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Boy Trouble #5

Edited by Robert Kirby and David Kelly
80 pages, black and white
Published by Boy Trouble Books, distributed by Top Shelf Productions

It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since the last issue of Boy Trouble was published. A gay-themed anthology, Boy Trouble‘s previous issues had a nice mix of humor and drama between its covers, spotlighting creators whose works you might never see otherwise. In the time since then, the Internet has really come into its own, making it suddenly much easier to find specific genres and styles of comic creators’s works. In this new techno-savvy world, it’s understandable if someone then asks if a book like Boy Trouble is really necessary. After reading the high level of quality the editors have assembled, you quickly realize that the answer is a resounding yes.

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I Am Legion: The Dancing Faun

Written by Fabien Nury
Art by John Cassaday
64 pages, color
Published by Humanoids/DC Comics

When Humanoids first announced I Am Legion, I was pretty excited about the news. John Cassaday, drawing a trilogy of oversized graphic albums printed with Humanoids’s typical high production values? Sounded like a real winner to me. Since that original signing and now, though, Humanoids has decided to team up with DC Comics for their English-language releases, and the finished project isn’t quite what I was expecting.

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Scandalous

Written by J. Torres
Art by Scott Chantler
104 pages, black and white
Published by Oni Press

J. Torres and Scott Chantler’s first collaboration was Days Like This, chronicling the rise of a singing group in the 1960s. It was a fun, fresh project that made me really want to see what they’d do together next. Now, a year and a half later, the wait is over: Scandalous, focusing on 1950s Hollywood. If it turned out to be as good as Days Like This, I’d be a happy reader indeed.

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Gutsman Comics Vol. 1

By Erik Kriek
128 pages, black and white
Co-Published by Oog & Blik and Top Shelf Productions

In the past decade or so, one of the trends I’ve embraced the most is the importing and publishing of comic books from different countries. It’s something that’s obviously been going on for quite some time, but the rate in which they’ve arrived in the English-language markets is certainly on the rise. Of course, it helps when your comic doesn’t have any actual dialogue, like Erik Kriek’s Gutsman Comics. This is a book where you certainly don’t need to know Dutch to get the full meaning of Kriek’s hysterically funny relationship drama comic.

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Temporary #1

Written by Damon Hurd
Art by Rick Smith
56 pages, black and white
Published by Origin Comics

“My co-workers are crazy,” is a pretty common phrase bandied about by people all over the world. It’s not surprising; in the stressful location of the workplace, you’re definitely going to see people at their worst, giving you a bad impression of them. Damon Hurd and Rick Smith took the familiar complaint and took it in an entirely different direction, though. In the world of Temporary, this is an office where complaint is more accurate than people would initially believe.

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Grampa and Julie: Shark Hunters

By Jef Czekaj
128 pages, color
Published by Top Shelf Productions

The genre of serial adventure fiction primarily lives on through comics, but it used to be much more widespread. People would go to the movie theatres and discover what was going on in the latest installment of “The Perils of Penelope”, for example, as each segment would get Penelope out of the previous cliffhanger, while bringing her promptly to a new one to keep audiences wondering what would happen next. It’s that sort of feel that Jef Czekaj brings to Grampa and Julie: Shark Hunters… except that here, you don’t have to go back to the movies a week later to see what happens next.

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Tsubasa Vol. 1-2

By CLAMP
208 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

I was more than a little hesitant about reading Tsubasa, one of the comic collective CLAMP’s new series now being published in both Japan as well as North America. The gimmick of the series made me think that as someone who hasn’t read the majority of CLAMP’s work, I’d be utterly lost, since it features characters and situations from many of their previous books. I was pretty surprised, then, to discover that not only was I doing just fine in comprehending it… but that I was enjoying the series to boot.

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Egg Story

By J. Marc Schmidt
64 pages, black and white
Published by Slave Labor Graphics

There are a lot of “coming of age” stories being told, in all types of media and in all shapes and forms. It’s a story that everyone’s familiar with, having had to live some part of it one’s self as time goes by. That’s certainly what J. Marc Schmidt tapped into for his new graphic novel—but unlike most stories of this nature, Schmidt took a slightly different tactic. His story is about a group of eggs.

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Salmon Doubts

By Adam Sacks
128 pages, two-color
Published by Alternative Comics

About a year ago, Alternative Comics publisher Jeff Mason was talking about an upcoming graphic novel he’d just gotten the rights to publish called Salmon Doubts, and how this would be a book that everyone would talk about for some time to come. Having now read Salmon Doubts for myself, it’s easy to see why he was so excited.

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Sock Monkey: Uncle Gabby

By Tony Millionaire
40 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

The first time Dark Horse published a color, hardcover Sock Monkey book, it was Tony Millionaire’s children’s book Sock Monkey: The Glass Doorknob. Under the circumstances, then, I think it’s forgivable that I assumed that the new Sock Monkey: Uncle Gabby was a second book for children. What I found instead, though, was a graphic novel that, like the regular Sock Monkey comic, is most definitely not a cute children’s book.

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