TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD VOL. 2: THIS ONE GOES TO 11
Written and Drawn by Tom Beland
Published by AiT/PlanetLar

It’s funny because it’s true.

That’s an old axiom, but reading Tom Beland’s continuing journey towards true love and living happily ever after, you realize that there’s more to it than that. It’s also sad because it’s true. It’s heartbreaking because it’s true. It’s inspiring because it’s true.

Beland met the love of his life, Lily, at a bus stop on a press junket. It doesn’t get much more random than that. But it’s that random chance, knowing that it happened to someone, that gives any reader with an ounce of romance in their heart just a sliver of hope that someday, their life might take that turn for the fortunate as well. And if it doesn’t, Tom and Lily are such interesting, complex, and likeable people that you don’t have any problem rooting for them to overcome their obstacles and find a way to be together, where they belong.

This volume covers one of the first crises that the pair had to get through: Hurricane Georges. Beland was still living in Napa Valley at the time, and Lily’s home nation of Puerto Rico came under massive assault from the monster storm, leaving Beland worried sick about his new love. It is this worry, and their distance, that leads Beland to begin pondering leaving his family’s longtime home and move to a land where he doesn’t speak the language.

Beland’s strength lies in his honesty. He manages to find a delicate balance in the natural humor that pervades his life, and the emotional baggage he carries into his relationship. Tom isn’t a shiny, happy, hero, and he doesn’t pretend to be. He lovingly puts that shine on his portrayal of Lily, but you can forgive that, because this is a man writing about his true love, after all. There’s such an earnest quality to this book, and such a complete dearth of anything you could consider a “romance” comic, that the flaws that do crop up here and there take on a negligible feeling. Plenty of stuff here just works, and in the end, combining with the ease with which I’ve found non-comics readers can enjoy the book, TRUE STORY gets a big thumbs up from me. Grade: A

SIBAM?

I’ve covered this book previously, and frankly, I’m still at a loss to explain why Disney hasn’t snapped this up and put it on screen. They met at Disneyworld, for Pete’s sake! Maybe not a big screen adaptation, but certainly it would make for a quality TV production. Baffling why it hasn’t gotten done. Baffling.

SCOTT PILGRIM VOL. 1 AND 2
Written and Drawn by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Published by Oni Press

I’m going to do my best to describe this book, but I’m warning you: it might sound a bit insane.

Scott Pilgrim is an unemployed, 23-year old guy who plays in a rock band and is dating a high school girl. He’s so poor that he shares an apartment and bed (non-sexually) with his gay friend Wallace Wells. Sounds sort of odd, right? Well, Scott’s life is about to get even stranger: he meets rollerblading delivery girl Ramona Flowers and falls head over heels in love. Sure, lots of people fall in love every day. But with Ramona comes complications unlike any others: she has seven evil ex-boyfriends, and in order to date Ramona, he must defeat them all in combat. Plus, the high school girl, aptly named Knives, has decided she won’t take her dumping lightly, and sets her sights on eviscerating Ramona. Then Scott’s ex-girlfriend’s band arrives in town looking for an opening act.

Madness. Madness.

The book is equal parts romance, comedy, and video game. O’Malley’s vision here is something to behold; he’s not content to play this as anything resembling a straight or normal narrative. Instead, he tosses standard logic and storytelling out the window, using every aspect of the comics medium to put his story in motion. I’ve heard what he does here referred to as “game logic” and that’s an apt description: things don’t happen in these books because the laws of logic and nature apply; they happen because they need to happen and they happen. No greater reason is required.

I was completely engrossed in Scott’s world. I’m a sucker for ludicrous creativity, and these two volumes have it in spades. The only serious complaint I have is that O’Malley doesn’t always do a solid job in distinguishing the supporting cast from each other artistically. However, the majority of the art and storytelling are very solid and effective, and the characters sparkle with wit and glee. Through two volumes, we’ve seen Scott face off against two of the boyfriends, so if I had to guess, there must be five volumes to go. If they’re as good as these two, I hope they get here in a big hurry. Grade: A-

QUICK HITS

This is sort of an alt-comix version of the great FLIGHT anthologies, and in certain ways, it suffers by comparison. BETE brings together alternative cartoonists from all over the world and puts their work on display for a broad audience that has probably never heard of them or seen their work. An admirable goal. Now, much of this stuff is really terrific. There’s some amazing talent in these pages, material that more than makes this book worth your dollars. However, it seems like some of the artists didn’t take print quality into mind when producing their pieces, and the darkness and shadowing mar the clarity of the story. I suspect there will be much improvement in the next edition.

SUPER F*CKERS
Written and Drawn by James Kolchaka
Published by Top Shelf

James Kolchaka is an enigma to me. His work has a simple and elegant look, but nothing he’s done has ever blown me away or appealed to me the way it does to my old friend Alan David Doane, who seems to be stalking the cartoonist. I think where I have issues with his work is in his intent. Take this book for example. SUPER is the story of a young superhero team and their oddities. One member, Grotes, is some sort of thing that excretes a substance the other members smoke and get high off of. Another member keeps a younger version of himself in a jar in a fashioned memory that keeps the space-time continuum from imploding. And then the team decides to have tryouts, and even more strange characters show up. Oh, and every character swears like a sailor. No, that’s not quite true- every character swears like a junior high kid learning a new vocabulary and trying to be cool.

So what is Kolchaka going for? Is he poking fun at superhero comics by pointing out the more juvenile aspects of that genre? It’s been done, and it’s been done much better than this. Is he reveling in his own personal sense of juvenile humor? Okay, that’s fine, but is that’s the case, why go with the superhero genre to do so? Or is he having a hearty laugh at the expense of his readers? Is he saying that anyone who bothers to pick up a superhero comic is the equivalent of one of these fucked up characters? I’m not sure, and I think material open to interpretation is a fine thing, but this is taking it a bit far. I can’t help but feel like Kolchaka himself doesn’t know precisely what target he’s aiming for, and in the end, it reduces the effectiveness of the material.

BLACK DIAMOND: ON RAMP
Written and Drawn by Various
Published by AiT/PlanetLar

This is something new for AiT: a preview book. This floppy contains a solid chunk of Larry Young’s upcoming high-concept series THE BLACK DIAMOND. Set in the near future where domestic air travel is prohibited, distance travel now primarily takes place on an elevated freeway that spans the nation. On the flip side, we get previews of SMOKE AND GUNS (an action thriller about a war between Cigarette Girls) and FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE (featuring a team-up between Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain). Each of these future projects looks to have the potential to be great fun. Larry Young has been referred to as comics’ version of Jerry Bruckheimer, but I don’t think that’s quite right; he’s more Francis Ford Coppola, making his own paper movies, producing other quality paper movies, and even producing prose works (such the way Coppola did with his Zoetrope magazine).

TOZZER 2 #5
Written by Rob Dunlop and Drawn by Peter Lumby
Published by Ablaze Media

I described issues one through four of this min-series as “fifteen pounds of what-the-fuck? in a five pound bag.” This concluding issue adds about three more pounds. Really, I could try and tell you about what happens in it, but it wouldn’t make any sense to you or me. It’s one joke after another, and some are even funny. Not much more I can say.

See you in seven.

Review materials may be sent to: Marc Mason, P.O. Box 26732, Tempe, AZ 85285. You can also find me at Happy Nonsense and The Comics Waiting Room

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