Bear Pit Zine #1

bearpitzines.tumblr.com

This is an anthology of Bristol, UK based comics artists and features work by several comic artists who's stuff I've read, reviewed, and enjoyed before (namely Lando, Simon M., and Nick Souček).

The lead comic by Simon M is a simple idea, but executed well. It features a single scene of a bridge and a town, but presents it at various intervals throughout time. What happens to the bridge and the town in these pictures may not tell a full story, but it does gives hints of bigger events in the surrounding events.

Souček's comic focuses on the absurdity of trying to live each day as if it were your last. Would you go to work? Of course not! Would you plan for tomorrow or have long term goals? By definition you couldn't. Souček decides that while he may not have been making the most of his life before, he can focus on working on smaller things, as long as they succeed in making him and his friends lives slightly happier lives. (Of course as he's currently cycling across Australia by himself, I guess he decided to work on larger projects too.)

Lando's comic is similar to many of his others, in that it is set in a seemingly post-apocalyptic/alien setting filled with tiny details, snake people, skeletons, and giant floating credit cards. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it makes me incredibly curious about the world, and just what the hell is going on in it.

Of the remaining pieces Dani A. does a pretty neat piece on graffiti artists and their interactions with the police in late 1980s Bristol, while Deemo's features giant mutated sea monkeys (see below).

There are some things in here that I didn't really enjoy, but that is to be expected with anthologies, and for the most part I liked everything in here. If only more anthologies focused on urban decay and existentialism.