Though Quite Different Than What It Would Become, MAD #1 Is an Auspicious Start
OnMAD #1 — talking about the original 1952 issue, not the 2018 relaunch — was quite different from what MAD would evolve into, but an auspicious beginning.
Category: Comic Reviews
Review: Battle Angel Alita – Last Order, Volume 18
OnSince the return of Alita, the titular Battle Angel, and her eclectic group of friends, we’ve been treated to a series with a few interesting ideas and a large number of lumbering, slow-moving expanses of non-story overstuffed with oddball characters and fighting…
Review: Nuts
OnI’m not sure what it is, but it seems that Fantagraphics is reading my mind about collections to publish. After reading the excellent Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead by Rick Meyerowitz about the National Lampoon — featuring some of the best work from…
Review: Iron Man: Extremis
OnWhen people think of Marvel superheroes, usually the first ones that spring to mind are Spider-Man, Wolverine (or any of the high-profile X-Men), Captain America, the Incredible Hulk or the Punisher. Iron Man didn’t get the same kind of high-profile position until…
Review: Comix, Essays, Graphics and Scraps: From Maus to Now to Maus to Now
OnIt might be a little odd to have an Art Spiegelman book that doesn’t have a whole lot of comix, and mostly essays, but it works. Comix, Essays, Graphics and Scraps: From Maus to Now to Maus to Now is a catalog published…
Review: Any Similarity To Persons Living Or Dead is Purely Coincidental
OnI think I’ve mentioned before that Liquid Television was both hugely influential on me and kinda turned out to be an animated version of RAW. And it was Liquid TV where I first saw the work of RAW and, later MAD contributor,…
Review: Four Color Fear
OnFantagraphics is known as much for their work with new and innovative artists as for their archival projects — and for the high quality of both. They recently got the EC Comics license and have been putting out artist-themed compilations like Corpse…
Review: The Adventures of Blanche
OnRick Geary is a wonderful cartoonist known for a lot of things — he’s contributed to National Lampoon and MAD (he’s in the current issue even!), he’s worked with Harvey Pekar on stories for American Splendor, but the thing he’s probably most…
Graphic Novel Review: The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
OnCover via Amazon Some time ago, I reviewed a naughty little animated film on Kittysneezes entitled The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, an exercise in excess written and directed by Rob Zombie. While it may seem like this movie was nothing more…
Review: Axe Cop, Volume 1
OnI never thought it’d turn out that I’d be for enforced, mandatory child labor. But then I read Axe Cop, the comic written by a 6-year-old, and drawn by his 30-year-old brother, and honestly, it’s convinced me that we need to get…