|
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Rich's Reviews
Comics from PANIC
The following reviews are for comics that were at a unusual show in Manhattan last weekend (October 7) called PANIC Punk and Indie Comics. It was a combination mini-comic expo and punk rock concert, with local bands playing sets in the same room with the cartoonists. You can read more about my thoughts on the show in this post I made on the Newsarama Blog about it. (Oh yeah, I got invited to be a part of the Newsarama blog recently - for how long, I don't know, but look for me there.)
Dolltopia
by Abby Denson
website, $2
Dolls (and action figures) unsatisfied with their predetermined identities journey to the titular place to be their true selves. While there, they plot a mass liberation of their fellow dolls. After many years amidst the self-publishing scene, Abby Denson has finally hit the big time this year with the release of the collected volume of her long-running romance series Tough Love. Fans of Chynna Clugston, Andi Watson and Christine Norrie should give her work a try - it's very much in that vein. I've known her for many years, and I remember when she was still doing Tough Love as mini-comics, so I'm naturally glad to see that she's blown up.
Dolltopia is one of her more recent works. Cult film aficionados will likely be reminded at first of the banned Todd Haynes film Superstar, a biopic of 70's singer Karen Carpenter which used Barbie dolls instead of actors (good luck finding it; to my knowledge, it's only available as a bootleg). It's closer to Toy Story, though, with a touch of Matrix-style philosophy mixed in. Like Buzz Lightyear, Kitty and Army Jim are anomalies whose self-perceptions deviate from their peers and mark them as different. Where Toy Story argues that there's value in being a toy, Dolltopia takes the opposite approach, and as such, enters the realm of metaphor - and when Kitty puts on Army Jim's jacket and he puts on a kilt, it's not difficult to guess what it's a metaphor of. As messages go, it's not exactly subtle, though it�s compensated by also showing dolls not interested in taking the path of self-determination. That distinction made the story feel more believable.
Since these are dolls, there's little that can be done in terms of gestures and facial expressions - and this is even addressed in the story! Still, the art does its job; Abby's style hasn't changed much over the years, though some of the backgrounds are a little too sketchy.
Dolltopia is definitely one of Abby's best comics, and it makes for a fine introduction to the major themes in her work. B+
Crash: The Life and Death of a Germ
by Craig Bostick
Aquaboy Comics, $2
A profile of the Germs, an 80's punk band, focusing on singer Darby Crash. Not knowing a thing about this period of punk history, this is all new to me - I didn't even grok that this was based on a true story until a little past the halfway point. Still, this felt like the Readers' Digest version; moments quickly come and go, bridged by long stretches of exposition, and as a result I wasn�t as emotionally invested in Darby's life as much as I should have been. Art is woefully limited in range of facial expressions; it's as if every other panel was meant to show off Darby's overbite. Plus there are too many floating backgrounds. C+
Party at Horror Beach
by Robin Enrico
website , no price listed
Tales of teen sex, boogeymen, video games, and dentistry. Didn't suck, but it wasn't all that memorable either. I didn't really care enough about the characters in the costume party story to worry about who's cheating on whom. Plus, they seemed to have a different relationship to each other in the boogeyman story (they seemed more like siblings instead of friends). The last two stories were better; perhaps because they were autobiographical (at least I think the third one was). The way the characters were drawn made it very unclear how old they were suppsoed to be - at first I thought they were pre-teens, then teens, then young adults. It's a little too simplistic for stories with nudity and sex and profanity. C+
Bosko #1
by John Holmstrom
Punk Comics, $4.95
A collection of old and new strips mostly featuring the title character, a scumbag loser with a weakness for booze and chicks. If Bosko reminds you of Buddy Bradley from Hate, well that's because creator John Holmstrom and Peter Bagge go back a long way together. Holmstrom is a punk rock ink stud from the old school - some of the strips here go as far back as 1980.
Bosko, for all the slovenliness, flatulence, alcoholism, and overall white-trashiness, retains a childlike aspect to his character that distinguishes him from Buddy, who comes across as crankier and a bit more grounded in reality. As a result, the stories here are goofier and more episodic, in an anything-goes sense. (The opening strip, for example, is an obvious homage to a classic Lee-Ditko Spider-Man story - not that non-superhero fans would get the joke, though.) Bosko identifies with New York as much as Buddy does with Seattle and Jersey, and while there are fewer recurring characters, there's no shortage of freaks, squares, jock-thugs, and assorted weirdos to be found. The one autobiographical story in this collection is in the same vein.
Artistically, it's remarkable how consistent Holmstrom has remained over three decades. There's little difference in his style between 1980 and 2006. While it may not be as aesthetically pleasing to the eye as others, I suspect this is one of those cases where prettier art could almost be considered detrimental. These are ugly people doing ugly things in an ugly world; it seems somehow right that they should look wildly exaggerated and excessively cartoonish. Call it the "anti-Archie" look.
I'm glad I got to meet John Holmstrom. Another avenue of comics history has been opened up for me to explore. Might be a future column in it� B
Sidescrollers
by Matthew Loux
Oni, $11.95
Trio of post-high school geeks play video games, antagonize jocks, and attempt to save The Girl from a bad relationship. Some cute yuks here and there, but it's almost entirely lifted from the Kevin Smith School of Storytelling. There's even a pair of Jay and Silent Bob ripoff characters, hip hop slang and all. Art is very stylized - lots of sharp edges and hard ink outlines - and while I can't say it's to my taste, it is done consistently well, with quite a bit of detail. Pure fluff. C
|
April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
