PAPER
TIGER comical opinions
Welcome to the REVIEWS section, the latest small press and independent comics given the paper tiger once over. If you have a comic you want us to review or want to submit your own review of a comic you recommend, then please contact us.
CLICK ON A COMIC TO JUMP TO IT'S REVIEW:
Pet Static..Booby Trap.. Riverwurst comics..
Crisp.. Gorky.. Dr.Ripper..
Mbleh.. Cruel World
Whore's Of Mensa.. Colin Comix..
It Lives.. Glenjamin..
Spinster Nemesis.. Wreckshow..
Jism.. Thread.. MorgenMuffle..
Nice.. Telephone Thing.. Grot..
Paen.. Agent 44.. Paper Biscuit..
Mia.. Kartoon Cuts.. Inner
City Pagan
|
BOOBY TRAP #1 by Jon Chandler US Format, Color cover, 32 Pages, £2.25 / $2.99 This is a truly brilliant and bizarre comic, made up of seperate strips which move into one another, and go off on wild tangents. The comic starts with two very drunk barflies, one of whom is the crude and wiseass particle man, who in his drunken stupor, has come up with his idea of the pussy machine which he then proceeds to elaborate upon to his friend Larry. This is a hilarious and gleefully disgusting start to proceedings. Enter 'Ripper The Fuckin' Elephant', who is the cartoon manisfestation of the real author of the comic. He then proceeds to go into his guilty neglect of his creations, and how they are his friends, whom will not let him down (unlike life). He starts to go into how he has complete control of his creations, when suddenly he is kidnapped by Pussyfoot & Johnny Claws of the Anti-Bad League, who are particularly angry that they have been left to rot in limbo & who are thirsty for revenge! ...The next strip starts off as an autobiographical Ripper tale, but then the elephant becomes defensive and angry, unwilling to share his innermost feelings for cheap entertainment...at this point the strip itself takes a life of it's own, and a god-like presence gives words of advice; 'we just want you to draw more tits, fanny & cock!' etc. The Ambassador is one of my favourite strips, where Ripper is chosen by a group of voyeuristic aliens to be tested, to see if he has what it takes to be the interplanetary ambassador for Earth. Ripper's reactions under the aliens scrutiny and disapproving comments make for a good chuckle. There's also a tale about a grumpy, cynical agnostic fellow trapped in purgatory with only a strange talking snaky, mandible creature to keep him company & a strange pot. Add more musings from Ripper about embarrasment as he hurtles over a cliff, plus a final strip 'The Tube' about two little pipe creatures who worship a huge clunky cyborg lummox, and you have a unique & heady strange brew indeed. Nice to see a genuinely inventive and interesting comic that plays with the medium. email: jcboobytrap@hotmail.com reviewer: S Duffield |
|
RIVERWURST COMICS #3 - Anthology A4 size, colour cover, 40 pages $3.00 US This is a brilliant US comics anthology based in Milwaukee, edited by Tea Krulos. The theme for this issue is halloween/ horror, and there's a diverse array of comics on this theme. My personal favourites are Zombie Love by Heather Shinn; a rather unusual, very funny, rhyming love story where a girl falls for a zombie Underground legend Denis Kitchen provides two strange and quirky strips from his 'Geek Town' series, Ben I Iesch's 'Grade -A' tells a darkly funny tale of a teenage boy who receives a satanic egg after breaking the one he was supposed to look after for a school project; "The Salem Match Trials" by Dug Belan is a satirical comment on anti-smoking laws, "A bad Dream" by Jessica Zierta recalls a bizarre dream she had complete with cut 'n' paste descriptions of dream imagery which makes an interesting strip. "Demon Night" by Chris Miller is a hilarious strip about a pair of manic demons who get their kicks gleefully wreaking havoc on earth once a year & causing mass destruction & mayhem before ending the night in a situation that will make your eyes water. My final favourite of the strips is " Hell To Pay" by Tea Krulos, in which Satan's concubine's pester the horned one to tell them the story of his fall from heaven (they weren't impressed by his earlier story of having to shave without shaving foam).It turns out that the cheeky chap has been telling different versions to each jezebel in turn, and they are not happy... This is a great collection of alternative comics, hope this anthology goes from strength to strength! email: teakrulos@hotmail.com reviewer: S Duffield
|
|
CRISP #2 by Robert Wells A5, colour cover, 28 pages £1.95 This is quite an old comic, but it is a small press classic & a great autobiographical story & Robert is still selling it so hence this review. A PERFECT WEEKEND is basically a reminiscent and heartwarming tale of the artist and his girlfriend falling in love and spending a passionate weekend together. The story refrains from gooey sentiment or false romantic corn, but instead documents their time together; meeting his parents, getting very drunk, avoiding jehova's witnesses (and the temptation to poke one in the eye with a baguette), going to a birthday party and all the steamy, intimate moments between. The artwork is drawn in a simple, effective, 9 panel-a-page format, using funny symbolism and associations to compliment the narrative. This is a great comic which captures the love and passion between the two via the artists memories, and the humour is subtle as not to detract from the story. There's also a two page second story entitled " The Fat Fucking Nerds"; a funny tale about too geeks who are excited by their recent acquisition of a P.C, and the prospects of undiscovered knowledge, downloading porn & exchanging ideas with like-minded international nerds. The last one-page strip is a Colin The Rhino strip, one of Rob's ongoing characters, who again gets himself into trouble due to his unpredicatable bowel movements. As usual, his dad has the patience of a ice cube melting in a fire and even less sympathy. email: rob@gitland.com web: www.gitland.com reviewer: S Duffield |
|
THE IMMEASURABLE ADVENTURES OF GORKY PARK by Dave Hughes A5 46 pages £3 inc uk postage. A very funny self-contained story by Mr Hughes. Born in a small Russian town, Gorky Park grows up playing chess with his father-substitute (a teddy bear - his real dad ran off with the milkman) By the age of 20 he is a chess grandmaster, and the USSR's hopes rest on him to be the world champion. He commits a terrible faux pas, and is ostricized by a lynch mob, forcing him to defect to Britain with his wife and pet duck. Here, he soon settles into British life (ie: living in a bedsit, drinking white lighning & signing on). Little does he know however, that the KGB want him dead and are sending out their newest deadly weapon (the sabre-toothed squirrel) to invade Britain and wipe him out!...This comic shines with lots of absurd hilarity and quick humour, with a mad art style which perfectly complements the plot...I personally like all the background humour surrounding the main story, such as when his duck tries to eat his eye, the philosophical 'everything dies' sequence, the jobsearch diary, and the rat and the roach playing cards on the bedsit floor. Great fun email: stonechatproductions@yahoo.co.uk web:www.angelfire.com/journal2/stonechatproductions reviewer: S Duffield |
|
DR RIPPER'S MULTIPLEX #1(2nd Edition)by Richard Nairn A5,32 pages £2.50 This is the first part of a grissly but tongue-in cheek comic-horror story. "The cinema was a lunatic asylum, imprisoning dangerous & insane criminals. Due to rumours of cruelty to prisoners, the asylum lost it's funding from the healthboard...Realizing that they would be forced to abandon the asylum, leaving the prisoners to escape, the doctors had to come up with a new money making scheme..their decision was a multiplex...The world's first cinema entirely staffed by lunatics and managed by doctors." Enter Heather, her charming boyfriend Bulldog & her stepsister, the annoyingly cute Trixabelle. Heather has been paid to look after her sister for the evening, so she's taken her to the multiplex.to see the 'furry bunny rabbit adventure'...whilst her sister and boyfriend start getting it on in the cinema, Trixabelle realises she's lost her teddy...she runs off to find him, bumping into several of the inmates during her journey aswell as some of the equally disturbed doctors *ahem* sorry supervisors. She stumbles into another screening which happens to be showing 'The Bare-Naked Executioner'...she finds her teddy (somewhat defiled) & begins to watch the film which warps and twists her (very) tiny little mind, and a startling transformation occurs... This is a great comic...lots of attention to background detail throughout, a savage & funny script that gleefully rips apart anything sickeningly cute and fluffy and gives it a punk-rock, psycho makeover. Very British in it's humourous approach with added 'up yours' ending....A 'Ripping' yarn....Mwoo hah hah hah hah haaa! email: richard@pantomimepress.co.uk reviewer: S Duffield
|
|
MBLEH! #2 by Bob Byrne-ClamNut Comix US format, Colour cover, 36 pages 3 euros Brilliant twisted tales from Ireland's Bob Byrne. Clam Land is first up, and this is a very entertaining, out-there strip, full of lot's of seedy, low-brow-yet-witty toilet humour. When Penzram finds out that everthing his nephew Herby eats turns to gold (after being bitten by a vicious piss-prune), he decides to make him eat bags of coins, his talking columbo doll and various other items so that he can cash in on his nephews affliction...trouble is, the poo only turns to gold for a few hours so they have little time to sell the trinkets before it reverts back to cack. Day Off is about a guy who has a weird contraption to make himself sound ill when he rings the boss so he can skive off work. After going to the supermarket and watching daytime tv, he begins to wonder if he wasn't better off at work...Venus Muschell is a serious, mature comic about a WW2 german soldier talking to a psychiatrist about how he got his medal, but soon it is revealed nothing as it seems...Adictos is a strange tale about underground knock-off toy smuggling, involving mercernaries, third world death squads and the lethal rebel adictos. Shrivel Up is a tale read by post-apocalyptic cockroaches who have found a diary of an ordinary Irish bloke from our time. He details a date with a girl he likes which turns just a little bit sour. Snodule is a brilliant strip with no words, but a strong visual narrative which I'm not going to tell you anything about, you'll just have to read it! A great collection of strips, great artwork and original & unusual ideas and characters....more please! email: bob@clamnuts.com web: www.clamnuts.com |
|
CRUEL WORLD#7 by Anton Emdin A5, Colour cover, 32 pages $3.50 An interesting and darkly funny comic from Australia. It seems there's a strong influence from Peter Bagge & Kaz in Anton's work which is not a bad thing. The first tale The Taming Of The Shrewd is an autobiographical short in which the artist portrays himself as the poor underdog, victimised by his tyrannical girlfriend (who in one panel he draws as godzilla on the rampage). Dandyland is a cute one pager where a guy enters a cute alien land where nothing bad happens...even if you're decapitated! Porn Again Penis is a 3 part tale running through the comic about a wretched loser who gets rejected when trying to enter a career in the porn industry. His dream smashed, he cut's of his member, but little does he know it's developed a life of it's own! Knock Yer Writer's Block Off is my favourite strip, a hilarious tale of a squiver (half squirrel, half beaver) & a bug called Angelo. Squiver accidentally kills his friend and then panics as he realises they're only part way through the strip and the script is ruined! What to do? Oh the humanity... Other Strips include Sammy The Sperm, Trendy Nose-Jobs, Fast Food For Thought, Baby Chad & Freudian Slip. Not a bad collection of strips at all! email: anton@antongraphics.com
|
|
WHORES OF MENSA by Jeremy Dennis, Mardou & Lucy Sweet -A4 32 pages £2.50 With the snappy title taken from a Woody Allen script, this is an anthology from 3 uk lady comic artists who put the sexual into intellectual. Jeremy Dennis' "The Society Of Dead Poets" involves a lot of well-known dead poets manifesting themselves in the artist's flat. Whilst she tries to get on with her work, they prance around like peacocks, getting in various sexual scenarios with each other (some enjoying the modern extravangance of the battery powered dildo), all, that is apart from Sylvia Plath who tries to gas herself in the oven, not knowing it's actually electric. Lucy Sweet has several nice strips, one involving a smutty inuendo fest with Justin Timberlake coming round to lay her laminate flooring, "The Nigella Complex"; a comic that explores the artists' self-torture at not quite making the grade in the cuisine stakes, whilst hypothesising that even the smug Miss Lawson has her off days..."The Writers & Artists' Guide" provides indispensible (& hilarious) advice and insights for the struggling artist, "The Beauty Myth"; womans' preoccupation with beauty products, & "Hipster Preoccupations" a funny swipe at all those dedicated followers of fashion. Last up is Mardou who explores a kinky love affair with 'Mr Miyagi' (Pat Morita) in "Dojo Of Love"; seduced by the mature spiritual older man, he seems every thing she wants - he's dynamite in the sack...he opens her third eye, teaches her karate but later becomes possessive (commanding 'wax off!' when she doesn't shave her legs)... "Sillitoes baby" is another fantasy about her having a one night stand with the leftist writer (and having a post-cotial tug on his pipe), and having his baby who inherits his dour expressions and angry demeanour. and the final strip is a very funny send-up of Farenheit 451 ("Farenheit 50/50") which deals with comic burning & an underground society who tattoo themselves with underground comics to keep the art alive. There's a particularly funny scene with a manic middle-aged collector who catches fire rather than have his stash taken away from him. email: mardou85@hotmail.com jeremy's web: www.alleged.org.uk lucy's web: www.chicamagazine.co.uk mardou's web: www.stiroville.com reviewer: S Duffield |
|
COLIN COMIX #1 by Robert Wells A5, Colour Cover, 28 pages £2.50 A lot of you may be already familiar with Colin The Rhino from Robert's earlier comics and web stuff. For those who aren't, he's the very sensitive 'adorable baby rhino' who constantly has problems with his bowels (hence his catchphrase "I wanna do a poo poo"). Colin is brought up by his less than tolerant Dad (his wife ran off - no wonder) who reckons his son is a 'poof'' because he hasn't developed a thick skin like ol' dad and won't poo outside of the house because he's self conscious of people watching (they live in a zoo you see). Aswell as the Colin strips, there are several others, my favourites being "Twenty-Bore"; a pisstake of the Keifer Sutherland TV show, "Gitland" - an autobiographical strip by the artist & "Who Is Cecelia Doom?"; all about a hulking blonde amazon (don't dare call her a bimbo) who beats up guys who wolf whistle, burnt down her school, disposes of cheating boyfriends and is to homemaking what arnold scwarzenegger is to politics. A fun read email: rob@gitland.com web: www.gitland.com reviewer: S Duffield
|
|
IT LIVES #1 by TED MAY A5, Colour cover, 40 pages $3 Some nice comics here fron St Louis's Ted May. All have a quirky sense of humour & fond send up of classic/ archetypal comic characters and themes whilst injecting more modern real-life elements. The first strip "Help Me Understand Your World" splits between a band looking for a new guitarist as the girl bassist has chucked the old one (her ex-boyfriend). Cut to the arrival of a mysterious Sub-Mariner style mer-man come to wreak revenge on the land-folk who have made a polluted toilet of his domain. Unfortunately the first person he chooses is an old hobo who mistakes him for a yuppie and urinates on him (i chuckled at this bit) "Now who's gettin' pissed on you stinkin' yuppie? Take that to the bank!" He then realises that he needs an army of minions to control, and we are introduced to a pair of freaky looking slackers...not the brightest of the bunch (end part one). The next strip called "Toilet Battle" is exactly that...two superheroes (one a cosmic space dude, the other a football jock from hell) duke it out on a toilet seat, matching fists with heavy duty verbal sparring. Using every comic book cliche x10 this a funny strip where the two are so absorbed in the fight (falling into the bowl) that they do not see the impending looming danger coming to meet them! In part two of "Help Me Understand Your World", the story follows the drunken misadventures of the two punk slackers aswell as the 'sub-mariner' guy, trying to disguise himself as a human and turns up at the bands audition (The audition of the guitarists sequence is funny too). I'd like to read more of this strip. The final main strip is "Monster Mask" which is like an old B-Movie or EC comic on acid. A guy who has designs on a girl decides to go along with her to a strange abandoned cave in the hills which is claimed to be haunted. They go along & find a strange ancient mask, & our reluctant hero also has to contend with a possession, sinister aliens & manisfestations of his own psyche brought to life by the mask! An all round enjoyable treat for all us comic geeks! email: may@usscatastrophe.com web: www.usscatastrophe.com/itlives reviewer: S Duffield
|
|
GLENJAMIN #2 by Glenn Smith & Ben Hutchings - A5, Colour cover, 48 pages $4 Glenjamin gets it's name from it's a pairing of Glen Smith & Benjamin Hutchings - A real creative odd couple from Australia. This is lovely produced work and very diverse in content; from the surreal and artistic, to witty & interesting stories to straight up belly laughs. The book also includes fake ads such as the very funny Black Metal Paint Chart (with such delightful hues as' Incinerated Nazarine' & 'Lucifer's Liquorice') to the Personal ads spoof ("White Male, 30 wishes to meet Red Female to make Pink children" etc) to the music ads spoof ("80's pop saxophonist looking for band to ruin. Can fuck up ANY song with obnoxious sitcom theme style sax solos..."). My favourite strips were "Like Desperados Waiting For A Train" - A tale of 3 old west bandits struggling to adapt to the modern age; "The Wind'll Change" - A cautionary tale of what becomes of those whose expressions stick;"Ice Belly" - A strange 2 pager whose art reminds me of Lorna Miller, & the "Meniscus Man" strips -a menacing microscopic organism causing terror to human kind. I get the feeling from the front and back covers that these guys aren't big Disney fans either... Some beautiful artwork (the dustcover style glossy cover with intricate interior drawings was a nice touch), and a packed read, this is great value for money and I hope for further collaborations from these two email ben: geeen@hotmail.com email glenn: retardmetal@hotmail.com web: http://www.effect.net.au/geeen reviewer: S Duffield |
|
SPINSTER NEMESIS by Yurt (Clambake Comics)-A5 size, blue card cover, 24 pages £? This is a brilliant self-contained story by Yurt which centres around our two heroines 'Crabbity Annie Nora' & 'Jennifer Snappy-Snatch' (who also appear in other Clambake comics). Ms Snappy-Snatch, needing a break from Crabitty Annie & disillusioned with the local Riot Grrrl scene decides to roam the island where they all live...she comes along the isolated home of elderly spinster Harriet Keller, famed for her feminist techno science novel "Peranghytis in the Monoroid". She is also one-time mentor of Crabbity, the woman who taught her to 'sing & swing'. After initially being dismissive and warning off Snappy Snatch, Harriet decides to let her stay. But soon Jenny is plagued with dark nightmares & all is not what it seems. Harriet has become more bitter & cynical as the years have gone by & she reveals her true feelings for Crabbity. Jennifer offers herself to Harriet, to 'Come in from the darkness'....But Harriet has become much more than just a bitter battleaxe and transforms into something much more sinister...Snappy wonders is this unimaginable horror real or just a creation of her subconscious mind...Meanwhile Crabbity misses her companion & Jenny tries to use telepathy to contact her for help.... Will Jennifer escape alive to see another clambake? Will Crabbity handle her loneliness and see her friend again? Will Harriet ever find love and redemption from becoming an old hag-monster? This is a very funny and also quite touching story with some great dialogue and worldy-wise humour. One of my favourite bits is during the nightmare sequence where a masturbating maggot exclaims "Vulgar Latin" whilst achieving climax. The drawings of the final transformation of Harriet also made me laugh If you like unusual, intelligent and enjoyable stories this is for you. email: yurt@opendiary.com reviewer: S Duffield |
|
|
|
