The long-overdue SPX loot post

[jkcarrier]

THE ACCIDENTALS: IRREVELATIONS
Mike Carroll/4753-H Olentangy River Rd./Columbus, OH 43214-1963
B&W digest by Mike Carroll. Mike's stick-figure superheroes meet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Cartoony antics and bad puns ensue, along with some suprisingly insightful commentary about what the "apocalypse" actually means in this day and age. One of Mike's better strips, I think.

ATAXIA OVERDRIVE #1
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dcconspiracy/
A full-color minicomic by Evan Keeling. It's some kind of sci-fi adventure, where a woman is being chased by some unnamed evil dudes. Nice art, but it's hard to get any feel for the story from this excerpt.

ATOM BOMB BIKINI #4
http://www.lurid.com/
B&W minicomic (plus a few color pages) with cardstock cover by Robert Ullman. Lots and lots of drawings of nekkid and near-nekkid gals: finished drawings and pencil sketches, as well as some of the illustrations he does for a newspaper sex column. All are super-cute and sexy as hell.

AXEL AND ALEX #7
Terry Flippo/205 Breezewood Ct./Mt. Airy, MD 21771
B&W digest by Terry Flippo and Joe Gravel. Gyro the boy robot has his first day of school, only to be confronted by protestors who don't want his kind integrated with their kids. I had mixed feelings about this one. The author's afterword makes it clear that this was a heartfelt attempt to pay tribute to the civil rights movement. But unfortunately, the story comes across just the opposite: Like he's using the historical events to lend phony gravitas to his silly little robot character. It reminds me of those old Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics from the '70s: Utterly sincere, but kind of embarrassing in retrospect.

BLEEP THE PEEPER
http://www.wideawakepress.com
A silly little minicomic jam involving a peeping tom. Includes pages by Robert Ullman, Jim Mahfood, Paul Hornschemeier, and various others. Some funny stuff here.

BROWNSVILLE
http://www.rantcomics.com/
B&W digest with color cover by Neil Kleid and Jake Allen. Preview of an upcoming graphic novel about Jewish gangsters in the 1930s. Looks pretty interesting, and Allen does a great job evoking a "period" feel.

COEXISTENCE
http://www.waspcomics.com/
B&W digest with silkscreen cover by Matt Dembicki. An adaptation of a short story by Slawomir Mrozek, about a man confronted by the Devil. A nice twisty (and twisted) tale, with creepy and effective artwork.

THE COLONY #1
http://www.greenpiece.net/jasondegroot/
B&W digest by Jason DeGroot and Marc Haines. Apparently this is just a preview of an upcoming full-size comic. A burned-out hitman is recruited for "one last job" involving some kind of zombie-like monsters. Hard to judge where the story is going from this excerpt, but it could be pretty interesting. The art's not too great, though -- kind of crude and cartoony, which doesn't really match the "horror" tone of the script. I'm supposed to be getting a copy of the finished version, so we'll see how that turns out.

CORNELIA CARTOONZ #8
Kel Crum/32 W. Goodman Dr. Apt 23/Fairborn, OH 45234
B&W digest by Kel Crum. A series of one-page strips, mostly social/political satire featuring the sarcastic everywoman Cornelia. The art's nothing to write home about, but the gags are great, with just enough of an absurd edge to keep the "message" from getting too strident.

DEATH BY SEXY
http://www.myspace.com/evan_number_1/
Full color digest by Evan Keeling. Here's a clever idea: A series of band flyers that actually form an ongoing comic. Granted, there's not much to the story -- generic sci-fi pulp with lots of sexy space chicks. But pretty fun nonetheless.

DOCTOR DREMO #1
http://home.dcconspiracy.com/blog.html/
B&W digest with color cover by Matt Dembicki and various. A very cool jam comic, mostly a semi-satirical riff on Dr. Strange. The thing I hate about most jams is that there's usually some dick who wants to completely change course halfway through. Not here; everyone "plays nice" and builds reasonably on what went before, and the result is a pretty tight and suspenseful little tale. As you might expect, the art varies a lot, but most of it is very nicely done.

GLASS EYE Summer 2004
http://www.markinnes.com/
B&W zine by Mark Innes. This is a real old-school style zine, a random collection of essays and articles. The main feature is Mark talking about being an extra in movies like "Cinderella Man" and "Resident Evil Apocalypse". It's an interesting "peek behind the curtain", and you get a real sense of the absurd amount of work and preparation that goes into every aspect of a major motion picture. There's also brief articles on DC's "Plop" comics and Topps' "Funny Lil' Joke Book" series, and some snarky capsule reviews of '70s comics by John Migliore. Lots of fun.

THE GUARD #2
http://groups.msn.com/HappyFaceProductions/
B&W digest by Chuck and Ben Robinson. If you're feeling nostalgic for '90s Image comics, this is the book for you. The art is straight out of the Liefeld school -- awkward figures inked with zillions of hatch-marks. The story is something about a war between Mars and Venus, with Earth superheroes caught in the middle, but I couldn't really follow it through the cluttered visuals. Not my cuppa, I'm afraid.

JESSICA ABEL, INTREPID GIRL REPORTER
http://www.artbabe.com/
B&W digest by Jessica Abel. This is a collection of "documentary" comics, done for various alternative papers and magazines. She covers everything from the Democratic National Convention, to art shows and concerts, to a Camille Paglia lecture, to a Godzilla convention. Her eye for detail and ear for dialogue are put to good use here. The reproduction is kind of iffy, though, and a few strips have been shrunk down so much that they're hard to read. Still, if you're an Abel fan (and who isn't?), it's cool to see this other aspect of her career.

LOLA & THE SPACEMAN
http://www.jim8ball.com/
B&W mini with color cover by Jim Coon. A silent strip drawn in a slick, deceptively cute style. Starts out as an adorable love story, then abruptly turns grim. Great stuff, if you're into black humor.

NOE
http://www.backporchcomics.com/
B&W mini by Bob Corby. A cryptic tale about a little alien-looking guy. It depicts his life cycle, or something. There's some "alien" script running alongside the pictures, which I assume can be translated into something, but whatever. It's an interesting visual experiment, anyway.

PILGRAMMAGE
http://www.rantcomics.com/
B&W digest by Neil Kleid. An illustrated diary of Neil's trip to Israel. Neil writes very eloquently about the country and the feelings it evoked in him. It's refreshing to read something about that part of the world that dwells more on its history and spiritualism, rather than politics.

RASHOMON
http://www.houseoftwelve.com/
B&W digest with color cover by Cheese Hasselberger and various. A cool experiment: three different creative teams depict the same event, each from the point of view of a different character. It's all played for laughs, but it does make a point about how we see ourselves vs. how others see us. Some great artwork here, too.

TAKE-OUT #7
http://www.goraina.com/
B&W digest by Raina Telgemeier. Short slice-of-life strips, done in a very cute and distinctive style. Most are very "quiet" and subtle, and evoke a contemplative mood, but there's also a great gag involving an apple-scented doll. All very well done.

TURTLENECK BOY #5
http://www.fridge-mag.net/
B&W minicomic by Suzanne Baumann and various. Suzanne has created a sort of "blank slate" character and invited other cartoonists to basically do whatever they want with him. Some pretty cool stuff here, especially Pam Bliss' tale of Egyptian gods and old VCRs, and Matt Rasch's riff on the Katzenjammer Kids.

AN UNAIRED EPISODE OF DOCTOR WHO
http://www.saucygoosepress.com/
B&W digest by Trisha L. Sebastian. A 24-hour comic, done as a fundraiser for a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. Sadly, her friend Kelly passed away not long after, which makes reading it a bittersweet experience. Still, it's a very funny story (even moreso when you find out that Trisha had never seen Doctor Who before), with a clever twist at the end. By her own admission, Trisha's no artist, but she gets by pretty well here. I'm sure that whereever Kelly is now, she approves.

URSA MINORS
http://www.rantcomics.com/
B&W digest with color cover by Neil Kleid, Paul Cote, and Fernando Pinto. Preview of the upcoming full-size comic from Slave Labor. Postmodern superhero parody, with three slackers in mechanical bear suits. Plus high-concept stuff like "Rabbi Ninja". Totally not my kind of humor, but it's very slickly done.

UNPLUGGED
Mike Carroll/4753-H Olentangy River Rd./Columbus, OH 43214-1963
B&W digest by Derek Currant & Michael Carroll. A small collection of newspaper-style strips, with talking appliances as the characters. The art's pretty rough, and the gags aren't side-splitting, but there's some cute stuff here.

VALENTINE
http://www.giganticgraphicnovels.com/
B&W digest with color cover by Rick Spears and Vasilis Lolos. An excerpt from an upcoming graphic novel. Really just a teaser, but an intriguing one. Seems to be a mix between a modern-day love story and some kind of Grimm's Fairy Tale (complete with haunted forest). The manga-flavored artwork is pretty slick. I'll definitely keep an eye out for this one.

VOGELEIN: OLD GHOSTS
http://www.vogelein.com/
B&W digest with color cover by Jane Irwin. This is a preview of an upcoming graphic novel, a sequel to Jane's previous VOGELEIN book. Her painted artwork, which was none too shabby before, has improved by leaps and bounds, and the book just looks stunning. The story is very strong too, as we meet several new characters and find out more about Vogelein's past. I'm really looking forward to seeing the whole thing.


Coming up next: full-size comix and trades.