This is the second volume of the self proclaimed 'Graphic Mix Tape'. It's a nice chunky 472 page volume. It's glossy and pretty and contains a good deal of stuff I enjoyed a lot. I have a number of names of artists I hadn't heard of who I will definitely seek out more by. There was a decent amount of really good material. There were a good variety of styles represented.
In a minute I will go through the whole shebang in bullet format with brief comments. I didn't love this 30 dollars worth. for thirty bucks I could have gotten two good trades of continuous stories by artists and writers I would probably have enjoyed more than this volume as a whole. I recently bought two Patrick the Wolf Boy Collections for 15 dollars each, and not only did I love every bit of them, but I can give them to my 14 year old daughter and my 9 year old daughter, and I can pretty much assure you that they will love them as well. I am not condemning the anthology in any way, but it does tie in to something we all probably think about from time to time, and that is how you apply relative value to the comics you buy in order to maximize your whole comic buying experience. I'm not made of money, I tend to be made of credit, and some day that will bite me in the butt. I buy Popgun because several people whose material I respect and whose careers I want to follow and support to some degree have material in it (any other enjoyment I get is a bonus!). If it comes out too regularly I may not be able to keep up. I will certainly need to keep buying it from Amazon if I do keep getting it (19.99 vs 29.99)
- Love the Paul Pope cover
- Love the Dan Hipp front pages
- Like the Joy Ang illustration of the girl flying on a cloud
- indifferent to Derek Yu's very nicely illustrated Manjuu story thing. It's like a field guide entry on a sort of mandrake root kinda thing. I liked the art and the thing was fine but didn't do much for me otherwise.
- Loved 'Red' by Yeray Gil Hernandez. Love the art, the story was neat, and the extreme take on little red riding hood was clever, even though we may some day become immune to clever takes.
- Liked Frank Espinozas The Belukha a lot. The art was cool and the story was fun and well done.
- Almost loved Anthony Go Wu's Kid Revolver. I loved the art, and thought the fight scenes were exceptionally dynamic and cool. It also contains a handgun so large it could have almost come from Frank Miller's Elektra Assassin... almost. There were just a few things about it that left me short of loving it. Another day maybe...
- Liked James Kochalka's Glorkian Warrior. I like his work, and this is exactly what living inside an old side scroller video game would be like.
- Liked Sanz Pantz: All you can eat beatdown a lot. Sometimes we all get sushi madness... it's as simple as that.
- indifferent on Post Zero Hour. It is drawn fine, the action plays out like the final showdown between the hero and the primary villain in a lot of action movies. It's like a bite sized morsel of decent action movie, but it's only a bite and not a complete thing.
- I loved She Came From Venus, the Rugg and Maruca Afrodesiac story. This is where Nixon first appears in the anthology. It's a good story, it's funny, it's Afrodesiac, and I am in love with the blue alien now.
- Liked I'll Buy Freedom a lot. It features the Aardvark Brothers by Grant Bond, and is very well done. It is a 'Funny Animal' comic, and has bi-plane on tri-plane action.
- I can't say I understand Barnaby Ward's The Forest. I like the art a lot. For some reason I feel like this could be used as a jeans commercial like the Levi's I walk the line commercials. I don't know what I am supposed to get from this, but it's pretty.
- I will stop there for now. I will add more in another post
No comments:
Post a Comment