21 Aug, 2007
Indie Comics Roundup - August 2007
By: Hal Johnson
Here at Indie Comics Roundup, we dispense praise and blame on independent comics according to the Incredible Hulk #185 scale. In this scale, Incredible Hulk #185 is considered to be the average comic (a solid C), and everything is graded based on its deviation from the average. Since Incredible Hulk #185 contains a Glen Talbot imposter trying to assassinate Gerald Ford with an organic bomb, you will perceive that we grade harshly. For example, every comic Marvel released in the year 1996 received an F.
We would also like to request of you that if you wish to post a comment, please make sure the comment has some content. Not that we don’t appreciate your wellwishes, mom, but it’s starting to get embarrassing.
Love and Capes #5
Thomas F. Zahler / Maerkle Press
Shock Value: Either B+ or D
Love and Capes is either the driest parody in the world of comics, or it totally sucks. For the life of me, I can’t tell which. It’s billed as “the heroically super situation comedy comic book, and this is no lie: Love and Capes perfectly mimics the banality and triteness of your standard situation comedy, with superheroes thrown in…
Casper the Friendly Ghost (Harvey Comics Classics Volume One)
Leslie Cabarga, ed. / Dark Horse
Shock Value: A
Unlike some of the other children’s comics that are currently being reprinted–notably Carl Barks’s Duck stories and John Staley and Irving Trip’s Little Lulu–the Casper comics are not good in any traditional sense. They are perfectly serviceable children’s stories, but there’s no reason for a grown-up to read them. Comparing Lulu to Casper is like comparing Edward Lear to Stan and Jan Berenstain…
XXX Scumbag Party / Angry Youth Comics #13
Johnny Ryan / Fantagraphics
Shock Value: A-
Everything bad that you’d care to say about Angry Youth Comics is true. It’s repellant, racist, juvenile, mindless, repetitive, and pornographic, and I can completely understand why someone might absolutely hate it. I love it. Angry Youth Comics is living proof that a bad joke repeated often enough becomes funny, and a bad joke pushed far enough is good. Neither enough nor too much is enough. You wouldn’t laugh at a retarded person, and you wouldn’t laugh at Hitler, but what about a character named Retarded Hitler? If Sam Henderson is a little too intellectual for you, if Tijuana bibles aren’t quite scatological enough, if Doofus is too well drawn for your taste, you’ve got a friend in Johnny Ryan…
The Girls’ Guide to Guys’ Stuff
various / Friends of Lulu
Shock Value: C-
So apparently girls can read comics. If this sentence absolutely blows your mind, or if it fills you with such delight that you are now doubled over with mirth, you will probably want to read this anthology. Anyone else can skim…
Stop Forgetting to Remember: The Autobiography of Walter Kurtz
Peter Kuper / Crown
Shock Value: C+
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the only thing worse than hearing one of your friends brag about his acid trips is hearing two of your friends brag about their adorable baby. Similarly, the only kind of autobiographical comic I dread reading more than the teenage drug fiend story is the “let’s have a baby” story. The hipster and the bourgeoisie are the twin horns of lame, and these two emblematic narratives are like their spoor, left behind when they pass.
So Peter Kuper’s Stop Forgetting to Remember focuses on drug use and babies, which is on the face of it a big problem. It also contains a “how I lost my virginity story” and a “I’ll teach that bitch who didn’t love me a lesson” story, all tied together by a chatty narrator (”Okay, okay! We get the picture! Jesus, don’t you ever shut up??” one character complains. “Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?”); if you’re starting to get worried, you’re not the only one…
Love and Rockets vol. 2 #20
Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez / Fantagraphics
Shock Value: A-
It’s probably impossible to review any single issue of Love and Rockets dispassionately or even fairly. The weight of twenty-five years’ worth of Love and Rockets comics lends every new issue a weight and depth it cannot produce on its own. The extended continuity is sometimes exhilarating and sometimes oppressive, but it makes for a unique reading experience. For a story running this long, in which every issue counts and there are no retcons or reboots, you can look to Cerebus or the first hundred issues of Fantastic Four, and there’s not a lot else…
Big Plans #1
Aron Nels Steinke / Self-Published
Shock Value: B
There are many ways Big Plans is no better than the autobiographical mini comic your hipster roommate used to crank out. Parts of it are embarrassingly slight. Boo hoo, the author went to a comic store with no Fantagraphics books. If he couldn’t draw, he’d have to go home and blog about it. But Big Plans has two advantages over most autobio minis. One is a thirty-page story in which some interesting things happen…
Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean
Douglas Wolk / Da Capo Press
Shock Value: A-
Look, this is a comics review column, not a book review column, so I’m only going to mention in passing Douglas Wolk’s new book of comics criticism, Reading Comics. It’s divided into two sections: in the first (”Theory and History”) he says everything I’ve always wanted to say about comics but never quite managed to get out right. In the second (”Reviews and Commentary”) he praises comics I like. What a great idea for a book…
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