A few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 4

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Always Darkest" by Joss Whedon and Jo Chen

Jo Chen is by far the best of the Buffy artists I’ve seen, able to strike a perfect balance between celebrity likeness and original art that stands, lives and breathes on its own. Her tendency to give characters played by actresses with small breasts remarkably larger bra sizes aside, her covers tend to be the very best part of the (admittedly terribly few) Buffy books I’ve read, and I can say with some confidence that my BTVS TV series virginity aside, I’d certainly read an ongoing comic if Chen drew the interiors.

So in that Chen drew this whole story, it is awesome.

On the other hand, it’s only three pages long, and it took you far longer to read the last few sentences than it will take you to read this story. It’s a dream sequence most notable for Spike and Angel going all yaoi, with a little punchline ending.


"Rapture" by Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma

This is an eight-page sample of Soma and Oeming’s vaguely-Christian post-apocalypic adventure, which I believe is currently being published as a miniseries.

There’s this gal flying around with a scarf and a magic spear (The Spear of Destiny…maybe…?), fighting cannibals at the behest of a flying, cloaked character called The Word who probably isn’t actually Jesus Christ, but man, isn’t weird to have a character named “The Word” and a Christian post-apocalyptic fantasy story?

He looks kinda like a spooky superhero and has an upside-down pentagram on his chest.

Oeming’s art is, as always, a pleasure to read, but this sample didn’t make me want to read Rapture comics. I wouldn’t mind reading a review of the eventual trade paperback though, if only so I can understand what the book is actually about.


"Dreamstar" by Gilbert Hernandez

So, is DC ever going to hire Hernandez to do a Power Girl comic?


"Penny: Keep Your Head Up" by Zack Whedon and Jim Rugg

Unlike a lot of the stories herein, this one doesn’t seem to be attached to any sort of larger comics series or franchise. Instead, it’s just a well-made, sweet little eight-page story about a lonely young woman trying really, really hard to save the world through acts of social activism, and having trouble getting a date in the process.

By the time I closed the book, I think this remained one of my favorite stories in the volume.


"Martha" by Dave Chisholm

It’s two old men in a little car vs. a young woman on a motorcycle in this weird little Road Warriors kinda story with a twist ending. I love Chisholm’s art.


"A Day at the Zoo" by Carolyn Main

This is actually my very most favorite story in this volume. It’s about a grade school field trip to a zoo, and the many crazy things that happen to poor Violet and her pet gerbil while they’re there. It’s…it’s kind of hard to describe exactly. You can read it for yourself here (please do!), and then proceed to her website where it’s quite easy to burn an hour or more taking in all her great art and comics.


"Em and Gwen: Magic Spell" by Farel Dalrymple

Dalrymple is an artist who, like Jim Rugg from a few stories ago, is one whose work, style and line I admire so much that it hardly matters what he’s drawing, so long as he’s drawing it. Like, whatever the actually story is supposed to be about, whatever the events in it or the dialogue, I just like looking at the way Dalrymple draws fists and faces and curbs and walls and telephone poles and fences and the corners of buildings and so on. Also, he’s a fantastic letterer.

This is one of the several stories in this volume that I have no idea if it’s connected to something else or is supposed to be a standalone story.

It’s about two girls named Em and Gwen. We meet Em winning what looks like a prearranged fight with a boy from a private school. Then she goes to a magic tree that Gwen apparently lives inside to get the sweatshirt she left there. And that’s, well, that’s it, really.

As literature goes, it ain’t great, but there are some nice moments of comics working as only comics can, and it is all drawn (and lettered) by Dalrymple.


"Flower Mecha" by Angie Wang

Okay, here’s another one that is on my short list of favorites. The plot? A girl is on a picnic, when she’s attacked by pollen. She retaliates by getting inside her Flower Mecha, but then she’s attacked by a bird, a bee and a butterfly, which necessitates upgrading into a different mecha.

While there’s some funny word play, and the story is rather amusing, it’s the way that Wang tells it that is important here.

Each of the eight pages is divided into three rectangular panels stacked vertically. The style is old-school fine art Japanese, and everything depicted is highly-stylized to fit with that aesthetic, even the more modern stuff like goggles and racing gloves employed by our heroine when she’s seen within the cockpits of the mechas. The action in each sequential panel whips in alternating opposite directions, making for a exhilaratingly, violently kinetic work. It’s only 24-panels long, but God is it action-packed.

Actually, don’t listen to me try to find the right words. Just go read it. And if, like me, you were unaware of Wang’s work, you should check her and it out here and here.


"The Secret Files of the Giant Man in Paris" by Matt Kindt

The format of Kindt’s graphic novel 3 Story: The Secret History of Giant Man played such an important role in the story, that an eight-page, side-story would seem all but impossible. But Kindt does it, and does it well.


"Tickets" by Mike Lawrence

Eh, I did not care for this story at all. It’s well drawn, but way too precious, with narration that makes the fairly obvious beats of the story over-obvious.

Also, I thought the old lady exploded during the panel with the SPLATHOOM!! sound effect in it.


"Piper’s Pet" by Nicholas Kole

A little kid using a piece of delicious-looking pie as bait in an attempt to catch a pet. Why kind of fish are attracted to that particular bait? This two-page, 16-panel story provides the answer.


"Face of Evil" by Tory Novikova

The moral of this story about a mysterious pirate is, if I’m reading it correctly, that girls are evil. I thought so.


"R.J. Jr., The Dragon’s Librarian" by Alec Longstreth

I quite enjoyed this short story about a book-hording dragon, his own personal librarian, and by the latter for get new reading material by the former.

Longstreth’s art is very simple in design, but the panels are all very busy and detailed, which is sort of a neat trick the more I think about it.

I didn’t much care for the backwards name gags though. They’re just kind of there.


"The Origin of Man" by Kate Beaton

This is a two-page, full-color comic strip in which Charles Darwin thinks he’s discovered which animal man has evolved from (Hint: it’s native to the Galapagos), but is laughed at by his fellow scientists, who embrace an even more ridiculous theory.

The great thing about Beaton is that almost everything she draws because of the way she draws it, a two rare but completely invaluable talent in a cartoonist. The look on Darwin’s face in each of these panels is honestly enough to crack me up, devoid of context.


"An Early Sunset" by Joseph Lambert

Genius.


"The Catch!: A Wondermark Tale" by Dave Malki

I admire the hell out of Malki’s Wondermark and the way the strip’s constructed, both in regards to the imagery and the plotting, but this story seemed to go on a page or two too long for my tastes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty funny, and at least two disparate threads are brought together in a satisfying conclusion, but I think Wondermark works much better in smaller bites.


"Sinfest: Street Poetry"

Tatsuya Ishida, doing what Tatsuya Ishida does best.


"Achewood: The Garage Sale" by Chris Onstad

This is an eight-page, full-color story that deals with the familiar subject matter of Teodor having a grage sale, and Roast Beef showing him how it’s done.

It’s a fine example of Onstad’s considerable virtues as a writer, including a random assortment of fully realized, highly idiosyncratic characters that belong to an unusual subculture (i.e. garage sale regulars), and his regulars essentially just being themselves, interacting with a specific set of circumstances (Asks Ray, “What’s the chick scene at a garage sale? Pretty bad?”).


"Werewolves on the Moon: Versus Vampires—Bad Blood" by Dave Land and the Fillbach Brothers

I didn’t much care for this one. It’s actually a sort of prologue to the Werewolves on the Moon Dark Horse published, but because of that they aren’t actually on the moon at all during this eight-page story, nor do they fight vampires…in fact, there are no vampires at all. So the title doesn’t do much to prepare one for the story, which is essentially a light-hearted crime story wherein all the participants are werewolves for a reason that is never made apparent.


"The Goon and Ann Romano: Gone Dishin’" by Ann Romano and Kristian Donaldson

This Romano character showed up in the previous volume, writing the introduction and appearing in a not-very-good-at-all story full of lame celebrity gossip jokes.

This one’s a lot better, in large part because it involves The Goon, Franky and the weird world of the Goon.

There’s a bar fight involving fish-men, and a giant octopus cook holding a cooking utensil in each tentacle and neither of those are the best part—the bartender is a monstrous fish-person who has lost each of his hands and had them replaced with hooks, and yet he’s still—successfully!—in disguise, wearing a fake beard.

The Romano character doesn’t really add much other than pop culture references and a Lindsay Lohan joke (Is it cool making fun of Lohan? It just seems kind of mean to me at this point), but Romano the writer does a pretty decent Goon story.


"The Marquis and The Coachman" by Guy Davis

Davis’ dark, bizarre-looking, alternate history hero stars in a short eight-page story in which he encounters and battles some of Davis’ typically strange monster designs. It’s been a long time since I read the original Marquis comics, and I’ve sort of forgotten the exact premise, but I enjoyed this short little peek back into that world, and Davis’ art is always a pleasure to read, perhaps especially in a case like this, where it’s in service of a story that is all Davis, from the words to the settings to the character designs to the architecture.


"And What Shall I Find There?" by Mike Mignola, Joshua Dysart and Patric Reynolds

Migonla simply co-writes this Hellboiverse story about a very young Trevor Bruttenholm in 1939 rural France, where he seeks the supernatural answer to an obscure art folklore mystery. It’s a typically pleasant horror story of the sort Mignola is now known for, and while Patrick Reynolds art lacks the high degree of stylization present in that of Mignola himself or many of his collaborators (Guy Davis, Duncan Fegredo, Richard Corben, etc), it’s certainly effective and pleasant enough.


"Star Wars: Dark Times—Blue Harvest" by Mick Harrison and Douglas Wheatley

I could count the number of Star Wars comics I’ve read on one hand, and my interest level in the franchise at this point is probably at the lowest point it’s ever been in my life (I was born in 1977, and thus quite literally grew up with Star Wars), so I was expecting this to be rather hard to get through.

I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised that it was a fairly engaging read, and by the time if was over I found myself wanting to know where the story it sets up continues so I could find out what happened to the protagonist, a retired Jedi knight forced to become a bounty hunter.

I suppose that has a lot to do with Harrison’s skill as a writer, and the fact that he is basically telling a story that would make just as much sense in ancient Japan or the American Old West as it does in space. That is, it’s not contingent on the setting or, at its heart, a Star Wars story. It’s just a story that happens to be in space, and happens to bear the Star Wars brand name. (In fact, if it weren’t for the presence of some alien species—whatever race Hammerhead is from, the Asian stereotype banker aliens of the new trilogy—I recognized from the movies filling up the crowd scenes, I probably wouldn’t even known this was a Star Wars comic).

It also has to do with how lush and fully realized Wheatley’s artwork is. Richly colored by Dave McCaig, they achieve the more beat-up, lived-in aesthetic of the original trilogy, which seems appropriate given the subject matter.

A few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 3

"7 True Tales of Internet Horror" by Keith Knight

This apparently isn’t actually a story per se, but an introduction to the rest of the volume, although I did not discover that until I got to the final panel, in which Knight lists his seventh tale of Internet horror as “Finding out the intro you were asked to do for MySpace Dark Horse Presents was due last week!!

So, poor job of introducing the introduction as an introduction, although it is a decent introduction of what follows in that it is a typical Keith Knight cartoon, and an anthology that contains a typical Keith Knight cartoon is one that’s probably going to include a great deal of variety, since no one has such a disciplined loose style as Knight, nor the ability to rely heavily on verbal wit without seeming to be trying to overcompensate at all (A word-less Knight strip would still be pretty hilarious, so adept is he at drawing funny faces, and moving from image to image).


“Murderous Intent” by Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck

Your typical Mike Mignola story, which is either a good or bad thing, depending on the degree of affection you have for Mignola’s writing and the patience you have with the endless variations of a government agent guy versus the supernatural, presented with enough historical detail that the supernatural aspects can feel genuine, or at least based on real historical facts.

This one stars Edward Grey, star of Mignola’s Witchfinder series. Stenbeck is credited with art, but many of the panels looks so Mignola-esque that I would not call you a liar if you told me he penciled or inked it.

That’s not necessarily a criticism of Stenbeck, by the way. Being able to do a very convincing Mignola impression is probably a virtue in drawing a Mignola-verse story.


"I See The Devil in my Sleep" by Becky Cloonan

This is a very effective eight-page supernatural mystery type of story, in which an unreliable narrator walks us through a day in his life, letting us share enough of his thoughts that the events of that day and night are open to interpretation. Is he a psycho killer? Is the devil out to get him, coming at him in various disguises? No way of knowing for sure.

Cloonan fills the dark of the protagonists room with swirling, skeletal monsters that aren’t really there in an incredibly effective, creepy way. I can’t recall a better depiction of what it felt like to be afraid of the dark and imagining scary things all around you.


"Creepy: Meet the Creepys" by Dan Braun and Jeff Preston

I did not care for this short story, in which the creators introduce us to a Addams Family-like family of ghouls who apparently serve as horror hosts (as we’ll see in a later story).

It’s just two-pages long, so it’s not like it ruins the collection or anything. There’s nothing to the verbal side of other things other than cheesy puns, which might be fun if they weren’t being sold by hyper-realistic art


"The Cleaners: The Body Colony" by Mark Wheaton, Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal

This is a short story featuring a character and/or concept from a Dark Horse-published miniseries, although it’s not a very good introduction to whatever that concept is exactly.

There’s a grisly murder scene, and the guy who shows up to clean the floor ends up encountering the murderer, someone infected with some kind of killer plant, and I guess he’s maybe actually not just a cleaner but some kind of scientist or doctor as well?

It reads more like a scene from a story than a complete story, and thus may work better for readers of The Cleaners than someone coming at it cold.

I wasn’t impressed enough to seek out The Cleaners, but then, there’s a lot of this sort of material out there these days, and it takes something pretty exceptional to stand out from the crowd.


"The Stain" by Josh Dysart and Ron Wimberly

Wait, Ohio University? Athens, Ohio? Why, that’s just a short drive from where I live!

Despite my geographic proximity, and the number of people I know who have gone to school there, I’ve never heard of the story that creators Dysart, Wimberly and editor Scott Allie hear in the story, and decide to investigate. Weird.

I assume it’s true though, but, if not, Dysart sure does a great job of selling it (Five-second Internet search says it’s true).

He and his fellow comic book people, visiting the campus for a comics-related event, check out a campus building that’s supposedly one of the most haunted places in the world. Specifically, they want to see a stain that’s shaped like a woman and was supposedly created by a woman dying and her body rotting into the floor.

Later, Dysart has a much scarier experience.

It’s a neat little essay about horror and mystery not always being where you expect to find them. This is my favorite piece so far, but I’m only one-fifth into the book at this point.


"Emily The Strange: She Moves in the Dark" by Kitty Remingon

I don’t understand Emily The Strange. This is a terrible two-page poem accompanied by nice art that sort of flirts with being a comic, but is probably closer to illustrated poetry.


"Creepy: Om Nom Nom!" by Andrew Mayer and Lukas Ketner

Apparently we were introduced to The Creepys earlier so we wouldn’t be surprised to find Uncle Creepy playing horror host in this short story.

He doesn’t add anything, and it seems a bit odd to have a character hosting a comic book story that will be told partially in first-person narration by one of the characters.

It’s a solid, eight-page horror story though, one with a predictable twist ending, but then, that’s part of the fun of such stories. Lukas Ketner’s art is appropriately creepy, and will likely re-instill your childhood fear of old people, if it’s something you’ve managed to grow out of.


"Previously Possessed" by Sarah Oleksyk

A very cute story about a young woman who buys a cool flapper dress from a vintage clothing store, only to discover it’s possessed by the woman who died in it, and it’s up to her to help the restless ghost find peace in the afterlife.

Of course, doing so sounds awfully hard, so she thinks of a rather clever solution to put an end to the haunting without having to inconvenience herself.

One fun thing about this anthology series is discovering new artists, and I’m glad to have been introduced to Olkesyk’s work. If you’re unfamiliar with her, do check out her website.


"The Nightmare of the Wine Hobo”"by Jamaica Dyer

A hobo discovers what happens if you love a bottle of wine too much…or perhaps not enough?…in this funny little silent story of absurd humor.


"Hunger For Knowledge" by Colleen Frakes

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—bears are the new monkeys. And this story has a great many bears in it, all depicted by Frakes in a style that has more in common with fine art painting than pen-and-ink cartooning. It’s beautiful stuff, with an amusing punchline ending.


"Usagi Yojimbo: Saya" by Stan Sakai

Man, it is hard out there for a ronin…


"Beanworld in '? and !'" by Larry Marder

While horror seems to be the default setting for most of the contributors here, there’s something to be said for any anthology that can go from a samurai rabbit to a completely original world full of sentient bean-shapes and it’s own completely unique cosmology.

This is…well it’s Beanworld, and a sort of day-in-the-life look at it. Unlike some of the other contributions here that spin-out of pre-existing works, Marder’s short eight-page story does a pretty fine job of selling what it spins out of.

Although that may simply be a function of Beanworld being so damn unique that it’s extremely difficult to explain, and one needs to read it to get it, so that any Beanworld story is more or less as user-friendly as any other.


"The Famous Mysterious Actor in 'The Couch Fort'" by Famous Mysterious Actor and Todd Herman

I’m afraid I just didn’t get this one at all.


"Achewood: One-Dollar Genius" by Chris Onstad

Ray, Roast Beef and Teodor are doing bong hits at Ray’s mansion and decided to go on a completely spontaneous road trip. Passing a Taco Bell, they decide to order one of everything on the menu—“It could be a thing!”—and then have Teodor blog about it all fancy-like, in the manner of British food writer A.A. Gill, whom Beef assures Ray has “sentences better than any sentence in the land…He is to sentence technology what Hell is to places where the damned dwell.”

It turns out that there’s a reason no one orders one of everything off of Taco Bell’s menu and then tries to write about it all fancy-like though, as Teodor unfortunately discovers.

So you know, pretty much your average Achewood story—not one of the weird ones—only on paper and in color.


"President Carter and Kenny in 'The Best Job in the Whole World'" by Brian Sendelbach

Hmm, is it just me or is there more work from comic strippers in this volume than the previous ones? This is a two-page strip by Brian Sendelbach, creator of Smell of Steve (the only place you can find the adventures of Black Aquaman!), featuring his reoccurring characters President Carter and Kenny, a demon that is friends with President Carter.

In this adventure, President Carter realizes “presidenting just isn’t paying the bills anymore” and that he might not be able to make rent, so he decides to get a job and, after some difficulty, he lands the best job in the world!

That means President Carter now has both the best job in the world and the worst job in the world on his resume.


"Nothing Nice to say: Getting Hip!" by Mitch Clem

I have to remember to try asking "What's shakin', Hairstyle?" to a pretty girl while pointing at her with finger guns next time at a bar.

It doesn’t work for one of the protagonists in this short, two-page strip, but it is funny.


The K Chronicles by Keith Knight

Hey, Keith Knight again! This one’s twice as long, at two pages, as the cartoonist talks about the similarities between having a child and launching a daily newspaper strip.


"Steak & Kidney Punch" by Liz Greenfield

I do believe Greenfield wins the honor of best title in this volume.


"Applegeeks: RoBro" By Amanth Panagariya and Mohammad F. Haque

Oh hey, this reminds me I still need to read Dark Horse’s recent-ish Applegeeks collection.

So there are about a half-dozen cute-looking college students who share a home, and one of them is named Hawk, and he’s an inventor. He finds his fifth-grade science project, a robot built out of a bucket, cardboard box and alarm clock named RoBro. It falls in love with Eve, a more human-looking robot/android, also of Hawk’s invention, and begins stalking her.

Cutely-drawn hilarity ensues.


"Mister X in Slumberland" by Dean Motter

This is an eight-page introduction to Motter’s Mister X, with a punchline panel homage to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo.


"Serenity: The Other Half" by Jim Krueger and Will Conrad

And here begins a suite of Joss Whedon-related comics based on pre-existing franchises from other media that I have extremely limited experience with/exposure to.

This is based on the short-lived sci-fi western TV Firefly I watched one episode of, which spawned a movie I kind of liked.

Nathan Fillion, drawn rather Nathan Fillion-y, and a bunch of other actor likenesses that look passingly familiar swear in Chinese while fighting zombies on a hover stagecoach. I guess. Eh.


"Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Harmony Bites" by Jane Epenson, Karl Moline and Andy Owens

A vampire named Harmony, drawn to resemble Buffy Summers as much if not more than the TV show version of Harmony, maybe has a reality TV show of some kind…? Is it still cool to do comics premised on a reality TV show? I thought that was played out when DC launched Blood Pack in the mid-90s.


"Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Vampy Cat Play Friend" by Steven S. DeKnight and Camilla d’Errico

I would have even known this had anything to do with Buffy if I didn’t notice the executive producer credit for Whedon at the bottom of the first page, and then double-check the table of contents.

It’s a cute, two-page commercial for a cute doll that rips the heads off of those who make fun of you.


"Moist: Humidity Rising" by Zack Whedon and Farel Dalrymple

Dalrymple draws the hell out of a weird, paranoid story about a very weird individual with unusual problems that suddenly veers into being a superhero parody before ending up being a Dr. Horrible tie-in of some kind.

I’m vaguely aware of Dr. Horrible, mostly through previous volumes in this series, but no matter how good the art is, they don’t really do anything for me.


And that’s a few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 3.


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Note: This review appeared at Blog@Newsarama earlier today. I'm cross-posting it here on Every Day Is Like Wednesday since my reviews of the previous two volumes in this series appear on this blog.

A few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 2

This second volume collecting the current, free, electronic version of Dark Horse Presents strips features a cover by Eric Canete, which gives me the Conan/Milk and Cheese/B.P.R.D. crossover of my dreams (and it looks like Kraken from Umbrella Academy and a couple of other characters are in there as well).

Dark Horse should really get into the company-wide crossover event comic business sometime; I know I’d buy a Crisis on Dark Horse’s Earths featuring, like, Predator stalking Little Lulu, Tubby and the fellers; Sock Monkey teaming up with Conan; a starving Conan lost in a desert trying to eat Milk and Cheese; Solomon Kane trying to send Hellboy back to hell; Empowered joining forces with The Umbrella Academy; and like that.

Ah, that’s a pleasant thought…

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 2. It also includes an introduction, by one Ann Romano. This excited me a lot, because of my oft-repeated belief that almost all collections should have introductions.

This was an extremely boring introduction though, structured as a gossip column, and I couldn’t force myself to read more than the first paragraph. I have just googled “Ann Romano” and she apparently writes a column for Portland Oregon-based altweekly The Portland Mercury. Dark Horse is based in Oregon, so it’s cool that they hired locally. This sort of thing just isn’t my cup of tea, I guess.

What about the rest of the contents? As I did last time, I will try to say a few words about each story.

“Captain Hammer (Nemesis of Dr. Horrible): Be Like Me!” by Zack Whedon and Eric Canete

As did the previous volume, this one opens with a story written by a Whedon. This is a new Whedon though, or at least a Whedon who is new to me. Is this Joss’ new pen name? His brother? His son? His father? Someone who just coincidentally has the same last name as Joss Whedon and has managed to parlay that into gigs writing comics? I have no idea.

I will go spend 45 seconds looking on the Internet and tell you what I can find out.

Well, he has an IMDb entry, and a Wikipedia entry. Apparently he was a miscellaneous crew member on Deadwood and Angel and was involved in that Dr. Horrible Internet thing that 450 people recommend I look at but which I never did. He is the brother of Joss Whedon, graduated from Wesleyan University in 2002 and is nicknamed “Spacious” and “Stonehenge.”

So that’s who he is.

Eric Canete is an artist whose name sounds familiar and whose work looks very nice, but I can’t recall reading a book of his before. (Oh hey, he did this at Project Rooftop; I liked that picture).

This story is an eight-page one narrated by the rather generic hero Captain Hammer, who wears cargo pants, black gloves, a utility belt and a black t shirt with the outline of a hammer in a yellow field. You probably know that, if you know about this Dr. Horrible thing the kids with their computers know about and like.

Many of the jokes are your standard superhero parody jokes, of the sort you’ve heard 100-600 times before, but a few of them were funny. I liked the third page, for example. Canete’s line work and sense of motion is a lot of fun too. In the action panels, the whole image pitches radically in the direction Captain Hammer is punching a crook or throwing Dr. Horrible.

It’s alright, I suppose. I still don’t want to watch Dr. Horrible though.


“The Umbrella Academy: Anywhere But Here” by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

This surprisingly complete eight-page story set in the full and mysterious past of Way and Ba’s superhero team focuses on the team’s bad boy and bad girl, Kraken and Vanya, their punk band, how it broke up and how they both kinda sorta ended up doing what they were destined to.

The franchise’s considerable virtues are all on full display here, but what I found most impressive was the economy with which Way and Ba were able to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end, a story that features some actual characterization and everything. I know that sort of thing shouldn’t impress me, and that it should just be standard, par for the course stuff that all comics always did, but man, this fucking medium. What are you going to do?


“Retro Rockets Go!” by Ian Edginton and I.N.J. Culbard

Speaking of economy, here’s another completely complete story told in just eight pages, this one not even having the benefit of characters the reader is already familiar with (at least, as far as I know; they were new to me, and sure seemed like one-off characters).

It’s a kind of sci-fi flavored melodramedy, about a space race between extremely colorful racers—sort of like Wacky Races, but in outer space.

You can see more of Culbard’s work here.


“Wonder Twins Activate!” by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

The lack of the word “powers” between the words “twins” and “activate” in that title really bothers me for some reason.

This is, of course, a collaboration between twin brother artists Moon and Ba, who together produced De:Tales for Dark Horse.

The story is the story of the two of them doing a Batman-like superhero comic story in which the caped crimefighter stops a mugger. One of them explains it to the other by beating on him just as the superhero beats on the mugger.

I’m not really doing it much justice. It’s a pretty simple but rather cute story, and the last page gag is especially nice.

Now, how do I tell them apart…?


“Milk and Cheese in ‘The Fur Suit of Crappiness!’” by Evan Dorkin

A two-pager in which Dorkin’s angry, violent dairy products gone bad accidentally show up at furry convention, thinking it was supposed to be a fury convention.

The results?

Insults. Lots and lots of insults. Followed by violence. Lots and lots of violence.


“Ann Romano: Gossip Whore” by Ann Romano and Paul Lee

Here’s the contribution from introduction –writer Romano, which is two pages of stale Britney Spears-is-a-trashy-human-being jokes. Perhaps it was less stale when it originally ran on MySpace, but it’s hard to imagine it was actually “fresh” then.


“Ransom! A Wondermark Tale” by David Malki

Here’s a story from well regarded web comics maker David Malki, which is unusual in its length. Rather than a strip, it’s an eight-page, more comic book-style story, which keeps the style and humor of his usual work remarkably well.


“A Going Concern” by John Arcudi and Steven Young

This may be the weirdest story in here. It’s a short western about a bounty hunter with a neat little twist ending, but, for whatever reason, the characters aren’t humans, but some sort of flea-like insects. And the horses are made out of pipe cleaners. But there are other animals, scaled to the fleas as if they were humans, like donkeys, dogs, vultures and even flies.

I didn’t get it.

But they’re all drawn quite well.


“Hobo Fet” by The Brothers Matkinson and Jon Adams

This has a fairly fantastic title, mixing one of the funniest words in the world, “hobo,” with one of the coolest things in the world, Boba Fett. And yet it’s pretty terrible.

It’s an eight-page story about a guy named Hobart who has a motorcycle helmet, and, after falling off his scooter, encounters a variety of characters that all vaguely suggest Star Wars characters. Then he decides to become a bounty hunter.

After the title, it’s all down hill really.


“Manga” by Gilbert Hernandez

I believe this was linked to pretty heavily when it originally ran, for the obvious reasons. It’s a pretty clever, dryly amusing story about a village punching competition in which the winner gets a basket of coins and a beautiful (looking) girl. It’s always a treat to see Hernandez’ art both in color and in a different context.


“Jared” by Ilias Kyriazis

Human beings as giant space ships piloted by Star Trek-style captains and crews. Jared is one such person, and we see a day or so in his life, from both his perspective and that of the people inside him. There’s not an interesting conceit, and if there’s not a whole lot to do with it, Kyriazis’ story is only eight-pages long, so there’s not enough time for it to get tired.


“How to Heal a Broken Heart: Method #37 by Tara McPherson

This is the first comics work I’ve seen from McPherson, an artist who has provided covers to some Vertigo series and recently had a second collection of her work published by Dark Horse. It falls somewhere into the picture poetry territory, told in images instead of words, although there is some dialogue as well.

If you like McPherson’s art, and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, it’s a nice enough two pages.


“Rex Mundi: Frailty” by Arvid Nelson

At just eleven panels spread over just two pages, there’s not much to go on here. There is a woman, named Genevieve, and there’s a man named Julien, and the former gets the latter to sneak out of a boring class. And then they kiss. It seems to function best as a sort of commercial for Nelson’s Rex Mundi comics, by pointing out how great the art is, and, if you want to know what it’s in service of, perhaps you should check out a trade.


“The Nothinist” by Jason Graham

Like the McPherson story, this is an art-first, picture-poem sort of strip, a two-page tale of Death—a cute little grim reaper with black and white-striped tentacles that can turn into snakes, and a little girl with bear claws who he falls in love with. There are several cute corpses in this story. You don’t see cute corpses all that often, really.


“Criminal Macabre: The Creepy Tree” by Steve Niles and Kyle Hotz

I think I’ve mentioned my dislike of Niles’ Criminal Macabre before. I read a trade of it from the library because it was illustrated by Kelley Jones, and I found it extremely amateurish and pretty generic. The lead character, Cal McDonald, was a drinking, drugging, smoking P.I. that specialized in the supernatural and seemed conceived as the sort of character a junior high boy would think is totally cool.

This story doesn’t have the benefit of Jones’ art, but Hotz isn’t exactly a slouch either. As for the story, McDonald is called in to kill an evil tree, he does, and that’s all there is to it.

The swearing is kind of funny in that I-want-to-use-a-swear-word-and-have-everyone-know-exactly-which-specific-word-without-actually-putting-all-the-letters-down kind of way. So Cal says he has “the worst f****** luck in the world” and that he’s seen “some weird s***” in his life.


“B.P.R.D.: Revival”
by John Arcudi and Guy Davis

Ah, now this is more like it. The BPRD versus one of those creatures they call frogs, which is posing as a little girl capable of performing miracles at a sort of revival meeting, by regular B.P.R.D. creators.


“A+” by Nate Piekos and Jeff Wamester

A horror story with a twist involving nerdy high schoolers and a killer science fair project. A bit predictable, but nicely executed, one of Wamester’s monsters is exceptionally well-designed (the snake-based one), and they all have funny, easy to read expressions.


“Legion of Blood: The Messenger” by Francisco Ruiz Velasco

Here’s another short story which ends on a gag punchline, although it’s set up is perhaps too long for the pay off. The sense design sense and artwork are both rather incredible though.


“Criminal Macabre: ‘The Trouble With Brains’” by Steve Niles and Kyle Hotz

No better than the first one.


“The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob: True Stories rom the Life of Robert E. Howard” by Jim and Ruth Keegan

A two-page version of the autobiographical strips that used to run (and perhaps still do?) in the back of Dark Horse’s Conan comics. I’ve always liked these a lot, and I like this one as well.

This kicks of the Robert E. Howard section of the book that carries us through the end.


“Sailor Steve Costigan” by Joe Casey and Pop Mhan

This was actually my first exposure to Howard’s modern day (to him, anyway) creation, a merchant sailor and ex-boxing champ, and it actually made me want to see more stories featuring him, be they comics adaptations like this, or maybe some of Howard’s original stories.

The title character has a new gig—writing sports stories covering the boxing world he used to know from the inside of the ring—but the last two boxers didn’t like what he had to say about him, so he finds himself having to use his fists anyway.

It’s a lighthearted, humorous story that also happens to involve a whole lot of punching. It’s also really nice looking, and I was surprised to see that Mhan supplied the art, something I didn’t notice while reading it.

I haven’t seen new work from Mhan since 2006’s Blank, so maybe he’s changed his style quite a bit, or maybe he was just working in a style that better suited the character and time period, or maybe colorist Jose Villarrubia completely transformed it (or maybe a little of all three), but this doesn’t look much like Mhan. Even rereading it now, I have a hard time seeing Mhan in it, aside from the way a limb flails here or there.


“Solomon Kane: The Nightcomers” by Scott Allie and Mario Guevara

I’ve been fascinated with Solomon Kane since I found a copy of the old Marvel Comic at my barbershop when I was a little boy, and rather eagerly awaiting the trade collection of Dark Horse’s new series featuring him. This was a welcome taste.

The story, in which the hero arrives in a mysterious village plagued by raiders who strike each night, is somewhat confusingly told, on account of the need to hide the twist ending, and could probably have been done a little more smoothly. Guevara’s art is quite lush though, and it certainly hits the Conan-as-pilgrim note I expected it to.


“Conan” by Tim Truman, Ben Truman and Marian Churchland

This story kind of irritated me. See, it’s lettered by EDILW favorite Brandon Graham. Which is nice. I like his letters just fine. But that put into my head the thought of a Brandon Graham-written and illustrated Conan story, and now I really, really, really want to see one of those.

Not that this isn’t a great little Conan comic or anything.

The Trumans write while Churchland draws. Conan walks out of the desert with a ton of loot and journeys to a bar that he quickly realizes is full of people who would like to kill and/or rob him. He defeats them all, but this time not through violence—rather, the stories he tells and the amounts of wine he buys for the house is enough to defeat them all.

The stories within the story are all really neat. Here, for example, is perhaps the most badass thing I’ve ever seen Conan do:

He killed a dude with his loincloth. Damn.

If you’d like to see more of Churchland’s art, you can do so here. She’s pretty great.

And if you’d like to see a Brandon Graham Conan story, well, that makes two of us. (I guess there’s this, for a taste).


The collection finishes up with a discussion about superhero comics between Evan Dorkin, Zack Whedon and Gerard Way. What I found most interesting about it was Way talking about his approach to continuity in Umbrella Academy. He says he intentionally implies a long continuity for the characters as if they previously existed and had many adventures, but he doesn’t actually know what all that backstory is, and doesn’t really care about it. It’s a strange thought, that complicated continuity is a negative in superhero comics, but to imply its presence where there isn’t any. It works for Way though.

And that’s a few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 2.

A few words about every single story in MySpace Dark Horse Presents

“Sugarshock” by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon

This was by far the best comic book writing in Joss Whedon’s short comic-scripting career, perhaps in large part because of the tossed-off nature of it.

His previous endeavors have involved big-name properties—Buffy “Season Eight”, Astonishing X-Men and, to a much lesser degree, Runaways—and the attendant expectations that come with them (not to mention the attendant expectations that follow any creator to have found success in another medium trying their hand at this one), but the three short parts of this rather random story add up to little more than Whedon goofing around with enough half-ideas to make for a very fun short story.

All-girl (plus one robot) band Sugarshock are on their way home from a battle of the bands when they get invited to another battle of the bands—in outer space!—that turns out to be a battle of the bands sans bands.

Each of the characters has a few super-quirky character traits (for example, lead singer Dandelion believes she works for a top-secret government agency and she also really hates Vikings for some reason), and Whedon’s plot is the wild, anything-goes sort that will flash to a scene featuring the Greek god Pan for all of one panel simply because he’s thought of an amusing Pan joke to get in there somehow.

The one thing I didn’t like is when Dandelion used “the saddest song in the world” as a weapon, mainly because it seemed too similar in concept to an aspect of Guy Maddin’s 2003 film The Saddest Music in the World. It only accounts for about a page worth of jokes, so it doesn’t ruin the whole story or anything, but it was certainly distracting.

If you haven’t seen The Saddest Music in the World, by the way, you totally should; it’s one of my favorite movies.




“In the Deep, Deep Woods” by Tony Millionaire

This is a two-page, six-panel Sock Monkey strip that reads pretty much like your average Maakies strip, the only differences being that the panels are bigger, stacked horizontally instead of laid out vertically, and it’s in color.

Like Maakies, it’s deeply weird, and funny on two levels: The literal level in which the crude thing that happens is kind of amusing, and on the conceptual level that, “Hey, Tony Millionaire thought this weird, crude chain of events was funny, and worthy of him drawing in his meticulous style.”

So, you know, it’s like all of Millionaire’s work: Awesome.


“A Circuit Closed” by Ezra Clayton Daniels

This is a moody little story featuring a sort of YA novel version of magical realism. It’s about a little kid with a fantastic device on an unusual quest of great personal import.

Daniels is able to quite effectively tell a whole story, complete with foreshadowing, climax and a punchy ending, in just ten pages, in large part due to an interesting Q-and-A format narration, although the art is strong enough that if you took the narration away completely, the story would remain the same, although it would naturally be much more vague.

Check out Daniels’ work at his site.


“The Comic Con Murder Case” by Rick Geary

Geary, master of murder comics, presents a two-page, 18-panel story pretty much summed up by the title. There’s not a lot to it, really, nor much of a story there at all, but hey, it’s nice to see Rick Geary included along with some of these other creators, especially if it gets some Buffy or My Chemical Romance fans to check out his comics.


“Safe & Sound: Featuring The Kraken, Formerly of The Umbrella Academy” by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba

I’m like 90% sure that this is the same story that was included in Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day free comic book. It’s the story in which the superhero-ish colorful character The Kraken rescues a kidnapped little girl from a gypsy supervillain…? That must be where I saw it, as I had a distinct feeling of déjà vu as I read it.

I like how when he punches out the gypsy, the sound effect is “CRACK,” since his name is The Kraken and all…


“Founding Father Funnies” by Peter Bagge

Two one-page gag strips featuring President and Mrs. George Washington, as drawn by Peter Bagge. Yes, it’s just as great as it sounds.


“Gear School” by Adam Gallardo, Nuria Peris and Sergio Sandoval

On it’s own, there isn’t really much of anything to this story, aside from the fact that Peris is a great designer, both of characters and, even more so, of the weird vehicle called a “gear.” It looks a little like a small, personal mech version of a cross between a Japanese motorcycle and a frog.

It wasn’t until I hit the ads at the back of the trade until I realized that Gear School is actually a graphic novel from Dark Horse. I’m not sure that this short sketch which introduces readers in passing to the characters and that neat frogcycle thing actually makes me want to read the trade—reading the solicit for the text excited me more than the contents of this story, as well as cluing me in that this story was meant as a sample of the actual trade—so I don’t know how effective the story was as an ad.

Still, pretty great art.


“Samurai” by Ron Marz and Luke Ross

This is a perfectly fine, straightforward genre piece about a samurai who kills some guys. Like the previous story, it is something of a sample of a comic, Samurai: Heaven and Earth.


“Who da Uber-mensch?” by Adam Warren

Adam Warren’s series of original graphic novels, Empowered is, honest-to-God, probably the best superhero comic around at the moment. It’s fun, funny, sharply written, sharply drawn, bursting with new ideas and starring deceptively realistic characters.

This is a full-color story in which Empowered helps her teammates in the Superhomeys take on The Crimera, which is a sort of half robot, bipedal chimera that commits crimes. And that alone is genius, but it’s just one of many little bits of ingenious super-writing that punctuate this story (like all of Warren’s Empowered stories).

It’s a nice intro to the characters and the concept of the Empowered trades, as well as answering a question about super-fights. Specifically, throwing a car at an opponent is pretty bad-ass, but isn’t there a more effective way to strike them with a car?

It looks like this story is also included in Empowered Vol. 4, which was just released, so Empowered completists need not buy MySpace Dark Horse Presents Vol. 1 just for this story. (They can buy it for all the other good stories, though).


“Chickenhare” by Chris Grine

I didn’t get it.

In fact, I never really got past the title character, who is apparently some kind of human/chicken/hare hybrid…? He and some other Wuzzles play a prank on another Wuzzle.

Perhaps if I had prior experience with the character and his/its comics, I would have appreciated this two-page story more.


“The Nocturnal Adventures of Scratch and Suck” by Steve Niles and Brian Churilla

Niles turns in a neat little eight-page story about a vampire and werewolf that fight crime together as a sort of superhero buddy cop team, with a little old school EC horror type twist at the end.

I’m completely perplexed as to why Niles called his super-werewolf Scratch though; DC Comics, a company Niles is currently writing two titles for, has a werewolf superhero-type character named Scratch that Niles surely must have heard of before.

Check out Churilla’s art here.


“Tricks of the Trade” by Brodie H. Brockie and Katie Cook

Like the Niles story that precedes it, this is a short horror story with a twist ending. It’s also a much, much more effective one, with the horror and violence implied—involving the reader in putting two and two together to enjoy the four—and Cook’s super-cute art subverting the nature of the story.

For more Cook art, click here. And if you only read one thing on her site, make it The Smashy Adventures of The Hulk, a strip so cute I can barely stand it. Marvel should pay her $1 million dollars to run those at the end of every Hulk comic.

No seriously; check out Cook’s site, it’s awesome.

How awesome?

This awesome:



“The Axeman” by Haden Blackman and Cary Nord

A short history of American serial killers, as told to an almost-victim by a serial killer who can see the future, the better to tell the almost-victim—and thus the reader—all about these serial killers who weren’t around just yet.

Since the story is essentially just an ineffective framing device for a few anecdotes of lesser known killers, it makes the whole endeavor seem kind of pointless, especially give the fact that the whole thing is only sixteen pages long.


“The Christmas Spirit” by Mike Mignola and Guy Davis

This was probably my favorite story in the book. Mignola scripts and Davis draws, a division of duties that the Hellboyiverse collaborators are clearly quite comfortable with at this point.

It’s Christmas Eve in what looks like either Victorian England or America, and a priest labors fruitlessly to exorcise a demon from a little boy’s body. He must break to handle Christmas mass.

Meanwhile, Santa Claus/Saint Nicholas/the titular spirit, intervenes, plucking the devil out of the boy, wandering gigantic through the urban city at night, and decorating a huge tree with the demon.

The imagery is beautiful, both as subject matter and as rendered on the page by Davis and colorist Dave Stewart.


“Eat The Walls” by Matt Bernier

Another short, scary story with a neat twist at the end, this one involving a man trapped in the belly of a whale. A dead whale. It’s a pretty neat story.

Now who is this Bernier character, exactly? A pretty damn good artist, that’s who. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to click here.


“Fear Agent” by Rick Remender, Kieron Dwyer and Hilary Barta

While I’m aware of the existence of a comic called Fear Agent that I know is written by Rick Remender, I’ve never read any of it, so this was my first exposure. It’s not a bad introduction—better than the Chickenhare and Gear School stories at introducing their comics, although it’s longer too.

From what I can gather, it seems to be a sort of sci-fi tale that reads like it was published by 2000 AD, which I mean as a rather high compliment.

The story? A manly-man space guy runs around from action scene to action scene, with cool drawings of cool monsters, sets and characters everywhere he goes, but all is not as it seems.

Oh, and by the way? I love Hilary Barta.


“The Goon” by Various

The collection ends on a high note with this four-chapter story featuring Eric Powell’s Goon and his supporting cast, although Powell himself doesn’t seem to be present, beyond the Maltese Falcon-like set-up, in which the Goon and Franky must find a friend’s missing pecker.

Four different creative teams handle the different chapters, making for a story told a bit like a chain letter. A chain letter involving baboon’s with razor-sharp boomerangs, chimps with sai, dismemberment, corn chowder, a giant spider on a bombing run, punching, kicking, more punching and a whole lot of dick jokes. That all comes courtesy of the all-star team of Bob Fingerman, Herb Trimpe, Al Milgrom, John Arcudi, The Fillbach Brothers, Rebecca Sugar, and Frans Boukas.


While I didn’t like every single story between the covers, I liked most of them, some of them so much that they more than made up for any of the weaker contributions and/or ones that just weren’t to my personal tastes.

If I had one criticism of the book, it was that it lacked contributor’s notes in the back. I realize with the Internet, that may seem superfluous—every contributor whose work I was curious about I ended up being able to find with a simple Google search—but since so many of the creators involved aren’t “name” creators like Whedon, Mignola, Niles, Bagge and Warren (at least, not yet), it would have been nice to be able to simply flip to the back of the book to see what, say, the Fillbach Brothers have done before, or why Cook’s art looks so familiar.

That is all.

Otherwise, I eagerly await Volume 2, which I will read when it’s printed on paper, and pay for the privilege, rather than read the stories for free online. Because I am old-fashioned.

If you’re less set in your ways than I, and aren’t yet sure if you should borrow this from the library or, if you’ve got $19.95 to spare on a pretty awesome anthology, buy a copy for yourself, you can read most if not all of these stories at myspace.com/darkhorsepresents.