's Eyes
Milo Manara and Vincenzo Cerami
Humanoids
I remember seeing Manara's comics serialized in Heavy Metal, Penthouse, and L'Echo when I was little and thinking they were pretty good and very porny, but nowadays my porn sensitivity is dulled and I just see amazing comics. His fixation on assholes still seems a little weird. Like I'm pretty sure from reading through some of these comics that he considers ladies' love stars their primary sex hole. It's kind of weird when someone's perversions show through too much. Like for a while in the early 90s Bob Guccione got really into piss and there were all these pictorials of women pissing on each other and drinking piss. As a nine-year-old I thought this was kind of strange, but all adult sexuality was strange and also what the fuck was I doing reading Penthouse at nine? Anyways, now as an adult the idea of being obsessed with women pissing seems really strange. I knew a guy who was into women shitting but I don't think he'd found a partner to engage in his shit fetish with him yet. I'd ask him "Would you eat a ziplock bag of Britney Spears' shit?" "Yes, totally." "What about a bag of my shit?" "No that's gross." --Wait, what was I talking about?

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New Character Parade
Johnny Ryan
Pigeon Press
Oh yeah! Hundreds of new page-long funnies by Johnny Ryan! There's a hilarious one about Chris Benoit, the wrestler who murdered his family. There's one about a guy named Stink Saw who jerks women off by letting them ride on his chainsaw and then charges folks money to smell his saw. There's the "100% Anal Rape" comic that Johnny did after Gary Panter's jerk daughter said that that's what all his comics were these days. There's Obi Wan Slobbobi in which a fat Jedi knight refers to a lightsaber as his zim zam stick. There's the one that's just goofy animals quoting all the mean comments about Johnny Ryan that were on the Vice site. Everything after that looks like it was influenced by the movie From Beyond and is full of people mutating into horrible monsters after making contact with weird sexual demons from other dimensions.
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Usagi Yojimbo Volumes 9 and 10
Stan Sakai
Dark Horse
Usagi Yojimbo tells the story of Usagi Miyamoto, a wandering samurai who is also a rabbit. This comic's been going since the black and white boom of the 80s and the character appeared in the Ninja Turtles cartoon show way back when. I've never heard anyone mention being a fan except for Dash Shaw, but it's a lot of fun to read. Stan Sakai makes us feel like we're Usagi's traveling companion, sharing in his adventures of good doing.The stories are pretty similar from one issue to the next. Usagi wanders into a town and there's some obviously corrupt people and he fights 20 animal samurais at once. Or he meets some child or lady or elderly person who is running from an attacker and then he helps that person. Sometimes a demon or a person who Usagi thinks is his pal will betray him. It's all pretty straightforward. I always like the main character, and it's full of lessons about old-tymey Japanese agriculture and blacksmithing and stuff. If you're going to be on a plane ride or doing something else you find uncomfortable, Usagi Yojimbo will be the comic book blanket that will just wrap you up in fantasy. Every time I read this comic I immediately want to eat Japanese food. And then I usually eat it.
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Dick Briefer's Frankenstein
Edited by Craig Yoe
IDW/Yoe Books
Dick Briefer is an obscure cartoonist who did comics about Frankenstein's Monster in the 1940s. He's also one of the few auteurs of the medium from an era when most comics were churned out by studios assembly-line style. Briefer's Frankenstein comics started off as mediocre horror stories but then the character got his own comic series and it turned into a great humor comic about Frankenstein and his funny monster pals. The poses, linework, ideas, and jokes that Briefer did in the funny Frankenstein comics are some of my absolute favorites in the history of comics. The lines have a supreme slick undulation to them that are sort of like Jack Cole's, Al Capp's, or Boody Rogers (who Craig Yoe also edited a book about). Briefer's Frankenstein also has a nose that is slightly above his eyeline and makes him look little-boyish. Who doesn't love friendly monsters or feel like one? Unfortunately his editors didn't dig the funny monster thing and made him go back to the old mediocre horror style of doing shit where Frankenstein is a misunderstood beast-man.I first saw one of these funny comics in Art Out Of Time and it blew my mind. Later Gary Panter loaned me one of his original copies of an issue of Frankenstein and sometime after that I managed to score a copy of #4 on Ebay for cheap. I'd had my samplings and was ready for a full on anthology collecting the series. Unfortunately this book fails to deliver what I think we all wanted.
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Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft
Joe Jill and Gabriel Rodriguez
IDW
I initially thought this looked corny as Hell, especially the use of the name Lovecraft in the title like that's supposed to be some subtle inside reference. The art's also pretty hideous by my standards. Or rather, it's too stylized for its own good. For a story like this it would've been helped if the art was less slicky extremo and more like Steve Dillon did for Preacher.
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Scenes from an Impending Marriage Adrian Tomine
Drawn & Quarterly
Adrian Tomine got married and gave out little comics he made about the process of preparing for a wedding to give away as wedding favors. If I got this at a wedding I would be psyched. "Wow, what a rad little book documenting the goofy stress that my friends have been going through in order to show me a good time while celebrating their love." As someone who wasn't at the wedding, however, and truthfully doesn't really like the idea of weddings, I am not super into it. Adrian Tomine's drawings are always nice to look at but I don't know if this really needed to be released to the general public.Much of the book seems to be Adrian complaining to his irritatingly good-natured wife about how much he hates preparing for this wedding. Every step of the way seems to be an obnoxious chore which highlights a different thing that sucks about giant expensive weddings. I've only been to one peer's wedding which turned out great and not corny. Still, I could never imagine myself turning to someone and saying "let's buy food for a bunch of assholes we don't talk to." Were I ever to get married I'd probably have a party then get married in the middle of it as a surprise to the guests. I like America so maybe at a Fourth of July party. Something with low costs, no stress, fireworks. A real black shorts and socks kind of affair.
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My Dead Dad Was In ZZ Top
Jon Glaser
Harper Perennial
Jon Glaser is one of best comedians out there. I'm not a top-five-list kind of guy but I would put him in my top five comedians. Johnny Ding Dong is amazing. Drac Search was a huge and important joke. Delocated is also pretty great.The stand up bit that this book is based upon was great for a lot of reasons and was one of the best things on that Invite Them Up CD set. This book isn't very good though and it pains me to say that because I like Jon Glaser's comedy a lot and if he ever sees this he'll go,"Vice doesn't like my book? Fuck those fools, especially Nick Gazin." Any invisible bond or fantasy friendship I may have had with him while watching my Youtube clips and TV appearances will never, NEVER happen now. But this is how it goes when you write reviews.The original bit that this book is based on involved Jon coming to the stage, explaining that his dad had recently died and that while going through his father's possessions he found a series of letters that his dad had sent to ZZ Top while being in an early incarnation of the band. It's an amazing bit, partially because it almost seems real up until he gets deep into letters that his dad wrote full of terrible ideas and bizarre conceptions of what the nature of ZZ Top should be. If you haven't heard it you should, it's great even with me having ruined it. Unfortunately there are no such surprises in this book. Or rather, there's one initial surprise, the one I just ruined and then excused myself for ruining. Once you've read one fake letter relating to rock n' roll history you've read them most. What if the Velvet Underground & Nico record had a hoagie instead of a banana? What if a whole lot of musicians known for their integrity had been shameless sell outs and pitched parodic versions of their song lyrics to lots of big companies? It takes the punch out of what's coming and is also bereft of Glaser's amazing voice and timing. I guess those last two failings are more my fault than book's, but it's still disappointing.If Jon is reading this. Please forgive me, and keep writing books.

The Cardboard Valise
Ben Katchor
Pantheon
I've been informed by teachers and critics that Ben Katchor's a great cartoonist but like Devo said, "teachers and critics all dance the poot." I felt like I was supposed to like it for a long time before I realized that there was nothing redeeming about his work at all. It's so ugly and bland in the way so many overly stylized old illustrators are ugly and bland. I don't get it, I don't like it and I don't know how anyone can. There, I said it.See you in two weeks!NICK GAZIN
