Richard Krauss from Midnight Fiction kindly sent me a copy of his and Bob Vojtko’s new Bug Infested Comics mini-comic and since I was going to mention it here I thought while I was having a look at one mini-comic from the States I should also bring up a couple of British small press titles I picked up recently at Hi-Ex, so here’s a little transatlantic small press quick review!
Bug Infested Comics #5
By Bob Vojtko and Richard Krauss
There are mini-comics and there are mini comics, but this wee offering from Midnight Fiction is exceptionally mini, not just in page count (eight, including work on the covers) but in physical size, being small and neat enough to fit into my jacket pocket easily. Size, of course, is not the best criteria for judging any comic, mini or otherwise, it’s about the strips and between them Bob and Richard squeeze four strips into this fifth issue of Bug Infested Comics
Richard accounts for three of these strips, all one-pagers: Fine Art Flyby, Skeeters and Bar Fly Theatre, while Bob gives us Murry’s Garbage Worms, a four pager of hard-hat, blue collar (well, not literally, they don’t wear shirts to have collars on) working worms, which even in this small space plays nicely with frames, from a 2-2-1 format to 1-1-1 longer landscape frames at the end. I like the fact that Bob doesn’t take the small dimensions to mean it should restrict his playing with the space and layout in his short strip, which adds to the enjoyment.
(a scene from Murrys Garbage Worms, art and (c) Bob Vojtko, taken from Bug Infested Comics #5)
Richard’s three one-page strips also draw on creepy-crawlies (well, it is called Bug Infested Comics!) and despite only being from five to eight frame the three of them still offer up some nice chuckles, from flies exploring avant-garden art to a pair of old soaks – real barflies – discussing what life would be like it they were actual flies.
(panels from Richard Krauss’ Fine Art Flyby, from Bug Infested Comics #5, (c) Richard Krauss)
Production-wise this is pretty impressive – yep, it is a very small, short mini-comic but the art from both guys is nice and clear and expressive (better than a lot of newspaper 4-panel strips, I think), the whole thing is in full colour which is reproduced with a good, crisp finish, shading, no colour bleed-over and on good paper stock – very nicely done. As I said it is small, but the effort isn’t and the comic is produced to a quality which belies its tiny price tag of two whole dollars (yes, I know that’s two bucks for eight pages, but I think its worth it for decent print quality); for more details or to order it check out Midnight Fiction.
Zarjaz Presents: Judge Dredd 30th Anniversary Special
Okay, I know, I know – the thirtieth anniversary was last year, but I only picked up this special from the fine Zarjaz stable via the FutureQuake table at Hi-Ex a couple of weeks ago. As the title would infer the Zarjaz guys have decided to pay homage to 2000 AD’s – and probably British comics’ – biggest character, ole’ Stony Face himself, Dredd, with over 40 pages of strips from creators like Al Ewing, David Gray, Colin J Dinnie, Indio and Oliver Redding, as well as boasting a front cover by Boo Cook (plus a nice little extra in the shape of a look at the process behind creating that cover).
We get six stories here in a good-sized issue (especially good sized considering it cost me a mere three pounds, Earth Money), a celebration of Dredd’s anniversary and also a final hurrah from Colin J Dinnie’s Underfire Comics as Zarjaz became part of the FutureQuake family. As with any collection you’re bound to enjoy some stories more than other. It’s always hard to give fair play to short story collections – taste in comic strips is obviously subjective, but in the case of short story anthologies I find that subjective streak in any review is stronger, perhaps rather unfairly, because you are getting several short, very different styles of story and art. Then again, that’s what we get with Zarjaz’s inspiration, 2000 AD and it doesn’t stop us loving that…
So bearing that subjective aspect in mind I’m pleased to say there aren’t any duds here, although of course there were some I preferred over others and some where something just didn’t quite sit right, at least at first. For example in The Line by Richmond A Clements and Paul Martin I liked the story (a judge forced to choose between The Law and his humanity, with nice overtones of the early classic Dredd-Rico story) but at first Paul’s artwork, with a lot of strangely square, blockish lines just didn’t work for me, but then re-reading it I actually started to appreciate this different look.
I particularly enjoyed the two strips Al Ewing had a hand in – The Zoove (with Oliver Redding), which took a nice swipe at the mad fads which sweep the Big Meg’s citizens and the rapid rise to fame and decline to obscurity caused by them (just another way Mega City One has always mirrored and satirised real-world society, a hallmark of Dredddom) and The Hills Have Angel Eyes, a tale set in Texas City and involving those good ‘ole boys from the Cursed Earth, The Angel Gang. That one’s almost worth watching just for a couple of brilliant flashback sequences alone, showing the early days of the Angels including a priceless toddler version of Junior, complete with itty-bitty trademark hat and Fisher Price ‘My First Blaster’. The art on Mark Pexton’s Letters to Erik is exceptionally stylish, delicate and beautiful, very different looking from what you might expect in a Dredd tale, which suits the story well since the judges take a back seat here while the focus is on the unfair life of the Big Meg citizen, a mother forced to turn slabwalker; I’d love to see more of his work.
(Dredd from the past meets Dredd of today – a scene from Time Trial written by Colin J Dinnie, art by David Gray)
Colin J Dinnie and David Gray’s Time Trial is also of particular note, a temporal anomaly story which allows contemporary Dredd to come face to face with the original 1977 version, with David carefully recreating the distinctive early Ezquerra/McMahon artwork, which may not mean a lot to some but to old 2000 AD hands like myself (and we’re the obvious target for this anyway) that in itself is a lovely touch. There’s also a touch of satire commenting on the way Dredd’s been beefed up over the decades as art styles changed; when you see the two Dredds in silhouette the contemporary Dredd is clearly bigger and bulkier, more in keeping with the more muscular style not dissimilar to US superhero comics. All in all an enjoyable slice of Dredd told by a number of creators for the bargain price of three pounds.
One Last Time
Graeme Neil Reid
Another small press title I picked up at H-Ex was this collection by Graeme Neil Reid; we were chatting away at the end of the day, I noticed he had sold out of several of his titles during the convention, spotted this and figured I should grab myself one to enjoy reading on the train home. This is a short story collection of Graeme’s work from 1991 to 1999 – Graeme says he was clearing out some boxes of old work and sifting through them found some which had either not seen print or had last been printed years ago (including some which first appeared in Joe Pruett’s prestigious Negative Burn).
(lovely mixed media scene from One Last Time, (c) Graeme Neil Reid)
The eleven tales here are drawn (no pun intended) from Graeme’s work in the 90s and make a nice little introduction to his work if you haven’t read it before – there’s a nice mix of story types, themes and artistic styles, which also makes it something of a showcase for the different styles Graeme can create, from the heavy inks of the brief To Get To The Other Side with its nice darkly humorous payoff (black humour crops up a lot here, which I enjoyed), taking the piss out of superheroes who deal with everything in the same overblown manner in Choke!, Achtung! For Boys which delights in pastiching the war comics British lads grew up reading in the 70s through to Eight Months ago which uses a very effective – and aesthetically attractive – cross-cutting between heavily inked panels and some beautiful black and white painted panels for the flashback scenes.
In a nice touch Graeme has included some interesting personal observations on the strips – how he came to draw them and when, what he was trying to do at the time and even describing some of the publications they appeared in like Negative Burn and Turn, which adds rather nicely to it for me. A compilation like this is fine to read but when it is also a sort of retrospective it is nice to get some context from the artist about where they were in their stylistic progression and technique, how they were approaching the medium, what was influencing them, who was encouraging them. For more details or to get hold of a copy of this or any of his other publications check out Graeme’s website.
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