Continuing with out perusal of publisher Justin Skarhus’ Entropy Editions offerings, we come to catalogue number EE03, Los Angeles-based cartoonist Danielle Chenette’s The Beast, a deceptively “naive” comic that actually wryly and rather expertly deconstructs everything from the role of myth in society to “gun culture” to sibling dynamics to gaming to toxic masculinity — and somehow manages to do it all with a smile on its face and nary a hint of self-important lecturing. In fact, this unassuming little coming-of-age fable is actually, dare I say it, quite a bit of fun.

“Don’t go in the woods” is a common enough trope in popular culture — it’s even served as the title of at least two films that I’m aware of — but here Chenette cleverly and ingeniously transposes it into the internet age, where stories of things that go bump in the night have been amplified to…

Err — except for the talking (and endlessly taunting) stones, that is.

Case in point : the collector mentality, especially the comic book collector mentality. The kind of “thinking” that compels people to drop ridiculous sums of money for cheaply-made periodicals that are essentially disposable by design, and then to not even engage with them on the level people who paid a quarter (or less) for them did, which is to say — the collector doesn’t read that “holy grail” comic he (and yes, it’s almost always “he”) just dropped a huge chunk of his life savings and/or year’s…

I mean, for all intents and purposes what we have here is basically the comics equivalent of a PSA, and to top it all off, this thing isn’t even offered for sale anywhere! It is, however, easy enough to get your hands on a copy, as well you should — but we’ll get to all that at the end of this little write-up. First let’s deal with why I said you “should,” in fact, get it —

So-called “backward masking” is the theme of the day here, a largely bogus urban legend which contended that rock groups — in particular those that plied their wares in the heavy metal genre — were “concealing secret messages” in the vinyl grooves of their records that could only be heard…

Confession time : I pride myself on being up on just about everything going on in the world of small press and self-published comics, but try as I might, there is still a fair amount of stuff that escapes my notice until well after its release date, and such is the case with Scab County, a harrowing, disturbing, and yes even funny one-shot written and drawn by legendary DIY cartoonist/musician/SOV filmmaker Carlos Gonzales in 2015 and published by Floating World Comics the following year. Odds are fairly good, then, that a number of regular readers of this blog already have this book, but to give away the game right away here, let me say that for those of you who don’t, you’d be well-advised to do what I recently did and grab one up quickly because the sooner you get the contents of this comic into your subconscious mind…

Droplets of water constructed from text, clippings, and various and sundry found materials are the de facto “protagonists” here, either by themselves, in small “groups,” or as part of veritable torrential downpours, and as with other Mavreas works, each page can be taken as a discrete “concrete poem” (albeit in liquid form, ha!) on its own, but in succession the effect they have is cumulative at the very least, exponentially multiplied if you’re really picking up what he’s laying down. A visual poem with each page…

The first of two ‘zines we’ll be taking a look at is B V A, a “concrete poetry” project published by Ottawa-based above/ground press in 2019 that has about as tight a self-imposed remit as possible to conceive…