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Humble Books Bundle: Kickstarter Edition
Aug. 2nd, 2015 01:28 pmThe Big Feminist BUT - A comic anthology about feminism, predicated on the issues of “I’m not a feminist, BUT…” The quality is inconsistent, as is common with comic anthologies, but there are a couple of clever ones.
Poorcraft: The Funnybook Fundamentals of Living Well on Less - This is less about surviving in poverty and more aimed at recent college grads and similar newly-minted adults who don’t actually know how to take care of themselves. Virtually all of it is aimed at people who have an abundance of time (and the energy and health that comes with youth) and not a lot of money. And while some of it is a little absurd (you don’t need to grate bar soap to make your own laundry detergent—just buy the $3 bottle of store-brand), much of it is useful advice. Like the Tiny Houses book I read recently, there’s an emphasis on being aware of what you actually need and not paying for things you don’t need or won’t use.
Code Monkey Save World - This is a comic book mash-up of a bunch of Jonathan Coulton’s songs, most notably “Code Monkey”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “The Future Soon”, “Creepy Doll” and “Re: Your Brains”. It’s an amusing little story of lovable incompetence for JoCo fans who get the references, and would make no sense whatsoever to anyone else.
God Hates Astronauts - A superhero story that falls somewhere between Umbrella Academy and Seaguy; in that it arguably makes sense as a narrative but leaves you asking, “What the #$^ did I just read?” In what I’m guessing was originally stretch goals/supplemental material, there’s a series of two-page origin stories of pretty much every character that appears.
Imagined Realms, Book 1 - This is a collection of fantasy artwork by Julie Dillon, with a bit of exploratory prose to accompany each one. Every one of them could easily be the basis for a bigger story, though I’m not sure how much use I have for them. They’re pretty?
The Sleep of Reason: An Anthology of Horror - A collection of short horror comics, none of which are amazing, but each of which presents an interesting look at what that particularly cartoonist is freaked out by. (Randy Milholland of Something*Positive did one of them.) The ones that involved things happening to small children were probably the ones that freaked me out the most.
Blast Furnace Volume 1: Recreational Thief - From the same author who did God Hates Astronauts, further pushing the boundaries of absurdity is BLAST FURNACE, a man whose tie is perpetually on fire. It feels like a 24-hour comic more than anything—each page is the author going, “Hey, what would be funny right here?” (This is also in black and white, with much less refined art.) Flashbacks layered within each other! Random talking animals! Violence! Mayhem! Bestiality! Sound effects!
Mother Russia - World War 2 has ended in Russia because of a zombie plague. One woman still stands against them; and she discovers she might not be the only one. The backup stories are prequels to the main one, telling the stories of characters before they ended up in zombie-covered Berlin. It’s cute, but nothing I haven’t really seen before. Zombies, explosions, the usual lot.
(This was just the graphic stuff. The bundle also included a number of novels and prose anthologies—those will take me much longer to read, I think.)
Poorcraft: The Funnybook Fundamentals of Living Well on Less - This is less about surviving in poverty and more aimed at recent college grads and similar newly-minted adults who don’t actually know how to take care of themselves. Virtually all of it is aimed at people who have an abundance of time (and the energy and health that comes with youth) and not a lot of money. And while some of it is a little absurd (you don’t need to grate bar soap to make your own laundry detergent—just buy the $3 bottle of store-brand), much of it is useful advice. Like the Tiny Houses book I read recently, there’s an emphasis on being aware of what you actually need and not paying for things you don’t need or won’t use.
Code Monkey Save World - This is a comic book mash-up of a bunch of Jonathan Coulton’s songs, most notably “Code Monkey”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “The Future Soon”, “Creepy Doll” and “Re: Your Brains”. It’s an amusing little story of lovable incompetence for JoCo fans who get the references, and would make no sense whatsoever to anyone else.
God Hates Astronauts - A superhero story that falls somewhere between Umbrella Academy and Seaguy; in that it arguably makes sense as a narrative but leaves you asking, “What the #$^ did I just read?” In what I’m guessing was originally stretch goals/supplemental material, there’s a series of two-page origin stories of pretty much every character that appears.
Imagined Realms, Book 1 - This is a collection of fantasy artwork by Julie Dillon, with a bit of exploratory prose to accompany each one. Every one of them could easily be the basis for a bigger story, though I’m not sure how much use I have for them. They’re pretty?
The Sleep of Reason: An Anthology of Horror - A collection of short horror comics, none of which are amazing, but each of which presents an interesting look at what that particularly cartoonist is freaked out by. (Randy Milholland of Something*Positive did one of them.) The ones that involved things happening to small children were probably the ones that freaked me out the most.
Blast Furnace Volume 1: Recreational Thief - From the same author who did God Hates Astronauts, further pushing the boundaries of absurdity is BLAST FURNACE, a man whose tie is perpetually on fire. It feels like a 24-hour comic more than anything—each page is the author going, “Hey, what would be funny right here?” (This is also in black and white, with much less refined art.) Flashbacks layered within each other! Random talking animals! Violence! Mayhem! Bestiality! Sound effects!
Mother Russia - World War 2 has ended in Russia because of a zombie plague. One woman still stands against them; and she discovers she might not be the only one. The backup stories are prequels to the main one, telling the stories of characters before they ended up in zombie-covered Berlin. It’s cute, but nothing I haven’t really seen before. Zombies, explosions, the usual lot.
(This was just the graphic stuff. The bundle also included a number of novels and prose anthologies—those will take me much longer to read, I think.)
