Polaroids From Other Lives: Volume 2 by Howard Hardiman Self published Howard’s Polaroids series continues with the idea of writing a series of imagined autobiographies; detailing snatches of other people’s lives. These are very short comics (just 12 pages here), mere fragments of a tale, more akin to illustrated poetry than actual comics. But within the small page [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 14, 2009
Justine Tyme Chapter One: Dreamgirls and Lazer Cannons by Jake Harold Self-published I read Jake’s debut comic Tards (superheroing meets mental and physical disability) and just didn’t like it at all; childish, unfunny, deliberately gross and badly written. But I was pleased to see a while ago that Jake’s moved on – in fact, he now hates his [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Pasty Anthology cooked up by Rob Jackson, ingredients assembled by Steve Butler, Francesca Cassavetti, Jim Medway, Dave Hughes, Anthony Mercer, Rob Jackson and Matt Badham. Self-published. Sometimes you do wonder what on Earth people are thinking when they come up with the ideas for a theme for their anthologies. Rob Jackson’s latest certainly wins the award for [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 7, 2009
BLOC By Oli Smith and Oliver Lambden Self-published. The UK small press equivalent of a dynamic duo here. Smith and Lambden are well known around these parts for their individual works: I enjoyed Oli’s sentimental early works (reviews here) and more recent I Toddler and Grumpy Days (review here) and likewise think Oliver’s artwork on Tales From The [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 28, 2009
The Everyday Collection 1 – 3 by Adam Cadwell Self-published There’s a simple joy in well crafted, well observed autobiographical comics, it’s not something that appeals to everyone, but I’ve always loved the genre. So easy to get wrong though – there’s nothing worse than a series of strips whining about your life and detailing a [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Our Birmingham Nostalgia and Comics branch has had a lovely refit in the past few months. I’ve always had a great love for this store – after all I did spend 19 years there and was sad to leave when we moved the family up here to Yorkshire. It’s a store with an incredible history [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, August 6, 2009
Dave: a day in the life of a zombie & Dave II: a day out in London. by Jon Scrivens Self Published. Here’s a lovely little pair of comics that really do do exactly what they say on the cover. A pair of tiny things, no more than 40 pages and 40 panels between them, but still [...]
Continue reading...Monday, August 3, 2009
Garden Funnies # 2 Anthology edited by Jim Medway Self Published (Garden Funnies #2 cover: “A Captive Audience” by Gary Northfield.) Garden Funnies is a lovely all-ages anthology edited by Jim Medway featuring a host of talented folk. It’s Limited to 200 copies and is 22 pages of all-ages horticultural humour with a very fitting green look to all [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, July 23, 2009
Harker issue 5 Roger Gibson & Vince Danks Ariel Press The latest issue of this top quality detective series, and the penultimate issue of the first storyline. I’ve looked at it twice already: “This is one of those books that I knew I was going to enjoy within the first ten pages. It had that feel of a great [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Striptacular Comics Revue by Francesca Cassavetti Fabtoons Striptacular is Francesca Cassavetti’s latest comic, 36 A5 pages with 9 stories of delightful comic work. I’ve looked at Francesca’s mini comics here and her excellent book about being a new parent; The Most Natural Thing In The World here and it’s no surprise that her latest is just as enjoyable. Striptacular [...]
Continue reading...Monday, July 20, 2009
You might remember a few weeks back Eagle award winning creator Tom Humberstone posted up some advice on how to go about selling your small press comics (see here). Now Tom’s followed it up with an article on printing your own comics: “You know that famous illustration that appeared in a punk fanzine (Sideburns I [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, July 19, 2009
Next up on a packed summer of comic events: Alternative Press Festival 2009; Wednesday 29th July – Sunday 2nd August 2009 A festival of events over five days celebrating the small press, self publishing and being creative in the print media. Sounds like there’s a lot involved across the 5 days. It all kicks off with the anthology [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, July 16, 2009
Borderliners: Ceremony Of Innocence – pilot issue. Written & Drawn by Brian Gorman, Letters & Photography by Chris Harvey. Unico Comics. Borderliners is a one shot from new(ish) publisher Unico Comics that’s hopefully going to lead to a series sometime soon, because it’s a very promising start to what could become a great espionage thriller. This is described as [...]
Continue reading...Sunday, July 12, 2009
I like Necessary Monsters, the web / print comic by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Sean Azzopardi. I haven’t read it for a while because I’m either waiting for the next comic or two or, failing that, building up enough episodes of the webcomic to make it a really satisfyingly good read.I read the first 65 [...]
Continue reading...Friday, July 10, 2009
Sushi Karaoke! by Lizz Lunney Self Published I last had a look at Lizz Lunney’s wonderful mini comics a while back. (damn, given away what I thought of the new comic already.) I started it with this: There are some mini-comics that really want to be grown up, proper comics, who want to be published in bigger form but [...]
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Thursday, September 17, 2009
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