Read Comments (10)

One of the few comics I’ve read recently that does not feel like it’s nostalgia driven or overly genre based. The press release for the book says it’s science fiction, but it feels like some weird hybrid of slice-o-life daily office life banality mixed with an action movie. The hook is that through time travel, whenever the clock hits 11:11 pm the protagonist switches from office life to action-hero life and thusly gets to experience both as the story moves forward, instead of the usual zero-to-hero plot development. Okay, maybe it is genre-based sci-fi. Still, it doesn’t FEEL like some re-hash of a genre comic book or a self-referencing comics nod. There’s even a comic book that is read by the zero/hero within this graphic novel that is used as a narrative device but that doesn’t FEEL nostalgic to me either. Hurm.

But all that is so inside baseball. I guess it’s from working at Copacetic. Like I can’t explain a lot of comics to customers in “comics terms” cuz most of our customers are fairly new to comics. So me explaining that it is Kindt’s brushwork that keeps this rollicking tale from coming across as a re-hash, or that his brushwork is, to me, a flowering of the alt 90’s Mazzucchelli/Pope bang-it-out approach and is a beautiful counter-point to all the slick photo-reffing schlubs who can’t draw an action scene to save their lives—that just barely makes sense to them, or maybe even to you, True Believer. But I gotta try, and will, for you, Believer, before I move on to how I pitch it to the lay people. (more…)

Read Comments (17)

Comics shop reverie. Ah, the new store. Up in the clouds. Heaven. Copacetic rules the roost in Pittsburgh. Best feeling shop in town. I guarantee it! I work Sundays folks, come on down! Take a seat in the easy chair and read the funnies. Have a coffee.

This was a big week for a fanboy/wanna-be-critic like myself. Can you say “paradigm shift?”

Let’s count ’em off: Bulletproof Coffin #2, Orc Stain #4, King City #7 (I know, that came out weeks ago but I missed it and had to re-order it), The Man with the Getaway Face preview, and the new Matt Kindt graphic novel, Revolver. What was I saying about the Direct Market being dead? Sorry, I was high. This has been a great summer already for my new drug: Fusion comics. My term for what Charles Brownstein calls “Boys Comics.” And the Direct Market is delivering my fix, so who’s complaining?

Leading off, The Bulletproof Coffin #2 By David Hine and Shaky Kane. This is my dream comic. I’m in love. This comic is my girlfriend. At this point I wouldn’t care if she fucked my best friend. This comic can do me no wrong. For me, it’s a perfect mashup of styles that POPS with bright colors and dripping blood. The whole book looks really sharp, I think, and the story’s clever unfolding owes a lot to its design. There’s another comic-within-a-comic interplay (Shield of Justice cover to your left) that twists up the story and makes it all swing. If you couldn’t find issue one, I’d say you could still jump on board with #2 and not miss the train. There’s a great synopsis on the inside front cover that made me laugh. Reads like a comic book, like serial entertainment. And for me, really, it’s just the joy reading a Shaky Kane comic. Talk about Fusion – Shaky’s able to somehow subtly, easily shift styles that it really creates a jarring, discordant note in the story. (more…)