Sunday, May 3, 2009

Popgun Bullets (of pure love) v3 p1

I am finally at a point where I can start reading and posting bullets for Popgun volume three. I have sort of adopted this as the anthology series I read for now, so it makes sense that I treat volume three the same as the other two. You can click on the popgun key word to find the entries for the other volumes.

  • Cover - Awesome Tara McPherson art. I really love her art. Another great popgun cover.
  • Inside cover and p1 - Anjin Anhut - Very cool illustration
  • p2-5 Kris Anka - fantastic stuff. I swear, if there is one thing that the popgun does as well or better than anyone else, it is putting absolutely brilliant art not just on the cover, but in the fornt and back pages of the book as well. It is independent of the anthology pieces, but it carries the feel of the book better than some of the actual entries do in my opinion. The picture of the girl dancing to the record player on page 5 is like... eating chocolate or something, it just elicits a great feeling.
  • p10 Ed Kwong illustration - more good stuff, but not my favorite picture.
  • p11 Carjacking!! - Guillaume Singelin - This is a funny short with a little twist in it. I like the art. The style is neat, the limited color palette works well in it.
  • p15 Four Seasons - Patricio Betteo - This is sort of like a poem, and a color poem combined. It is 4 pages with good art, and color evocative of the season and mood. The text is very sparse, and visual narrative isn't really there. I don't hate it, but might not want an entire book filled with it. It would look good on a wall, though.
  • p19 The Magnificent Zhao - Sam Bosma - This is another one that has a very spare but pretty artistic style to it. It's pacing is very deliberate, and has a feel of Asian myth to it. I liked it a lot.
  • p31 Ghost Hunter - Celor - Another strong style at work here. The art is on the ugly side, but I don't mean that as a criticism. I swear there are perfectly good styles that are a bit on the ugly side, and it isn't a negative and is not because of a lack of ability, and doesn't indicate any such thing. This comic does movement really well. It is fast paced, has a cool style about it, and is really funny in the end.
  • p39 Vertex - Juan Doe - This is bright and trippy and strange. Again this seems more like an 'art piece' than a comic. I don't think that just having pictures and words makes something a comic. It's not my thing, although the art is pretty cool.
  • p45 Sushi Nachos - Andrew Szymanowicz - Great art, great story. It's funny and moves, but tells a full story. I like the fact that it starts with our main character at home and gives us a glimpse of him there before moving on. In a short anthology story we get a good bit of character development.
  • p57 Pizza Monster in The Large Hawaiian - Joshua Agerstrand - This is hilariously well done. It makes me think of Brandon Graham for some reason, but not in an imitative way or anything(and I love Grahams work). Pizza delivery guy who is also a low level vigilante gets chased and attacked by a villainous restaurant grade dishwasher, and a bad guy that uses the word 'murderize' which is always worth extra points with me.
  • p71 Ramen-O-Rama - David Rubin - Great story, great art. This story has a start to finish story, has Ramen and giant monsters a breakup and reconciliation by young lovers, everything you might want in a comic. Constant flashbacks were cute, and used well in this.
  • p83 Roadkill - Sam Mckenzie - Not so much a story here as a ... thing. It isn't bad, but it doesn't do much for me. The art is good, but it has a strange softness to it like looking at an old screen image of a cartoon or something. I can't describe it, but I imagine computers were involved.
  • p91 The Knight Who Would Be King - Michael Dialynas - Awesome. Very cute story of the careful what you wish for variety. The art is lovely, and the twist made me laugh aloud when I realized what was going on.. Great stuff, great anthology piece.
  • p101 Spirit Room - Peter Bergting - Some beautiful art in here, but the piece moves too fast to make it have any impact. There is a twist here that isn't bad, and has an old horror anthology feel to it, but it could use another layer or two in my opinion, or another page or two to develop. The art is awesome regardless.
There we go! First hundred pages down. I am hoping to do this 100 pages or so at a time just to keep down the number of installments, but we'll see.

3 comments:

Sam Bosma said...

Hey! Thanks! Glad you liked my story.

Eden said...

Tara McPherson is awesome. She's also a total sweetheart in person. She was working on a comic, but I think that fell though, sadly.

Talkin Bout Comics said...

I love everything of hers I have seen. I would love to see what she would do on a full length comic.

I understand that it doesn't make someone's art better or worse if they are nice to people, or if they are jerks, but I sure love to hear that people whose art I respect are nice. (case in point... nice people sometimes give nice replies when you talk about their work... not that I expect everyone to, but it's cool when people take a moment to do it)