parakkum

I'm starting to go through books I picked up at the 2005 Alternative Press Expo in SF two weekends ago. My first reading is Ragtag volumes one through three, put together by "Allstar Industries." I don't know who I actually spoke to at APE, but the collections looked pretty swell and were five bucks a pop, so I picked them up. Correction: As the comment below says, Allstar was only involved in the first trade, and Punchthroat produced all three. Thanks for the catch.

General thoughts -- I found each collection a mix of the downbeat, the humorous, and the unreadable. That last point is a common pitfall of indie comics. I don't think it's a matter of being done in a still I'm not used to, as much as they are genuinely poorly designed. There's just as much poor design in mainstream comics, of course, but an editor at a big publishing house will, at the very least, force you to have an open layout so that it's readable, if not entirely successful.

As it stands, though, I skipped some entries because they were simply too annoying.

Below, I'm going to highlight the bits I liked from each volume.

Volume I

Stupid Comics (Jim Mahfood) -- Jim Mahfood is a more of a known quantity than most of the contributors in this book. I was impressed by his ability to write many believable perspectives for his "person on the street" section. This is a political commentary piece, but one that's not so heavy-handed as to be annoying.

Support Our Troops (Travis Fox) -- Okay, this one is pretty heavy-handed at times, but I still appreciate the basic message, and he knows how to draw a readable, engaging comic. Provides some good quotes, such as:

I mean, who doesn't support the fucking troops? Is there anyone who looks at the entire situation and thinks... "You know, president Bush and his war pals set all of the policies and whatnot...but it is those 19 year old kids who got sent over there for eleven months...that's who is responsible for this whole mess!!!

A Boy and His Ham (Shane Hillman) -- Fun, silly story that somehow managed to make me feel trepidation and then have a heartwarming ending all in the space of five very spartan pages.

Suburban Glamour (Jamie McKelvie) -- Very straightforward slice of life story, with a charming understanding of how one little thing can turn a day around.

Happy Pigeons (Dr. Graham) -- Pigeons tell you about all the diseases they can carry and transit. Cool. Of course, I'm a little unclear how one can catch Listeriosis from a pigeon -- what are you doing, eating it?

Volume II

Escape! (Kazu Kibuishi) -- Funny. I love the tears in Clive's eyes when he's on the Happy Jump.

The King of Catastrophe (Zach Trover) -- There are a number of one-pagers by Trover throughout volumes two and three under this name. It's basically autobiographical stuff. Most notable is his page about how he doesn't like how the "emo" label has appeared to describe him, basically. He is, nonetheless, quite emo, at least as far as I understand it.

Notice how people tend not to write autobiographical books that aren't downbeat, emotional and very inward focused? (Obviously an autobiographical book must be inward directed, but few of them go heavily into other goals in the person's life, etc -- it's mostly about feelings. True Story, Swear to God is a notable exception.)

A Portrait of the Artist In Her Creative Process (Chynna Clugston-Major) -- Another known quantity for me. A solid page describing the feeling of her workday. I think Honeyfields can empathize.

Make Yourself Useful (Travis Fox) -- A pre-2004-election piece about why and how to become politically involved, aimed at the young folk. Sadly, the young folk did not turn out for the last election. Dumbasses.

Volume III

Ghost Frog (Evan Larson) -- ribbit boo This one just cracked me up.

The Booth (Kire Carlson, writer; Edel Tripp, artist) -- A solid story about a woman who works in a peep-show booth. This really looks like something Oni should be publishing.

Fetch (Dave Crosland and Debbie) -- Another one that cracked me up, and which would take too long and ruin it to explain. But good.

And What I Ate When I Got There (Brian Wood) -- The transition from "food as fuel" to really enjoying what you eat. If you ever need to go back somewhere to rekindle that feeling of truly experiencing food, this is an excellent story. I'm glad I liked it, as it gives me hope that I might also like Wood's series Demo, whereas I didn't like the other two books I read by him.

Libertad (Matt Leunig) -- Another one that I'd ruin if I said much about it, but the art is good and the story is great, especially in light of some of the other things in the anthology.

A reminder -- if you like comics, you can read mine at www.parakkum.com.

Continuing on with my reading of works picked up at the 2005 Alternative Press Expo, I read The Lone and Level Sands today (A. David Lewis (w), mpMann (a)).

TLaLS is a retelling of the Exodus story, relayed largely from the Egyptian perspective, focusing in particular on pharaoh. There's a substantial forward explaining the motivation behind the work -- it's intended to not just switch the point of view, but to also humanize the story, adding grays to the traditional black-and-white view.

All in all, I think it's fairly successful. Ramses is perhaps a bit too nice, but he is definitely written as a human character. Moses is pleasingly strange, with Aaron there to translate from Moses-speak to normal-people speech. I think these characterizations represent the strength of the book.

On the weakness side, I think some of Ramses' actions were not adequately realized. This is a problem inherent to the story -- after all, what does it mean that God "hardens" pharaoh's heart? In TLaLS, this is represented by God speaking through those around Pharaoh, directing him away from reasonable courses of action he had intended to take. In general, it's a cool concept, but in practice, Ramses acquiesces too readily after he's figured out what's going on when God tells him to do things. I really like the idea that Pharaoh is exhausted and willing to play along by the end, but I don't know if that mindset is earned by the story leading up to it.

On a more prosaic note, the lettering is bigger than it needs to be.

Overall, a good reinterpretation of a classic story, and more fun and merit than watching Charlton Heston rain fire down on Yul Brynner.

The Lone and Level Sands is published by Caption Box. You can see their page for it here:

www.captionbox.net/lals/

Quite a few things to cover in this entry. In the order I read them. My highlight for this set is Matt Silady's The Homeless Channel. If you only want to check on one thing I read, skip down to that.

The Supernaturalists (Patrick Neighly (w), Jorge Heufemann (a)). A detective story set in 1926 with a solid helping of vampires, a secret society and some genuinely good dialogue. The layout is at times confusing, which leads in turn to confusion about the identities of a few characters -- things sometimes felt jumpy, basically. I picked up a preview edition with only part of the story at the San Diego con previously, and I'm glad I was able to find the full edition. Overall, a worthwhile read, able to stand on its own as a 20s detective story even without the entertaining take on vampires.

Published by Mad Yak Press. As they point out on their site, it really is a good value for ten bucks.

The Tethered, volumes 1 and 2 (Steven W. Kendrick (w), mpMann (a)). These were freebies when I bought The Lone and Level Sands. Same artist, different writer. Tethered began in a promising if erratic fashion, tying together the stories of four people -- three living, one dead pretty soon after the book begins. In the second volume, it veers away from a seemingly spiritual approach to become a poor remake of The Prisoner, with the requisite elaborate CIA conspiracy and all that jazz. Whereas volume 1 made me want to read volume 2, volume 2 makes me want to toss both of them.

The Homeless Channel (Matt Silady) This is the first issue of what will most likely be a trade, eventually. So far, it appears to be about people putting together a television channel that will cover issues related to the poorest stratum of society -- a literal "Homeless Channel" in the same sense as the already-extant topical channels like History, OLN and so on. So far, well written.

Of special interest to me was how this book was made. I talked with Matt at APE and he confirmed what I'd expected. Frustrated with trying to find an artist to work with (and I am, again, thankful that James and I work together so well), he decided to go ahead and do it all "himself" (in quotes, because his friends helped). With much patience and assistance from his friends, he photographed the entire book. He then composed those as pages, printed them in blue and inked over that, then scanned them in again to finish out the book. It looks great, and it's definitely one way for a dedicated writer to get his work out.

As a special bonus, you can read the entire first issue by clicking here to go to Matt's site. So go, read.

American Born Chinese, 2.2 and 3.1 (Gene Yang) The numbering system is, indeed, wacky, but these are the two most recent installments in Gene Yang's ABC series. ABC is a three-quarters good mixed bag. Gene writes both present-day stories about being (shockingly) American-born Chinese and he writes his own entertaining versions of Chinese myths and legends. The myths and legends are always well-done, with a mix of the story and a touch of contemporary humor that makes them accessible. I also really like his "Jin" stories, which tell the tale of a Chinese student at a mostly white school and his effort to not stand out (which is not quite the same as trying to fit in) and just get along in life.

What I find tremendously annoying, though, is his "cousin Chin-Kee" stories. Now, I'm not bugged by the racist stereotype used in satire of itself (I certainly couldn't live well with kwc et al if I couldn't deal with people slinging slurs about their own ethnicities) but pages after pages of stale jokes about stereotypical Chinese speech and other things just grates. I think this would stand out less if "Jin" didn't already cover the same ground in a much subtler and more engaging fashion.

You can check out Gene Yang's stuff at his site, Humble Comics, or at Modern Tales.

Ritual (Tammy Stellanova) A brief but complete story about overcoming fear. You can see more of her sketches and so forth at her site: www.tammystellanova.com/

A Field Guide to Urban Wildlife This is a very clever "demo book" for a number of area creators, and it tickled me so much I had to pick it up. It's what it purports to be, though with a definite humorous bent:

It is believed that cockroaches are the only thing capable of surviving a nuclear blast, besides Twinkies, so we know what they'll be eating. (from Lane Brookeshire's entry)

I'll just list each creator's critter and site here:

Pigeon -- Tammy Stellanova
Roach -- Lane Brookshire
Rat -- Carl DeTorres
Fly -- Chris Lane
Raccoon -- Justin Gabbard