In another lifetime — okay, in this lifetime, and right up through last year, at that — I positively drowned myself, and readers of this humble site, in horror film reviews during the month of October. That was before a little thing called Four Color Apocalypse took off like a shot and started greedily consuming every spare moment I had for writing, and before those moments became even more spare thanks to a frankly pretty goddamn grueling work schedule, but hey : it’s still “Halloween season,” is it not? And that means I’ve gotta make at least some time to watch a so-called “scary movie” or two, and to talk about ’em here. For the sake of persistent tradition, if nothing else, but also to make sure no one’s made off with the good china and silver I keep in a cabinet around these parts.

Amazon Prime is my go-to choice…

At the risk of losing an untold number of “cool points,” I’m gonna come right out and admit that Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman remains one of my all-time favorite extended series in comics, and even though I smelled a cash grab right away with DC/Vertigo’s new slew of spin-off titles (purportedly “curated” by Gaiman himself, whatever that even means) gathered under the umbrella of The Sandman Universe, the extra-length “special” introducing the line (reviewed in one of these very “Weekly Reading Round-Up” columns, if memory serves me correctly — which it does) was just barely good enough to convince me to give the first issues of each series a go. Now that they’ve all been released as of this past Wednesday, this seems as good a time as any to give some “capsule review”-style appraisals of each, it seems to me, so without any further ado, that’s exactly what…

At first glance, it may seem counter-intuitive, if not downright foolish and/or insane, to devote anything other than a “capsule”-style review (say, of the sort that make up my “Weekly Reading Round-Up” columns on this very site) to a 12-page mini that contains very little by way of dialogue and can literally be read in less than a minute, but hey — certain comics defy conventional wisdom.

Or, as is the case with William Cardini’s 2015-issued Sphere Fear, defy conventional wisdom, conventional explanation, conventional analysis, and maybe even conventional thought processes. But goddamnit, I’m gonna give it a shot anyway, because if there’s one thing we like at here 4CA, it’s a good challenge.

As a general rule of thumb, Cardini’s influences are pretty easy to spot : Kirby looms large at all times, a fact that the images reproduced in conjunction with this review make well enough…

So-called “creative types” have been using their art to process loss since time immemorial, but seldom does it come across as raw, as unfettered, and yet as understated as it does in the pages of issue 27 of veteran cartoonist/illustrator Mike Taylor’s Late Era Clash. Between these two-color riso covers (interior pages also coming off a riso, but in stark black and white) is an unmediated primal scream delivered at whisper-quite volume in response to a silent and gaping void of nothingness, as large and as unfathomable as the universe itself.

Here’s the thing, though : it was all supposed to be something entirely different.

When Taylor started work on this ‘zine in 2015 (it’s just starting to get some distribution today, though) his idea was to throw the veil off his artistic process — and those early pages survive, complete with his ever-present, insistent questioning of his tools…

As per the norm, we’ve got four new books to take a look at in this week’s Round-Up column, with something of a common theme in that they all come our way courtesy  of those unafraid to put their money where their mouths are, the noble ranks of self-publishing cartoonists —

Or, in the case of So Buttons #9, a self-publishing writer, specifically Jonathan Baylis, who makes a welcome return after a couple of years spent raising his infant son, who features prominently in a heartwarming little “who do ya love?” anecdote illustrated with stripped-down poignancy by T.J. Kirsch and an equally “awwwww — fer cute”-inducing yarn about introducing the lovable tyke to music drawn with gorgeously wistful aplomb by Summer Pierre. For the anti-natalists out there, though, fear not : we have a quartet of stories that re-visit tried and true Baylis themes, with the great James Romberger…