Teratoid Heights

I finally got my own copy and read this. Matt Brinkman, of Fort Thunder fame, makes some nice pictures although I admit they took me a little bit of getting used to at first. Teratoid Heights is good, but it is the art that is the best part. The stories are too short and not always very interesting or funny. I think Brinkman's best work in this style are his Two Dudes and Skeleton Jelly comics. They can be had for free here which is a great thing since tracking down a copy of the out-of-print Teratoid Heights can be costly: the only copy availible used on Amazon at the time of this writing was going for $44.95!

I consider Jim Woodring's Frank Book to be a much better book in the same vein as Teratoid.

Conclusion: Save the time and money of hunting down Teratoid and just get the two free strips mentioned above.

One thing I must say about the presentation of the book, and most small press/indpt books like this, is that you really can't beat it. Teratoid is something like 6" by 5" in dimension and the UPC is on a sort of wrap-around bookmark on the last page which says "Teratoid Heights" along the other side. The paper stock is fairly heavy and stories are separated by black pages. It's very nice indeed.

Now I leave you with a hilarious frame from Two Dudes.

Holy shit the Black Hole collection is out tomorrow and it's a hardcover!

Get 'em while they're hot.



Hott.

Judge this book by its cover and you're setting yourself up for disappointment

The Residents: Freak Show graphic novel
by

• John Bolton


• Kyle Baker


• Dave McKean


• and some other guys

I love Charles Burns' art. I also loved the first 9 or so issues of Black Hole (the hardcover's out tomorrow, more on that below) that I've read and his Blood Club one-shot. So when I saw Freak Show's cover on Amazon, I had to have it. I didn't even read about it. No researching whatsoever.

If it's Charley Burnsy, it's gottabegood I thought to myself.

Wrong. It's an anthology of boring stories put forth by a band (The Residents) I had never heard of.

The stories are very short and not that great despite the talent behind them. Not unusual for an anthology. And CB only did that very nice cover :(

One Unfunny Duck

Well I've learned my lesson yet again about listening only to people's reviews on Amazon in making a decision to read a book. Not funny. Not clever. Not interesting. Trite crap that only comic book nerds can enjoy (and not the good kind of comic nerds). Had I only checked my old standby, these idiots I would've spared myself the trouble. God bless the guys at 4th Rail for without them I would have no 90% effective method for determining if a book is right for me. Do they like it? Then I probably don't. Do they even award less than a 7 out of 10 more than 5% of the time?

Why isn't it funny or clever? Mocking boy bands sound old? It is. Nothing new or interesting here. Mocking Oprah? *Yawn* None of it is even done in a clever way. All I saw in mind was a fat guy eating fries while leaning against a rack in a comic store and laughing in an annoyingly high pitch.

You want comedy in comics? Go read Matt Fraction's Mantooth. You want clever? Read Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. You want biting social commentary? Well...hmmm...I hear Milligan's X-Force has some of that, I never checked though...anyways, point is, none of that is in this book.



Fortunately I didn't purchase this book but rented it from Books Free. It's like Netflix for books, including some 600 comics (of widely varying quality).

This guy ain't skerred'a no pants

Finished reading Frank Miller's "The Man Without Fear" run on Daredevil from the 80s. Gotta say, not totally impressed. Just reminds me of Voltaire's excellent line about how the man who thinks that every work by a particular author is great is a fool. Don't get me wrong, it's not horrible or anything, but for me it's definitely one of Miller's less excellent works. The first thing that I didn't care for was the whole mystical, clandestine group that Stick and Stone are a part of that supposedly influence people and events in the world in an attempt to keep things from going to some obscure dark side. They seem to be outside of the world and are connected to some fundamental truth that the rest of us are unaware of but where do they focus their efforts? New York city and some rich guy's daughter and her love interest. This doesn't make too much sense to me and isn't explained at all. Consequently, the whole 'secret group who controls the world' thing feels very lame to me not only here but most anywhere I encounter it. It's the only part of Brubaker's excellent Sleeper that I didn't care at all for. The next thing that bugs me is the whole theme involving Matt Murdock's inability to break rules. When Matt is pursuing Elektra through the park the narration explains this idea succinctly:

He could flatten the cops/It would be easy/But that would be breaking the rules/that would be breaking the law.

Not only is vigilantism against the law but so is murder, of which Murdock commits plenty of in this book. Where was that ideal at the end of the story where he's taking out large numbers of goons at the dock? I agree that they all deserve to die for trafficking children, but the character doesn't even act within the confines of the system that the author has constructed for him. Although it's still better than most of the superhero crap out there it didn't convert me into more of a Daredevil fan as much as Bendis' recent run on the otherwise silly character has done.