From the depths of space to the depths of hell to the depths of the mind to the depths of depravity, Annie, the titular Acid Nun of illustrator extraordinaire Corinne Halbert’s new self-published mini, covers a lot of territory — but then, you’d expect nothing less, I would suppose, given that a comic with a dizzyingly lurid name had damn well better serve up the dizzyingly lurid goods to match.

Of course, with an artist of Halbert’s skills, most of that luridness is going to be expressed visually, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint on that front : this is a veritable tableau of sexually explicit violent psychedelia rendered with the care of a true enthusiast, a celebratory paean to the libertine spirit and ethos delivered with a passion that can’t be faked. There’s good and there’s evil, then there’s beyond good and evil, and then somewhere well beyond even that

In the comics game, second issues are almost as tricky a thing to pull off as first issues — sure, debuts have to grab you and all, but the follow-up has to give you a reason to stick around. And in the case of a rather tightly-defined humor strip, that task is amplified to an even greater degree, because it’s incumbent upon a cartoonist to prove that their concept can keep on being funny even though readers already have a pretty good sense of the general gist of things.

That being said, the swamp is one of those locales that’s always offered more sheer storytelling possibilities than most other places — just ask Walt Kelly. Or, if your sensibilities run more toward comic books that strips, ask Alan Moore or Steve Gerber. And while we’re at it, we can add Robb Mirsky’s name to this list of luminaries.

I did this last year, so I’m doing it again : in an effort to gin up interest in my Patreon site, I’m posting a selection of reviews that ran on there originally with the brazen goal being to get you, dear reader, to part with a buck (or more, if you wish) per month so that yours truly can find some level of intellectual justification for the sheer amount of time I put into cranking out so much comics criticism. Really, anything helps and is much appreciated. Next up : proof that I don’t ignore the comics mainstream entirely, as I take a look at the first volume in the new graphic novel series from the fan-favorite creative team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips —

Here’s the deal : the crime comics “dream team” of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been at it for so damn long…

I did this last year, so I’m doing it again : in an effort to gin up interest in my Patreon site, I’m posting a selection of reviews that ran on there originally with the brazen goal being to get you, dear reader, to part with a buck (or more, if you wish) per month so that yours truly can find some level of intellectual justification for the sheer amount of time I put into cranking out so much comics criticism. Really, anything helps and is much appreciated. Next up, a fantastic book that Floating World Comics released in 2019 and seems to have largely floated under the radar —

Strictly speaking, there’s no reason that pioneering underground cartoonist, musician, and SOV filmmaker Carlos Gonzales isn’t on the so-called “A list” of contemporary artistic talents. I mean, whatever you’re looking for — fiercely-realized visions, a legitimately singular drawing style, a…

I did this last year, so I’m doing it again : in an effort to gin up interest in my Patreon site, I’m posting a selection of reviews that ran on there originally with the brazen goal being to get you, dear reader, to part with a buck (or more, if you wish) per month so that yours truly can find some level of intellectual justification for the sheer amount of time I put into cranking out so much comics criticism. Really, anything helps and is much appreciated. First up, a comic that pretty much everyone has been talking about, and for good reason —

Finnish cartoonist Tommi Musturi has always been something of a stylistic chameleon, a literal “man of a thousand faces” who can conjure any of them up when the need arises. In times past, this has largely meant that you never know what to expect from…

Curious items don’t come muchmore curious than this one — an undated, uncredited, eight-page mini that offers a refreshingly feminist, and decidedly succinct, take on popular sci-fi/fantasy tropes without saying a word. Unless you count “psttt —” as a word, that is.

Still, never doubt that there is a cartoonist behind this self-published exercise in kaleidoscopic anonymity — and a damn good one, at that. The name Maya Durham may be far from a household one for the time being, but if Blooolight is a portent of things to come, it’s one we’ll all be familiar in due course, even if it continues to be conspicuous by its absence on the covers of future publications. After all, visionary talent has a way of making itself known one way or another.

That’s the hope, at any rate, which provides me with a clumsy segue opportunity of sorts — this comic…

I’ll be the first to admit that a historical corrective in regards to one of mainstream comics’ longest-simmering controversies is hardly what regular readers of this small press-oriented blog come here on any given day (or night) expecting to find — but give it up for author Michael Hill, who’s proven with his new (though long in the making) surgically-detailed work, According To Jack Kirby, that he’s as independent as it gets, foregoing the arduous process of shopping his labor of love around to publishers in favor of self-publishing via the auspices of Lulu’s print-on-demand platform. And I’ve gotta say it’s a wise choice because this is, by its nature, an uncompromising piece of scholarship.

If Abraham Riesman poked a million tiny holes in the big lie that was Stan Lee’s fraudulent claim of being the Marvel Universe’s “creator” in the pages of his much-ballyhooed True Believer : The…

There are interesting comics, unique comics, unconventional comics, innovative comics — and then there’s this, something truly singular in, dare I say, the history of the medium.

The “this” in question in 2019’s Einstein, Eddington And The Eclipse (or, in its native Portuguese, Einstein Eddington E O Eclipse), subtitled Travel Impressions (or Impressoes De Viagem), a lavish publication that consists of both a thoughtful, scholarly, long-form essay by Ana Simoes and an equally long-form, but decidedly impressionistic, comic by Ana Matilde Sousa that together provide a holistic and multi-dimensional view of the expeditions to Principe Island undertaken by A.S. (colloquially Arthur) Eddington to observe the total solar eclipse of 1919 and thereby confirm Einstein’s then-controversial theory of relativity. So yeah — when I say this is a singular work, I don’t exaggerate in the least.

The cliche about an iron fist in a velvet glove was around long before Dan Clowes tinkered with it to come up with the title for his first long-form serial in Eightball, and it survives to this day because, hey, let’s face : there are certain situations to which it just flat-out perfectly applies. Welcome to one such situation.

Jooyoung Kim is a German-based cartoonist with a real affinity for shrouding the dark aspects of reality — as well as the darkly comic — within the most delicate, even precious, of surroundings and trappings, and in World Ceramic Fair, which is #98 in the Mini Kus! range from Latvia’s Kus! Comics, that delicacy goes beyond the pottery on display in the comic’s titular festival and extends into the artist’s own aesthetic approach. Kim incorporates (what I assume to be, at any rate) digital approximations of colored pencils…