Meanwhile...

That's a page from Philippe Coudray's Benjamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking, one of the three books I discussed in the latest installment of Robot 6's "What Are You Reading?" column, which you can read here.

Also at Robot 6 this week, I reviewed Age of Ultron; you can read that piece here.

And over at Good Comics For Kids this week, I have a review of The Baby Smurf here and an interview with Joey Weiser about his recently released Mermin Vol 1: Out of Water here.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I have a reivew of Joey Weiser's Mermin Theatre and Max Ink's Blink: So it Goes Chapter 1: Wonka Wonka Kochalka, which you can find for sale at the Fluke Mini-Comics and Zine Festival in Athens, Georgia and the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo in Columbus, Ohio this weekend, respectively.

Meanwhile, at Blog@Newsarama...

I have a kinda sorta but not really review of Mermin #4 and #5, which concludes a designated "Part 1" of Joey Weiser's series of mini-comics, up at Blog@Newsarama. I labeled it a recommendation, since it's more of that than an actual review. Anyway, since I reviewed the rest of the series here on EDILW (the first two issues in the second part of this post, the third issues in the middle of this post), I figured I should link to it here, for completeness' sake.

Three #3's

Fraggle Rock #3 (Archaia) A graphic novel collecting this, as well as the first, second and fourth issues, shipped this week, so a review of the third issue probably a little pointless at this point, but, well, pointlessness has never prevented me from writing something on this blog before.

This is another issue split into several stories each by a different creative team. The first, “Where Have All The Doozers Gone?” is written by Adrianne Amborse and drawn by Joanna Estep.

Like the stories contained in the first issue, it’s a pretty ideal Fraggle Rock story in that it’s concerned with the balance of the universe, and how one element being out of balance can gum up the whole works…while focusing on comedy and little, close-to-home adventures, rather than pounding home the messaging.

Cotterpin, the rebellious Doozer who is friends with Red Fraggle, has convinced her fellow Doozers into building a sort of Doozer Tower of Babel. They place it out in the Gorgs’ garden and don’t want any Fraggles eating it, resulting in the Fraggles going hungry and the Gorgs eventually perceiving the structure as some sort of threat.

Estep draws great Doozers and pretty good Gorgs, and most of the Fraggles are pretty nicely done, although there’s a tendency to give some of ‘em fish-like faces, and this one named Large Marvin is pretty horrifying looking.

It’s followed by Grace Randolph and Whitney Leith’s “Party, Doozer Style!”, a four-page gag strip in which we learn exactly how it is that Doozer’s party (once they learn what partying is, of course), and Bryce P. Coleman and Michael DiMotta’s “To Catch a Fwaggle,” in which we learn a little bit (perhaps too much?) about the inner life of Junior Gorg and his desires to catch Fraggles.

The art in these last two features struck me as a bit stronger than that of the first, but perhaps because they are more stylistically different. Leith draws super-cute Doozers, and draws the story down at Doozer-eye level, so that when Red appears in the last panel, she looks gigantic to readers. DiMotta’s art has a painterly sheen to it, with a lot of dappled light and warm colors, and he pulls off a pretty great trick of making Junior look like a man in a well-constructed suit.


Mermin #3 In the third issue of Joey Weiser’s self-published minicomic about a grade school-aged merman named Mermin, our hero flees the home of his human friend, not wanting to cause him further trouble, and retreats to the tree house.

There he finds one of his old friends from his underwater world waiting…plus that cool-looking whale-man from the previous issue.

A couple of pages of combat involving two pretty cute, simply-designed protagonists ensues:Sure, it’s slight, but I’m still really enjoying it.


Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard #3 (Archaia) Nothing has changed with this third issue of David Petersen’s Canterbury Tales-like, invitational anthology, other than the fact that this particular issue features four short stories by creators other than Petersen, embedded in his framing sequence of mice in a tavern in a tale-telling contest.

All four stories are pretty great, and there’s perhaps a greater variety of art styles between the four of them than was evidenced in previous issues. I only had some reservations abut one of them, and only for nitpicky, think-to-much-about-it reasons.

The first is “A Mouse Named Fox,” by Katie Cook. In her regular super-cute style she tells a very fairy tale-like story, about a childless (pup-less?) couple of foxes who find and raise an orphaned mouse on their own, and their son’s journey into the world, where he meets his first mice and the first fox he’s not actually related too. The second—and my favorite—is a short, wordless story by Guy Davis, in which a (guard?) mouse notes a young mouse’s artwork featuring a valiant mouse slaying an owl, and he decides to set about slaying an owl himself. It turns out to be a lot harder than the young artist made it look. The artwork is a lot more stripped-down and simple than what we usually see from Davis, which makes it a little refreshing (On top of just being great art work). Additionally, Davis has the mice speak to one another in Owly-ish pictograms, so that the dialogue bubbles each contain little pictures, which are themselves a slightly more stripped-down and simplified version of Davis’ already stripped-down and simplified artwork here and…it’s just incredible. Man, I can’t tell you how excited I was to read this story…it’s comics within comics. I love it. Next up was “The Ballad of Nettledown” by Nate Pride, and while the story is another neat riff on a fairy or folk tale sort of story, and the artwork lovely, I’m afraid I didn’t much care for this one, as it is told by a mouse bard, and thus sung. (For what it’s worth, I’m the sort of reader who always skipped the songs in Tolkien’s novels, so my dislike of this story is certainly a matter of personal taste—the form certainly fits the context of the series and the franchise in general).

The final story is “The Raven” by Jason Shawn Alexander, who takes all of the dialogue from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem (And Poe is credited with a “Written by”). Alexander gives his mouse a very realistic face and head, although its nicely animated, and the lettering is incorporated into the art rather beautifully. Sure the joke is a one-note one, and maybe at six-pages it goes on way too long, but it’s a nice-looking piece (and I was surprised it didn’t end in the surprise way I was expecting, given the fact that the narrator is now a mouse, even though the raven is still a raven).

The thing is, this story is set in the twelfth century, and Poe wasn’t even born for another 700 years yet.

That is literally the worst thing about this comic.

Reviews of Joey Weiser's latest works, Cavemen In Space and Mermin #1-#2

I have a review of Athens, GA-based Joey Weiser's latest original graphic novel Cavemen in Space in Athens, GA-based altweekly Flagpole this week. You can read it here.(And you can download a preview of the book here, if you're so inclined).

*************************

Caveman in Space might have just recently seen publication, but Joey Weiser’s already working on his next project (in addition to his ongoing concerns, like Monster Isle), Mermin.

It’s a rather unusual project in at least two ways. Firstly there’s the format, which is that of a more-or-less standard self-published mini-comic, a format generally geared toward adult comics fans (mostly ones who make their own mini-comics). The subject matter and tone, however, are very much all-ages, and geared especially toward a broad audience of little kids.

It’s also rather unusual—for Weiser, at least—in that it’s fairly conventional compared to his two AdHouse-published graphic novels, each of which are at least an entire degree higher in weirdness than Mermin, a literal fish out of water story.

“Mermin” is the name a little, kid-sized fish-person who washes up on a beach in a ripped uniform of some kind gives the group of children who find him (Mermin the Merman, get it?). Despite his weird appearance and beach ball-punishing super-strength, Mermin befriends the kids, strengthening their bond when he saves one from a shark.

One of their number take him home to stay out his house and then, the next day, take him to school. Almost immediately they notice something weird about Mermin, beyond the obvious fact that he’s some sort of green, amphibious sea creature person. He’s also afraid of the water, since, when he’s in water of any kind, he can be tracked by other sea creatures, and they all seem to be looking for him for some reason.

There’s little terribly revolutionary going on in these first few chapters of the story— a 38-page, $4 first issue and an 18-page, $2 second issue—but it strikes me as the beginning of what will no doubt be a pretty great kids graphic novel of the Jellaby or Lunch Lady variety. Something that will do extremely well in the youth departments of libraries.

And while I didn’t feel it changed my life or offered any great epiphanies, it is enjoyable enough to keep an open-minded, comic book-loving thritysomething entertained.

I really appreciate Weiser’s art style and, in particular, his sense of design. Mermin’s a solid-looking character, balancing weirdness and cuteness, and the first issue ends with the introduction of these three-awesome looking guys:I think the middle one is a humanoid sea serpent? With some sort of retro, 21st century version of New Wave hair? And the one on the left is definitely an whale with arms and legs. And they are both awesome. (They are among those looking for Mermin, although ordinary, limb-less fish seem to be in on the act a swell).

Plus, the first issue does include a scene of Mermin kicking a shark in the face……something that should appeal to the tiny, little Chris Sims that lives in the brain of most comic book readers.

I imagine that Mermin will be back in a bound format at some point, either as a graphic novel through AdHouse or a book publisher with a graphic novel tendril, or a self-published one by Weiser himself, and that the mini-comics are simply a way for Weiser to maybe make some money on the comic during the months it will take to draw it or to elicit some call and response feedback throughout the creative process (or both).

If you can’t wait to read a comic about a cute little creature from the black lagoon that goes to grade school, plays tether-ball and flying kicks great white sharks, you can check Weiser’s site to see how to go about getting the single issues (the third of which is due in September).

I really liked the creative, lo-fi cover concepts. Each is a single-color image with an individualized logo, and a full-color sticker of the lead character placed atop it.

I also really liked this panel from the first issue:Weiser just plain drew the living hell out of a swimming pool of fish, didn’t he? Wow.

August 23rd's Meanwhile, in Las Vegas...

In this week's LVW column, I cover





and



A little something for everyone.