Word: comicalities
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...Orchid," (Sparkplug Comic Books; $8; 116pp.) contains seven black and white adaptations of Victorian-era short stories, all of which involve shocking apparitions. It's a brilliant conceit by editors Ben Catmull and Dylan Williams. The most amusing of these is "Tobermory," adapted by Gabrielle Bell from a story by H.H. Munro, about a housecat who, upon being taught to speak, reveals its owner's most embarrassing secrets. Fantastic animals become a kind of sub-theme, as in David Lasky's adaptation of E.A. Poe's "The Raven." Testing the definition of a comic, instead of containing distinct images...
Comix' greatest bargain, "SPX 2002" gets you over 300 pages of engrossing comix for only ten bucks. If that doesn't make you feel good, the money you spend goes to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization with the superheroic mission of defending the First Amendment rights of commix artists. Published in conjunction with the recent Small Press Expo (see TIME.comix coverage), "SPX 2002" has nearly fifty comix artists (most of them unknown) working in a short biographical format. Subjects run wildly from the man in the Godzilla suit to ethnobotonist Richard Evans Schultes...
...matter where they begin, Barry's stories always end up somewhere unexpected, and sometimes they're dark, frightening places you never thought a comic strip could take you to. A meditation on growing out a short haircut ends with Barry's cutting her best friend out of her life forever. We don't usually look to comic strips for insights into teen sexuality, but every parent in America should be forced to eavesdrop on the 12-year-old Barry and her friend as they talk over their early experiments while sewing reversible tote bags in home ec. There...
...Hundred Demons deserves a place on the shelf with serious graphic novels like Art Spiegelman's Maus, but oddly enough, Barry is a fan of the most cozily, comfortably predictable comic strip of them all, Family Circus. "It's my absolute favorite comic in the world!" she gushes. "All the people I know who grew up in difficult situations love it. For me it's like looking through a circle to a world where everything is good." The world of One Hundred Demons may not be good, but it's far closer to the real...
...election day in Iran, and a female official has landed on the remote island of Kish to be chauffeured by a gruff soldier and collect the locals' votes. It's a comic chore for all concerned. One old fellow wonders why his favorite candidate, God, isn't listed. There are no hanging-chad jokes, but the film's spare wit is as applicable to Broward County as to the Persian Gulf. Secret Ballot offers further evidence that an Islamic regime can foster humanist satires with a critical, political edge...