Dear Dear

By Eroyn Franklin

eroynfranklin.com

My first time through this comic I wasn't really sure what was going on. The story cuts back and forth between multiple people disjointedly talking into a video camera and telling about an event that happened one night. Like many eye witnesses to events they misremember things, get real events completely wrong, combine real memories with dreams, and come at things from incredibly bizarre points of view.

After I finished reading through the comic I thought about it for a while and tried to figure out what had happened. When it hit me, I went back and checked some stuff and suddenly everything clicked. The seeming nonsense that one person said actually made sense once you were able to filter it back to reality.

I thought this was a really interesting way of telling a story, one that I've seen before (usually in film), but which can be used really effectively by some creators. My only wish is that this comic was much longer. I feel like we get, at most, half of what was going on here, and that if there were more interviews with more characters we could get a fuller sense of the events.

Of course it could be that the creator didn't want to create a more defined account of what happened, and that their goal was to make the reader think and wonder about all the elements of the story that we can never find out about.

Travel and Going Stories

By Claro

So after months and months it's hard to get back into the swing of writing reviews. I'd much rather procrastinate doing my homework in some other way!

But I keep getting more zines, and if I'm ever going to read them all I need to get reviewing, so here we go!

Travel and Going Stories is a travel zine, but whereas most travel zines are about an entire trip, Claro has made the choice of creating a zine that only covers the journey of getting somewhere. Claro takes a taxi across Newfoundland, hitchhikes in Ontario,  gets lost in a field full of stinging nettles somewhere, and has other adventures, but I generally have no idea why they were going to these places.

This doesn't bother me, as I liked these short travel stories of things that could have gone horribly wrong somehow, but ended up working out alright in the end. Some of them reminded me of some of the trips I've gone on: sleeping under a table in a hallway in Montreal, or hoping that we could get in touch with my friend's friend after we got stuck in the middle of nowhere hitchhiking.

The layout and design is kind of strange, switching between text that was created on a typewriter, handwritten, and even cut out and pasted. This can happen in the middle of a sentence! But while that seems like it might really mess with the reading experience I didn't actually find it that problematic, and found this zine to be an enjoyable read.

Hewin' a Nutshell: Tales from Past Lives

By Hew

Perzines are a pretty common thing in the world of zines. (Probably the most common thing.) People writing about their own lives, what they're doing, and what they're thinking. But there really is a difference between writing about what you did for yourself (in a diary or something) and writing for other people. Everyone's personality and viewpoints will colour their recollection of events (and eventually you end up with memories of memories that might have little to do with what actually happened). Writing for an audience can create an extra layer that separates the written word from reality, as you edit what you want other people to know about.  At some point I'd love to read two different zines that cover the same event, and see how different people recall and put emphasis on different things.

What a ludicrously long introduction.

This zine is a perzine, but in some ways it seems more "authentic" than other perzines because it is mostly just reproductions from Hew's old notebooks. There's still an editorial process as he chose what to include and what not to, but none of the content was originally created with others in mind.

There's a collection of things from various to do lists ("build 2 sawhorses"), random poetry and lyrics, things Hew had written down to look up and never looked up (something I know all too well), and random stories and doodles. It's pretty chaotic, but there's some neat stuff in here too.

24 Hour Zines: Part 2

The second zine I made at the Roberts Street 24 Hour Zine Challenge was one I've been planning to make for ages, and finally the stars were right as the Dartmouth Comics Arts Festival was happening just a couple of weeks later.

I was inspired by the Dino Saw Us sticker book some people I know made at a UK comicon a few years ago, and the Panini sticker albums in which people try to collect stickers for each member of a soccer/football team (or whatever, I remember having Ghostbusters ones as a kid). I combined both ideas and listed every person/group who had a table, gave their website address, and included a space for a sticker.

I didn't tell anyone I was doing this, so I was kind of terrified everyone would hate it. But on the actual day I gave out stickers to all the artists, and they all seemed happy to participate. We ran out of albums by the end of the day (I had made over one hundred!), and a lot of people (especially kids) really enjoyed collecting all the stickers. There were numerous comments online saying how cool they were, and the organizer asked me to do it again for next year. A clear success!

I went around at the end of the day and got stickers from most of the people that were still there. I won't post all the pages here, but you can see the whole album on imgur or on facebook.

24 Hour Zines: Part 1

The Roberts Street Social Centre had their 24 Hour Zine Challenge last month. I went and, in addition to eating some pancakes, make a couple of zines.

The first was the newest issue of the Halifax Comic Jam anthology. I didn't draw much of this issue, but I scanned it all in, did some digital editing, designed the cover, and laid it all our. Hurray!

The cover was pretty fun to make. I found a jam jar in the fridge (I can't remember what was in it, but it wasn't jam...), soaked it in water, pealed off the label, dried it off, scanned it, and edited it on the computer.

You can find the Halifax Comics Jam on Facebook. Their next event is on September 25th.

Mustaches for Fun and Profit

By BT Livermore
www.robopocalypse.com

Well here's one almost sure way to get your 24 hour comic finished, only draw one panel per page! And draw it at quarter size. That way you can spend almost an hour drawing and letting just one picture. Easy!

Livermore's tale is more like those old fashioned comic strips like Rupert the Bear which featured a large picture and some text above/underneath than a "proper" comic, but whatever really. The author is a much bigger fan of facial hair than I am, having spent most of the last decade with some type of facial hair or other. This is despite the fact that it took him ages to actually grow a proper moustache. (Speaking of which, dude with long hair from Far East Movement needs to shave. Dude!)

Um, anyway, the comic features a brief history of moustaches in general (wait, how do I spell that word anyway?!), tales of Livermore's facial hair in particular (and the horror that comes when he doesn't have any), the "Brotherhood of the Handlebar", and more. It's pretty amusing, and would make a good companion to this other moustache zine.



And even if the rest of the comic had been completely and utterly terrible (which it certainly wasn't), I'd still like it if only for the amazing logo on the back cover check this out! Robots yeah!

Things: A 24 Hour Comic

By James Wilkinson

I reviewed another 24 hour comic recently, and in my review I said that they can often degenerate into nonsense. This one really doesn’t take very long to do so as after three pages of plot it degrades into stick figures and other poorly drawn characters making bizarre jokes and metatextual statements (at one point a character even asks “You really think there are still people reading at this point?”).

Eventually it becomes incredibly self-referential and Wilkinson starts drawing other people at the 24 hour comic event he was attending. As such it’s an interesting look into the thought processes someone creating a 24 hour comic goes through, but perhaps not as effective a comic. It’s too bad as I liked the first few pages.

(Oh, an idea. I’d love to see someone do a Joe Sacco style journalism comic about a 24 hour comic event. That’d be pretty neat.)

Wilkinson included a letter along with the comic when he sent it to me. In it he explains that he spent forever drawing the first few pages, and then had to rush through the rest. He says that he “found it a very useful excersize for [...] creating comics, rather than agonising about creating something that’s perfect and therefore creating nothing.”

True words. So when’s the next 24 hour comic or zine event? Someone invite me to one so that I can get off my ass and make something.

Flower Eater Issue One

By Will Kirkby
chamonkee.livejournal.com

24 hour comics are curious things. I think they're really more about going out and just doing something. Making comics (or zines, or whatver) instead of sitting around thinking about making them. (This is advice I should really take more, as I wonder why I've only made one zine in the last four months.)

However, one of the "rules" of 24 hour comics (such that the are) is that you have to go into the comic without any plot plans. This does seem to lead to lots of comics where things just happen one after the other without reason, then either get wrapped up in some ridiculous manner or just stop, leaving you wonder what's going to happen next. This isn't to say there aren't some awesome 24 hour comics (or that you can't make your 24 hour comic part one, I mean look what Kevin Cannon did), but that you often end up with comics that kind of meander and don't really go anyway.

And that's pretty much what you get out of Kirkby's comic. People eat flowers to gain powers, there's a bunch of fight scenes, a talking cat, a giant, talking frog, and...that's it. There's clearly a massive world with lots of backstory here, and Kirkby's art is something I generally enjoy (though some parts of this seemed a bit weaker than some of his other work, understandably so), but it just falls a bit flat.

As part of a larger work it would probably do just fine, but as a stand alone comic, with no apparent sequel coming it's a bit disappointing. The wrap-around cover is really good though.

Marina: A 24-hour comic

Marina: A 24-hour comic
By Emily Block
Fortune Cookie Comics
Half sized.

24 hour comics are pretty bad ass. I did a 24 hour art marathon once, though I just made artist trading cards, and even after 24 hours you can still probably cut out pictures from magazines and glue them to pieces of cardboard even if you can’t draw any more.

(I was actually supposed to do a second last year, but ended up too sick to do more than a few hours. Drat).

I’ve wanted to do a 24 hour zine for a while, but just haven’t had the opportunity. This year! I commit myself.

But back to the comic. This entirely silent comic (no lettering makes it easier to complete in 24 hours) is about a girl who can fly, for some reason. Or glide. Something like that. She falls off a cliff to imitate seagulls, much to her mother’s despair, but it works out okay, and later she has to go rescue her father.

Block’s art is pretty good, there are some pretty rad facial expressions here, and I like her seagulls. As with most 24 hour comics, the art does suffer a bit towards the end. A note by Block saying that she is “never drawing water again” at the bottom of the third last page is pretty telling of the insanity that sets in around that point. I also got the feeling that the main character changed clothes so that Block wouldn’t have to do any more cross hatching.

It’s cute throughout, and Marina seems like a pretty awesome little girl, sort of reminiscent of Ponyo.