Sorte

By Cav Bøgelund
abenmaler.dk

At times in the past I've wondered if something I've reviewed on this site counts as a minicomic. I will admit right away that Sorte does not count in any way except actual size (it's small!).

Sorte is part of a series of small, square comics put out by Aben Maler as part of the 676 series of work by Danish artists. Lots of them looked pretty interesting but this is the one you should get because it's entirely silent and thus you need absolutely no knowledge of Danish to understand what's going on (I think every other book I looked at had at least some Danish in it somewhere).

Sorte features a soul stealing monster of some kind (who appears on the cover) traveling through a creepy city full of tall, dark buildings at night, and seemingly killing poeple and stealing their souls. What does this creature have in mind for the souls? You'd probably guess that it's not very positive, and while to be honest writing this sentence made me wonder if maybe it could actually be positive, all I will tell you about the rest of the story is that it features a body in a box in a tree, some sort of weird mystical magic stuff, and a costume change.

Bøgelund's art here is really fantastic. It reminds me of a number of different creators, none of whom I can remember the names of right now but at least one of whom is European. Everything is drawn in a stark black and white, the cities seem empty, the landscapes seem desolate, the creatures seem kind of scary.

The detail in each panel varies, with certain ones using more simplified character designs that still manage to keep hold of the character's apparent traits and have them be recognizable. Other panels manage to show the emotion of the cover character, which considering he only has a beak and huge pupil-less eyes seems like quite a difficult task. All of them manage to create a great sense of mood.

I kind of wish I'd used a page that featured multiple panels instead of the one below, but here's a pretty rad drawing of Batman that Bøgelund did.

Anyway, if you can find this somewhere it's worth checking out, and I'm certainly going to be on the lookout for more of Bøgelund's work.

Robotobor

By Patrick Ringsborg
www.redtape.dk

Straight up, I don't really get this comic. A girl finds an animal skull and attaches it to a robot, which then runs amok. A magic flying turtle, some meat, and a baby trap also appear.

"Matthew", you are probably asking yourself if you were clever enough to look at the above URL and deciphered that it was for a Danish website "are you reading comics in languages you cannot understand again?"

Well, I am not. This comic is entirely silent, and presumably the weird goings on were all part of Ringsborg's plan, even if I'm not entirely sure what his plan actually was.

The art's good (a sort of weird goth style with both cutesy and realistic elements), and if you're at all interested you can go to the above website and check out a PDF in the publications section. I hope you do as it's worth the few minutes it'll take you to "read".

Mix Tape

By Allan Haverholm

If for nothing else this comic is amazing for it's packaging. It's the size of a cassette tape and comes inside a cassette case. AMAZING. Plus once you get to the middle/end you have to flip it over to read the other side.

But what's inside? Oh it's another of these visual poem things I seem to have gotten a lot of recently. Why? I have no idea, or maybe I've just been reading certain comics the wrong way for years and never noticed.

Each page has two different images on it. Do they relate to each other? Sometimes I think they do, sometimes I don't. I am almost certainly positive there is no continuous narrative here.

Instead I wonder if this is actually a companion piece to an actual mix tape of some sort. The more I look at it the more I think that Haverholm played a mix of music and drew whatever it made him think of. If so it's a really cool idea, though I do wish that I knew what the music he may have been listening to while drawing this was. Oh well!



Woo, check out my fingers.

Threes

By Cliodhna Lyons, Maeve Clancy, and Philip Barrett
www.ztoical.com
www.maeveclancy.com
www.blackshapes.com

This comic features three different short comics about the number three created by three different Irish creators. Three three three three three.

None of them is very long. Lyons is about superstitians (presubably inspired by "third time's the charm"), and featurs some pretty cute artwork, though it is lacking in backgrounds (just what is that ladder leaning against?).

Clancy's is a silent tale inspired by the story of the three little pigs. The pencil only (I think) artwork is quite nice, but to be honest I'm not really sure what's gong on here and the ending just kind of confuses me. Maybe I am just dumb.

Barret's also confuses me a little as it jumps through time and I wasn't sure if there were multiple narrators talking. Clearly I am not good at dealing with non-conventional story telling right now! It does have some really nice inking and line work, and some incomprehensible future monster things.

I don't think this comic is the best examples of work by these creators, but if you alrady like them it's worth picking up, and it's possible that reading it will inspire you to go and find more work by one of them.

Freedom of the Press in Black and White

By Tobocman

Considering how often I've seen "Free Mumia" graffiti it's kind of strange that I had almost no idea who he was before I read this. Was I never curious? Did I never come across something discussing it? I guess not.

This is a (biased) account of Mumia Abu-Jamal live. It covers his early days as a young black man in America, his connections to the Black Panthers, his time as a journalist, the murder case he was involved with, and some of his time spent in prison afterwards.

If you read this account you will no doubt think that Mumia was set up, or wrongfully tried, or at least that the death penalty shouldn't exist. But that's what the comic is trying to convince you so of course you would think that. Is it true? I really cannot say, it seems as though something fishy was going on with the whole proceedings, but what exactly I don't know. I also feel that some seemingly important information I saw on the wikipedia page about the whole incident isn't included here. (Also, MOVE seems like some sort of cult.)

But enough about that, how good is the art? I think it looks pretty good. The artist has chosen to use a blocky style that at times looks like woodprints. It works well with the type of story being told (political propaganda) and the huuuuge amounts of text that are jammed into almost every panel.

Speaking of which, there are a few places where the text is a bit confusing and I read things out of order, but for the most part I knew when to read each piece of writing.

If you already know about Mumia this won't give you any information, but if you're as clueless as I was then it's a good starting point. Though as with all political propaganda it's probably worth reading some other sources too.

Kunsthæfte nr. 8

By Jesper Fabricius

Okay, I guess this is another art book thing, as it has an ISBN and everything, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a zine.

So this is the "visual poetry" zine I mentioned a few entries back. Sure the cover calls it "space poetry", but as it's not actually about meteors or astronauts I'm more comfortable with the term I just invented.

Inside we are presented with full colour pages which present images, or parts of images in new forms. One of the earliest presents a square with a blue design, a horizontal rectangle with a hand, and a vertical rectangle with a different hand holding a bottle of soda that seems to be from an old advertisement. The images are presented more or less in a vertical line, and leave a lot to wonder about. Why these three images? What is the connection between them? Did the creator cut them out specifically, or just find them and combine them? Why do all of my reviews now consist of unanswerable questions?

The rest of the zine is similar, some of the pages have a few more pictures (pretty much all of them are small squares or rectangles), and a few have less (these ones present larger full page images, or at least the borders and outlines of them), but all of it made me wonder what the artist's intentions were.

I've never really been a big poetry fan, but this zine actually made me rethink the entire concept of poetry, both visual and written. I suppose when I'm presented with images I have to think about I realize that poetry is often trying to create the same thing, only with words, and that perhaps I should start reading poems in the same way that I "read" this: studying each image that is presented to me and wondering what the author's intent was. Though usually I'd probably rather make bad puns about "intense intents in tents".

Jeg Ser En Mand

By Claus Handberg Christensen
www.hurricane-publishing.com

I have no idea what the title means, and the contents are almost as mystifying. They consist of six photos, with no captions or text of any sort, of a man in a suit walking down a broken and decrepit street. He looks up at something we can't see, then continues walking.

There are so many questions raised here: where are the photos taken? Are they part of a larger set? Who is the man and whey is he walking through such a grimy area? What is he looking at?

None of them have answers, so I'm left to try and think up some of my own. (Okay, there is a street name sign visible in the photos so I could probably figure out where it is, but I'm not going to, and I'm just going to assume he's looking up at a pterodactyl fighting a giant robot.)

All the photos are shot from the exact same height, angle, and whatever other photography terms I have forgotten. The shot itself is really interesting, as part of a wall is so white it looks almost like a margin, separating the photo into two parts. I'm not sure if this was intentional or is just something that I'm creating with my mind, either way it looks interesting.

Finally, this was part of a set of small books that were also designed as postcards. There's space for you to write an address and message on the back, and the orange bit on top actually sealed the book close (until I tore it open to look inside). Neat! I'd love to get something like this in the mail.

(And yes, I guess this is an art book, but it's basically just a zine.)