Popgun Bullets V3 P4

- Bulleted mini reviews of the entire contents of Image Comics anthology Popgun Volume Three (the final installment)

• 303 The Jailhouse Swing - Jamie S. Rich, Joelle Jones - I particularly like the style of this 8 page narrated piece about a down on his luck palooka and the Angel that loves him regardless. The art goes heavy on the lines in some places, and uses a very sketchy style when showing bits of his fights.His girl seems always drawn with a bit of delicacy. It has a little bit of the feel of something you might see related in Ed Brubaker's Criminal (not the only piece in this review that made me think of that).
• 311 50 Miles to Marfa - David Hopkins, Daniel Warner - The art in this piece sits on a weird line for me. I am not sure if I love it or if I hate it.The lettering got on my nerves a little, but as I sit here going over the whole thing again, I will say that I really like the art. It's bright, and certainly conveys the setting well, also, the hot-headed character is so expressive he is almost manga-like. The story itself is funny and well written. It is a clever double-cross, and I kind of love those.
• 319 Cuffs - Derek McCulloch, Peter Krause - Speaking of double crosses and things that could be right out of Criminal, this story has at least three twists in it. The art is very good, and yet again a different style. It's a decent story all the way through.
• 333 These Kids Today... - Eric Skillman, Connor Willumsen - I love Willumsen's art in general, but I don't love the coloring on this piece. This is a narrated piece that is 3 pages long and a bit abrupt. It isn't badly done, I just don't like it very much. It may just be the theme.
• 336 Tackle Goes Fishing - Robbie Lawrence - This is a single page bit, and is really cute. I have a hard time saying anything negative about it. It's a kid fishing for birds with a balloon. It's brightly colored and whimsical. I looked at it a few times and thought... ok... graphic mixtape... I get it.
• 337 Eternal Warrior: Endings - Paul Grist - I like Grist's work a lot, and like this piece as well.
• 345 The Real Incidentals in Kill Phil - Zac Gorman - I really liked the art and the humor in this one. This is sort of a super heroes meet Captain planet rings that summon embodiments of music styles. The enemy they are tackling is Kill Collins who ruins parties with his insipid Lite Rock. There are a lot of embedded jokes in this thing to look for, The art and color are great. I enjoyed it.
• 349 Sanz Pantz: Home Al-Owned - Chris Moreno - I love Sanz Pantz. This is another good piece. Every aspect of it is polished and well done. Nothing wrong with Ninja Platypus in my book.
• 355 Curse of Silence - George Gousis - This is a good efficient anthology piece. It tells a complete story in 4 pages with a twist and good distinctive art. The art and writing are equally strong and both contribute to the story.
• 359 Bunnyboy - Robb Mommaerts - A cute little girl, a cute little bunny and an atomic chemistry set. This entry takes those three things and remains cute through the entire bit, even when it's horrific and gross. Facial expressions are especially well done in this, and I liked it.
• 367 Lumberjack in The Root of All Evil - Stephen Reedy, Greg Titus - I loved this piece. The art is very slick and polished, the colors are great, and the writing is sharp. If this were a serious super-hero bit, I would probably not like it, but it is the story of a larger than life, plant hating lumberjack who seems to exist solely to eradicate plant based threats to humanity. He sort of reminds me of the Tick in a way. There is a vibe about it, rather than any direct correlation. He spouts lines like 'My ass will be wiped by your children's warm leafy bodies!' as he leaps in with axes and chainsaws flashing. It commits, takes the risk and succeeds.
• 379 Avocado Allegrando - Maximo V. Lorenzo - I don't love the lettering in this piece, but that's about it for things I don't love about it. It has a strong manga flavor about it with dynamic layouts and intense one on one duel action. The action is a musicians' battle between a guitarist and a violinist. It is clever and very well done.
• 387 Deathnaut: Emotional Baggage - Danilo Beyruth - Deathnaut is another very slick good looking entry. It's another one that is a bit tongue in cheek in it's delivery, while not being jokey at all. It works for me, although I am not sure I would want to take this in much larger doses than this. It's solid, but isn't particularly exciting to me. It IS very well drawn and written, though.
• 403 Londown - Alberto Mielgo - I am sadly mixed on this one. The story is brilliant and touching and kind of lovely. It is a strange sort of super-hero love story with a strong de-emphasis on the super part. The art is my issue. I loved it at first, but after a while it really started feeling like it was done entirely by drawing over top of pictures. After that got into my head it somehow brought down my opinion of the art and got in the way a little. I still think it is very artfully done, and it isn't like I don't consider it a top notch comic even if that is the case. It tells it's story pretty well and I like that story a lot. I don't love the odd text effects it has and the way the word balloons are done, but on a whole, they just cement it's uniqueness whether I love them or not.
• 421 Failure After Failure - Vassilis Gogtzilas, K.I. Zachopoulos - this is kind of a sweet little sketchily drawn piece lifted out of a relationship between two currently jobless people. It is more a slice of life/moment in time kind of thing that shows the tensions, but also shows some hope. The dialog is a little stiff, but it's nice. Some of the text is hard to read.
• 429 Olympus: They Say... - Christian Ward, Nathan Edmondson - gorgeous art. The story isn't so much of a story, but the art is just beautiful, and the piece is decent regardless.I like the underwater color effects in particular.
• 435 Found In The Attic - Olaf Brill, Donald Hello - Time travelling 'secret in the attic' creepy twist sort of story. It works well, and definitely captures the flavor of the sort of story it is patterned after.
• 443 The Young Macaw - Derek Yu - This is pretty funny. The last page is a bit of a surprise, and should put a smile on your face. The art is well done, and pretty different from anything else in the book. It is set up as a cultural/tribal coming of age ceremony and it fits that pattern well. The pacing is good, and I think the payoff is cute. Plus it has an owl bear in it, and that is worth something.
• 453 King's Hollow: The Trade - Ryan Cody - I love this piece. I love the main character Nissa, I love the art. I love it and I may just marry it. It really feels like something there should be more of. It is a nice self contained bit, but it really feels like there should be a graphic novel of it somewhere. It looks like there is a one-shot with the same character in it, and I think I will seek that out at some point.
• 461 Hairballs - Gary Fields - I don't love this. It is an itchy and scratchy sort of piece by way of the campy unfunny Sunday funnies. It's all puns and things that look like puns. I get it, but it isn't my favorite thing. Not badly done for what it is, but not my thing.
• 463 Mickey Maus - Erik Larsen - It is what it sounds like. It is a one page gag about Mickey Mouse being in a concentration camp and not getting it. Atrocities are funny! I would like to see an edition of this with no Mark Andrew Smith, and no Erik Larsen. No offense to them, but really, make this about other things and other people's work. Innovative and widely varied stuff.
• 464 Twilight - Michael Woods, Nic Klein - Wow. This is stunningly beautiful and equally sad. The art is lovely, but man is it sad. It's both lovely and haunting. It's a hard situation to face, but the idea of the piece is a good one. It involves a child in a coma, but paints an extraordinary world around them. It will probably stick with me.

Thoughts, opinions, comments? let me have it!

I enjoyed this volume, and if I can afford it, I may very well try to continue this project when the next volume of Popgun comes out. I like this series best when it is giving me really different and innovative stuff, or when it is giving me a very broad range of styles and subjects and genres and art, etc. It's nice to get to see 50 things or so I wouldn't have otherwise seen, and get a maximum number of creators in front of my face. I really do want to experience as much as I can, and this continues to be a decent way to do it. It also forces you to think about short works and anthology pieces as a very different thing from serialized comics or long form graphic novels, etc.

Popgun Bullets v3 p3

- Bulleted mini reviews of the entire contents of Image Comics anthology Popgun Volume Three (the next 100 pages)

• p215 Alien Abduction - Isam S. Prado (Assistance from Alisa Stern & Amy Stern -Not my favorite piece, but not a bad piece really. The art is different enough from everything else, and well done for its style. It isn't a style that I love, but I won't say it's bad or anything. It sort of makes me think of the Rugrats cartoon in its style, and i am not a fan of that style either. It's at least a complete thought, and an original take on an aliens are real story.
  
• p224 Intermission: Just Outside Circus Liquor - Dan Brereton - This is a two page illustration with evil clowns in a sort of circus setting with what looks like some Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters people thrown in. Good stuff, but not my thing really.
  
• p226 Young Johnny Appleseed - Frank Gibson, Becky Dreistadt - I will call this piece sweet and unexpected. It feels to me like it was lifted right out of the 1970's for me. I remember a big focus on Johnny Appleseed then, and the cute characters look like products of that time. It's a cute thing start to finish.
  
• p231 Rex Onazuka, The Japanese Wasp in the GodFather of Monsters - Mark Andrew Smith, Johann 'Ullcer' Leroux - I have in the past said some things about Popgun seeming almost like a vanity publication for Mark Andrew Smith, and maybe one or two others, given the volume of their work appearing in the first two volumes. This volume doesn't have that feel at all. I LOVE the Rex Onazuka stories. The writing is great, the art is great, what's not to like. You get around thirty pages of really great story that gives you giant monsters and real characterization and story. It is nice to see a piece like this.
  
• p261 Ever Upward - Tonci Zonjic - This story made me look up Joe Kittinger. The art is great and distinctive, with a sort of Non-fiction historical cartoon feel to it. It documents a major accomplishment in test piloting, and memorializes a man who did some truly amazing things in his long lifetime.
  
• p267 Father of Two - Amanda Becker, Janet Kim - This is a creepy and wonderfully done sort of horror short. The art is amazing, and the story is just awesome. This is another story that seems to have the horror anthologies of old as its spiritual successor, but this is better than most in all ways. It focuses on two sisters living with their Father who has signed on to make monsters for the Nazis. Good stuff!
  
• p271 There's Always a First Time - Michael Dialynas - Cute and funny little love story featuring the Grim Reaper. I like stories like this a lot. Death meets a girl he is taken by, and dates her, but can't touch her. It ends how you might expect it to, and is just lovely.
  
• p285 Cave Pat and the Early Femenist Movement - Alison Acton - It's tough being a smart and independent woman in the time of cavemen. This is a pretty good one also. The art is really well done, and it's funny. I would love to see more antics with these characters in this setting.
  
• p299 Same Again - Ray Fawkes, Justin Randall - We end this on a string of really high notes. The art is stunning, and the setting and premise of this sort of put chills down my back. Seriously. I consider this a perfect anthology piece. It's four pages and uses all of them and requires not a single bit more than that to tell us a story that resonates and gives us something that will stick with you.
  

Popgun Bullets v3 p2

- Bulleted mini reviews of the entire contents of Image Comics anthology Popgun Volume Three (the next 100 pages)

• p105 Crow Rooster - Connor Willumsen - This entry has good art, a real sense of mood about it, and is evocative of a scene from a mob movie. I don't really love it, solely because I don't really understand it. I don't think it tells a complete story, and it ends with what looks like a cover that features a character I assume is dead, and i don't know if we are going back in time, or if that is just an unrelated cover(endpage) or what. I like the elements a lot. I think it's pretty good stuff, but as an anthology piece it leaves me a little flat.
• p120 Twig & Cassius - Ulises Farinas, Ben DeRosa - Maybe it's just me. I'm not the deepest guy, or the smartest, but I am inclined to like comics. This is another one I just don't understand. The art is interesting, but I don't know what I am supposed to take away from the square headed guy and the giant crow, and what looks like a giant baby mouse. There is dialog that suggests a larger story than we are seeing, but again this feels like a piece of something, and not enough of a piece to be in a story anthology, assuming that is what popgun even wants to be.
  
• p132 EEKS! and SHRIEKS: A Brief History - Josh Parpan - This is a good example of something that isn't a story, but is a complete piece, and works fine in an anthology in my opinion. The art is pretty awesome. It is a bit on the grotesque side for my tastes, but it is very well done. It is a series of panels representing events in world history, re-enacted with monsters more or less.
  
• p137 Swordsman Monster Slayer: Monster Revenge - Frank Stockton - Relatively short and fairly funny, this isn't my favorite bit, but it certainly isn't bad or anything. I at least smiled at it. decent art but not my favorite style
  
• p141 Max!! Get out Of My Room! - Mike Dawson, Antonio Campo - Brotherly hijinx between a teleporter and a telekinetic. It's really funny stuff, as in 'MOM! MAX TELEPORTED MY ARM OFF!!'. I liked this one a lot.
  
• p153 Agents of the WTF in Would You Like to Dance, Papi? - D.J. Kirkbride, Adam P. Knave, Matteo Scalera, Antonio Campo - I also liked this piece a lot. The art is great. The best part of it being the dynamic action and layout/ panel design. This is a well done entry.
  
• p159 2 Copper Pieces: Gotcha! - Jim Zubkavich, Chris Stevens - This is another example of really well done art that just isn't a style I love, but I acknowledge that it's really well done. It is also an entry that gives you just a piece of what seems to be a bigger story, but it is perfectly packaged so that it is complete in and of itself. Great anthology piece!
  
• p163 The Last Voyage - Scott Hallett, Thomas Mauer - Can't say I get much out of this, but the art is pretty great. It's a boat full of viking like guys who go and get eaten by a sea monster. Really, it's like 'here's some guys, here's a monster, chomp, the end'
  
• p167 One In Every Box - Jim Zubkavich, Jason Ibarra, Matt Moylan - What if you were a fantasy world witing for the chosen one to arrive from another world to save them, but when the chosen one arrives they decide they would rather finish their breakfast instead... This is really pretty funny and well done. I enjoyed it.
  
• p176 Superhero Bobby - Dennis Brown - This entry is stupid and lazy. I Saw this someplace, and I can't recall where that was. There is some cool art here, The guy has a ton of talent, but this bit just isn't anything.
  
• p181 Nudging Buddy - Ron Turner - Amazingly well done backgrounds and scenery, etc. The art is very good, the story isn't bad, but it is really just packed with dense narration, in a sort of hard to read small font. The art and the story go together, and the art certainly enhances and reinforces the story, but man this is wordy.
  
• p189 Bastard Road: Cockfighter Blues - Brian Winkeler, Dave Curd - I said of a previous Bastard Road from a previous popgun, that I didn't want to like it, but it grew on me. This one has the benefit of it having already grown on me, as well as the fact that it is extremely funny, with exceptionally distinctive and humorous art. This comic is filled with as many penis and vagina references as you can fit into one comic without actually talking about penises or vaginas. If this took itself seriously for a second, none of it would be funny, but everything about it is tuned to make it work. Very funny stuff.
  
• p203 Error - Jeik Dion, Dominique Carrier - I flat out love the art in this. Limited color palette, post apocalyptic look and feel,cool character design, etc. I would almost like it better if it had no text at all, rather than the one or two word text boxes scattered about that read sort of like poetry. I guess post apocalyptic sci-fi poetry comics are a completely valid art form, but I may need some time to get used to it as an art form.
  

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.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume One, part five - The next 50 pages

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

• p201 Super Tron - Sheldon Vella - This comic is crazy with color and style. There are places in it that I had to go back and re-read several times to figure out what was going on and exactly which character things were happening to. It's pretty fun though. It is also up to 60 screens on Zuda at the time of this writing. The interactions between the robots in this seem very pre-teen. Even after reading a lot more of it online, I am not fully sure what to make of it, but I've enjoyed it.
  
• p217 They Shoot Ponies, Don't They? - Mark Sable, Rob Guillory - The art is good, the story interesting. We get a tale recounted here by perhaps the smallest badass in the old west. It's a story about a town trying to keep itself cut off from the rest of the world in order to be 'normal'
• p224 Grow Seven Monsters Ad - Danny Hellman - This is a one page fake ad that lampoons comic book mail away ads, and suggests that the bitter recipients of the disappointing crap may grow up to be serial killers.
• p225 Tiger-Man: Mark of the Squid - Mike Bullock, Marcelo Di Chiara - This is a classic old school all ages Batman and Robin style superhero story. It is certainly well done for what it is, and as a bit of nostalgia for a time that maybe never was, it made me smile. Super Hero's young sidekick is kidnapped by odd villains and superhero goes and kicks some butt, all the while seeming heroic. This is by the same person who did Lions, Tigers & Bears, which is great, and in which Tiger-Man is a comic book hero. I highly recommend the two trades of that as good all ages fun, geared toward a younger set.
• p237 Cheeseburger-head - Erik Larsen - not a bad little bit about a guy who wakes up with a cheeseburger for a head, but it sort of feels like something that was pulled out of a drawer when asked if he had a contribution for the book.
• p243 Black Circle White: The Recycle Soul Project - Jonathan Hickman - The art is great, the layout cool and stylish. I don't get this at all. I mean... I do, I guess, but I have no real use for it.
  
• p248 A Man Named Wattson In A Head Among Skulls - Kris Anka - Speaking of things I don't need in an anthology... There are 3 FULL PAGES of ... NOT STORY here. Three. We have a cover, a title and a dedication page before we get to the first page, which also has a title on it. I am just not a fan of this piece.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume One, part four - The next 50 pages

Part One Part Two Part Three

• p151 Solomon Finch -vs- 100 Vampire Bikini Girls - Julio Figueroa, Chamakoso -This is a cute story with great manga style art. It's 10 pages about two police detectives who bust a crime ring based out of the trendy and popular restaurant 'Bikini Vampires. It isn't deep, but I would certainly read more of this sort of thing.
• It's Mexican Wrestler Funnies - Andy Kuhn - Man, When did Mexican wrestlers elevate to the level of Pirates, Ninjas, Monkeys, Bears, etc.? I am not knocking it, but I swear nearly all things hip or alt, etc. probably have at least one masked wrestler in them. I have no issue with it, just sayin... This is by Andy Kuhn, so the art is great, and it is an extremely funny take on taunting and trash talking.
  
• The Death Of The Midnight Sky - Rick Remender, Josh Hoye - I appreciate the style of the art in this, and recognize it as well done, even though it isn't my thing exactly. I like the story well enough. It's really just a short narrative, but it's done in a neat way, and certainly uses the medium well.
• p172 Aqua Leung: Ambush - Mark Andrew Smith, Paul Maybury - I really liked Aqua Leung a lot. The writing was good, but the art was fantastic. What we have here is a piece where the art is really the star.
• p179 Blood Inside - Nick Stakal, Chuck BB - I like the art here, especially the cool looking kind of viking guy in the beginning, but I have no idea what I am looking at really. I guess it is two glimpses of last moments with blood loss, I don't really take anything away from this.
• p183 Express Elevator To Hell Tour - James Stokoe - Nothing really happens in this. We get told what's going to happen, but mostly it is a cool looking tentacled guitar ? playing guy in a hat who is leaving hell. The art is trippy, but there is no substance here.
• p191 Love Will Tear Us Apart - Tim Seeley, Jeremy Dale - This is a sweet little piece about a guy who falls in love with a girl who is too free to be tied down to another person, only to kill himself when she leaves him and comes back as a zombie after a zombie outbreak. The art is decent, the idea is ok.
• p197 Space Mutha Fucka - J.Latour - This is short, the art is good, the idea is funny. It's not exactly my thing, but it is funny. It takes the gun as penis thing to a logical conclusion.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume One, part three - The next 50 pages

Part One Part Two

• p105 Remnants - Llarena/Sobreiro - Perhaps this is too sophisticated for me. The art is decent, but the story isn't so much a storry as it is a statement or a monologue of sorts. I guess that maybe it's a statement on religion or human nature or something, but it zips right over my head.
• p113 The Fall Of Geometry - Coleman Engle - I love the art in this. It is bright and cute and all, but this is another story I am not sure the point of. The art is great, except that it is so light and pleasant in style that the scenes of destruction and guts being sliced open and a cat cut in half are way way harder for me to handle. I noted the references to Ender's Game, but am not sure what purpose they serve. Shapes are falling from the sky cutting things into pieces. It appears to be a defense system gone wrong, but then we mostly just get people dying and things being destroyed.
• p129 Leed's Devil - Joe Flood - This is a pretty standard sort of story done well. It feels like the x-files and any number of private detective shows/movies. That isn't a criticism, just a comment as a frame of reference. There is a very cool looking devil/dragon creature in it, and it is written well.
• p147 New Brighton Archeological Society - Smith/Weldon - The art for this is again amazing. The story itself is really just a bath gag, and really the sort of thing you have probably seen in Calvin & Hobbes in one form or another. As part of a larger work it would be great, but although I liked it fine and appreciate the art, I'm not doing flips over it.
• p150 Amazing Joy Buzzards promotional piece - Dan Hipp - I still love his art. I am not sure why this is in this volume though.
  

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume One, part two - The next fifty pages

Here is a link to Part One.

• p 51 Thrilling Ant Farm (fake ad) - Danny Hellman - One page gag. It's funny though, and describes a product every bit as lame as I always assumed the stuff in the back of comics would be.
  
• p52 Pinapl - Corey Lewis - I am crazy about this. I don't know what it is about it, but every bit of it is awesome and just pops off the page to me. The color is crazy in a good way, and there is so much movement and sound. I would love to see more of this in all it's future samurai gangland action glory.
• p67 She's Out Of Reach - Jim Mahfood - This is a very good five pages. I swear I thought it was longer than that when I read it, but it crams a good bit into the five pages. It's fun and interesting. The art is great. It certainly has the feel of a story being told by 'one of your friends' about that 'ideal match' they found, and why it didn't work. I think it's a good use of five pages and a good anthology piece.
• p72 Motorface - Benjamin Roman - It's two pages long. The art is great, but it's not a story and not quite a gag.
• p74 Hector Plasm In Palamon's Conundrum - Benito Cereno and Nate Bellegarde - This is a Hector Plasm story, and a really good one. I am a big Hector Plasm fan, but I will say that the writing is great, the art is great, and it is a great short piece for an anthology. We get to hear a tragic love story, as well as seeing the sort of empathy Hector has with the dead. You don't have to know the character to understand it, but if you do it's that much better.
• p81 Monoluminant: The Goblin Sisters - Joe Suitor - Ok, even I am getting a little tired of how much I have liked the various pieces I have reviewed. I promise you it's because they are good, and not because I am THAT easy. This is another great story with terrific art. It's very funny and cool. I am pretty sure that this is a true story of Jimmy Page... It's got guitars and creepy creatures in it. It's another good piece.
• p89 Sanz Pantz Ninja Platypus - Chris Moreno - I should get a thesaurus. This is a touching piece on just how far some will go for a loved one (in this case it's beer). The main character is a platypus, and looks a lot like a ninja turtle. That is just a fact of life for that sort of creature wearing that sort of mask and practicing martial arts. It's another funny story, and it's well done. Cheesy T-Shirt Slogan Clan has to be my favorite ninja clan ever.
• p95 The Amazing Joy Buzzards in The Fearless Vampire Hunters - Mark Andrew Smith/Dan Hipp - I really like Amazing Joy Buzzards. I really like how it is written and drawn. I think there is a bit too much Smith in this volume for having been edited by him. I know there were bits by others that were cut out of the volume, but there sure does seem to be a lot of Smith in it. I think this bit is great, I'm not trying to take away from that, honest.
• p99 Tag - Dave Crosland - This is like a gag and an editorial statement wrapped in one. I love the art, I love the color, and I love the way that this is so different from so much of what went in before it.
  

That brings me to page 104. I will break here and pick up with the next page range soon.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume One - Part One, The first fifty pages

There are a number of reasons I decided to go back and post about popgun volume one. Some of them I will post when November is over, but some of them are: I thought of a clever title, I did volume two, and if/when a volume three is released i will do that as well, so I figured I should do the first one as well. Mostly it was the clever title thing. I am a sucker for naming things as though they are a long running feature. I plan to go and retroactively change the old posts to match this naming convention.

Any mention from me of popgun has to start with my standard comment. All the hype for the popgun line focuses on this idea that it is a 'graphic mixtape' and that somehow it is bringing together comics and music in anthology form, in a way that just has never been thought of before. It strikes me as a bit pompous and based in a sort of denial. Reading the blurb at the back of the book by Joe Keatinge takes a little of the fire out of my belly on that, as he seems really sincere. I had read little bits in the press that made it sound like it was a grand experiment for people that didn't read comics, rather than what it is, which is a fairly straight forward, seemingly theme free anthology. To me, None of that matters. If you give me an anthology filled with really awesome stuff cover to cover, then I don't need a theme or any coaxing to like it.

• The Allred cover is beautiful and brilliant. It features Frank Einstein in the middle, and bits from the comics in the volume are all over the room he is in.
  
• We get part of a Joe Flood spread that starts in the front of the book and finishes on the inside back cover. I LOVE this guy's art. Everything I have seen from him is amazing and makes me want to own a print of it. It doesn't hurt that he seems to be just the nicest guy you could want to meet. This page has a character from the first story that appears in most of the pieces done for the book design by a variety of artists. It looks like a vampire themed tele tubby sort of.
  
• Two, two page pieces by Barnaby Ward follow. Both are beautiful, and they work nicely one after the other. The first is a girl reading in an attic and wearing headphones done in muted tones, the second is a similar looking girl in space with pinks and blue and orange. The helmet to her space suit appears to be made out of giant headphones. It's a nice effect.
• The next page we get after the table of contents is another Barnaby Ward piece. I will need to look him up when I am done typing this. I really like what is here. This one is a full page girl standing up and apparently poking Felix the cat in the eye. really nice picture.
• p11 - Your Hand In Mine, Carlos Lerma - The art here is pretty beautiful. The story seems to be taking place in the imagination of a young cancer patient who is being taken off of life support. It's nearly wordless, and really nicely done.
• p18 Me And The Cat Own The Lease On The Flat, Jamie S. Rich & Joelle Jones - This is a joint custody after a contentious break-up story. The kid in this case is a female cat named Jake. I like this piece, although the bad blood that is portrayed in it makes me sort of uneasy. I think that is a sign that it is pretty well written. The art is expressive and works well.
• p23 Codename Colonel Kursk, Toby Cypress - I LOVE the style of art here. It's really cool. Unfortunately, while I can't say i don't appreciate what looks like the end of an action movie, I am not sure what the point of this is. I think it could be (and who knows, maybe is) a piece out of something fairly awesome, but It doesn't seem to be something that is complete.
• p29 Manhunt In The Obsidian Hills Of Mars: A Futari Tale, Nick Derington - This is another piece like the one before it. First, it seems to have a title longer than the work itself, but that isn't the problem. This piece also has very solid art. It looks like something I would like, but it feels like a snippet. It's like watching trailers rather than getting complete short works.
• p35 Frank Einstein In For The Record, Mike Allred. I like Allred, I like Madman. This is a nice little story. In it we get a sort of origin, as well as a story about Frank trying to get a special order from a record store. I don't know if this story was previously published, but it was fairly old when the anthology came out. That doesn't hurt anything, just mentioning it.
• p43 The New Brighton Archaeological Society, Mark Andrew Smith & Matthew Weldon - I like the style here. I am not sure I love that there are three different installments of this throughout the anthology. So far it reads good and the art is great. I like Smith's writing a lot, and Matthew Weldon is a terrific artist. I'll have more opinions on the whole thing when I get to the last part.

I am going to stop here at page 50. I may or may not do larger chunks as I continue on with this.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume Two - Part Five, The final countdown

I have decided to do some stretches, crack my knuckles and just muscle my way through the last installment of my quest to have an opinion on every bit of Popgun volume 2. If you are just joining me, here are parts one , two, three and four.

• 'Reverberation(Doubt)' - Jamie S. Rich & Joelle Jones. This piece creates a real sense of uncertainty and confusion. The art is good, and it is well written. It also feels complete, which is nice. It leaves things unresolved in a way, but the story, the focus of the piece has a complete feel to it. It's the sweetest little comic about VD testing in the whole anthology.
• Deadeye: Live Fast, Die Young, Be A Good Looking Corpse - Leah Moore & John Reppion - I love the art in this one. Hover cars and cyborg-type replacement parts. The story is told beautifully through the art. There's not a great deal to it, but it's decent.
• Friggit The Frog - Gary Fields - One Page gag, not bad, not mind blowing. The character reactions are cute.
• Wolf and Bug - Nick Thornborrow - This reads like a creepy sort of Aesop's Fable, or maybe closer to an Uncle Remus, Bre'er Rabbit sort of story. The art is distinctive and cute, the story is funny and a little creepy as I said.
• Wide Awake: Behind The Wall Of Sleep - Brandon Jerwin, Eric S. Trautmann & David Messina - I liked this. It is a bit heavy handed, or overwrought, or something to that effect, but the art is good, the piece is interresting, and pretty well done. I like the style and design of it as much as anything, and the premise is decent if not 100 percent new.
• Jersey Gods: Rock God - Glen Brunswick & Dan McDaid - This does very little for me, but it isn't bad. It is a one page gag more or less.
• Yonchi - Richard Meyer, Carlos Silva & Alan Robinson - I liked this. Good art, funny idea, and well executed. In places it's pretty brilliant.
• Sleepless - Alexei Conman & Ronald Salas - This is a single page piece and it isn't a gag or a strip. It is actually pretty well done. It's sort of like a poem, or a piece from a movie.
• 42nd and Lex - Dan Goldman - I don't get this, but that could just be me. I don't love the style, and it doesn't speak to me on any level really.
• Bacon Mummy vs Gorilla Mayor - Erik Larsen - It's a picture of the forementioned characters... It works on exactly that level.
• Never Again:Until Next Time - Michel Fiffe - The art is decent. This doesn't speak to me. Not really sure I get it, but again, that may be a shortcoming of mine.
• Don't miss the awesome picture on page 467 by Joe Flood, that features a Frankenstein Monster on Tambourine. It's awesome, and I met him today at SPX and bought a mini comic with that picture as it's cover, and that expands upon the 'bird on a wire' piece that I spoke of earlier in this anthology.

And there you have it. Good stuff, all in all, but a bit of a chore to comment on every bit of it. I am glad I did though, and will probably keep this as a thing I do.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume Two - Part Four, The Fourth Hundred Pages.

Ok, I am going to try and tie up loose ends before I move on to the myriad other things I want to cover. I sit here now with Popgun v.2 at my side, ready to jump right back into my grand endeavor of reading and commenting on the entire freaking anthology. If you are just joining me, here are parts one , two and three.

• Soulless, Man Without A Soul - DJ Kirkbride and Anjin Anhut. - The art is good, and the story is less of a story than a seeming intro to something else. It's good, but I don't see it as complete. It is a lot like the bit of a movie prior to the title coming up, or a trailer maybe. Good stuff, but I want more of it. I am not sure that I want an anthology filled with things that feel like ads for other things. Don't get me wrong, I like it a lot, just sayin'...
• I can't say that I get 'In The Belly Of The Beast' by Jasen Lex. - I think the art is interesting, but not really my thing. It could grow on me if the writing meant something to me, which it doesn't.
• Everybody's Hero - Erik Martinez and Ken Knudtsen - Art, or crap? I honestly am undecided on this. I sincerely either love the art in this, or I hate it. The strange part is that I don't know how to determine which it is. It is either very artistic or kind of lazy. I would probably benefit from seeing more of the artists work. There are parts that I am taken with, but otherwise I don't know.
• Diamond Of Khadai - Lars Brown - I loved this. It is nicely drawn and colored, and there is a scene where the conflict is resolved by throwing kittens. The funniest part is how it seems to take place in the present, but the protagonists have armor and go on a quest. I enjoyed this a good bit.
• Dream Time - Ralph Nieze - Pretty strange, but I mostly really like the art, until the very end. I like the parallell of the people from two different worlds dreaming of/longing for each other. Very short piece.
• Lady In Space - Ancor Gil & Gisela Marraro - Very nice wordless piece. Boy meets girl encased in asteroid, Girl becomes giant monster. It's a love story. The art is great, and the story telling is solid.
• The Story Of Evolution - Tim Hamilton - Nicely done and very funny wordless 3 page bit.
• Boffo Yock's Joe's Jokebook - Funny and absurd.
• Kill Audio, Time to Face The Music - Claudio Sanchez & Sheldon Vella - This didn't do much of anything for me. I don't get it, it doesn't click, or whatever. I don't really care for the art either.
  
• Ogre And The Elves - Ryan O'Hara & Rod Laiz - 'I guess we ain't gonna learn a lesson 'bout life today' - This is a great piece start to finish. It's cute and funny and well done.
• The Clockwork People - Yann Krehl & Christian Nauck - The art in this is very good. The character design is cool, as is the premise. I really like this story and would love to see more stuff in this setting with these characters. I haven't looked into it yet, but I plan to.

I am going to stop there. That puts us on page 407. If I don't get to the rest of it tonight, I will do it tomorrow so I can start going through all the goodies I got at SPX. We're in the home stretch now, only 11 more pieces and less than 70 pages to go.

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume Two - Part Three, The Third Hundred Pages

Here we are at the third batch of micro reviews of the contents of Popgun v2. If you haven't already read them, here are parts one and two. It feels like I've had my hands in this thing's guts forever and am only just now passing the halfway point. As you'll see, I like an awful lot of it, but trying to take this thing all at once would make anyone walk funny for a while(so to speak).

We resume our reviews with Sucky Sucky on Page 207 by Jonathan David Hanh and Vu Hill.

• Sucky sucky was great. Vampire babies!
• Out of focus is another great piece. It is a terrific little surprise ending affair and is well done with a distinctive art style. Good Job Connor Willumsen
• Billy Dogma in Sex Planet by Dean Haspiel is ok. The art is cool, it seems pretty funny to me, but it loses me a little somewhere.
• Leaf and Augustus by Ulises Farinas is great. I really like the art. I like the near wordless storytelling method. For something that starts out looking like it might go good with Owly, it gets a little dark and bloody, but it's a nicely done piece.
• I really like Paul Maybury's Prey On You. Again, it's the art that does it for me. I really like the art on this. The story is cute, but the art and cleverness carry it.
• Mr. Universe is sort of like an extended Calvin and Hobbes bit. It's ok, but I don't love it. That is not to say that isn't well done.
• Another Boffo Yocko one pager. Bacon Mummy!
• 2 copper pieces isn't really my thing. It's a bit overly slick for me, but the writing is ok. It's pretty funny, and would make a terrific piece in the back of Dragon Magazine or some such.
• Bird on a Wire by David Brennan and Joe Flood is decent. I like the art and the characters and the action, but it doesn't feel like enough to me. I would read more with these folks in it, but I would like more to it.
• Bloom by Paul Conrad was pretty decent. I like the art and the character. There's a cute little twist at the end, but this is again, more of snapshot than a real story in my opinion.
• Little Known Fact is an extremely cute 2 page piece by Benito Cereno and Paul Mabury. It's cute, did I mention cute?
• I didn't want to like Bastard Road, but it has grown on me. It's funny stuff with a very distinctive style.
• King And No King just left me shrugging. There's nothing awful about it I guess, but there's not much to it . It's 4 pages and is mostly about climbing stairs then falling to your death, and it's dedicated to Mike Wieringo. The art is Ryan Ottley, so it's pretty great art. It looks good, but I just don't think it does much.

That puts us at page 302. I promise there will only be another one or two of these to go. If you bought Popgun v2, or have an opinion about any of the stories or any of my little comments, let me know! Change my mind on something, I love different perspectives!

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume Two - Part Two, The Second Hundred Pages.

I will pick up here from what I started in this post. I am just going with bullet points, but I am covering Popgun cover to cover. We reume our effort here with Loner on page 101.

• I am just shy of liking Loner by Tim Daniel and Ming Doyle. This is another sort of anthology thing that isn't really a story. It's another thing that feels like a snippet, a vignette I guess. I like the setup, but there could be more, couldn't there?
• I like Promontory by Matty Field and Chuck Knigge. The art is good, there's a story there. It's introduced and wrapped up nicely and you have a feeling for what went on and a sense of completion as far as the story is concerned.
• I love Brandon Graham's art and writing. Sputz is cute and funny.
• I didn't care for Grant Alter and Ronald Salas's 'The Wager'. I think they could have done better. It was a bit lazy and tired in my opinion.
• I like the fake ad for the 'institute of the dying arts' It's not brilliant but there is certainly some funny in there
• I kind of love 'Scummy' by Marley Zarcone. I love the art, and the story and dialog are great. It isn't exactly anything new, but there is a nice combination of good stuff that makes it better than average. I would love to see more work by her.
• I love Hexbreakers, Inc. (Freelance) by the Atomic Robo team of Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener. It is perfect in every way to me, including the fact that it seems like an ad for continuing stories . I would buy it as a series, but according to Scott Wegener's blog, it may only ever be short stories, which would still be cool.
• I thought The New Job was funny. Not the biggest fan of the art, but that is just personal preference. Bigfoots love s'mores... FACT.
• Amo Jamon by Gabriel Bautista is awesome. It's an animal comic. The art is great, the dialog and story are really good.
• Boffo Yocks Lotta Malarkey - Erik Larsen There are several funny pages bits by Larsen throughout the book. They are pretty funny for what they are.
• Survival of the festive is pretty hilarious. Never heard of Sheldon Vella, but this was funny and the art was good and apropriate for the story.
• Val Nunez's Dr. Bears PHDs is a cute one pager.
• I liked 'Nixon's the One' It's a short fictionalized account of a late night trip around town that Nixon made in May of 1970. It's the second appearance of Nixon in this volume.
• Stopping here at the end of the second hundred pages of Popgun v2

Popgun Bullets: Popgun Volume Two - Part One, The first Hundred Pages.

Popgun volume 2, edited by Joe Keatinge and Mark Andrew Smith ($29.99, Image)

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