Dead Trees

The Boston Comics Roundtable sure seems like one of the most viable and interesting local comics collectives around.  They've put out several issues now in a couple of different anthology series (ComixTalk reviewed previous books Outbound #2 and Inbound #3).  The latest edition of the Inbound anthology series (subtitled "Comics From Boston") is The Food Issue which focuses on comics featuring food.  The first half of the book is titled "Food Facts" and includes stories about food and autobiographical tales with food as a prominent part of the story. The second half of the book is titled "Food Fiction" and is a more wide-ranging selection of comics, none of which purport to be nonfiction.  

The book is 176 pages and features 26 brand new stories. The contributors include: E.J. Barnes, Eric Boeker, Jerel Dye, Franklin Einspruch, Patrick Flaherty, Bob Flynn, Joel Christian Gill, Andrew Greenstone, Danny Gonzalez, Raul Gonzalez, Beth Hetland, Erik Heumiller, Allie Kleber, Braden D. Lamb, Cathy Leamy, Jackie Lee, Jesse Lonergan, Dan Mazur, Mar-T Moyer, Line O, David Ortega, Shelli Paroline, Adrian Rodriguez, Roho, Aya Rothwell, Katherine Roy, Adam Syzm, Laura Terry, Jason Viola, Rebecca Viola, Katherine Waddell, Ryan Wheeler, and Andy Wong.

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J.T. Yost is the creator of the Xeric winning comic Old Man Winter and Other Sordid Tales which ComixTalk reviewed in 2009.  Today I'm covering three new mini comics he has out this year: It's Dream Time, Snoop Doggy Dogg and two issues of Losers Weepers.  All three books are available from Yost's publishing label Birdcage Bottom Books.

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Road is a new short graphic novel from Charles Schneeflock Snow.  It originally appeared as part of his webcomic Sordid City Blues which is a favorite of mine. I've always liked Sordid City Blues — it's probably suffered in awareness online because of some hiatuses from Snow.  There's also it's willingness to acknowledge and grapple with the Christianity of its characters.  Anytime an author puts an agenda over telling a good story, whether it's religion, politics or an ideology, well that can just kill the chances of a good story.  But incorporating any topic, even religion, politics or ideology, into a story isn't the same as having an agenda above the story.  And Snow does not have an agenda, but rather has a number of characters who deal with issues of faith and religion in a pretty honest and interesting way.

Road is one of the better stories from Snow and is very worthy of its book treatment.  It's the tale of the very small band Owns Big Mecha doing a short East Coast tour.  This is one of those classic — play small clubs, stay in friends' basements kind of deal — with the band driving in a van, eating bad food, getting lost and everything that goes along with that.  The band does feature three of the main characters from the ongoing webcomic, but Road feels pretty self-contained and I don't think you need any backstory to enjoy it on its own terms.   

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Gordon McAlpin is the creator of Multiplex, a webcomic about the staff at a neighborhood theater.  I first encountered McAlpin's work when he was creating the short nonfiction comic pieces under the banner of Stripped Books.  Those works, although perhaps dated now were a clue that McAlpin had ambitions to create quality work.  So I was a reader of Multiplex from the beginning (ComixTalk has interview McAlpin twice, once in 2006 and once in 2008).  McAlpin recently put out a book collecting the first year of the webcomic, titled Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show: Book One.

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The world of Bone is back for a series of short stories in Bone: Tall Tales by Jeff Smith with Tom Sniegoski.  Jeff Smith's creation has been told in the original black and white versions and now the full series is out in color from Scholastic.  After the release of a prequel Bone: Rose, Smith has turned to a small sequel of sorts as Tall Tales concerns four stories that Smiley Bone tells to little Ringo, Bingo, Todd and the rat creature Bartleby during a campout.  

This is a fun little addition to Boneland focused on the sillier, fun side of Jeff Smith's world with almost none of the serious side of the epic tale through the original series of books.  Most of the tall tales center around a new character called Big Johnson Bone, a Paul Bunyan-like character who is constantly telling tall tales as he wrecks a patch of destruction in his adventures.  There is also a wordy, somewhat timid monkey named Mr. Pip (who Big Johnson won in a poker game) who is a nice counterpoint to Big Johnson's bravado.  Even though the book is set after the epic series, the tall tale about Big Johnson concerns an adventure before the story in the original series. It turns out Big Johnson serves a key role in the early history of the valley when he turns back the rat creatures and rescues the forest creatures.  

While there is none of the epic quality to the original series or the prequel Rose, this book does have all of the charming humor.  The Queen Rat and her gigantic son Tyson are two great characters who add a bit more to the basic rat monster template of the stories.  The tiny dragon Stillman is also very funny – in fact there is a whole lot of "cute" in the stories with lots of baby animals and the type of scattered chatter that Smith has done before.  

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