Comics I Read Last Week - Week 4

Welcome to week four of my weekly blog feature "Comics I Read Last Week" in which I talk about the comics I read last week. Pretty simple really.

Bone Volume 2
Jeff Smith

I talked about the first volume of Bone back during the first one of these. I resisted the urge to read the second volume straight after, seeing as it likely won't be until the end of the year before I get to read the rest and I wanted to make it last at least a bit.

Bone is a lot of fun. The protagonists are fun. The monsters are fun, both genuinely threatening and fantastic comic relief at the same time. The cow race is brilliant. The whole thing is just a great read and a whole lot of fun.


Plagued
Ryan Estrada

Cartoon Coup
Ryan Estrada

There's a bit of dialogue in an episode of Jonathan Creek where a publisher finds out that the author she's talking to didn't make Jonathan up, but has really been working alongside him to solve murders. The moment she finds out that Jonathan is a real person he's suddenly a much less believable character.

I'm not entirely sure that Ryan Estrada is a real person. I mean, I've interacted with him on Twitter, he's commented on one of my comics,  but I'm still not entirely convinced that he isn't a character out of a series of ever more over the top comedy movies. The kind that start off semi-believable but by the third instalment the main character's found himself sleeping in the open during a typhoon and accidentally entering a foreign country as an illegal alien.

Did you know that Ryan Estrada has slept out in the open through two typhoons and once entered Burma illegally? Like I said, I'm not sure if I really, truly believe that Ryan Estrada is real.

Plagued by Ryan Estrada is the true story of how he survived a disaster that mostly existed within his own mind and also the true story of a man who survived a real one not long before that. It features a plague of insects, frogs falling from the sky and incident with a naked man running around in the middle of the night. And it's a true story.

Cartoon Coup is a collection of different stories including those two typhoon incidents, the time he set himself on fire, the time he found himself in the middle of a corporate coup orchestrated by crazy people he'd never met before, the time a homeless man offered to kill for him and the first time he ever got paid for producing comics.

Ryan Estrada is a character out of a series of increasingly ridiculous comedy movies, only the movies are comics and non-fiction.

They're also very good.

You can check out his comics over at ryanestrada.com.

Duckula #5-7
Various (uncredited)

Yep, more stories about the vegetarian vampire duck. I think I said pretty much all there is to say about the comic as a whole last week. These three issues are very much more of the same. There's one story in issue six that's a bit disappointing, like someone had a great idea for a story, didn't really know where to go with it, but went ahead and wrote it anyway.

The Marlin the Magician story that started in issue one wraps up in issue seven, which is lucky really because my copy of issue eight has been missing for years, though I do have issues nine to twelve still., so that's good.

Dennis the Menace annual 1976
Various (uncredited)

This book is old and smells funny.

Finally here's one that's seven years older than I am. I can't remember if I got this one for a pound in a charity shop or for 50p in a different charity shop. Either way it was a bargain.

Dennis seems to have stayed largely the same since he was created back in 1951 and many of the strips in this book could easily be redrawn for publishing today with very few changes. The art however...

Yeah, some of the art is interesting to say the least.

It's basically what you'd expect from Dennis and Gnasher with the exception that almost every strip ends with a panel of Dennis getting hit with a slipper. Dennis's dad become a much better character when the editors decided he couldn't just hit Dennis whenever he thought he'd done something wrong. He had to start actually thinking when it came to punishments and that always makes for a much more interesting strip.

Bizarrely in one story Dennis questions why his dad bought a dog lead, because they don't have a dog. They don't have a dog? Did he forget poor old Gnasher?

Dennis is Gnasher's favourite person in the world and he forgot he has a dog.

Either this strip is from before Gnasher was introduced in 1968 or that's just mean.

Slimer! #9, 12 and 13
Hilarie Staton, Howard Bender, Michael Hawkins, John Stangeland, Joseph Allen, Tammy Daniel, Michele Mach, Katherine Llewellyn, Tony Caputo, Gordon Morison, Dan Nakrosis, Mark Braun,

Slimer! was published by Marvel UK in the UK and Now Comics in the US. These issues are all from 1990 and each one contains one eight to nine page story, two short stories and an unrelated single page comic called The Daily Howl about a newspaper by the same name staffed by various horror movie monsters with help from Douglas the tea boy, the one and only human staff member.

Being a go-fer is a dangerous job.

The Daily Howl and all but one of the six shorter Slimer comics come across a bit DC Thompson-like to me. There's something very Beano and Dandy about them. Obviously that's not a complaint, because I love those comics. It's these pages, and a spot the difference where Slimer has great big piles of bangers and mash that look like they came straight out of a Bash Street Kids strip, that make me think that it was actually Marvel UK as opposed to Now who were responsible for this comic.

None of these comics are at all weird.

Actually, I do have one complaint about one of those stories and it's, well is it just me that thinks that maybe someone should have thought twice about putting in a strip with this as its punchline?

If I'd asked you to guess where I'd be most likely to find dodgy and kind of offensive stereotypes, a 1990s spin-off comic about a wacky sidekick ghost or a 1970s collection of strips about a juvenile delinquent would you have guessed the wacky sidekick ghost? I know I wouldn't.

The three main stories involve Slimer going up a pack of wolf ghosts, a dodgy looking pair trying to collect Slimer's slime to sell as engine coolant (they discovered it's cooling properties when one of them accidentally drove through him during a ball game) and a slightly Garfield-esque story about Slimer eating too much.

The other story is a bit of an oddity. It's the first part of a tie in with the first movie, in which Walter Peck (Yes, the man who according to the film version of Peter Venkman has no dick) is trying to ruin everything for the Ghostbusters again. Now that it's been thoroughly proven that ghosts are real and he's an imbecile he is trying to get them shut down for keeping a pet ghost around. That guy is really an arse.

What's weird about it is that it's as much a bit of prose as it is a comic. As much of the story is told in the paragraphs of text at the top of the pages as is in the actual panels. It's a really weird half hearted way of doing a comic. 

And on an unrelated note is it me or does one of the kidnappers in this panel look a bit like Andy Capp?

Join me again next Wednesday for some more Ghostbusters related stuff, volume 1 of Battle Angel Alita, 88 Blues by Nam Dong Yoon and whatever else I feel like reading between now and Sunday.

Pound World Sell The Coolest Toys

When people mention pound shops and toys you might picture dolls with their faces printed in the wrong places, toy guns that look like they'll slice a child's hand up if they hold them,  little plastic houses with furniture twice the height of one of the floors, clone action figures in entirely inappropriate metallic colours, superhero merchandise that looks about as legitimate as a nine pound note and plastic horses whose boxes claim they're ponies and whose heads have fallen off and are rolling around loose in those lying boxes.

And that would all be entirely fair because I've seen all of those things myself, but there are also the totally brilliant toys as well. No really, there are.

This lot for example:

A bunch of cool stuff.

That lot are all pretty awesome and came from my local Pound World and only half of them only cost 50p.

Zoobles!
Zoobles are cool. They're little balls that turn into brightly coloured animals or little brightly coloured animals that turn into balls. One or the other.

They don't look like a whole lot when you take them out of their packets, but tap them against that little magnetic base their heads pop up and you get...

Aren't they cute? ^-^
One weird thing though, Redford (the one in the middle) is blue according to the packet, but the actual Redford there is purple. That's weird, right? I know the figures come in different colours in different sets. Maybe the individual packets have different colours as well and it's just coincidence that the other two match their packaging colours?

Only one way to find out!

Nope! The Redfords have just been packed in the wrong packets. Maybe that's how these ones ended up in Pound World?

Anyway we have...

Buzzabelle!

Harry! (I'm totally going to get Harry in some more colours.)

And of course Redford.

Aren't they cute?
There are eight in this wave. I am so getting the other five.

Next up something I normally see for about £2 each in most stores, but are currently in Pound World on a 2 for a £1 deal.

Littlest Pet Shop figures are adorably cute, so it's pretty obvious I'd be a fan of them. Unfortunately in this case I got the same one twice, but hey, who's going to complain about getting two Tweety-birds for a pound?

"We tought we taw a puddy tat!"

You do find some odd things in pound stores though. Tie in toys for the French release of the Magic Roundabout movie?

Check!

I once read that The Magic Roundabout wasn't so much translated from French to English as a new writer sat down and just made up new dialogue to go with what they were seeing.

I'd like to think that when The Magic Roundabout movie hit France they returned the favour. Hell that's apparently what happened in the US and the UK and US speak the same language! Mostly.

Last up some Hello Kitty toys!

I like Hello Kitty toys. I'm a big fan of Hello Kitty toys. If you were feeling charitable you might call me a collector of Hello Kitty toys. For the less charitable amongst you, hoarder might also be an appropriate term to use.

I also like constructable things, though the buildable Hello Kitty figures are a little disappointing in that regard. None of the pieces from these two figures are compatible with each other, not even the bows. How am I going to make new outfit combinations from all my duplicates if I can't swap parts!?

Oh well, they're only 50p each, so I can't really complain.

"Now you go over there and I'll photograph you pretending to cook."

So to sum up, Pound World have cool toys and you should go have a poke around in there occasionally, specially if you like small, cute things.

And the new organiser of the Web Comic Secret Santa Exchange is...

...me!

Because clearly I don't have enough to do already. : )

Link!

The Web Comic Secret Santa Exchange, which was until recently ran by Sheryl Schopfer of Deer Me (Go check it out!), is exactly what it sounds like, a Secret Santa for webcomic creators. Your name goes in two hats (don't worry I have plenty of hats to choose from) and every creator gets assigned a random comic to produce a Christmas present for.

You're eligible to join up if you have an active webcomic with 20 or more pages in the archive by the time sign ups start next month. If you don't then you can still help out if you like by becoming a safety net elf. What that means is that whilst you won't receive anything you can act as a stand in and jump to the rescue if a participant fails to deliver, because you're such a nice person.

Anyway, you can read more about it here.

Go read more about it.

Go.

Shoo!

Comics I Read Last Week - Week 3

Welcome to the third installment of my weekly feature thing Comics I Read Last Week where I briefly (or not so briefly) talk about comics I read last week. Pretty simple really. I had an unusually hectic week last week so the list's pretty short this time.

Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake #1-6
Natasha Allegri, Patrick Seery, Britt Wilson, Betty Liang, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Lucy Knisley, Whitney Leopard, Rebecca Mock, Kate Leth, Jen Wang, Amanda Thomas, Terry Blas, Kimball Davis,

This is what a messy pile of comics looks like.

Damn there are a lot of people involved in a print comic. That list doesn't cover the cover artists for cover variants I didn't buy, the bizarre error on one inside cover claiming that Amanda Palmer is responsible for colouring a cover or the cover artist(s) for the cover to the cover variant of issue one that I have because it's got a new cover for the second print version and the inside cover only lists the cover artists for the standard cover variants.

That sentence features the word cover twelve times, in case you were tempted to go back and count.

Anyway, I finally got issue six, the final issue of this series on Tuesday, and of course what do you have to do when you pick up the last issue of a story? Read through the whole lot again of course.

In case you've somehow managed to avoid ever hearing of it (What? Do you live under a rock or something?) Fionna and Cake are the gender-flipped versions of Adventure Time's Finn and Jake created by Natasha Allegri (the main writer for this series). They first made their appearance along with their own supporting cast of gender-swapped characters in an astoundingly awesome episode of the third season of the show.

The comic isn't quite as aweome as that episode, but it's still pretty awesome. The main story starts with Fionna and Cake stuck inside because of the rain when they're distracted by a bunch of baby fire lions (which are adorable) fleeing an attack by the Ice Queen. Before our heroes can intervene a boy jumps into the fray, a boy made of fire!

It's a fun, slightly odd, meandering story featuring silly swords, daft costumes, a candy dungeon and a disturbingly bizarre looking Lumpy Space Prince.

Wierdo.

There are also back-up stories in four of the six issues featuring stolen sweaters, sinorses, a disturbing glance at the Lemongrabs and a severe lack of bathing.

The trade for this series isn't out quite yet, but it should be soon and you should buy it when it is.

Son of a Father
Nam Dong Yoon, Translated by Kim Hyun Sook

Son of a Father by Nam Dong Yoon is this week's odd one out being the only one not based on a kids' cartoon and also the only digital comic and the only translated comic. It's the odd one out for a number of reasons really. Coming in at 157 pages, Son of a Father is a collection of stips about a young boy and his parents.

It's one of the comics I got as a backer of the last Kickstarter for The Whole Story, which is a series of collections of completed comics organised by Ryan Estrada, starting at a dollar for the basic bundle, which is still hundreds of pages anyway. I went for the one above that, the Double the Comics bundle, which meant I got this and another of Nam Dong Yoon's books along with a bunch of other stuff.


I didn't particularly enjoy the comic the first time I tried to read it. I don't know why really, because it is actually a pretty good comic. I think it's just one I really have to be in the right mood for. Some comics I can read any time and some not so much. I gave it a second chance though and I enjoyed it a lot more, so yeah, it's definitely worth giving his stuff a try.


My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #9
Katie Cook, Andy Price, Heather Breckel, Neil Uywtake, Bobby Curnow

Yep, another Pony comic. I actually haven't managed to grab issues 7 and 8 yet because my local comic store is useless, but luckily 9 is the start of a completely new story featuring Big Mac going shopping for some nails. Sounds simple enough, right? Of course not! Nothing is ever that easy.

This is another fun, well written and drawn issue and  one of the things I love about these comics is just how much extra stuff there is to notice when you reading through again. In fact I'd say it requires at least one time through without reading any of the dialogue because there are just too many great little details that deserve your attention.

Also, I do like a well presented boom.

Duckula #1-4
Various (uncredited)

I mentioned in last week's entry about there being a much better Duckula comic than Celebrity's attempt and this is it.

The London Editions version of the comic that started a year later in 1990 is a much, much better affair. Like the Dreamstone comic I covered in the first installment of this feature someone at the comic decided they needed to cover the show's first episode in comic form, but unlike the Dreamstone comic they did it well.

Each issue features two different Duckula stories. Most of them are stand alone stories, but the first story in issues one and two is a two part retelling of the first episode, featuring the origin of the good Count, the world's only vegetarian vampire duck. It all comes done, you understand, to a ketchup bottle.

Apparently using ketchup instead of blood in your occult ceremonies to summon the undead has some serious effects.

Other stories feature a Duckula starting a TV station, Duckula starting a band, a disasterous trip to Florida, the lost city of Atlantis, a keep fit obsession and an encounter with the British tabloid media.

I'm joking about that last one. It's really a story about a doppelganger, but y'know, it could have been about the British press.

As well as the two Duckula stories each issue also features an installment of 'Marlin the Magician'. The first part tells his origin where he rescues a time travelling Merlin from a dustbin and he gives him a book of spells in way of a thankyou.  The next three issues are part of a story called "The Back to the Front" in which young Marlin is teleported off to a place where an evil wizard has made everything go all topsy-turvy and everyone say the opposite to what they mean, which leads to a couple of small problems as you'd expect.

I'm not sure why London Editions decided it would be a good idea to include a completely unrelated story alongside the Duckula stories, but it's entertaining enough and who can resist a comic that dedicates half a page to a girl petting a bunny?

Tune in next week for more Duckula, more Bone and a bit of Plagued by Ryan Estrada. Plus whatever else I feel like reading between now and Sunday.

Comics I Read Last Week - Week 2

Welcome to the second installment of my exciting new feature 'Comics I Read Last Week', where I unsurprisingly talk about comics that I read last week. Print or digital, old or new, if I read it in the last week it goes here. Webcomics don't count though unless I've done a massive archive trawl, because really, who wants to hear me talk about the same twenty or so comics ever week? How boring would that be?

Anyway, to the first of the week's comics!

My Little Pony Micro-Series #6 - Applejack
Bobby Curnow, Brenda Hickey, Heather Breckel and Neil Uyetake

Ponies!
Ponies! Ponies! Ponies!
Yay! Ponies! ^_^

...

Right, now I've got that out of the way onto the review. Alongside IDW's normal Friendship is Magic title, featuring longer stories set over 2-4 issues, there's the Micro-Series comics, single stand-alone issues concentrating on one character, or in the case of the Cutey-mark Crusaders issue a group of characters, and whilst the longer stories are nice not having to wait a month to finish a story does have its advantages too.

So, to this issue. It's Hearth's Warming Eve, a major holiday that is definitely not Christmas, and Applejack is freaking out about how much work there is to do, so business as usual then. Well, until someone or something starts replacing a whole bunch of the Apple family's crop with squashes. Something obviously needs to be done and Applejack being Applejack we get this panel:

And Applejack being Applejack it works out exactly as well as you'd expect.

Will she ever learn? Probably not.
Of course things go much better when she lets the rest of the family help.

It's a fun, well written issue with a decent little twist and well worth grabbing if you happy to be a bit of a pony fan.

Sonic The Comic Online #262
Pete Murphy, Stephen Davis, Michael Stephenson, Seumidh MacDonald, Chris Gould, Matthew Bramble and Matt Dittmer

Stephen 'Spydaman' Davis

Stephen 'Spydaman' Davis

So I did say I was going to be doing webcomics and this one is on the web, but it is released in issue form and comes out every couple of months and is a continuation of a print comic that bit the dust back in 2002, so I think it's okay. Sonic the Comic, for those that don't know, was the UK's officially licensed Sonic the Hedgehog comic (with other Sega characters in some of the back-up stories) published by Fleetway Editions / Egmont Magazines. The title launched in 1993 and was one of the publisher's best sellers, but was killed off by publisher stupidity after they implemented their five year reprint cycle, the idea being that five years was the average reader turnover and so most of the readers wouldn't have ever read the reprints. This policy was stupid for multiple reasons. With a set coninuity and plenty of callbacks to earlier issues running reprints alongside new stories didn't really make a whole lot of sense and from issue 185 to issue 223 the comic just ran reprints with no new content at all.

Then it got canned because nobody wants to keep buying the same stories over and over again.

Jump forward to May 2003 and issue 224. Except issue 224 wasn't published by Fleetway/Egmont, wasn't available in newsagents, wasn't officially licensed and most importantly wasn't a whole bunch of reruns. A fan run affair, though wih the support of some of the original comic's staff Sonic the Comic online carries on where issue 184 left off with a whole bunch of new stories.

Issue 262's a good one with three stories, a seven page lead story and two five page back-ups. It doesn't update all that often, but most of the stories are worth a read or three and with 43 standard issues and 11 specials to read there's plenty to keep you busy.

L.Y.K. and Bear #1 
Ray Sumser

Here's a cute one.

I stumbled across this one on Kickstarter. It looked cute, sounded fun and any support of a dollar or more got you a digital copy of the first issue. A cute all ages comic about a kitten for a dollar? How could I pass that up?

Of course I paid more than a dollar, but you know, it was still a very good offer and that's what matters. Did I mention how cute this comic is? Little Yellow Kitten (that's what L.Y.K. stands for you know) is adorable. An absolute troublemaker, but adorable all the same. Bear is also pretty damn cute and the two of them are based on Sumser's cat and childhood teddy bear (who he still has of course) and knowing that somehow just makes the whole thing even more adorable.

The art style is simple, bright and cheerful and the story has a sort of freewheeling anything goes quality to it. Little Yellow Kitty is hungry. You'd think this would be a simple thing to fix, but no, the fridge is empty and the person who should be able to do something about that is missing and maybe, just maybe something got broken and now L.Y.K. and Bear have got themselves in a spot of bother.

I have one issue with this issue, well two I suppose.

One: There are a couple of Twitter messages shown on one page. One of them contains the hashtag #FML and the use of that acronym that I know ain't all that all ages. Yes, it's just an acronym and no, it doesn't use any actual bad words, but I still wouldn't want to be the one answering the question when a kid asks what it means.

Two: You can't seem to buy it yet if you haven't backed the Kickstarter.

So yeah, generally a great, fun and cute little comic that I would recommend, but that you can't seem to buy right now.

Count Duckula #2
Mario Capaldi, Etta Saunders, Andrew Brenner, John Burns, Nancy Hazel, Vin James, Alan Case, Cal Hamilton and Nick Abadzis

Ah, Duckula. You've gotta love old Cosgrove Hall cartoons.

There are three different Duckula / Count Duckula titles that I know of. One published by Marvel, one published by London Editions and this one by Celebrity. I've never read the Marvel one, but between this one from 1989 and the London Editions one from 1990 onwards, this one doesn't fare all that well.

It's not the art that's a problem. The art's spot on. It's not the writing either. The writing's great. There's a single story comic, a one page gag strip and a two page prose story (which would have fitted easily onto one page if they didn't use such a huge typeface).

No, the problem with this comic is that it seems to be put together all wrong and the first problem is that cover. See, that's actually an illustration of that two page story, but there's a bit of a problem with it. Here's a description of the visitor in the story:

"Before him, on the threshold, drenched with rain and lit by flashes of lightning, stands a gruesome figure. It is eight feet tall. and spectre-thin, wrapped in black robes. The face is harrowing and fierce, half-moon glasses perched on a hooked beak. The grey hair is drawn up in a bun."

That's a pretty fair description of the character on the cover I'd say, except for one little problem. Black robes and grey hair? Hmm... Nope, I definitely see green robes and light brown hair. There is clearly some kind of communication problem here. Was the writer working from an inks only version of the cover image or did the artist draw it based on the writer's description and then hand it off to the colourist without any direction and where is the editor in all this?

Then there's the speech bubbles. Somehow they've managed to include pretty much every mistake you can get.

You get panels where the speech bubbles have no outlines:

Panels where the speech bubbles have a dividing line cutting their tails off:

Panels where the borders cut off part of the speech bubbles:

Speech bubbles that don't know where their owners are:

(There are only three characters in this entire scene.)

And speech bubbles that were clearly meant to be at the edge of a panel, but have been moved into the middle for some reason:

The writing and art are both spot on for a Duckula comic. This should be a great comic, but it's a mess. I blame the editor.

The Beezer Book 1975 and The Topper Book 1976
Various (uncredited)

When I was a kid the Beezer and Topper was one of my absolute favourite comics. Unfortunately not that many people seemed to feel the same way and in 1993 it was canned with its more popular strips being picked up sister comics The Beano and The Dandy. The Dandy of course has gone the same way now, leaving just the Beano.


Before that though there was The Beezer and there was The Topper, two completely seperate comic that were eventually forced together becaue neither of them were selling quite as well as they used to. Back in the '70s though? Back in the '70s they were doing just fine.

I picked up these annuals for 50p each along with a few old Dandy annuals, Beano annuals and even an old Denis the Menace book. Bargain.

Being the older one, and because the comic I used to read as a kid was called Beezer and Topper, I'll start with the Beezer. It's an interesting read, a mix of stuff I remember, stuff I've never seen before and stuff that I sort of remember, but not quite that way.

One thing that hasn't changed all that much is The Numskulls, a strip about little people that live inside someone's head and basically run the whole show.

 

The Numskulls is still running in the Beano. These days they run a boy named Edd, but back in 1975 they were in control of a balding man who liked to viit museums. The character designs have changed slightly, but not all that much.


One that should have survived, but didn't is Black Bun.

An adorable little bunny rabbit beating up a farmer. Who wouldn't want to read that? I think we should all campaign for DC Thomson to bring back this lovable little lagomorph or at the very least get them to put out a best of volume, because the world needs more comics about rabbits.

On the flipside there are some things that are probably best left in the past, whether it be this thing...

...or the comic's dubious representations of native Americans, and no, I don't mean the cover. I mean this:

Ah, the 1970s!



Now for The Topper!

Yes. Yes, you are Foxy, twice, and you manage to do it without any hugely offensive stereotypes. Well done.

The big survivor from this book is this young lady.

Beryl the Peril (unsurprisingly created by David Law, the same guy who came up with Dennis the Menace) managed to stay in print from 1953 to 2007 when she was finally dropped from the Dandy. It'd be fun to see her brought back alonside Dennis. They're very, very similar characters. I'd like to see them try and outdo each other.

Hoozee the Wotsit, the Dr Seuss-ish thing who doesn't even know what he's supposed to be himself didn't fare so well though.

Is it just me or does this character from The Fabulous Whizzers from Ozz look a bit like Fidal Castro did back in the '70s?

He's a rebel leader trying to blow up a railway bridge belonging to a British run mine, which currently has children crossing it. Later in the story he gets punched out by a remote control flying car. Subtle it ain't.


Well, that's all for now. Next week expect more My Little Pony, some Adventure Time and the better Duckula comic, plus whatever else I feel like reading. In the meantime I'll be organising the campaign to bring back Black Bun.

Ryan Estrada is looking for suggestions for the next Whole Story

So yeah, what the title says.

The Whole Story is a really neat idea, a really, really neat idea. Bundles of DRM free digital comics starting at a single, solitary dollar for the basic bundle (though I'm pretty sure nobody would mind if you felt like paying a whole lot more). For readers it's a good way to discover new creators and for creators it's a good way to get a whole bunch of new readers, and also some money. Everybody wins!


To quote from the last Whole Story Kickstarter:

"The Whole Story is all about digital done right. We put our time and money into offering the best first-run comics, new translations, and high quality, complete versions of old favorites. We don’t force you to read them on certain devices or in certain apps, we let you download and keep your comics forever. We don’t force you to pay more than cover price, we let you name your own price.

Our books are bundled together in pay-what-you-want collections, and every book we bring you is a complete, stand-alone story. No cliffhangers that force you to pay more to find out what happens next! You can choose between Retina-resolution PDFs (for the highest quality), Web-resolution PDFs (for easy storage), or CBZs (in both resolutions, for use in comic-reading apps), all of which are DRM-free so you can download and keep them forever."

Check out the official twitter account here for more information or if you want to submit or suggest something email Ryan Estrada at ryan@ryanestrada.com

A quick art request

The Owl And The Reindeer

As requested by a friend on Twitter. It took me about an hour and forty minutes all in, which is probably way longer than it should have.

Stuff and Nonsense has a new website!

...but the same old rubbish comics.

Feel free to look anyway if you want though.

Comics I Read Last Week - Week 1

So this is a thing I'm going to be doing from now on. Every Monday I'm going to post ridiculously brief reviews of all the comics I've read the previous week, old or new, print or digital. I'm not going to be covering webcomics, otherwise I'd end up mentioning the same twenty or so comics almost every week and that would be very, very boring.

I'll talk about those some other time.

Anyway, let's get on with this week's, or more precisely I suppose last week's, bunch of comics.


The Complete Bone Adventures Volume 1

I'd been meaning to check out Bone by Jeff Smith for quite a while having heard a hell of a lot of good stuff about it, so I got volumes 1 and 2 back in December and then, uh, took until now to actually read one of them. I wasn't dissapointed and I'm definitely not going to wait so long to read the second volume.

I must admit the start didn't exactly grab me. I don't know why, but I just didn't really enjoy the first few pages that much, but that all changed at about 23 pages in. The rest of the volume from that point on was great and I'd definitely suggest that anyone that enjoys comics that are fun, cute and full of adventure and terrifying mosters to check it out.

UK Web & Mini comix Thing 2008 Anthology

This is one you might have a bit of trouble getting your hands on, but it's definitely worth it if you can. The Thing was a comic con held in London each year between 2004 and 2010. I only went twice because I was living up the wrong end of the country (still am in fact) and I picked up this anthology at the 2009 (I think) Thing. Obviously this is a reread. I haven't just had the thing sat on a shelf for the last four years. It's far too good for that.

I must admit there are a few comics that I'm not such a fan of, but there are some really, really great ones in there. And giraffes, lots of giraffes for some reason.

It's very good and you'll probably never see a copy.

Adventure Time Volume 1

Do you like Aventure Time? Do you like comics? Do you have issues 1 - 4 of the Boom! Studios comic of the same name? If the answers to these questions are yes, yes and no then you need to buy this right now without question.

Oh, and pay close attention to the botton of the pages. :)

 The Sandman - The Doll's House 

Do I really need to write anything about this one? I suppose I should.

Hmm... Nope!
Moving on...


Odd-Fish Book 1 - Inexplicable Zebras

Here's another neat thing I picked up at the Thing. (See what I did there?) Odd-Fish is a nifty webcomic which you can read right here. It's not currently updating, but if you like three panel gag comics filled with highly detailed monochrome pictures of sea life making terrible puns, and who doesn't like highly detailed monochrome pictures of sea life making terrible puns, then check it out.

The Dream Stone issues 2-6

The Dream Stone was a brilliant cartoon back in the 90s and the fact that it's not currently on air is an absolute travesty. Whilst issue 1 of the comic is pretty rubbish, just a bunch of captioned stills from a VHS copy of the first episode, the next five issues are pretty brilliant, each containing one full, self contained, well paced little story.

Artist Tim Perkins has been quoted as saying that issues 7 and 8 were already in production when the title was cancelled and that sucks because these are some really fun comics. I like fun comics.

Wartortle is the Height of Fashion

Wartortle is a very fashion conscious wartortle.

An Important Public Service Announcement

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