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…

There are few cartoonists working today funnier than Drew Lerman, and while it would be a reach to say that his Snake Creek strip owes more to Henny Yougman than it does to Walt Kelly, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes-level detective skills to see a subtle-but-rich vein of Yiddish humor running under much of it. So why not acknowledge one’s influences, eh boychik?

And that’s what Lerman’s newest self-published mini, Schtick, is all about — a short form “deep dive” into the rapid-fire exchanges and caustic banter that inform so much of traditional Jewish comedy. It’s a lean and lovingly mean number, clocking in at 12 full-color pages, and that’s just about right to provide a nicely representative sample size of “double act” gag strips largely focused on the kind of aggravating-yet-hilarious misunderstandings that arise when two people can’t seem to help but to talk over (and around) each…

I’ve reviewed Josh Frankel’s work on this site before — specifically his full-length comic Eccentric Orbits from last year — and while it’s true that his traditional sensibilities lend themselves well to long-form genre works, it seems to me that where he really shines is in the mini game, where his old-school panel construction and smartly humorous take on tried-and-true tropes always combine for a refreshingly unpretentious experience. Simply put, when you read a Frankel mini, it reads like something made by someone for no other reason than they love the form, and that’s the best reason to put pen to paper that I can think of.

His latest self-published number (that I’m aware of, at any rate), a punchy eight-pager titled Grim Nutrition, is about as perfect a distillation of what makes his art, if not unique per se, at the very least special, and in a pinch…

I’ve sung the praises of Louisiana cartoonist Kyle Bravo’s unassuming (and, crucially, unforced) self-published autobio series Forever And Everything in the past — and will no doubt feel suitably compelled to do so again — but reading his two latest issues, numbers six and seven, back-to-back in one sitting is a quietly powerful experience the likes of which few things can really compare to. Which is ironic (sorry), of course, because I get the impression such was hardly Bravo’s intention when he created them.

Still, we live in (are coming out of?) unprecedented times, as the entirely accurate cliche goes, and as such intention can have little if anything to do with how a work is received — which, I suppose, is always true, but is doubly (at least) so nowadays. All of which is my roundabout (to put it far too kindly) way of saying that we are talking…

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.