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

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Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove -

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Tim's Reviews -

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

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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

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Joann Sfar's Klezmer - And a Front Racks Hiatus

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This Month's Guest: Dave Gibbons - From the pages of Elephantmen!

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

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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"

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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

Pet Shop of Horrors # 7

Review by Barb Lien-Cooper

Written by Matsuri Akino
Illustrated by Matsuri Akino

Published by TOKYOPOP
$9.99

Because I write a horror comic called Gun Street Girl, I get a certain number of strange looks from those who think that women writers in comics don't like to write horror. To quote a female comics creator friend of mine, "Girls don't like action. Girls don't like blood."

Bollocks.

Matsuri Akino is a female creator who writes a darned good manga horror series called Pet Shop of Horrors. Whenever people tell me that female comic readers neither read nor write horror, I pull out this comic.

Pet Shop sounds like a dumb concept: a vampire-like manager of a pet shop sells people enchanted pets. However, the execution of the work is brilliantly done, with moments of real eerieness, as well as moments of comedy, imagination, beauty, wit, and silliness. Pet Shop is a work that throws ideas against the wall the way Jackson Pollack throws paint onto a canvas. The series is all over the place, both in terms of quality and in terms of tone, but it's always vital, vibrant, fun, and alive with energy every story. There's a real joy of creating with this work that I both admire and feel a real empathy with.

If you want something different, something just a little nuts at times, Pet Shop is the comic for you.

And, guess what? Female readers I know are eating it up with a spoon, blood and action and all.

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