It’s one thing to subsist on the societal, economic, even social margins for decades — it’s another to subsist on those margins and still not fit in.
Welcome to the life of Casanova Frankenstein, who “graduated” from being the only black nerd in his social milieu to the only black punk to the only black cartoonist. A man who’s on the outside looking in — at the other outsiders.
We all wondered what happened to the guy formerly known as Al Frank in the long interregnum between The Adventures Of Tad Martin #5 and its eventual follow-up, #sicksicksix over 20 years later, and the new Fantagraphics Underground collection of Frankenstein’s short autobio strips, In The Wilderness, fills in some of those blanks, as well as helps set the stage for what should, by all rights, be the year in which this long-neglected cartoonist finally gets something akin to his…
Hello friends. Last time we spoke, it was really hard. I wondered if my second favorite show after Santa Clarita Diet went Lost Season 2 on me. The season opener was bad…really bad. It was scary for me to watch the second episode. I was actually worried that the show was a season 1 fluke or maybe I misread or willfully blinded myself to a meh show. Well, I’m happy to write that this episode was a solid …. Not Bad. Its flaws were LEGION (and we’ll go over those), but the story had a theme, character growth, and despair. Honestly, through in some Adele and Ben and Jerry’s and you got the makings of a lonely night in as you watch yourself age and love sulks away from you, broken, and never to return.
The episode is all about unrequited love and who We should be, but who We really are. It’s fun, if you’re in the mood for it. It was written by new writer Mj Kaufman and Christina Ham (Orphan Black) and these writers capture the loneliness of all of the most interesting characters.
The Devil talks to Ms Wardwell who we know is Lilith (Adam’s First Wife). He not too gently casts her aside and tells Wardwell/Lilith that Sabrina is to be Satan’s Prophet and Queen, not Her. The heartbreak is palpable, but the Devil’s Costume looks like a step above Party City and it really takes me out of it. Lilith asserts that Sabrina is too goody goody to be the Devil’s main squeeze and they wager on it: have Sabrina steal a stick of gum. Sabrina resists.
I gotta ask why? She seemed all on board the Midnight Train to Gethsemane with Old Scratch, but she just can’t bring herself to steal the forbidden Fruit Stripe. I would’ve been all in for the Freshen Up gum…ya know the one with the goo inside…I liked it….Whatever. Because she refused, Satan starts hurting people around Sabrina by giving them Chickenpox. WHAAAA? Chickenpox?! What kind of anti-vax town is Greendale?! Let it burn to the ground! They’ll give us all measles! To make amends to Satan, she starts to burn the school down as per Satan’s command. Well, why bother?! They’ll all get Whooping Cough soon enough away. Come on, Lucifer…this town is doomed and weird.
There are good subplots the Lilith story, which is a nice evil love story where Ms Wardwell watches her life portrayed as entertainment. The Evil Dean wrote and produces a play of Lilith and Satan falling in sort of love. It might of brought her a smile, but instead it brings tears because Satan has found a new special lady and Lilith’s destined to be eternally alone. We see in Ms Wardwell AKA Lilith how love is supposed to be, but how it withers and dies.
Suzie is now Theo is the focus of the other subplot. She should be accepted as a boy, but it doesn’t quite work out that way. Theo tries to change in the boy’s locker room and is mocked by some, but gawked at by all. The shot is done very well. We close up on the known bullies from the previous episodes, but then the camera pulls back and ALL of the boys are gawking silently, waiting to see female nudity regardless of her gender identity. They simply can’t help it. Where we should be, but who we are. It’s disappointing, realistic, and sad.
Sabrina and Harvey react to a sensual spark and begin making out, but her tie to Satan destroys the encounter and ends their love affair forever. What their love should be and the reality cannot be.
This was a good episode overall. It allowed you to see and not be told Lilith’s story and the struggles that everyone has against loneliness and despair.
Wow. Some TV episodes work, and then some — really work. And “Danny Patrol,” the eighth installment of the DC Universe streaming series Doom Patrol, most definitely does the latter.
Hewing reasonably close to its Grant Morrison/Richard Case comic book “source material,” there are key distinctions made to the story’s printed-page progenitor that, if anything, make it an even stronger piece of work, and for that, all credit to returning writer and director Tom Farrell and Dermott Downs, respectively, as well as to “showrunner” Jeremy Carver, who is doing a great job of setting a tone best described as “faithful but innovative” for this entire shebang. But enough with the praise, let’s talk specifics.
A sentient, non-binary street named Danny, home to outcasts of every stripe, is being hunted by a top-secret government agency known as the Bureau Of Normalcy, overseen by the ruthlessly square Darren Jones (played with…
Better late than —ah, let’s just get to it, with the latest from old friends of this site Aaron Lange and Brian Canini.
The insanely-talented (and sometimes controversial) Lange landed back on my radar with a package containing his three most recent comics ‘zines, issues 7, 8, and 9 of Cash Grab!, once a side-project that seems to be his main outlet now with his more traditional, narrative-driven publication, Trim, either being on an extended hiatus of sorts, or simply shuttered altogether. Sometimes less is more, and Lange, to his credit, seems to be “zeroing in” on his strong points with just one comic on his metaphorical “plate.”
Cash Grab! #7 bills itself as yet another entry in his occasional “sketchbook selections”series, but that title’s a bit misleading even if he does include obsessively-detailed portraits of the likes of “B”-movie actress Kari Wuhrer. To me, the more intriguing…
As a mass of contradictions, Max Huffman’s kickstarted, self-published comic Plaguers Int’l is — and here’s me “spoiling” the review early — wildly, perhaps even deliriously, successful. As a self-contained piece of “world-building,” though, it may be even more so.
Described by the cartoonist himself as a “North American manic feel-bad sideways world adventure comic,” that actually makes sense once you read the thing , but fair warning : the real world may not anymore by the time you’re done.
Not that it ever really did, of course, which is why the mish-mash of everything plus the kitchen sink that is this book is such a welcome reprieve from basically any kind of pre-conceived nothing you had about — I dunno, anything at all, really. Bronze Age scripting meets post-modern artistic sensibilities in a super-hero team book that’s less “piss-take” than it is loving homage but still…
Of all the unusual and/or avant-garde comics I’ve reviewed over the years, this one may be the most unusual and/or avant-garde of the bunch, a 12-page slice of self-published singularity from Pitsburgh’s Samuel Ombiri that, sure, can be described, dissected, and discussed — but is really pushing my critical faculties to their limits in an attempt to do so adequately.
Notice I don’t say accurately, as this is one of those minis that there’s probably no “right” or “wrong” way to read — assuming your eyes can even handle the deliberately-obfuscated printing enough to read it at all. Yup, folks — you’ve gotta come into this one willing to put in some work.
That work is rewarded, fear not, as Ombiri is not only a skilled but a very smart cartoonist, but he’s out to challenge you at every turn with…
What happens when a couple of stoner buddies, with an assist from their possibly-visionary older homeless “third wheel” sidekick, stumble across the machinations of an ancient cult devoted to summoning up some supernatural bird-creature or other, and then find themselves unable to stop their not-quite-dastardly plan?
I’ve never asked myself that multi-faceted question, but apparently Iowa City-based cartoonist Samuel D. Benson has, and he answers it over the course of 50 magazine-sized pages in his latest self-published opus, A Different Sky. The answer? Not much. But this one’s much more about the journey than it is the (non-) resolution.
Massive props where they’re due : Benson absolutely draws the living shit out of every panel. Vaguely Joshua Cotter-esque cross-hatching and barely-constrained linework take up every scintilla of real estate — yet nothing either looks or feels over-rendered or otherwise too “busy” for its own good. This is art that…
Reasonably hot off the heels of her magnificent, dreamlike Recollection, breathtaking comics poetry auteur Alyssa Berg returns with another self-published collection, Soft Fascinations, once again riso-printed with a varied and deeply sympathetic color palette that accentuates her themes of memory, fluidity, sensory consciousness, and transcendence with a kind of remarkably naturalistic aplomb, while at the same time bathing the book’s expressive illustrations with a soft, ephemeral glow. Calling it “beautiful” doesn’t do it nearly enough justice — trust me.
At just 20 pages, this is a shorter work than Berg’s last, justly-celebrated release, and yet it feels more conceptually “tight” and focused, as if each short “strip” (a term we’ll employ, by dint of sheer necessity, in as broad and expansive a fashion as possible) builds upon the one before it to present, in the end, a holistic journey within that is grounded not so much — okay…
Defying description as non-chalantly as it does logic and reason, Chicago-based cartoonist Gabriel Howell’s physically impressive (heavy construction-type paper; perfect binding; French-folded, oversized pages) 2018 self-published comic Father is one of those works that bypasses the conscious mind and goes right for the id — with a fucking scalpel. It doesn’t “leave a mark” so much as it carves one in, and you’re not going to emerge out the other side the same person as when you opened it up.
If that description scares you, it probably should — this is a horror comic, after all, and while its surface-level terrors are easy enough to spot and fit roughly into the loose category of “biological horror,” its conceptual terrors are more oblique, more unsettling, and more likely to stay put in your newly-scarred mind. This is a book that gets its hooks in you — and then pulls on them…
Through the Shattered Lens 