A Moroccan Werewolf in London

By Phil Hatchard
www.evilflea.com

Werewolves! Everyone loves werewolves! I love werewolves! Werewolves that cook carrots for stick figure versions of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and a hunchback of some kind. Plus astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin make appearances in full spacesuits. What is there not to love?

Well, the fact that it doesn’t really make a lot of sense, as there’s no coherent narrative. But I really like the drawings of the werewolf, the other monsters, and the astronauts (fish swimming around their fishbowl heads!), so I’m recommending it anyway.

And this review isn't short because I'm heading down to London for NYE. Nooooo, I would never do that...

Space Dracula

By Ben Clark
www.magicbeanscomics.co.uk
renegadeartsentertainment.com/spinechillers/comic-strip

The whole premise of this comic is in the title. Dracula gets sick of Earth, builds a spaceship, and flies off to conquer the rabbit-men of Mars.

The art is mostly floating heads speaking dialogue (so easy to draw!), and the story is pretty slight, but I was fairly amused for the forty or so seconds it took me to read this.

I don't really have anything else to say about this one.

People I Know #10

(Thanks to Timothy's site for the cover image.)

By Timothy Winchester
www.timothywinchester.com

Ooooh, a flip comic! How exciting! This one takes the interesting idea of taking the same story and ending it in two different ways: "How it was" and "How it should have been". What this means in the simplest terms is that there are actually quite a lot of repeated panels. In fact the first two pages of both comics are identical. However, that's not a deal breaker as the rest of the comic diverges quite a lot and we have two very different endings.

The story starts off with the cover character hanging out in her space ship, talking to her robot, and trying on various outfits for the bounty hunter awards (as she is a space bounty hunter, no I did not guess that from the cover either). Soon she gets some sort of space-video-hologram-phone call from her boyfriend and she rushes off to see him on the planet Platurn for one of two very different reasons depending on which side you're reading.

I actually read the "how it should have been" ending first, and I'm kind of glad I did, as the "real" ending was far more exciting and violent! The "good" ending had more robots and monsters though, a conundrum.

I think part of the appeal here is that Winchester's character designs are quite cute and the characters seem excitable and happy, so seeing them (or at least imaginging them) be bounty hunters and do horrible things to people is kind of shocking to the reader. Even if that's not the reason, it's pretty amusing.

Oh, and if you go to his site there's lots of comics featuring Thundercats, Lady Gaga, and other weird popculture things.

Sinatra in Space

www.pintsizepixel.com

Sinatra has been kidnapped, and brought forward in time so that some guy can win a contest. Now he’s stuck on the moon, and has to get a job to pay rent. Shitty!

I learnt several things from this zine, including three reasons why I do not want to live on this version of the moon.
1. It’s a monarchy (the moon king is either a giant cat, or has a giant cat with a crown that he likes to watch chase people dressed up as mice).
2. Giant flesh-eating sewer slugs are a major problem for people of all walks of life.
3. You have to pay rent.

It’s amusing, and the art is pretty good (though I definitely prefer the thin lined art style that is used on some of the pages). I have almost no reference point for Sinatra though, he was a singer? And in movies? My knowledge of things that are not giant space lizards is apparently lacking.