Comic World News | Past the Front Racks

April 22, 2008:
CWN and the Grand Finale! -

February 4, 2008:
In Conclusion - David ends his CWN run with Tezuka's MW from Vertical

February 2, 2008:
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

February 2, 2008:
The Shoegazer Returns - A New Year Begins, And Our Narrator Makes A Pledge

January 30, 2008:
Tim's Reviews -

September 13, 2007:
Wizard World Chicago Loot, Part One - Stykman, Empty Chamber, the Ztarian Saga, and yes, Little Bunny Foo Foo

February 15, 2007:
I Come Not to Bury Nick Cage... - But to mourn the death of my punchline

November 20, 2006:
The End - Rich's last Chicks & Romance

November 8, 2006:
Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

October 4, 2006:
This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

September 18, 2006:
Back in Berlin - or How I spent my summer

July 29, 2006:
KICKING UP A STORM - An interview with David Lloyd

June 19, 2006:
You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Me. - Graeme looks at Spidey's "genies"

December 18, 2005:
Disappointed - Sad news for fans of Busiek's CONAN, Stephen King, and others

December 13, 2004:
JUSTICE UNPLUGGED 2 at last !!! - By Fabrice Sapolsky & Xavier Fournier

December 2, 2004:
THE TWELFTH AND FINAL STEP - Say it ain't so, Dan.

November 23, 2004:
The importance of editing -

September 29, 2004:
Mystery and Conundrum indeed! - Where in the world is Jason Pomerantz?

September 13, 2004:
Hello and Goodbye and Hello Again - Change is in the air at CWN and it smells sweet.

August 12, 2004:
The Rise of the Web Toon - New Business Model or Dumb Luck?

July 30, 2004:
The Name Says it All... - Spin Doctors revamp Boomerang.

July 27, 2004:
Bigger Isn't Always Better -

June 8, 2004:
Pre-emptive Strike: MoCCA Arts Festival - Looking forward to the con, rather than looking back at it

The Layer Method
Our top Secret time-saving technique for creating and merging balloons and tails in Illustrator.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Of Mice and Golems

Mouse Guard and Crickets

Crickets #1
Words and Pictures by Sammy Harkham
Published by Drawn & Quarterly
32 pages (a few color, the rest in two tone color and black and white) for $3.95

The protagonist in Crickets has a problem. He�s running downhill under a storm of arrows and his pant leg is on fire. The arrows hail from an unseen source, but many of them have hit already their mark. By the time the character finally tumbles to a stop, he is pockmarked by numerous tiny arrows sticking out of his flesh. And yet he has survived the onslaught. Looking up into the sky, he lets out a laugh. The laugh is extinguished, however, by one last arrow � this one lands in his eye.

Blackness follows, then the scene shifts to a huge, motionless golem leaning against a tree in the forest. After a few panels, the golem wakes up and finds our luckless runner/tumbler. Later, the two kind of team up, but only after they stumble across a father and son trying to bury a member of their family. Both duos seem equally startled by the other, which Harkham plays up in the action of the story. Crickets is much more action packed than I had pictured it being. Harkham teases out sequences a bit with understated visual flare, but he doesn�t skimp on actual story content.

Harkham�s real strength here, as opposed to the quiet power of Poor Sailor, is the sense of movement he creates on the page. It�s almost as if you�re watching cartoon cells flicker in front of your eyes at times. Achieving this sense of action on the page takes considerable cartooning skills and it�s something you don�t see much of anymore.

Crickets begins with a mystery and ends with a new mystery. In between, you�ll find a mad tale of an unlikely survival, a golem, a chicken, an attempted burial, and several fights.

Mouse Guard: Belly of the Beast #1
Words and Pictures by David Peterson
Published by Archaia Studios Press
24 color pages for $3.50

Man, I didn�t see this title coming, but now I�m just thankful that I didn�t miss it. You�ll find a host of crudely targeted �all age� titles and copycat fantasy comics on the shelf, but if there were any justice (there isn�t, I know), those comics would be gathered into a pile, doused with gasoline, and ignited in spectacular fashion. Then the space taken up by all that garbage would be filled with copies of Mouse Guard - rows upon rows of Mouse Guard as far as the eye can see.

I�m kidding of course, maybe channeling my inner hateful critic that I keep locked up in the back room, but I�m also half serious. This book should be on everyone�s pull list. We should all be buying this book for the children in our lives (ages 10+ is recommended, but I think 8 and 9 year-olds should be allowed in on the fun as well). Mouse Guard so perfectly captures the unique advantage that comics can enjoy over prose or film that it should be selling in industry leading numbers. It�s not yet, but give it time.

The Mouse Guard guides other mice through treacherous territory, and almost all territory seems to be treacherous for mice. They protect their borders and their kin against a hostile world, but these mice look like mice. They aren�t cartoon mice or mice with exaggerated features; they look like pet store mice, except with capes, hats, and swords. And this visual trick works well thanks to Peterson�s art. As a reader, you can feel the determination in their gaze; you can sense the quiet strength quivering in their tiny bodies. In 24 pages, Peterson makes you believe in the Mouse Guard, even if you�re not a fan of the fantasy genre.

Check out the cover to issue two as Kevin Melrose points out at his excellent new blog, Comics, Covered:

�It's the little details that make this image: the strain/determination of Conrad the mouse as he lifts the enormous crab; the fish hook he uses as a weapon; and, most of all, the tracks Conrad's wooden leg leaves in the sand.�

Here are previews of the first two issues from Archaia Studios.