September 2008 – Page 2 – Read About Comics

By Jamie McKelvie
104 pages, color
Published by Image Comics

There’s an old chestnut about out there how there are only so many stories out there, and that everyone is just repeating them over and over again. It’s a slight exaggeration (you really have to break the stories down to their absolute basics in order for that to work) but the important point behind it all is that more often than not, it’s not what you’re telling in your story but rather how you’re telling it. I think that’s very much the case with Jamie McKelvie’s Suburban Glamour; the absolute core of the story is nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s his storytelling abilities that make the comic shine.

Continue reading “Suburban Glamour Vol. 1”

By Liz Baillie
128 pages, black and white
Published by Microcosm Publishing

One of the things I like about mini-comics is that, by their self-published (and often low-tech) nature, it lets creators jump right into creating comics on an open stage. This may sound a little strange, but by providing a print option for people to be creative, it often means that they’ll keep creating and refining their craft. I can’t think of a better example for this than Liz Baillie’s first collection of her mini-comic My Brain Hurts, compiling the first five issues of the mini-comic by the same name. Because while I liked the very first chapter of this book, the leap in skill between it and the fifth? It’s almost hard to believe it’s the same person.

Continue reading “My Brain Hurts”