Neotheric

by on August 3, 2018 at 5:12 pm
Posted In: Reviews, Blog

Neotheric Vol 1, #1 & #2

Story and letters:  Michael T Gonzalez

Art: Dave Mims

Finally got round to installing the Comichaus app today – and instantly regretted not doing it sooner. The very first book I picked, pretty much at random, is fantastic!

First up, this is not an all-ages read – there’s violence and swearing a-plenty, so if you’re under like 10 or whatever (when do they start swearing and playing inappropriate games these days?), you shouldn’t be reading this…Seriously though, it has a “Mature” explicit rating so save it for later kids; there are plenty of cool all-ages books out there for you.

Right, on with the (no spoilers) review.

Something that used to right-royally yank my tatlocks was a cover that hooked you in and made you buy a book that was a load of old turd on the inside – I’m very happy to report that this bad boy is 100% on the button; the cover looks just like the internal art. Which, in case you’re wondering, is freakin’ awesome!

The colouring uses lots of gradients and a slightly muted, but rangy, palette that works beautifully with really fantastic linework – and this is the real strength of Mims’ work here – he does an inspired job. At first glance it looks like there are too many lines, but somehow, it works to create a strongly graphic feel with sparse backgrounds, expressive characters and great action. This is some of my favourite artwork this year; sweet!

The story is a little off-the-wall and, although you might think you can spot the backstory of the main characters pretty quickly, issue 2 ups the ante and raises an eyebrow: no spoilers, but there appears to be at least one pretty famous dude in this series… I’m digging the premise and I’m looking forward to seeing where this story goes and I’m kind of expecting it to be not where I think! The dialogue throughout is nice and tight, funny, and natural – really great work which isn’t always in evidence in indie comics and a big thumbs up to Gonzalez for this work.

Pretty quickly he’s managed to create some interesting characters who are shaping up really well – one of what appears to be the main couple of characters (right now at least – I’ve been caught like that before…) is looking to be particularly interesting and I can’t wait to see what happens to him. I have some ideas of what his arc might be, but let’s just wait and see if he can step up and crack destiny right in the chops. I hope so…

Gonzalez also does the lettering duties here and does them brilliantly. He’s come up with some neat ways of dealing with different voices and the word balloons are tidy and sized well for the panels. A big shout out to him for the use of thought balloons too – I miss them.

All in all, you want to jump on board with this immediately, like now! It’s worth the Comichaus subscription all by itself! Amazing value!

 

 

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Awesome Comics Anthology, Issue 2. Review

by on May 17, 2018 at 9:39 pm
Posted In: Reviews, Blog

Imagine, dear reader, if you can, my unbounded delight when Tony Esmond slipped a little something into my inbox last night and I certainly had a warm fuzzy feeling (more of relief than anything) when it turned out to be a review copy of the Awesome Comics Anthology, Issue 2.

Let’s not waste any more time and crack on. As always, the review is spoiler free.

First off we have a very tasty piece of cover art by Andy Bloor (@andybloor) which focuses on Murder Road, the first story in the book, and gives us more than a subtle hint as to the darkness of issue 2 of that particular little tale…

 

Murder road

Story: Vincent Hunt (@jesterdiablo) and Daniel Marc Chant (@danielmarcchant)

Art / Letters: Vincent Hunt

Well, I’m happy to say that my prediction for issue two of Murder Road was cock-on: the proverbial is hitting the fan with gusto in an intense and fast moving sequence of people’s evenings ending even worse than that time Vince got mugged by his cat.

It was pretty clear that things were going to go south for a decent chunk of the cast in the last episode and I was slack jawed throughout as many met their demise in a variety of claret-soaked ways, but my particular favourite has to be desiccation inducing tyre smoke; what a cool idea!

Most of the people we see here are classic horror expendables and, as such, we don’t learn much about them. But there are a couple who we start to understand more clearly and that brings a certain level of intrigue around where they’re going to end up. We don’t get to see two of the main characters from the first episode, and it seems clear that they’ll turn up next time and say: “Well, it certainly looks like the young folks have been having one of their cockamamie parties all right!” (or something along those lines…), and I’m really looking forward to seeing who makes it as far as issue 3.

Not having read any horror comics before, I was slightly surprised at how much I enjoyed this piece of in-your-face violent story-telling. Notwithstanding the worry of being turned by the chaps, it’s clear that they’re having fun coming up with the ideas in this episode and, although the story isn’t significantly advanced, it does a great job of leaving you wide eyed and wondering what the hell just happened!

Great work boys; keep it up!

 

 

Cockney Kung Fu – The Big Old Kent Road Kick-off, Parts 3 (Bellbottoms) and 4 (She wears it well)

Story: Tony Esmond (@ezohyez)

Art / Letters: Nick Prolix (@nickprolix)

In Part 3 we pick up right where we left off with Red about to get up to her neck in a caper that hardly seems quite cricket – she might be the ‘bit of posh’ on the job, but she’s taking no crap from anyone and I have a feeling that’s going to be a theme of this story.

We meet a few new faces who make up the transit van full of low life that are going to pull off the job – I particularly like Custard; brilliant name and his dialogue is perfect! Talking of dialogue, Tony handles that really well with the mix of tone and 70’s slang hitting just the right note to sound natural.

As an aside, when writing dialogue, I often think people don’t realise how much we contract words when we speak and, for me, mishandling that always make it sound like characters are giving a speech rather than having a conversation. Seeing lots of contractions written down can look a bit odd, and I think authors sometimes remove them unnecessarily for that reason. I haven’t written much comic dialogue, but I have written a decent amount of prose and the old read-it-out-loud test can often make it clear where contractions ought to appear. Anyhow, none of that has anything to do with Cockney Kung Fu by the way, I just wanted to get it off my chest!

Part 4 focuses on the job which is definitely more akin to something out of The Sweeney than Ocean’s Eleven, but again, that’s just how it should be; gritty, rough, and a bit ugly.

There are some great references in panel backgrounds thanks to Mr Prolix (anyone remember Rumbelows?) and once again his art works a treat with the period story. Having just finished listening to the ACP talking lettering, I have to put on record how much I admire the effort Nick puts into that here (and his other work incidentally) – not only are the words in the balloons wonderfully laid out and lettering consistent, but the titles, sound effects and other text are all spot on.

At the end of Part 4 we leave the story with what I’m sure is going to be some quality action about to hit with the sting of a rushed back, sack and crack job in cheap beauty parlour – can’t wait!

 

Vyper

Everything: Dan Butcher (@vanguardcomic)

The opening of this episode of Vyper is so 80’s it hurts – I recall with fondness the time I got a 14” colour portable and a VCR for my room and was able to squirrel myself away for hours watching movies with characters that look exactly like these. Dan’s done a lush job of building on the great start from issue 1 in this respect.

Viperini confirms that he’s about as inappropriate as any 80’s hero you care to mention (and more so than most) pretty much as soon as he opens his mouth and Lopez, his partner, is confirmed as his moral compass which he’s temporarily lost down the sofa – although I can’t help thinking he’ll find it again before this story’s finished; at least I hope he does.

There’s a great flashback in this episode, brought on by our tight-trousered hero spotting a symbol he knows only too well from his past. We start to see something of his history which begins to explain why he’s so full of it and I hope Dan explores some more of his main character’s psyche in the rest of the story.

The one (very minor) problem I had with issue 1 was a tendency for the characters to be a little verbose but the dialogue has been nicely tightened up in this episode as Dan gets to know the characters and that really helps with the flow and pacing of the story.

We leave the story loaded with jeopardy and every chance that one of the main characters is likely to fid themselves in the deep and claggy in pretty short order. Perfect.

Once again, the artwork is Butcher through and through with some nice graphic touches which are always a pleasing addition to the look of his comics. I’m really liking this story and it feels like it has the scope to delve a little deeper into character as well as being full of kick-arse action – here’s hoping!

 

Extras

We’re treated to not one, but two pages of readers letters at the back of the book – each suitably irreverent and exactly what you’d expect from the listeners of the ACP (that’s the Awesome Comics Podcast in case you’ve been living in a space suit with the awesome filter turned up to max for the last 150 weeks you dickfer! That’s an 80s film reference for those of you too young to remember the glorious age of fluorescent socks the first time around…)

We also get a dose of fan art on the Board of Awesome which really shows off that at least four people read issue 1. Good work chaps!

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Out of Time – review

by on May 12, 2018 at 9:37 pm
Posted In: Reviews, Blog, Sequential

Story: Luke James Halsall https://lukejameshalsall.wordpress.com/ @LJHalsall

Art / colours / letters: Cuttlefish http://cuttlefishcomics.blogspot.co.uk/ @cuttlefishcomic

Publisher: Markosia @Markosia 

When Luke sent me the link and I downloaded Out of Time, I immediately realised that I’d seen this comic before – I still can’t remember when exactly but I thought at the time I really liked the cover, so getting to dip inside is real treat. 

Before we get into detail, let’s sum up: I’m reviewing the whole book here which is a collection of three issues, numbered 1, 2, and 4. This may seem odd, but as I only write spoiler-free reviews, you’ll have to read it to find out why this doesn’t make sense in a good way! You’re getting over 60 pages of story for your money here, so great value for a book you can download for under $4 (check out DriveThru Comics for the download). The guys were on the con-circuit hawking the book before it being picked up by Markosia after a meeting at Thought Bubble – just goes to show, it’s always worth making those connections at cons! 

So, let’s start with the artwork – it’s the first thing you notice about a book of course, and in this case it’s a good thing. The artwork isn’t entirely conventional but is nonetheless fantastic and that’s coming from someone who really got into, and then out of, comics in the ‘90s – and we all know what that means as far as artwork’s concerned: ’90s style art this ain’t, and the book is all the better for it. The characters only occasionally have mouths, sometimes don’t have arms (but still have hands) and frequently miss out on the joys of noses but that only adds to the wonderfully stylised appearance of the book. 

Backgrounds aren’t heavily detailed, colouring uses a really limited and largely unrealistic palette, and word balloons are funky hand drawn affairs. None of this, however unusual, is bad – every bit of it appears a consummate stylistic choice topped off by some really neat inks which are most successful when they are kept nice and simple. A slight criticism, and I’m working hard here to pull something out, is that I think both the inking and the colouring are slightly less convincing in panels where the palette gets too varied (in that you lose that really strong graphic element of shades of a single colour) or inks are too detailed (where inked shading goes further than solid blacks) – the middle section of issue one is an example, but this is pretty minor in what is otherwise really solid work from Cuttlefish. Does anyone know who this person is by the way or am I looking for a guy who squirts ink in my face if I approach too quickly from a jaunty angle at a con…?

Onto the story. As I say, no spoilers (although the book’s been out for some time and I’m not sure that the script is really built around surprises, so I think I’m pretty safe), so I’ll keep things relatively general. 

The story is about a small team of employees at a company who offer holidays to different periods in time to rich clients – when I say different periods of time, I don’t mean dressing up in green tights, sticking a feather in your cap and pretending you’re robbing from the rich. No, we’re talking actual time travel – which, as everyone knows, is a mind bender of a concept and something one would be well advised to steer clear of as a plot device. Given that, you have to hand it to the nutcase that is Luke James Halsall for taking it on! 

Halsall sails above the old time-travel pitfall of getting bogged down in the “major boring shit” of the mechanics of it all – his main tool for this nimble little authoring trick? The classic time-travelling-sofa; naturally. I know, but it just is, ok? 

While the story gads along at a rare old pace, it isn’t full of any great suspense which is fine because what we have here is a tale that relies on the characters and comedy to entertain the reader. Just before we get to those features though, it’s great that the story “gets about a bit” with scenes both in antiquity and in the future, all well visualised by Cuttlefish. Different realities are also mentioned but not explored in this book: I’m hoping that’ll be the subject of a future publication! 

In terms of characters, some are more successful than others, with Redmond, NC-1000 and Dave being the ones that stand out. The dialogue of these three really works to give you a sense of character and quickly established itself as the distinctive voice of each. The other characters are good supporting players but perhaps lack the more clearly drawn appeal of these three. 

One issue that jarred slightly was that the characters often use language that feels a little less natural than is comfortable, with fewer contractions than you might expect (e.g. “…what we are saying…” instead of “…what we’re saying…”). For many people this probably isn’t an issue, but writing natural dialogue is a really tricky business and it’s something that I find takes me out of a story if it doesn’t quite flow which happens here occasionally. 

As for comedy, I found the funniest moments of the book were those delivered by characterisation rather than dialogue written purely for laughs – both Redmond and NC-1000 have some great lines which are funny because it’s an insight to their heads rather than being funny per se. I’d definitely say that this is something to focus on in the future as it works really well here.  

To sum up, Out of time, is a good book full of fantastic artwork, some neat story and cool characters. I’d certainly recommend taking this little beauty for a spin! I’m really looking forward to what these guys are cooking up next. 

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