Rasgal #2

Here's a full-format comic that I picked up from writer/artist Liz Ortiz at ConnectiCon.

Title: Rasgal
Issue: #2
Date: 2009
Publisher: Immortal Gothic
Writer: Liz Ortiz
Penciler: Liz Ortiz
Inker: Liz Ortiz
Colorist: Albie Luciano

The world of Rascal has a full-scale demonic apocalypse going on, and things are not looking good for the remaining "fresh meat" (which is what the demons are referring to humans as).

Writer/artist Liz Ortiz gets things started fast and furious with a fun aerial battle sequence. Winged hero Zarn carries a mysterious and badly injured girl to safety while his allies provide cover. From there we get a bit more of the big picture before jumping right back into the action.

Ortiz does a nice job of conveying the hopeless battle against the overwhelming demonic forces, and there is plenty of potential for twists and turns in the complex plot.

I was a bit confused by the physical scale of some of the characters, but part of that is probably from picking this up in the second issue where characters and their respective species have already been established.

The dialogue falls back a bit too easily on cliches. There was even a "You'll never get away with this!". To some extent, this is part of the fun. Epic fantasy can use a bit of over-the-top dialogue.

Overall, this was a fast-paced story with plenty of action and was entertaining from start to finish.

Rating: 7/10

Benny & Fritz

Connecticon had a lot of minicomics for sale as anime conventions go. This one is a sampler from a webcomic.

Title: Benny & Fritz: A Story of Death in the Trenches of World War One
Publisher: Cory-June Vigants
Writer: Cory-June Vigants
Artist: Cory-June Vigants

Three ghosts, one American soldier, one German soldier, and one civilian, are trapped in a purgatorial No-Man. In this sample minicomic, the ghosts are entertaining each other with poetry with varying levels of success. Good moody art style, and a quirky style of humor to go along with the rather existentialist scenario. This only gives a quick glimpse of the webcomic it's based on, but it's a fun segment.

Rating: 7/10.

Science Project Gone Wrong

Here's another minicomic I picked up from an artist I met at ConnectiCon.

Title: Science Project Gone Wrong
Date: 2011
Publisher: Kristilyn
Writer: Kristilyn Stevenson
Artist: Kristilyn Stevenson

Fifteen year old scientist Maddy grows her cat, Dark Matter, to giant-size. What do you do with a giant cat? Lots of things, it turns out. I particularly liked racing the bus.

Then she sets out to breed a giant carnivorous plant. Things don't go quite as planned, and she ends up with a giant herbivorous plant.

This is a very cute minicomic with a whimsical art style and a fun lead character.

Rating: 7.5/10

The Burden Of Parenthood

My third review from ConnectiCon.

Title: The Burden Of Parenthood
Date: June, 2011
Publisher: Bittersweet Candy Bowl
Writer: Veronica Vera
Artist: Veronica Vera

Sampler from the Bitterweet Candy Bowl webcomic. This b/w half-sized minicomic reprints a story arc from the webcomic that involved the (anthropomorphic feline) teenaged protagonists caring for mechanical babies for a week as part of a middle school sex-ed project.

The webcomic promises unpretentious teen romance/comedy/drama, and that is pretty much what is delivered here. There's a strong focus on character, some comic relief moments, and some pretty insightful interactions.

I particularly liked the fact that the teacher breaks a tiny bit out of her over-the-top depiction toward the end of the story.

The artwork does suffer a bit from the loss of color with the transition into print, but this was still a nice entertaining little slice of life story.

Rating: 7/10

24 Hour Comic Presents: Sentinels Of Blood Island

Title: 24 Hour Comic Presents: Sentinels Of Blood Island
Date: 2011
Publisher: Free Lunch Comics
Writer: Matt Ryan
Artist: Matt Ryan

This is Matt Ryan's 2010 24-Hour Comic Day effort, published in standard comic format.

The story is a pretty basic horror tale. A recently married couple is enjoying a "working honeymoon". The husband, a professional travel writer and explorer who appears on cable TV shows about exotic locations, is planning to visit the mysterious Blood Island. Interspersed with the story pages are pages of his notes and observations. A guide brings him to within sight of the strange island, but various forces conspire to keep him from making landfall.

In addition to the story itself, this book also includes creator Matt Ryan's notes on the 24-hour comic process, with page-by-page updates on his progress as he worked plotted out and drew the comic.

This is a nice package for anyone interested in the 24-Hour Comic Day event, and it's packaged with a decent little creepy tale.

Rating: 7/10

Sky Pirates of Valendor Series 2 #3

Well, lack of working internet access at our hotel killed the plan to do live reviews, but otherwise Connecticon was a great show. I picked up about six comics to review. Here's the first of those.

Title: Sky Pirates of Valendor
Issue: Series 2 #3
Date: 2011
Publisher: Jolly Rogue Studios
Writer: Everett Soares
Penciler: Brian Brinlee
Inker: Alex Rivera
Tones: Jet Amago
Letterer: Steve Kuster
Editor: Amy Haley, Elizabeth Tramonti

Gearz and Shyni don't like each other. They're pretty incompatible just on a personal level, but when you add in the fact that they are rivals for the affections of one Captain Tobin Manheim you've got a powder keg that's ready to explode.

Which is pretty much what this issue is. A bit of setup, followed by a six pages of brawl between Gearz and Shyni.

Then the real fun starts. Gearz and Shyni need to work together to deal with an assassin who has been slowly poisoning a prince. As you might imagine, it's a shaky alliance.

There were a few minor problems with this issue. The "story so far" text that opens the piece is more complex than it needs to be, and the story indulges in a bit of a cliché by not having the fight between the rivals reach a real conclusion. It felt like too easy a solution for the writer.

But what really stands out in this issue in the amount and the quality of the action. It's almost non-stop, and it's really good, convincing action that flows well.

This is definitely the best installment in the Sky Pirates series in terms of just plain fun, and it does a great job of delivering the swashbuckling action that the setting was made for.

Rating: 7.5/10

Reviewing Live From Connecticon This Weekend

I've really been slipping on keeping up with the daily reviews, but I got one tonight, and I'm hitting the road early tomorrow morning for the ConnectiCon convention in Hartford CT.

Over the next few days, look for some reviews of my ConnectiCon purchases. Several of my favorite local creators will be there and I'm looking forward to checking out some new comics.

If your're attending, stop by and say hello. Dandelion Studios is at Table 36B in the Artists Colony.

Alien Implant Comics Anthology

Title: Alien Implant Comics Anthology
Publishers: donnamartinez.net, tacolicious.net, mobiusbandwidth.com
Writer: Donna Martinez, Joey Peters, Lindsay Moore
Artist: Donna Martinez, Joey Peters, James Mobius
Letterer: Joey Peters

Four stories makes up this anthology in minicomic form. The first and last are specifically related to the theme.

First up is "Among Us", a pretty clever twist on the alien conspiracy theories. The ending had an nice classic Outer Limits or Twilight Zone feel to it, which played well with the X-Files style buildup.

The second story was more of an autobiographical piece. "Natto Challenge" told the tale a group of American tourists in Japan and their encounter with a TV talk show crew who were looking for the reactions of foreigners to one of the local delicacies. I'm a sucker for geeky autobiographical comics, and I would have loved to see more of the adventures of these characters.

The third story, "The Lost Shadow" was more cartoony (in the Warner Brothers sense) and more surreal and humorous.

"Panic Attack", the last tale was done in a similar art style to the opening piece. It kept up the surrealism, but went for a much more serious storytelling style, and played around some more with the book's title theme.

All in all, a nice set of short stories, all of which leave room to be expanded into bigger tales.

Rating: 7.5/10

Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day 2011

Getting back on track now that the 30-day meme is over.

Title: Atomic Robo Free Comic Book Day 2011
Date: May 2011
Publisher: Red 5 Comics
Writer: Brian Clevinger, Trevor Pryce, David Ziebart, Tony Trov, Johnny Zito
Artist: Scott Wegener, Dan Glasl, Ambert Gant, The Rahzzah
Colorist: Ronda Pattison, Adam Guzowski
Letterer: Jeff Powell, Troy Peteri, Gabe Bautista

The Atomic Robo story here is played mostly for laughs as Robo is one of the celebrity judges at a school science fair, which is then attacked by a talking dinosaur who goes to multiple levers of meta in a barrage of Doctor Who references in the midst of his fight with Robo. Opening bit was silly, but once the bad guy got on the scene the dialogue was witty and very funny. I love the general geekiness of this book. Writer Brian Clevinger also took advantage of Atomic Robo's tradition of jumping time periods to put a satisfying and touching (but still fun) ending on this.

The backup stories were Foster Broussard, and Moon Girl. Foster Broussard showed potential to be a nice steampunk/weird west tale, although all we got here was an introduction. It was a bit wordy, and the (anti-?) hero's ability to talk himself out of a hanging seemed a bit contrived. That being said, this did a nice job of laying down the foundation of a tale with a lot of potential.

Moon Girl was a superhero piece, with the title character battling a female crime lord and her henchmen. The two characters clearly share some background, but not all that much is explained in between punches.

Rating: 7/10

30 Day Comics Challenge Days 28-30

Fell behind, but I'm doing a quick catch-up on the last three.

Day 28 - Favorite Comic Publisher.

This was a really hard one for me. I tend to love books and creators, but seldom a publisher's entire line. I suppose I could go with a publisher that is basically publishing a single book that I love, like Cartoon Books or Paradise Valley Comics or Plastic Farm Press, but that seemed like cheating. Picking Vertigo also seemed like cheating, since Vertigo is not really a publisher, but rather a specific line produced by a larger publisher.

I finally decided to choose a publisher based on their unique place in history. My choice is EC Comics.



EC revolutionized horror in comics. They also pioneered other genres. And then, when they were pressured to shut down their horror comics during the "Seduction of the Innocent" panic, they didn't just get even... They got Mad.



I didn't discover the EC horror comics until later in life, but I grew up with Mad. Spy vs. Spy, fold-ins, snappy answers to stupid questions. Awesome stuff that helped shape my sense of humor and taught me that you can find something to laugh at in just about anything.

Day 29 - A comic you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.

In 1986, I didn't know my history. Or rather, I knew a ton about certain periods of history that I was interested in. But the history of the Vietnam War wasn't part of my experience. My dad was a Vietnam-era army veteran, but he spent his time serving in Korea and never saw combat. I had no perspective on this period of history, so when I started hearing people singing the praises of Marvel's Vietnam War comic, I figured it wasn't something I'd be all that into.


Turns out, The 'Nam was a pretty awesome book, and I ended up following it regularly for most of its run. There were some flaws: a rotating cast (due to an well-intentioned idea of running the book in "real time"), and some silly crossovers toward the end. But overall, it was a great series with some of the best depictions of war that have appeared in comics.

Day 30 - Your favorite run or series of all time.

Another really difficult choice, of course. I'm going to go with Alan Moore here, and while all of his work that I've read has been pretty awesome, I'm going to pick V For Vendetta.



It's a complete story, something that Miracleman isn't, as much as I loved Miracleman. And for me it gets the nod over Watchmen because I feel that V For Vendetta's dystopia is a more more real and immediate one than that of Watchmen. Watchmen is in many ways a comic book about comic books. V seems more ambitious to me, while still holding a better focus. I also love Evey Hammond (who is the true main character of V For Vendetta), and I can't say that I related to any of the characters in Watchmen the way I related to Evey.

V For Vendetta is just brilliant stuff from the twisted plot, to the political allegory, down to cultural references and the poetic style of the language.

From My Creations

These last three are difficult to answer in the context of my own comics.

Favorite Publisher

Well, I have my own comic company. It's Dandelion Studios. I think it's pretty cool and getting better all the time.

A Comic You Thought You Wouldn’t Like, But Ended Up Loving

Well, it isn't that I didn't like the idea, it's just that I had no idea how GOOD it could be. For 24-Hour Comic Day in 2005, Gynn did a 24-page quarter-sized minicomic called I believe. It was about what cats believe in. I figured, hey, people like cats, maybe they'll like our comic.



It ended up being published in the 2005 24-Hour Comic Anthology. And over the years we've sold more copies of this little photocopied minicomic than all our other comics put together. That is definitely what I call exceeding expectations.

Favorite Run Or Series Of All Time

It's a bit unfair on my artists and co-writers to choose, but if you were to really press me on this one, it would be the comic that I've described as "near and dear to my heart".

That comic is called Stone. It started with a very simplistic idea (I wanted to write about a woman warrior who actually LOOKED like she could actually beat you up, as opposed to looking like, you know, a bikini model). It grew to be a lot more than that. We're one issue in with a second just about scripted, so it's got a way to go, but I think by the time it's done it will be pretty awesome.



But like I said, it's near and dear to my heart.

This has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed all of the insights into the world of comics that everyone else has shared, and I hope you've gotten a bit of insight into how I look at comics.

The 30 Day Comic Challenge Page on Facebook is here. Here is the complete list of daily topics:

30 Day Comic Challenge
Day 01 - Your first comic book.
Day 02 - Your favorite character.
Day 03 - A comic that is underrated.
Day 04 - Your guilty pleasure comic or character.
Day 05 - Comic character you feel you are most like (or wish you were).
Day 06 - Most annoying character.
Day 07 - Favorite comic couple.
Day 08 - Best series being published right now.
Day 09 - Most touching comic book/comic book scene.
Day 10 - Dream versus match.
Day 11 - Favorite comic book cartoon series.
Day 12 - A comic everyone should read.
Day 13 - A book you’ve read more than five times.
Day 14 – Most awesome single comic book image
Day 15 - A Picture from the comic you’re reading right now.
Day 16 - Funniest comic book/comic book scene.
Day 17 - Most useless Villain.
Day 18 - Favorite B-list character.
Day 19 - Comic book city/universe you wish you lived in.
Day 20 - Favorite super power or skill.
Day 21 - Favorite writer.
Day 22 - A series that you liked but stopped reading
Day 23 - Your favorite artist.
Day 24 - Dream character team up.
Day 25 - A book you plan on reading.
Day 26 - A comic you wish they would make into a movie.
Day 27 - Favorite comic book movie.
Day 28 - Favorite comic publisher.
Day 29 - A comic you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving.
Day 30 - Your favorite run or series of all time.