Category Archives: Reviews

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Top 5: Superhero Funnybooks
(…That Are Actually Funny)

  By Ju-osh M. • February 17, 2015 , ,

37The term ‘funnybook’ is a holdover from a bygone era. An era when people still used the word ‘bygone’ and bought comic books that aimed to tickle their funny-bone instead of firing off some weird, alpha-male, wish fulfillment synapses in the pleasure centers of their brain.

Ah, but even in today’s grim ‘n’ gritty world of pseudo-realistic superhero comics there still exist a few books that aspire to be silly. There aren’t many (and they never last long), but they’re out there: Honest-to-goodness, capital-F Funnybooks — just like Grandma used to read! Listed below are five of my favorites.
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Top 5: Sappy Spider-Man Comics

  By Ju-osh M. • February 14, 2015 , ,

99Spider-Man has always had girl troubles. From his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 to whatever movie Marvel is releasing this year, the wisecracking web-head has rarely been lucky when it comes to love. Oh, sure, he’s had girlfriends. He’s even been married. But each and every affair inevitably ended in disaster. Death, dumping, a Marvel mandated mind-wipe — the deeper the love, the more messed-up the break-up. But does Spider-Man allow any of that to dim his dream of true love? Hells no. Skip ahead a few issues, and a new gal walks through Spidey’s door (or flies past his window…or punches him in the face while fleeing the scene of a crime…) and his lower half’s spider-sense starts tingling once more. Oh, comics. Ah, l’amour! Continue reading

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Book Review:
Cinderella - A Dream Come True

  By Ju-osh M. • January 28, 2015 , ,

tumblr_nina67jU5i1ske259o7_1280Cinderella: A Dream Come True may only be 8” tall, but it is PACKED with gorgeous concept art and insightful behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

The first half of the 160-page hardcover is a delightful re-telling of Walt Disney’s Cinderella. What makes this ‘storybook’ section so special are the illustrations. The book uses crystal-clear stills from the film, Mary Blair’s pretty pastel concept art and various pieces of pencil animation and storyboard excerpts to bring the text to life.

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All-Time Favorites: Genshiken

  By Ju-osh M. • March 26, 2014 , ,

97Shimoku Kio’s Genshiken is one of my all-time favorite comedy comics. It’s like a Robert Altman remake of The Breakfast Club, only instead of high school students in Saturday detention, it’s about college kids in an extracurricular otaku club.

Genshiken‘s large cast of characters comprises pretty much every factor of nerdom, from the geek chic to the geek elite to those unapologetically un-hip nerds who take pride in their outsider status. Reading their rambling conversations about comics, cartoons, cosplay and love (lots and LOTS about love!) is often as hilarious as it is cringe-worthy. Hilarious, because most comics/cartoons fans have had similar discussions. Cringe-worthy, because…do I really sound like that?! Continue reading

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Comic Book Review: ‘Silver Surfer: Requiem’

  By Ju-osh M. • March 18, 2014 ,

001_smallSince the Silver Surfer’s inception in 1966, the character has been an outlet for countless authors’ overwrought, over-written, middle-aged angst.

But is it any wonder why?

Unlike most of Marvel’s menagerie, the Silver Surfer isn’t a fast-talking teenager or a testosterone fueled he-man. He’s an intellectual alien prone to alliterate elegies and impassioned pleas for peace. If you’re a corporate comics writer with a flash drive full of unpublished poetry, you couldn’t ask for a better mouthpiece.

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Book Review: Bill Peet: An Autobiography

  By Ju-osh M. • February 18, 2014 ,

61AZR4XSB2LYou know that old expression, “If it looks like a fish and swims like a fish, it probably is a fish”? Bill Peet: An Autobiography blows this ol’ axiom all to hell. Here’s how:

It’s written like a children’s book. It’s illustrated like a children’s book. The first 1/4 of the book detailing Peet’s poor, provincial childhood would easily appeal to a child reader.

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Our Friend, Martin: An Awkward Yet Effective Time-Travel Tribute To The Slain Civil Rights Leader

  By Ju-osh M. • January 20, 2014 ,

Our Friend, Martin, Robert Brousseau and Vincenzo Trippetti’s 1999 time-travel tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., is as awkward as it is engaging. The dialogue is cringe-worthy. The jokes are even worse. The animation looks like Captain Planet, and the voice acting sounds like it’s comprised entirely of first takes. Yet despite its many, many flaws, the movie manages to be an oddly effective bit of After School Special-style ‘edutainment.’

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Comic Book Reviews: ‘Batman: The Deal’ & ‘Superman: God’s End’

  By Ju-osh M. • January 8, 2014 ,

222Quell Your New Year’s Neurosis With These Two FREE Comics!

The new year often brings with it some serious soul-searching. Like the mid-year and end-of-the-year soul-searching, this beginning-of-the-year soul-searching is usually pretty depressing. Some folks will tell you to simply ‘snap out of it.’ Take a walk. Pop a pill. Buy a puppy. Not me. Over the years, I’ve found that the best way to stop feeling sorry for myself is to momentarily engage with something far more miserable — like, say, a maudlin movie or a particularly bleak book.

Don’t get me wrong. Human interaction works…sometimes. But other times it’ll leave you feeling far worse than before. That’s why I recommend art. Even at its most grim and gritty, well done art has the power to be life-altering. Inspiring, even.

This morning I had just such an experience with Gerardo Preciado and Daniel Bayliss’ two FREE, unofficial, online comics, Batman: The Deal and Superman: God’s End. Both of these comics are undoubtedly downers, yet both of them also planted the seeds of hope within me.

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Comic Book Review: Black Jack Vol. 1

  By Ju-osh M. • November 5, 2013 ,

book_blackjack01Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack answers the age old question: What would an EC Comic by Carl Barks look like?

I must admit, I didn’t know what to expect when I first picked up Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack Volume 1. While Tezuka’s Astro Boy is often hailed as the cornerstone of modern manga, reading it has always felt to me like more of a ‘study of the grand masters’ than an honest-to-goodness engaging read. (Sort of like reading the first few dozen issues of Superman or The Green Lantern — the art’s amazing and the characters are iconic, but goddamn if the stories aren’t repetitive.)

But Black Jack? Wow.

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Cartoon Review: gdgd Fairies

  By Ju-osh M. • October 29, 2013 ,

aagdgd Fairies puts the ‘sweet’ in “Sweet Jesus, what am I watching?!”

My current cartoon obsession, the one that has all but whisked me away from family, friends and my gal, Mishka, is gdgd Fairies. It’s a lo-fi anime series about three young fairies (naive pkpk, troublemaker shrshr and deadpan krkr) with limited magical abilities and lots and lots to say.

I love it. Will you?

I dunno. That really depends on your penchant for surreal silliness and Nth degree meta-humor, not to mention perversely plotted segments linked together using only the flimsiest of premises. Did you like David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s Mr. Show? Cuz gdgd Fairies is a lot like that. Except where Bob and Dave were working in sketch and stand-up, gdgd creator/animator Sōta Sugaharathe uses anime and YouTube clips.

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All-Time Favorites: Lilo & Stitch

  By Ju-osh M. • October 18, 2013 , ,

ouchIt’s a silly, little Disney cartoon about an alien whose spaceship crash lands in Hawaii. So why does it reduce me to a blubbering mess of snot and tears every time I watch it?

Oh, yeah. Cuz it’s also a HEARTBREAKING ODE to the FRAGILITY OF FAMILY and one of the MOST BEAUTIFUL ANIMATED FILMS ever produced.

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Comic Book Review:
Gus & His Gang

  By Ju-osh M. • October 9, 2013 ,

1French cartoonist Christophe Blain approaches the Western genre in much the same way as the comic books of old. His stories are short, exciting, melodramas full of bank robbers and beautiful women — and occasionally, bank robbers who are beautiful women.* But where the Western comics of the 1950s downplayed dialogue in favor of action scenes, Blain does the opposite. The bank heists, train robberies, and fistfights in Gus are often brief, four or five panel affairs, while the title character’s inept attempts at wooing can easily eat up four or five pages. Normally, this might imply an artist’s unease with action, but with Blain, this is clearly not the case. He’s one of those rare, Kirby-esque cartoonists whose every brush stroke packs a punch. So why would Blain even bother to write a Western if he was only going to use the genre as a Christmas tree with which to hang his brightly colored characters and vivid, engaging, and above all, hilarious dialogue? For the same reason that novelists like Elmore Leonard and film directors like Howard Hawks did: because it’s fun.
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