Apartment 307

By Josh Blair, Pete Borrebach (w/ Nick Marino), and Noah van Sciver
audioshocker.com

This comic anthology is based around a pretty neat that unites three cartoonists based on the one thing they all have in common: they all live in aptartment 307. (Not the same apartment of course, they live in different cities across America.)

But before we get into the actual comic I have to mention that contributor Noah van Sciver is the younger brother of Ethan van Sciver (who draws Green Lantern and stuff for DC and Marvel). Crazy!

The three different comics are about living in apartments, or rather about living on the third floor of apartments (there are lots of stairs involved). Blair's comic uses a combination of text and simple images to tell about how he hates walking up all the stairs to his apartment. And yet, it's not really that many stairs (only 42!), and he kind of hates himself for not being able to go up them easily.

Borrebach's comic starts off kind of strange and gruesome (roadkill and vultures), but continues on to more reasonable topics about living in an apartment and the ideas of "community" that some people try to create there (creepy ones, not good ones), before veering off into fantasy and violence.

Van Sciver's comic is not really what I expected from someone with that last name, but it's also the best drawn comic in here. Noah's style is very different from his brother, but he's creating very different types of comics (though I'd kind of love to see a Green Lantern comic he created) and it works well. I especially liked the filthy self-caricature he draws.

Van Sciver's comic deals with his quest to find a roommate, and how he feels as though he's turning his room into a womb from which he can hide from the world. It's kind of depressing, but it's told with enough self-deprecating humour that it's still enjoyable to read.