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Destined for Dizziness "I consider Salazar, along with Kevin
Huizenga, the most
intriguing young talent to come into comics in the last five years… Souther
Salazar, a Pasadena resident and soon to be no longer an art student
who makes comics that evoke intimacy without descending into mawkishness.
He accomplishes this through attention to craft, a natural understanding
of the intricate strengths of comics as language, and a light touch
when it comes to varying his tone… The effect in Salazar's best
work is similar to the evocatively detailed mini-comics stories
told by Kevin Huizenga and John
Porcellino, but with the narrator almost entirely removed from
the picture. At times reading Salazar's comics is like digging
through a stranger's packed suitcase or unloading a box from someone's
garage." |
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Spaniel Rage "Every day throughout the day there are these moments
I want to remember, or tell people, so that's usually what I
end up drawing. There are SO many things that I never even get
to draw, and I mourn the loss of their recording for the rest of
my days, that is until I forget about them. That's why I have to
draw stuff, because I forget stuff." "I'm
shocked that hardly anyone is familiar with her work. She's published
a few mini comics and has been in a couple of comics anthologies.
The work so far is diary comics. The layout of the pages is in
this loose sketchbook style and boy can she draw." |
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Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Vol
3 "I want to do a comic with proper structure, where stuff
happens and, hopefully, there's emotional stuff there that people
can tap into and feel something. But a large part of why I'm doing
this is that I just want to do a comic that moves. It's not an
artistic statement. Hopefully, I'll be doing this for the rest
of my life." "The Mummy is an homage to the
old-fashioned stories of crime and adventure I loved to read growing
up. I started off intending to make a straightforward adventure
yarn, but it turned into something else entirely, involving ghosts
and Japanese explorers and a stage hypnotist." "Every year Drawn & Quarterly offers an anthology of
lengthy stories by emerging young cartoonists; this installment
is the strongest thus far, and a visually stunning book to boot...
Occupying the middle spot is Kramer's
Ergot editor Harkham's Somersaulting,
a tale of two friends and a long summer. Using a muted color
palette of yellow, orange and black, Harkham effortlessly controls
the story's mood, summoning the languid pace of summer as well
as the gradual discovery of love and sex in the suburbs. Neither
cynical nor sentimental, this tale plays like a long, clear-eyed
tone poem to teenage summers... Broersma rounds out the book
with the two-part The
Mummy, a charming and funny romp through a mythical mid-20th-century European
locale, featuring tongue-in-cheek romance, intrigue and ghosts. Entertaining
and wittily executed, it's the perfect complement to the more serious works in
this essential new volume." |
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Late Bloomer "Carol Tyler is a crucial voice for the medium. She's lived
so many roles – bohemian, artist, mother, teacher. Midwestern housewife,
family historian – and imbues her work with all the wisdom of her
experiences. Poetic, her work is ornamented with detail, yet not
flowery. Carol is neither sensationalistic or sentimental, yet
she documents all the clumsiness of human existence with incredible
grace." "This book is a revelation for me; I'd only seen a few examples
of Carol Tyler's cartooning before, but the verdant richness and
humanity of her whole body of work has raised her in my mind to
one of the handful of true greats of the original underground generation.
Unpretentious and inviting, it recreates the comfortable, reassuring
feeling of a favourite relative telling you stories at the kitchen
table - despite its painful subject matter and revealing details.
Buy this book! It will inspire and move you." "I can only speak for myself. This is the kind of comics I like
best; deeply personal, honest, autobiographical, unpretentious,
funny, self-depreciating, highly individualistic. And one hopes
that there are enough other people out there who will appreciate
these qualities in Carol Tyler's work so that she will be encouraged
to continue on." "Tyler's folksy style of cartooning belies her art-school background.
She eschews careful portraiture in favor of just a few details
that reflect the nature of the personality. She depicts one ex-boyfriend
as something closer to a worm than a human. Apparently something
of a pack rat at home, she also likes filling her panels with stuff.
Your eyes are constantly exploring and discovering new things,
like the advertising babble coming out of the background radio
in some scenes. Though Tyler claims to prefer working in black
and white, the pieces she does in color display a gift that goes
well beyond merely 'coloring in' her outlines. Her painterly past
comes out in the variety and richness of her palette, making Late
Bloomer one of the most sumptuous color books of the year." |
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Strangehaven Vol 3: Conspiracies |
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The Alchemist's Easel "A religious experience, akin to dreaming with your eyes open." "Al Davison astounds us once again with his deft marriage
of a personal perspective that is utterly unique and his facility
for line, form and anatomy, that takes the breath away." "One of the most consistently original and thought-provoking
creators working in comics today. Al Davison's art is a joy.
His writing powerful. His martial arts, apparently, lethal. So
don't mess with him." |
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Capote in Kansas "Capote
in Kansas is entrancing,
a literate work in its own right. In the end, I think that Capote himself would
have greatly approved what Parks and Samnee have achieved here. Don't make
the same mistake I almost did and pass this by. I honestly can't see this not
making my 'Best of 2005' list... Highly recommended." |
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We All Die Alone (HC) "I am a great fan of Mark Newgarden's work... In his hands,
the gag caption is raised to literature." |
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The King |
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Humor Can Be Funny! "What can one say about Sam Henderson's venerable potty humor
that hasn't already been said? His blocky, crudely drawn (and crudely
spoken) figures exist in an universe populated by stars of canceled
sitcoms and thinly-veiled representations of Henderson's friends.
He does have a formula and, by and large, he's stuck with it for
years... Yes,
after all these years, the Magic Whistle still
blows. Thank God." "There are something like 50-60 strips here, with the longest
being seven or eight pages. The brevity suits Henderson and his
style of savage, biting, sarcastic humor. Henderson realizes
the subject matter often doesn't merit more than one brutal
kick-in-the-ass punchline. Some of the best sections feature
several one-panel comics on a single page or two-page spread.
This isn't moronic humor; Henderson knows what he's doing
and some of the more satisfying bits of this book are those strips
where he pulls apart and analyses the humor involved or simply
acknowledges a strip's abrupt vapidity. Better critics
than myself have been screaming about Henderson for years, including
a number of recommendations right here. With this attractive,
meaty tome, you no longer have an excuse to ignore them." |
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The Dead Boy Detective Digest |
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100 Bullets Vol 8 by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso DC/Vertigo $14.99 Murder. Admit it: you've had it in your heart at one time or another. Somebody, somewhere, did something so bad, so wrong, you wanted to kill them… even if it was only for a split second. So here's the question: What would you do if you were given the opportunity and the means to get away with it, scot-free? That's the question posed in 100 Bullets. Part hard-boiled crime story, part paranoid espionage thriller, 100 Bullets follows what happens when people from all walks of life meet Agent Graves, a mysterious figure who offers his clients the opportunity of a lifetime: an briefcase containing the proof, the gun, and the carte blanche immunity to extract revenge on a person who's done them irrevocable wrong. But who is Agent Graves? An emissary from an unknown government bureau? A rich man getting his kicks from granting people a personal justice where the judicial system has failed? Or is there something more sinister at work, a hidden framework that links his clients' personal dramas in a twisted game of shadowy conspiracies? Visit the 100 Bullets web-site here. |
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The Freebooters (HC) |
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The First Kingdom Vol 2 of 4 |
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Kinetic |
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Promethea Vol 5 (HC) "Magic isn't some unfathomable and archaic new territory so much
as something which you've been dealing with all you're life in
various forms, but have never chosen to see in those terms." |
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Promethea Covers Book "Utilizing my occult experiences I could see a way that it would
be possible to do a new kind of occult comic, that was more psychedelic,
that was more sophisticated, more experimental, more ecstatic and
exuberant." |
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Unstable Molecules "I feel like I went to the Marvel universe, kidnapped some characters,
brought them back to my side of the street... Kirby created [The
Fantastic Four] 40 years ago that has so influenced and shaped
comics history and I look to honor it. I hope that comes across
in the book. Kirby's imprint is all over Unstable
Molecules." |
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Hellshock: The Definitive Edition |
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Silent Dance |
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Little Book Of Horrors: War Of The
Worlds (HC) |
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Burying Sandwiches by Robert Sato Self-Published $7.95 This Xeric Grant winning comic features the story of a girl who never should have been born on earth. Includes culinary horrors, feeding frenzies, prescription drug drudgery, the supernatural, sporadic violence, senseless hauntings, subtle tortures, fantastic feats, drastic measures, disturbing visions and a celebrity. |
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Coexisting by Andrew Drozd Alternative Comics $2.99 A Xeric Grant winning comic which explores various social and political issues with humour and unflinching honesty. Coextisting depicts Andrew Drozd's relationship with Marcus, a Christian Fundamentalist, and his struggle to reconcile their ideological differences. |
Other Books Out This Month: Independents: DC: Marvel: |
| To Top | ART & ILLUSTRATION: |
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Through Prehensile Eyes: Seeing The
Art Of Robert Williams (HC) "Robert Williams is intelligent, boisterous, and a hardass
of an artist who expects us to be 'ardent observers' of his work
and the world around us. No subject is taboo in his fast-paced
visual novellas; no mental or emotional state, no racial or gender
conflict, no addiction, no sex act, no religion, no crime or orifice
is left unrendered. He democratically jams his finger hard into
our soft underbellies and applies pressure to our ability to reconcile
the inherent battle between mind and bodily matter. He shows us
our shit from multiple vantage points - usually all within the
single frame of a 30-by-40 inch canvas. His work often inspires
immediate gut reactions - both euphoric and vile - and in both
cases we need to take a deep breath and look a little harder...
The apathetic, intolerant, or lazy viewer will not find a seat
at this dining room table." "If the idea of having your imagination imploding within
the frail shell of your skull appeals, then step this way... Here
is a classic painter at play. A painter obsessed with form and
aware of the power of detail and its effect. A painter who draws
from every area of art, from Pleistocene to Pop, forever bending
and jumbling imagery from the Ugly Head of Amerika and beyond.
Everything that has dominated his work thus far, from Roth to Zap,
is on show here. T&A jiggle next to chromed brontos while the
living-gone pull bone-dry hard-ons, as Russ Meyer-styled goddesses
lure them into psychedelic damnation." |
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Weirdo Deluxe: The Wild World Of
Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow Art "I belong to a rather loose-knit group of artists that, because
of a fifty year dominance of abstract and conceptual art, have
been left isolated from the more conventional academic mainstream.
All of us, with few exceptions, function in the craftsmanship-based
realism of representational art. To better understand this, you
have to realise that we gain our source material and inspiration
from some of the most illustrious, colourful and controversial
influences and graphic traditions that one could possibly emerge
from. We spawn from the story illustration, comic book art, science
fiction, movie poster art, motion picture production and effects,
animation, music art and posters, psychedelic and punk rock art,
hot rod and biker art, surfer, beach bum and skateboard graphics,
graffiti art, tattoo art, pin-up art, pornography and myriad other
commonplace egalitarian art forms. And all are simply dismissed
and treated with condescension by the formal art authorities. I
am not alone. I stand with hundreds, if not thousands of like minded
artists. And enough of us exist to justify our own periodical (Juxtapoz magazine),
which stands third in all art magazine sales." |
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Sheep Of Fools (HC) "Exploring with Sue Coe is no gentle stroll through cloistered
sanctuaries of art. She makes uncompromising demands. She demands
to speak freely. She demands viewers go eye-to-eye with the equivalent
of road kill. She demands unflinching openness in full view of
painful contradictions. Essentially, Coe demands that we re-examine
our assumptions. When reading her books or looking at her images,
the natural reaction is to turn away, to shut out horrific truths.
One cannot meet her work without encountering resistance. This
is inevitable, because this is her intent." |
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Illustration '05 Magazine #1 |
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Juxtapoz #58 (Sept/Oct 2005) High Speed Productions $4.99 Robert William's arts and culture magazine. In this issue: - interview with Todd & Kathy Schorr. - Michael Hussar's second coming. - The cyclothymic rhythms of Elizabeth Huey. - The art of Shepard Fairey. - Plus news and reviews from the world of outsider art. |
Other Art & Illustration This Month: Heroes & Villains: The William
Messner-Loeb Benefit Sketchbook (TwoMorrows, $24.95) |
| To Top | COMICS: |
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King-Cat Comics & Stories #64 "When he was struggling with his pain, at what was to be the end
of his life, we talked on the phone practically every day... good,
honest, real conversations, heart to heart. In those moments we
were so close, our love was right there - so deep, so open, and
alive. I take consolation in knowing that when he went, there was
no a shred of doubt in our minds about how much we meant to each
other, how much we loved each other. It was an honor for me to
be his son." "...I would argue that he is certainly among the most important
young cartoonists currently working... Beyond his appealingly simple
cartooning style, what really makes Porcellino's work endure is
the sensibility that underlies all of his comics. Porcellino's
take on himself and the world around him is passionate, gentle
and accepting, while not without moments of despair, and self-hatred.
King-Cat Comics paints a picture of one person's struggle for inner
peace, as corny as that sounds in this world of irony and apathy." |
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Karma Incorporated #1 of 3 "In Karma Incorporated, we spend
a lot of time looking at the politics of relationships - specifically,
marriage, fidelity and divorce. Everyone is stuck in their own
hopeless drama. When things get difficult, no one is equipped to
deal with the situation in healthy ways. I don't know if I intended
Karma Incorporated to be a satire, but the themes emerged naturally
as I was writing." |
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Grenuord #1 of 6 "Francesca Ghermandi became known outside Italy by publishing
in US anthologies like Rubber Blanket and Zero
Zero, but she definitely
deserves more attention. In her rather 'cartoony' stories, Ghermandi
depicts highly styled, surreal city landscapes and interiors inhabited
by deviant yet almost Disneyesque characters." |
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Tales Designed To Thrizzle #1 "I'm always looking at older stuff for inspiration... I
think that the juxtapositions in it can be extremely useful for
me. I was looking at some of the old Radio comics that I think
Archie printed in the mid-'60s, when they were trying to imitate
Marvel, and the psychology in those and the storylines are so
wonderfully off that I would just love to appropriate some of them
wholesale. I wouldn't have to change very much at all." "There are three cartoonists who have published in alternative
newsweeklies where friends have contacted me demanding to know
more about this hilarious person they just discovered. The first
was Matt Groening back when I was still in college, the second
was Chris Ware when 'God' appeared in a Chicago free weekly, and
the third was 'P. Revess', the named used by Michael
Kupperman on the feature Up All Night appearing
in The Stranger and elsewhere." |
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Bonerest #1 "We live in difficult times, and it may very well be the
end of the world as we know it but thank God for the spellbinding
talents of Matteo Casali and Guiseppe Camuncoli! The Apocalypse
has never been more enticing." "A feverish dream literally brought to life. Bonerest will
haunt you." |
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Daredevil vs Punisher #1 of 6 by David Lapham Marvel $2.99 David Lapham is the creator of the Tarantino-esque, Eisner Award winning, crime-noir series, Stray Bullets and Marvel have let him loose on Daredevil... Daredevil and the Punisher seek to restore order to Hells Kitchen, New York, as the East Coast's underworld fight for control in the aftermath of the Kingpin's departure. But they both have their own brand of justice... for Daredevil justice means a billy club, for the Punisher it's a shotgun. |
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Conan #18 by Kurt Busiek & Bruce Timm, Fabien Nicieza & John Severin Dark Horse $2.99 Bruce Timm comics are something of a rarity, but always highly entertaining. So even if he is drawing a fill-in issue of a Conan comic, you need to buy a copy. Timm joins writer Kurt Busiek on a brief, sadistic little adventure involving girls, wizards and monsters. What more could you want? |
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All Star Batman & Robin, The
Boy Wonder #1 |
Other First Issues This Month: Independents: DC: Marvel: |
| To Top | ABOUT COMICS: |
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The Comics Journal #269 |
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Red Eye #4 Accent UK $6.00 A wake up call for UK comics. In this issue: - Ian Edgington and D'Israeli discuss their long awaited sequel to Scarlet Traces. - An interview with Losers artist Jock. - An interview with Albion creators, Leah Moore and John Reppion. - An interview with Whitechapel Freak creator, David Hitchcock. - Plus news, reviews and previews from the UK comics scene. |
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Draw #11 TwoMorrows Publishing $5.95 The how-to magazine on comics and cartooning. In this issue: - An in-depth interview with Nexus artist, Steve Rude. - Feature on leading Flash animator, Roque Ballesteros. - Plus more tips, tutorials and useful info for arty types. |
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Will Eisner: A Retrospective MOCCA $24.95 In May 2005, New York's Museum Of Comic & Cartoon Art (MOCCA) will host Will Eisner: A Retrospective, a career spanning exhibition of Will Eisner's work, from the 1930's to today, curated by Denis Kitchen. The catalogue of the exhibition will feature a foreword by DC's Paul Levitz and appreciations by Peter Livingston Myer and NC Christopher Couch. |
Other Books & Magazines About Comics Out This Month: Alter Ego #50 (TwoMorrows Publishing,
$5.95) |
| To Top | MANGA: |
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Blame! #1 of 10 Blame! is the story of Killy, a man of few words. He wanders
through a lonely, gargantuan labyrinth of concrete and steel, fighting
off cyborgs and other futuristic nightmares, searching only for
something called Net Terminal Genes.
The small communities he finds tucked into the crevices of this towering, dystopic
ruin hardly give him leads on his treasure, driving him to find larger enclaves
of civilization where people can reveal more about the world he lives in and
the quarry he seeks.
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Tokyo Tribes #3 of 11 Tokyo Tribes is a hard-hitting tale of Tokyo street gangs battling it out in the concrete sprawl of Japan's capital. Laced with hip-hop trappings and packed with gangland grit, Tokyo Tribes paints a vivid and somewhat surreal vision of urban youth. Rival gangs from various Tokyo barrios battle over turf, leaving many a foot soldier bloodied in the violent clashes. But when the heat between two of the clans becomes personal, a bitter rivalry explodes into all-out warfare. |
Manga First Issues This Month: Aquarium #1 by Tomoko Taniguchi (CPM) |