BOP! More Box Office Poison

This slim volume is a great companion to the Box Office Poison phonebook. BOP! More Box Office Poison reprints Alex Robinson’s short stories from the SPX anthologies (there was a piece in each volume from 1997-2001), Private Beach #4, and the color special published by Antarctic. It also contains Robinson’s 24-hour comic and a new story showing how Caprice’s friends deal with her ex-boyfriend. Since most of these were written as stand-alone stories instead of chapters in the bigger graphic […]

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50 Reasons to Stop Sketching at Conventions

The immensely talented Stuart Immonen (Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman: Secret Identity, Nextwave) doesn’t draw sketches at conventions any more, and he’s not too fond of attending shows, either. This self-published mini-paperback collects his fifty reasons why, reprinting four-panel strips that originally ran as webcomics. Comic artists and their fans often have a love/hate relationship. The new eight-page introduction puts the strips into that context, explaining that these experiences, weird as they might seem, aren’t terribly unusual on the convention circuit. […]

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After the Snooter

In comparison to Alec: The King Canute Crowd or Alec: Three Piece Suit, After the Snooter is a more modern work, more in keeping with the Eddie Campbell of today instead of decades ago. The most obvious difference is the dropping of the Alec psuedonym — Campbell’s now Eddie, raising kids and publishing for himself (an endeavor he seems to have since stopped, with his former website gone and Amazon listing his books as coming from Top Shelf instead of […]

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Alec: Three Piece Suit

Alec: Three Piece Suit collects three short books previously published as Graffiti Kitchen, Little Italy, and The Dance of Lifey Death. I very much appreciate the way Campbell includes a brief publishing history of his work on the indicia page. Knowing when he drew the stories and when and where they first appeared helps put his autobiographical work in the appropriate context of the times. These were all drawn between 1983-1993 and were originally published from four-six years after their […]

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Alec: The King Canute Crowd

Alec: The King Canute Crowd, this first collection of Eddie Campbell’s life stories, established his reputation as a dean of autobiographical comics. “Alec” is Campbell’s version of himself, an artist working a job at a metal-stamping plant he’s overeducated for. He and Danny go to the pub frequently to drink and talk. Each see something in the other they don’t have in themselves: Danny’s the “man of action” while Alec is hesitant and reflective. The nine-panel grid doesn’t get in […]

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Boneyard

Boneyard collects the first four issues of Richard Moore’s horror humor series. A young man has inherited a remote small-town property from his grandfather. He only wants to sell it and leave the area, until he finds out that the property is a graveyard with an odd group of inhabitants. Although they’re monsters, they’re more welcoming to him than the townsfolk. The art is confident and cinematic. Mr. Moore’s work has the entertainment and simple lines of a cartoon, drawn […]

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Wahoo Morris

Wahoo Morris is the story of a band from Craig A. Taillefer, someone who clearly knows what that’s like. Sebastien, the guitarist, has a crush on the new singer, Alicia, an animal lover with an interest in the occult. He’s trying to figure out how to get to know her better (after an aborted attempt at a kiss) while balancing the band, his work inking comic books, and his day job at a grocery store. Meanwhile, Chas, his childhood friend […]

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Cheat

Cheat is the story of a woman who cheats on her husband. It has beautiful linework and realistic characters, but it doesn’t fulfill its promise. Although Christine Norrie does a wonderful job of showing us the circumstances that may lead to infidelity, the book was promoted with questions like “how will the betrayed spouses react?” (As seen on the back cover.) But the discovery and its effects are given short shrift here, leaving me feeling unfulfilled as a reader. The […]

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