The Infinite Napkin

Karaoke Night (a sample)

http://bubble-cast.com

Our table was up against a wall, so this is a 180-degree pan of the room from there.

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The view from right to left, later (yep Carter’s holding an iPad and yeah that’s my forehead at the end.

http://bubble-cast.com

Took the longer works with me this time. Again, in order from liked more to liked less:

REGGIE AND BRIAN AND THE LOUSY NICKNAME by Cathy Leamy — This is one of the few books/stories I’ve read from either bath with a beginning and an end. A lot of these creators are shooting for poignance and that often leaves you unsatisfied if the point was lost on you. But this is a cute story and well-paced.

LIFE OF VICE #1 by Robin Enrico — This is a tight narrative that’s meant to shock me more than it does, but that’s all right. The style is cuter than you would expect from a tale of hard-living, but that’s clearly a deliberate choice. There’s touches of Mary Fleener here as well. It was a fun read.

IMAGINARY MONSTERS by Peter Lazarski — This is another webcomic that I think works better as a collection, but still scored a funny more often than not in each installment. There’s a lot of RPG-themed comics out there and many of them mine the easy ore when looking for funny. The best bits of this one are the most original.

MERMAID HOSTEL by Jen Vaughn — I’ll give points for setting this in a mermaid hostel; never seen that before. This series wavers back and forth between soap-opera (I know, I know) and gag-style humor and is still hunting for the right balance.

SPY GUY #1 by Mike Kitchen — This book couldn’t possibly top the amount of footnotes in FROM HELL, but for the size it gives the big book a run for it’s money with 122 footnotes. A lot of them say “Wikipedia” dash something or other and I dunno how I feel about that. That said, the lettering is a spot-on imitation of Dave Sim’s regular style and the sense of action is often very good. The cartoony dudes in a more realistic environment feels very b+w 80s to me. Ultimately I wonder if what happened is that we have two issues crammed into one here.

There were a few anthologies so large that it felt wrong to include them in this list. They’re mostly from schools, so I’m not going to go more to less with every name in each of them because that frankly sounds horrible to do. So I’ll list the names of the folks in each that struck me positively. That doesn’t mean the rest are bad, just that these are the standouts.

TABLE BUFFET–Katherine Roy‘s piece strongly resonated of Feiffer in tone and style; Garry-Paul Bonesteel is headed to a good place with his dialogue and incongruous critters.

CABOOSE–Nomi Kane tells a nice morality tale; hey, it’s Katherine Roy again!

That seems to be most all of them. I am saving THE SINISTER TRUTH/MKULTRA for another time, as it’s too long for a bath. Same with the new WORLD WAR 3 (but I always love those).

So I had a nice long bath and took a stack of MoCCA purchases with me. Ranked in order from liked more to liked less:

GRANDPA AL by Joe Decie — I’m a sucker for inkwash and this is a nice tale about getting older. The oblong format has a good feel to it; you feel like you’re turning heavier pages. There’s a sense of place and action and the eye is pulled pleasingly across each page.

INDESTRUCTIBLE UNIVERSE QUARTERLY #2 by Morgan Pielli — This is a collection of stories about simple twists, and often the setups are far more bizarre, esp the robot story of creation. The styles vary nicely and show good range.

IPHIS & IANTHE by Maggie Siegel-Berele (no site, email is followingshade at gmail dot com)– This is a book full of beautiful images, but it often feels overdrawn as a result of the obvious amount of effort. The story is melodramatic, but that’s something comics does well. Sometimes the sense of the panels are lost in the backgrounds, and perhaps that’s the point. But I think a little effort in making the figures pop a bit more would make this good comic a pretty great one.

INDESTRUCTIBLE UNIVERSE QUARTERLY #2 by Morgan Pielli — This one gets a bit airy, but it actually has my favorite of Morgan’s stories in it, “For Want Of An Oomplip”, a story about the critical importance of an Oomplip. it made me laugh out loud. The other stories are big idea pieces that miss, is all. They can’t all win.

SHITZ & GIGGLES BOOK OF GAGS by A. Norhanian — Aaron has digested a lot of the ZAP generation stuff, and it shows in the titular characters. These guys pop right off the page while just standing there. The humor is frequently out of nowhere and makes you laugh all the harder when it catches you. There’s a lot of anger in this humor, and when it missteps it’s just angry. Angry stuff works great when it works, and disturbs you when it doesn’t; but I think the goal here is both.

THE FOOL Preview Sketchbook by Jon Roscetti — ranked down the list only because it’s snapshots and sketches. This looks like it’ll be a fun book and the style is very appealing. Jon’s figures have a lot of character either standing or in motion.

MORE GREAT MOMENTS IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION: Sum Of The Parts by Caitlin Cass — I actually discounted this one because I completely disagreed with the point about Socrates. In the book, the main character rails against Socrates for questioning everything; to her, this means he believes nothing and did nothing. In fact, Socrates’ questioning was his most deeply held belief, that we need to hold everything up for analysis. His questioning got him executed. He dared Athens to follow through on their beliefs to make a point. St Augustine as a pear was good, though. Maybe questioning seems useless nowadays because via Stewart and Colbert we find parody much more effective. Caitlin, you’ve set me thinking. Well done.

BOOTLEGS by Pat ? — Johnny Ryan has spawned a genre. Some critics want to call the louche superheroes Warren Ellis pushes “Superhero Decadence”, but I think Johnny Ryan’s scatological wonders the true Superhero Decadence. These are longer pieces and are mostly predictable in their outcomes, but very much in keeping with JR’s stuff. That said, the funniest panel is the Spider-Man/Lizard staring contest.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGQUEENS by Mike Turzanski and Pete Lazarski  (no site)– This is just images of some weird folks. It works as is. This is more of an art object than a comic.

ESCHEW by Robert Sergel — This is the art style where all sense of motion (to me) is absent. This is deliberate, but I’ve never really warmed to it. The stories embrace the mundane heartily, but never really gel into poignance.

THESE THINGS HAPPEN #2 by S. Carbaugh — This might work better if it stuck with one of the stories, or just sprinkled the Cantos throughout. I liked the first story, the rest a bit less.

HERE COMES EVERYONE by Sam Carbaugh — This is a strip collection, and they have unusual risks. Sometimes you get a little too high on them, like reading lots of Calvin and Hobbes, and sometimes a basically good strip’s flaws pile up and become distracting. I think it’s because a lot of the punchlines are really minor high points in longer conversations. My suggestion is try longer stories with this dialogue style and see how that goes.

YELLOW by Robert Richburg — This is an apocalypse piece where zombies, humans and nano-infused ant-men are battling for supremacy or just trying to survive. The use o yellow and blue tons on the black and white art add a nice dimension to the proceedings, but ultimately we have an okay first issue to a book about the antman.

BILLY THE DUNCE by Jason Week — A comic strip with a long setup has its risks. I think this is another one that feels forced into a strip format. I think a longer format might make this one shine.

I rarely review comics because I think there’s something weird about making comics and reviewing them. I approach them here solely as a reader and only mean any of this stuff in the nicest possible way.

I’ve got a few more stacks and a few more baths to take, so I’ll have another one of these soon.

Monday? What the hell happened on Monday?