Babalon Babes #3

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Babalon Babes
Issue: 3
Date: 2007
Publisher: Witches Brew Press
Writer: Michele Witchipoo
Artist: Michele Witchipoo

If you're splitting hairs, this would be considered a sketchbook rather than a comic. Regardless of the designation, it is a lovely collection of artwork. The portraits feature (in the artist's words) "Scarlet women and femme fatales". The book is labeled as adults only due to some nudity in the images, but the focus is on the mixture of the erotic with the mystical.

Artist Michele Witchipoo has a really unique style that is highly detailed, and rich in symbolism. Each illustration is full of little symbols and sigils waiting to be discovered, reflecting a variety of spiritual traditions and mythologies. The ancient wisdom mixes with a punk vibe for a really fun effect overall.

This is one of the most visually attractive minicomic series I've run across.

Rating: 8.5/10

Dog Man and Cat Kid

A Scholastic book that the Kiddo actually bought through his school's Scholastic book order.

Title: Dog Man and Cat Kid
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2018
Writer: Dav Pilkey
Artist: Dav Pilkey
Colorist: Jose Garibaldi

Gotta love a book that manages to drop references to John Steinbeck, Mary Poppins, and Snakes on a Plane without skipping a beat.

This tale of good and evil features the good Dog Man, the evil Petey the Cat, and Petey's kitten clone Li'L Petey, who is caught in between.

There is also a Dog Man movie being made, and a robot who was programmed to obey, but who must learn about the nature of friendship.

This was funny all the way through, with some clever plotting and some surprisingly touching scenes.

Rating: 9/10

The Widow Reminisces Over A Plate Of Vegetables

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: The Widow Reminisces Over A Plate Of Vegetables
Date: 2003
Publisher: Alexander Danner and Stephanie Smith
Writer: Alexander Danner
Artist: Stephanie Smith

Stephanie Smith (Stephanie Brown) illustrates a poem by Alexander Danner in this 6-page b/w minicomic.

The comic shows a widow living alo
ne, remembering her husband, an avid hunter to his final days, the ducks that he would shoot and bring home for dinner, and the work involved in preparing the meal.

This has great use of detail as it goes through a powerful reflection on the nature of marriage and grief. Straightforward, even as it takes some unexpected turns, the story is charged with emotion in spite of the illustrations of simple routine tasks.

Rating: 8.5/10

Vintage Chinese Tintin Comics

Old Chinese comic books come in a 9 cm x 12.5 cm squartebound format that looks like it is adapted from printing newspaper comic strips. Antique shops in tourist areas sell plenty of Chinese titles (I have photos of a couple in this entry), but there I have also found a fair amount of Tintin reprints. Here are a couple that I bought yesterday at a shop new Shanghai's Yu Bazaar.

These are dated 1987.

As usual, I don't review comics I can't read, and my Chinese has a ways to go before I know enough characters to get through these, but I still thought they were a fun find.

Myths Stories (Chinese Classical Stories Series)

I picked this up at the gift shop of the Shanghai Museum and read it with the Kiddo (currently age 9, but only for a couple more weeks).

Title: Myths Stories
Date: September, 2012
Publisher: China Intercontinental Press (Chinese Classical Stories Series)
Writer: Xiao Li

Softcover full-color graphic novel of about 200 pages, telling a dozen stories from  Chinese mythology, beginning with a creation myth.

This was a nice introduction to Chinese legends, with a variety of characters and stories, all brought to life in vivid color. The art style was fun, with manga facial expressions and particularly nice work on the clothing and hairstyles of characters. All of the action is a bit cartoonish, even in the case of a couple of the stories that take a grim turn.

Aside from the first couple of stories, there is not a lot of connection between the tales, and there isn't much context provided as to where these stories fit into Chinese mythology as a whole, but it was still an excellent sampling of a real wealth of lore that will be unfamiliar to many Western readers.

The dialogue has some moments where the translation could have been better, including the odd inclusion of the name "Hercules" for what is clearly meant to be a Chinese god or demigod.

But the book keeps the dialogue short and simple, and the artwork fills in gaps and smooths over the minor translation issues. All of the text and dialogue is presented in English and Chinese.

Rating: 7.5/10

Total L.A. Tot: A Palindramas Collection

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Total L.A. Tot: A Palindramas Collection
Publisher: Dan Mazur
Writer: Dan Mazur
Artist: Dan Mazur

This is a minicomic collection reprinting cartoons from Dan Mazur's Palindramas webcomic, which originally appeared on Webcomics Nation. No date given, but I believe this is from around 2005-2007 or so.

The premise is pretty straightforward: Mazur illustrates Palindromes. The results are quite amusing for anyone who enjoys a bit of good wordplay, and there are some fun sight gags incorporated into the illustrations.

I also enjoyed the couple of cameos by classic Universal Studios monster characters.

Rating: 7/10

Superman #10

From the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Superman
Issue: #10
Date: October, 1987
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: John Byrne
Penciler: John Byrne
Inker: Karl Kesel
Colorist: Tom Ziuko
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Michael Carlin

From John Byrne's run on the rebooted Superman in the 1980s. This issue is actually from right around the time I started seriously collecting comics, although Superman wasn't one of the books I followed regularly back then.

Considering how "rebooted" this version of Superman was supposed to be, this issue had a surprisingly Silver Age vibe to it.

Clark Kent's powers go out of control one by one, while Lex Luthor watches on from afar, and Clark fears he's become a danger to Metropolis. And of course that's just the moment when a big robotic monster names Klaash attacks.

The story starts out looking like it is going to be the beginning of serious long-term problems for Clark, but then the whole thing gets resolved and wrapped up in a few pages, bringing everything back to status quo.

This makes this a fairly good self-contained issue, one that isn't going to lose new readers in a maze of continuity. But it also feels a bit anticlimactic when all is said and done.

Luthor has some good moments here, and Maggie Sawyer is excellent. Maggie is also the only character who really gets any plot action that extends beyond this story.

And there are a couple bits of fun comic relief early on when it's Clark's x-ray vision that's out of control.

Not a lot of depth, but a fun Superman story with an "old school" feel.

Rating: 6/10

Confessions of an American Ling Master Preview #0

From my friend EJ by way of the random stack of unread comics.

Title: Confessions of an American Ling Master
Issue: Preview #0, 2nd Edition
Date: 2007
Publisher: EJ Barnes
Writer: Al Ackerman, EJ Barnes
Artist: EJ Barnes

A seemingly mundane city-dwelling recluse leads a double life as the mysterious Ling Master. Featuring a highly unreliable narrator and a weird-pulp vibe, this b/w preview minicomic sets the scene for the weirdness to come. The mentions of the Vug-Randolphs ("a creche-family of large sentient black beetles") and the Araby society tease of some serious strangeness on the way.

Not a lot of plot in this introductory story, but plenty of groundwork is laid.

Rating: 7/10

Xenoglyphs Volume 1

Writer Omar Spahi contacted me on twitter and asked me to give his Xenoglyphs graphic novel a look. There is currently a Kickstarter to fund the complete series running here.

Title: Xenoglyphs
Issue: Volume 1
Date: October, 2014
Publisher: OSSM Comics
Writer: Omar Spahi
Artist: PJ Catacutan
Letterer: Steve Wands
Editor: Barbara Randall Kesel, Alex Wilson, Siike Donnelly

Trade paperback (I read the ebook version) collecting the first six issues of the Xenoglyphs comic series. The publisher is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the complete series.

This was an interesting take on the idea of the heroes traveling the world to bring together some set of magical artifacts. In this story, the magical artifacts (the Xenoglyphs of the title) are scattered around the world, and the heroes are dedicated to keeping them scattered. It's the villain who's trying to bring them together.

Staff-wielding adventurer Steven James and his techie friend Dom Jenkins are Seperators, part of a legacy of protectors who have helped keep the Xenoglyphs hidden for centuries. The Xenoglyphs give their wielders elemental powers (with nine elements in this system), and could grand godlike abilities if brought together.

A villain calling himself Anubis is out to track down the Xenoglyphs, starting in the midst of the Arab Spring demonstrations in Egypt. Steven and Dom have arrived there to try to protect the Xenoglyph, and soon encounter Jennifer, another Seperator, who goes against Seperator tradition to make an alliance with them.

This story had excellent pacing, with an overall entertaining Indiana Jones kind of vibe. The worldbuilding was accomplished smoothly, and the action never slowed down. Fight scenes were fun and plentiful with all the characters getting their moments to shine. The villain had a great look and came off as suitably menacing.

I could have done with a few less cliches. At this point I cringe at phrases like "chosen one" and "master of evil". I would be happy to never again see a scene where the male hero warns a female character who has already proved herself to be a capable fighter to stay out of a fight out of concern for her safety (and by "concern for her stafety" here, we mean a combination of stupidity and sexism).

But that being said, there was a lot to really like here. Good dialogue, generally appealing characters, and even a couple of surprise plot twists and hints of future plot twists, especially toward the end of this collection. I think there is the potential for this to go in some really interesting directions as it continues, and in spite of a couple of bits that felt tired, this was generally a fun ride.

Rating: 7.5/10

Dandelion Studios Website Update

Just a quick update: We decided recently not to renew our dandelionstudios dot com domain. We're looking forward to doing some new creative projects in the coming months and years, but we'll be operating from our various social media platforms.