Awakening Comics #1

From the Random Stack of Unread Comics.

Title: Awakening Comics
Issue: 1
Date: Summer, 1997
Publisher: Awakening Comics
Writer: Steve Peters
Artist: Steve Peters, Doug Sheaff, Dave Sim, Paul Pope, Mark Oakley, Matt Feazell, Scott Roberts, Steve Remen, Greg Hyland, Joe Chiappetta, Rick Veitch, James Kochalka, Sam Henderson, Oscar Stern, Rob Walton, Jimmy Gownley, David Nowell

This is an anthology comic that is mostly Steve Peters' solo work, but also includes a jam scection featuring a big cast of guest artists.

The stories cover a range of mystical and surreal topics, including a dreamer visiting an island and joining a battle against invading lobsters, a Hindu afterlife tale that takes a turn in the Norse direction, and a discussion of a long-abandoned roleplaying game campaign.

There is also an alternate dimension of super-powered kids, and a man trapped in a Circus of Heaven.

These were all prtetty interesting, and I especially enjoyed the discussion of what happens to the gaming worlds we invent after we stop playing.

The jam segment in Circus of Heaven was a bit choppy, but that is the nature of jams, and it featured a pretty stellar list of contributors.

Rating: 8.5/10

Cerebus #288

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Cerebus
Issue: 288
Date: March, 2003
Publisher: Aardvark-Vanaheim
Writer: Dave Sim
Artist: Dave Sim, Gerhard
Letterer: Dave Sim
Cover: Chris Verhoeven, Ken Sim

Reading a random individual issue of an epic like Cerebus can be a bit of a challenge. There was not a lot of plot here, and I definitely had the impression that my experience with this issue would have been different in the context of the story that came before and after it.

That being said, what we have here is a scene of the ending credits to a movie (with a few amusing references thrown into the credits), followed by a scene played out almost entirely with dialogue. The characters are actually only shown on one page. For most of the issue, the art wanders over detailed images of the scenery around the speakers, as the discussion turns from an examination of inconsistencies in religious scripture to something more intimate.

Sim's artwork is brilliant, and the storytelling approach here is interesting. In spite of me not really knowing what was going on, the combination of art, words, and storytelling did a nice job of hooking me in.

Surrounding the actual story was a bit of a hodgepodge of things: A cover referencing menopause, which didn't seem related to what was going on in the dialogue (although there might have been something subtle that I missed), an opening page excerpt from an article in The Comics Journal about the comic Donjon, which felt like a bit of a passive-aggressive swipe. And to finish up the issue, a collection of excerpts from accounts of the Canadian military operations in the Balkans conflict of the 1990s. Some of these were pretty interesting historical accounts, while others felt like standard political rants on the foreign policy roles of Canada and the US, and the role of the UN.

Definitely not the best spot to jump aboard this series, but Cerebus still always has enough depth to it to keep things interesting.

Rating: 6/10