More Great Comics You Should Buy Now

The second issue of Rob Jackson's "It's A Man's Life In The Ice Cream Business" is just as engrossing as the first, though I swear I'm confounded trying to explain why. It's more of the same action we enjoyed in part one as Rob and family continue to make their way round the farmers' markets of the North West selling home-made ice cream, sheep & goats' cheese, soup and even sorbet. Along the way there's drama as a miserable customer complains the vegetable soup is "all carrots", suspense as Rob wonders whether a heavy snowfall will stop him getting to Houghton Tower, and the threat of competition from rival cheese and ice cream stalls. There's music, grumbles, some inspiring recipes... and honesty. Real life honesty. With buckets of charm. I can't explain why I enjoy this book so much, I just do. Give it a try and see if you do too.

One of my all-time favourite small-press creators, Ralph Kidson, is back with another wonderfully observed mini comic. Graham The Lonely Snake is the heartbreaking (and I do not use that word lightly) story of a desert snake whose only friend is a rock called Steven Hughes. It may well be the most moving comic I've ever read, or I might just be getting soppy in my old age. The man who previously made me care about the adventures of an envelope and a stick has taken anthropomorphism to new levels with this tiny little comic. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me want to vote Ralph Kidson for PM. Our country needs him...

Small Press Round Up

I haven't written any small press comic reviews for a while, so here's a quick recap of some of the books I've read recently...

Tony McGee's Outcastes is revving up towards its three-part climax, yet with all the drama, revelations and plot twists contained in issue #9, I really have no idea where this book will go next. All hell just broke loose - quite literally. (Don't you just hate people who overuse the phrase "quite literally" or use it in a completely inappropriate manner? Like "I just coughed up a lung - quite literally". No, because if you'd literally coughed up a lung, you'd be dead. You mean "quite figuratively", if you mean anything at all. It's like that bloke on Come Fly With Me who always says "pardon the pun" when he hasn't actually made a pun. No? It's just me is it, again? Oh well, forget I said anything.)

Anyway, so much of great import happens in the latest Outcastes that you really need to have read the previous issues to truly appreciate it. So I suggest you start here. It's worth the effort, particularly as the latest issue contains the best art of Tony's career... and I've been following that career avidly for many a year now, so I know what I'm talking about. Quite literally.

While you're over there, you might want to check out Tony's online strip Eva Nova, which Tone describes as Love & Rockets + Halo Jones + Futurama. If you enjoy that as much as I did, he's also flogging actual paper copies too.

Sean Azzopardi's 100 Days Of Winter is another touching autobiographical story from a writer/artist who's fast becoming one of my favourite small-pressers. This takes the form of a series of illustrated diary entries between October 2009 and February '10, tracing the frustrations of working life, the artistic struggle, relationships, and the story of Sean's sick cat, Nobby, which is genuinely one of the most moving things I've read all year. But I'm a sucker when it comes to cats...

Buy 100 Days Of Winter, and sample more of Sean's work, over at his website.

I read Douglas Noble's Live Static in the car late one afternoon while waiting for an appointment I'd turned up really early for. Daylight was fading, I was all alone in a strange part of town, slightly edgy about the meeting ahead... and Douglas's story really freaked me out. It's a creepy-in-the-extreme tale of a fractured relationship and television gone bad. Douglas describes it as "a horror story about love, a romance about memory, and a dream of forgetting". To get the full effect, I suggest you read it in similarly discomforting circumstances. Brrr...

Find out more about Douglas's work here.

Finally, The Comix Reader is a 24 page newspaper print anthology of short strips by a variety of alternative cartoonists, most notable for the contribution by the legend that is Ralph Kidson (because I can never get enough of Ralph's work) but also featuring fascinating, amusing and thought-provoking work by the likes of Richard Cowdry, Gareth Brookes, Jimi Gherkin and others. All that for a quid? Bargain. Go to this place and buy.

Don't forget, there's more comic reviews by me (and Rob, and occasionally Paul and Steve) over at Comics On The Ration. I've recently reviewed Essential Hulk #6 and Mike Carey's Unwritten, while Rob has been slogging his way through volume after volume of The Walking Dead - presumably so you don't have to.

Hootiebits The Magic Owl

I hate the abbreviation LOL. I hate it for its scandalous geeky shorthand. I hate it for its stench of hipster exclusivity. I hate it because I have an awful sinking feeling that it was originally devised as TEXT SPEAK - and I deplore the way TEXT SPEAK is destroying our language.

I also hate it because it prevents me from saying that something made me laugh out loud without someone, somewhere thinking I'm saying LOL.

That said - fuck it. Ralph Kidson's latest small press comic made me laugh out loud till I burst something squishy inside. I wish I could explain what it is about Kidson's irreverent cartooning that amuses me so much, but god help us all if he ever calls it a day.

Hootiebits The Magic Owl ("For Adult Birds & Mammals Only") may well be Ralphie's magnum opus. It stars a magic owl who works for god, can travel in space and time (and under the sea) and occasionally kills people (but only 6 in 10,000 years so I wouldn't worry too much). Mostly he just hangs out with his friends, drinks sherry with the Elephant Man, gets drunk and wakes up in bed with Bill Oddie and then goes down the pub with a scented binbag for a ploughman's lunch. (One of his friends, on introduction, made me laugh so much that milk came out of my nose... and I haven't drunk milk since I was 5 years old and they gave it me at school and it made me throw up.)

In fact, I laughed so much I think I need to go read it again. If Hootiebits sounds like your kind of thing, pop on over to Paul Rainey's website where you'll find details on how to email Ralph for a copy of his comic. That might seem like an awful lot of effort, but it's worth every mouseclick.