Zzz: November 25, 2008
http://www.vex.net/~smarry/zzz/2008-11-25.html
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I've recently adopted a rule that I have to post whatever's sitting in the editor once the day is over, which is why there've been lots of individual reviews instead of one all-destroying monstrosity. Until now! Maybe.
Furrlough #186, Various, Radio Comix:
Mickmo's "Death Metal Bunny Brigade" continues with its weird art and actually half-decent writing. Chris Farrington's "Whomper" concludes as our hero destroys evil by hitting it with a magic hammer. David Goodman's "Catgirl Charter Crisis" and "Catgirl Cursing Crisis" are actually funny, and the most cripsly rendered art in this issue. Chuck Melville's "Felicia: The Vixen's Ears" has Felicia temporarily delayed in setting out on some adventure or other by an excess of bravado. And there are some pin-ups by Shon Howell.
Peebo Tales #4, Fred Perry, Antarctic:
Peebri, a sort of Roomba version of Brianna, tries to make one quarter into a billion quarters via a time travel device that can only go back two minutes, and fills the room with Peebris without ever remembering to get a quarter to start off with, or even to go back in time. Hilarity almost ensued.
Space Raoul, Jamie Smart, SLG:
This is pretty much of a piece with Bear, except without the potty humour and sex. Raoul, a quintessentially British unidentifiable cartoon animal, flies through space and gets into ludicrous slapstick situations that involve anything from getting hurled through a star to painting the entire universe blue, but never have any effects carrying over between episodes.
Castle Waiting #13, Linda Medley, Fantagraphics:
The ninepins game begun last issue concludes as Chess finally gets the trick of it, and Jain diverts Doctor Fell from his current spell of loopiness by the somewhat inobvious tactic in inquiring about the possibility of plague lurking in one of the recently-discovered passages in the castle.
The Sandman: The Dream Hunters #1, Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell, DC:
Apparently (I haven't read it) the original Dream Hunters was not quite a comic, but this is. This sets up the story, as a fox and badger bet on who can persuade a monk to abandon a temple. Neither succeeds, but the fox falls in love - with the monk, not the badger; that would be perverse. Ahem. She thus feels obligated to intervene when some manner of fearful things are plotting the monk's death, and endeavours to visit the lord of dreams (I think. I mean, he's a fox but this is supposed to have something to do with The Sandman.) and that's it for the issue.
I can see this maybe playing out in a European instead of a Japanese setting, given some of the Victorian elaborations on Grimms' fairy tales, but admittedly it would be very different. I don't know if the oh-well-whatever aspects of the story, wherein supposedly significant characters are shed without any suggestion that they'll show up again, are characteristic of Japanese folk tales or not.
Firefly, Melissa Peters, lulu.com:
Despite a mostly human protagonist and the creation of a parallel history where pseudo-Europeans are at war with pseudo-other Europeans, this is mostly more of the same mayhem as in Eternal Wings, with the significant difference that Kirima is believably horrified by the atrocities going on all the time in pseudo-North Korea. The rest of the time she's setting people, buildings, and whatnot on fire via telekinesis on the way to rescuing her friend Kozue whom she met over the Internet. Outside of North "Enga", however, this alternate Earth is a rather appealing place, where you can get around by train, and people are extraordinarily kind to strangers. Peters lives in Germany and this book has soaked up enough of that influence that the heady scent of Emil and the Detectives wafts off it in the early chapters when Kirima is on her way to the border.
Madame Xanadu #5, Matt Wagner, Amy Reeder Hadley, and Richard Friend, DC:
This time it's the French Revolution, and Ms. Xanadu meets the Stranger, again, who is annoying, again, and gets involved in things against her better judgement, again, and ends up a prisoner of the revolution, ag- actually I guess that hasn't happened before.
Rex Libris #13, James Turner, SLG:
An array of impressively weird-looking monsters shows up to try to influence Cthulhu 2 before he awakens, as Rex and Co. try to use the confusion to get to the same place. Things don't quite work out as planned, but fortunately Rex's hare-brained scheme to attract all of their enemies to the island as a distraction has a built-in safety.
RASL #3, Jeff Smith, Cartoon Books:
Mad science, seduction (as distinguished from sex, that was last issue), hard-boiled adventure, and sinister conspiracies feature this time. The lizard-faced man follows Miles to yet another universe, but turns out not to be an untouchable super-being of any kind, and only escapes by virtue of the same weird-looking gadgetry that he's using.
Burn #5, Camilla d'Errico, Scott Sanders, and Chenoa Ryks, Arcana:
This issue precedes the conclusion, which I had read already due to my tendency to let comics pile up and then read whatever happens to be on top. The most plotful event is the discovery of Burn's robot kid sister who features in #6, or anyway the discovery that she's a robot.
Echo #7, Terry Moore, Abstract Studio:
Julie and the biker gang hang out in the middle of nowhere with a monkey with a nasty temper, while Ivy Raven the master detective questions her ex-husband, tracks down their disposable phone and tries to get something out of Dillon, who isn't having any until he hears what happened to Annie. Then stuff blows up, most likely the work of the crazy homeless guy who's been wandering down the highway muttering quotes from Revelations.
Sky Doll, Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa, Marvel:
The first of 3 volumes about the travails of Noa, the T&A robot protagonist who starts out as a wholly-owned appliance at a T&A car wash. Through a confusing series of events she gets picked up by Roy and Jahu, emissaries of Papess Lodovica, who seem to be just 2 guys with randomly contrasting personalities and religious convictions. Jahu is the more cynical one, I guess. They get to the newage haven of Aqua, where Noa gets on quite well with the masses of fish-women clones, but it turns out that Jahu has a very important job to do here, namely busting in on the chamber guarding the source of all of the clones and blowing it up. Roy is so upset by this, he tries on a little cynicism himself, and boy is it ever a bad fit, at least in Noa's opinion.
In the meantime, Noa has been receiving visitations from some kind of possessing noumenon or emmanation or whatever, possibly connected with Agape, the vanished other Papess who used to work alongside Lodovica. Apparently without Agape around, the church's religion has become something of a circusy affair, with carefully orchestrated public appearances involving lots of special effects. There's also a whole studio devoted to producing and disseminating the holy media-stream, who aren't exactly fervent in their faith. And of course there's the pro-Agape underground, with agents everywhere in and out of all levels of the church hierarchy.
When they get back to home base, things really begin to tear loose, with Noa bringing Roy back to life after he gets shot, torrents of dog-things breaking into the studio, and a revolution starting up because some people aren't just guessing that Noa represents the return of Agape, they're sure. That's volume 1.
I was going to title this "The Hero as Gynoid", but Noa doesn't take all that much initiative in the story, that I can see. She does have a big part in the story, but I cannot escape this nagging feeling that Being Special Is Not Enough. Not that I am particularly set on believing that there's any very serious message here. The most interesting thing to me was the evolution of Roy's personality. I guess I'll have to see if anything different happens with everyone in the next volume.