This is and autobiographical comic about the
creator Ben (no last name given). It's in a comic
strip format; 3 Panels dailies telling us his life
from 11-29-01 to 2-28-02. Ben's life seems to go
from interesting to boring at times as some days
will be like "Today I went to work. Then I worked.
Then I came home." With pictures showing him
walking both ways. Ben is into ground level indy
bands, gets stoned and hammered a lot and goes to
parties. There might be something interesting within
those, but they are summed up in three panels as
well. Regardless, getting stoned and hammered all
the time is pretty repetitive and loses it's
intrigue after a while. Usually I love non-fiction
comics, but this simply didn't do anything for me.
I found it a chore to read through.
Ben also has a very crude drawing style. You can
make out what everything is. But due to his
drawing of ears and his hair, I originally thought
this was about a man with a monkey head. But
considering he's doing one comic strip a day, and
is squeezing it in somewhere between work, life
and play I do admire Ben's discipline. A lot of
artists wouldn't be able to do this. For the
future I wouldn't mind seeing a more full length
story devoted to funny and/or dramatic party
happenings. Ben has something of a real social
life, something many comic readers (including me)
do not. I think he'd be more popular if he'd share
more of that, then readers would live through him.
I give this book a 2 out of 5 stars. Despite it
not being to my tastes it gives you more than your
two dollars worth.
Wild Penny #1
Anthology - stories by Tod C. Parkhill and various
artists Price: $2US
This comic has 5 stories ranging from sci-fi,
humour and mystery genres. The one I enjoyed the
most was the first one called Midnight Star. It
was about a crew of weird people who work for a
tabloid that is writing about alien babies on
Earth. I liked this because there was more story
to tell and that it had some originality. The
script felt like normal people talking with
some swearing mixed in.
The artist for that story was Steve Gomez. He has
a very attractive style. He uses a thin line and
simple shapes and gives room for everything to
breathe - without it feeling like wasted space. At
the same time, he gets a minimum of 6 panels per
page which is something considering that this
comic is smaller than a typical comic book. I hope
to see more of his work in the future.
As always with anthologies, there is a mix of
stories and you like some better than others. The
other stories were about friends on a beach during
a storm, a spaceship crew getting into trouble and
waitresses reacting to a customer who did
something strange. While some of these stories are
unique, I did not find them compelling. Their
artists had parts of their work look good but need
more development. In all I give this book a 2 out
of 5 stars. The one good bit didn't make up for
the bad. And on a whole, I think anthologies
should be fat and not slivers stories put into a
22 page book. The small sizes limits what the
creators can do, and the small amount of stories
just isn't satisfying.