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Graffic Traffic
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“As Our Story Continues…”
By Ryk McIntyre
Forever on the lookout for something to massage and otherwise rouse my poor grey matter (yeah, like reading comics for review isn’t enough), how ’bout this month we do it alphabetically, right here on the floor.
From those Sci-lovin’ Fi’s at Sirius is Akiko #12 (Mark Crilley/story and art), a goofy adventure story set in a wintery world, with dinosaurs, yet. Over all, a fun read, helped along by a four-page “The Story So Far,” as told by resident smart guy, Mr. Beeba, in the back, which brings you basically up to date while trying to hustle up some back issue sales. It be worth your money.
Back to Sirius books again, this time with the Penthouse-ish Dawn #5 (Joseph Michael Linsner/story and art), a tight-clothing bit of spiritual mishmash with Goddess in one hand while the other hand seems busy mastur…uh… busy.
If it weren’t for books like Dork #4 (Salve Labor/words, Evan Dorkin/art), sometimes I think I’d just give up. With its semi-regular features, “The Murder Family” and “The Eltingville Comic Book, Science-Fiction, Horror, and Role-Playing Club,” along with pages and pages of Evan’s little gag strips, it’s not really $2.75 worth of printed material, it’s a necessary item in coping with today’s angst-on-ephedrine world.
Riding a Polysorbate-80 wave into their second collected book, Over The Hedge 2 ( Andrews and McMeel, cartoons by Michael Fry and T. Lewis), R.J., the raccoon underachiever, and his gnocchi-shaped turtle pal Verne romp ’round the suburban jungle with only TV, golf, sugar, more TV, more and more sugar, the Internet, and Verne’s sad faith in Martha Stewart as a force for good in the universe to guide and watch over them. And it’s the humans who should worry…
Last this month, see if you can pick-up the three issues out so far of the Starman spinoff mini-series The Shade (DC, James Robinson/ words, various artists), where we learn much of the background, if not the origin, of the stellar supporting character from James Robinson’s Starman. We learn of the family that has been sworn for hundreds of years, generation after generation, to kill the Shade, even those of the lineage who come to like or even love him. In issue #3 we get an inside glimpse of the relationship between hero and villain, between Jay Garrick, the mercury-helmeted Flash, and Shade. It’s more a jousting of noble adversaries than it is any real hatred or vendetta. Robinson’s strength is that his characters walk and breathe from deep inside, and that is right where we want to know them. Issue #4 can only be a week or two away and the first three should still be available. Your comic dollars could hardly find better.