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chuckroBad Machinery (Volume 1, 2) – A comic series by John Allison, also the author of Giant Days, and though this revolves around middle-school characters, it has a very similar feel. It does include some amount of the supernatural, but that’s not the focus. And while the pacing occasionally makes it clear that the pages were written as a webcomic first, the through-line is reasonable and the first mystery is wrapped up nicely in the first book.
Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears: A Pie Comics Collection – These are adorable! Short strips with mediocre art and a wide variety of gag-a-day topics. I think I may have read a bunch of them in an online collection or something because they seemed familiar.
A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities – Attempting to be a cute and gentle guide featuring cartoon snails and troll-ish creatures, the artwork is mostly there as a distraction while they infodump at you for far longer than is actually necessary. I appreciate what they’re trying, but this feels like something that would come off as cringy to teenagers and condescending to adults.
A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns - Moderately better (and by different authors), this goes with the tried-and-true “the authors talking directly to the reader” educational comics format. I feel like the biggest problem here is that the people who would pick up and read this are already trying to be supportive, and the people who genuinely need something like this would never deign to read it.
I Was the Cat – It seemed like a normal assignment, ghostwriting a biography of a rich recluse. Turns out, the client is a talking cat! Not only that, he’s on life number nine and plans to recount all of the others—and his attempts to take over the world during them--in the biography. Cute, but not quite wacky enough or witty enough for the premise.
Dead Dudes – A group of reality-TV ghost hunters find their show about to be cancelled, so they try one last shot at the most freakishly haunted abandoned prison they can find…and die. But now they’re ghosts and when their TV rivals come to do a series about the same location, they can finally prove ghosts are real. The characters are pretty much all jerks and the art is mediocre; this is “okay” at best and forgettable.
Kim Reaper (Volume 1) – Lesbian college drama meets grim reaper workplace comedy with a ridiculous but adorable chibi art style. It’s got a real “Star vs. The Forces of Evil” vibe to it; if you dig that sort of Cartoon Network style you’ll like this.
Princess Princess Ever After - Speaking of Cartoon Network style and lesbians, this is a short one-shot about a Princess who is rescued by another princess. They go on to also rescue a prince, defeat an ogre, and defeat yet another princess before falling in love. It’s cute, but it’s been done better in plenty of other places. (The series Prince-less immediately comes to mind.)
The Tea Dragon Society - From the same author as Princess Princess, this is a more original idea and thoroughly cute: It posits a society where tiny dragons grow tea leaves from their antlers, and a little girl is introduced to them by a pair of retired adventurers who now run a tea shop. It’s silly (even when it’s trying to be deep, it’s an overdone and somewhat trite deep) but the illustrations are adorable and, y’know, tiny pet dragons.
Algeria is Beautiful Like America – An autobiographical story about the daughter of a French “Black Foot” colonial family returning to Algeria, where her grandparents grew up but were forced to flee from during the war for independence. I recall reading a travelogue of an American doing a Birthright Israel trip, and this has a similar sort of feeling to me, of discovering the real (and often both beautiful and mundane) nature of a place you only know from stories, and also learning a history from perspectives outside of both your family and the media narrative.
Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters (#1) – This bundle only included the first issue, which tells us that it’s some sort of post-apocalyptic setting and Jonna is the wilder, missing sister of our main character. I might have found this more interesting if they gave me a little more story; as a teaser I’m not really caught.
Dryad (#1) – Similarly, a one-issue tease isn’t really enough to get a good sense of a series, though this one has the feel of a D&D campaign that got turned into a comic book, especially with the subplot about a woman whose cellar has a passage into monster-infested ruins and “protectors” need to keep going down there and clearing the monsters out. I’d consider snagged a TPB of the first storyline if I saw it.
Heartthrob (Volume 1) – Remember that movie “Last Christmas”, where a woman gets a heart transplant and then falls in love with the ghost of the donor? This is that, except they also rob banks. And love Fleetwood Mac. It’s okay, kinda fun, and better than a Christmas-themed rom-com?
Little Witches – A Little Women pastiche, except the girls all have magical powers, Laurie and his uncle are witchfinders, and some sort of hex has been placed on the town. Fun for the Little Women completionist, but not standout.
Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us – A collection of Johnny Wander, a gag-a-day, slice-of-life webcomic about Yuko, Ananth, and their assorted friends/roommates (and their cats, of course) who make middling-at-best life choices. Only a few of the strips are really laugh out loud, but it’s a fun collection.
My Boyfriend is a Bear – In “weird concepts that kinda-sorta work,” this features a woman who, after a series of douchebag boyfriends, falls in love with a 500-pound north American black bear, who lives in her house and does odd jobs and speaks only in grunts. The Bear (as he’s referred to; he never gets any other name) is clearly a great boyfriend but the hibernation thing is an issue and her friends and family don’t all come around on it. The tone is “light-hearted rom-com” throughout. My best guess is that this is intended as a metaphor for queerness, but it’s also possible that it grew from a late-night drunken ranting session where someone declared, “You know what would make a great boyfriend? A BEAR!”
Overall: Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears was particularly cute. A bunch of these I enjoyed but wouldn’t go out of my way for. My Boyfriend is a Bear was a special kind of crazy.
Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears: A Pie Comics Collection – These are adorable! Short strips with mediocre art and a wide variety of gag-a-day topics. I think I may have read a bunch of them in an online collection or something because they seemed familiar.
A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities – Attempting to be a cute and gentle guide featuring cartoon snails and troll-ish creatures, the artwork is mostly there as a distraction while they infodump at you for far longer than is actually necessary. I appreciate what they’re trying, but this feels like something that would come off as cringy to teenagers and condescending to adults.
A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns - Moderately better (and by different authors), this goes with the tried-and-true “the authors talking directly to the reader” educational comics format. I feel like the biggest problem here is that the people who would pick up and read this are already trying to be supportive, and the people who genuinely need something like this would never deign to read it.
I Was the Cat – It seemed like a normal assignment, ghostwriting a biography of a rich recluse. Turns out, the client is a talking cat! Not only that, he’s on life number nine and plans to recount all of the others—and his attempts to take over the world during them--in the biography. Cute, but not quite wacky enough or witty enough for the premise.
Dead Dudes – A group of reality-TV ghost hunters find their show about to be cancelled, so they try one last shot at the most freakishly haunted abandoned prison they can find…and die. But now they’re ghosts and when their TV rivals come to do a series about the same location, they can finally prove ghosts are real. The characters are pretty much all jerks and the art is mediocre; this is “okay” at best and forgettable.
Kim Reaper (Volume 1) – Lesbian college drama meets grim reaper workplace comedy with a ridiculous but adorable chibi art style. It’s got a real “Star vs. The Forces of Evil” vibe to it; if you dig that sort of Cartoon Network style you’ll like this.
Princess Princess Ever After - Speaking of Cartoon Network style and lesbians, this is a short one-shot about a Princess who is rescued by another princess. They go on to also rescue a prince, defeat an ogre, and defeat yet another princess before falling in love. It’s cute, but it’s been done better in plenty of other places. (The series Prince-less immediately comes to mind.)
The Tea Dragon Society - From the same author as Princess Princess, this is a more original idea and thoroughly cute: It posits a society where tiny dragons grow tea leaves from their antlers, and a little girl is introduced to them by a pair of retired adventurers who now run a tea shop. It’s silly (even when it’s trying to be deep, it’s an overdone and somewhat trite deep) but the illustrations are adorable and, y’know, tiny pet dragons.
Algeria is Beautiful Like America – An autobiographical story about the daughter of a French “Black Foot” colonial family returning to Algeria, where her grandparents grew up but were forced to flee from during the war for independence. I recall reading a travelogue of an American doing a Birthright Israel trip, and this has a similar sort of feeling to me, of discovering the real (and often both beautiful and mundane) nature of a place you only know from stories, and also learning a history from perspectives outside of both your family and the media narrative.
Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters (#1) – This bundle only included the first issue, which tells us that it’s some sort of post-apocalyptic setting and Jonna is the wilder, missing sister of our main character. I might have found this more interesting if they gave me a little more story; as a teaser I’m not really caught.
Dryad (#1) – Similarly, a one-issue tease isn’t really enough to get a good sense of a series, though this one has the feel of a D&D campaign that got turned into a comic book, especially with the subplot about a woman whose cellar has a passage into monster-infested ruins and “protectors” need to keep going down there and clearing the monsters out. I’d consider snagged a TPB of the first storyline if I saw it.
Heartthrob (Volume 1) – Remember that movie “Last Christmas”, where a woman gets a heart transplant and then falls in love with the ghost of the donor? This is that, except they also rob banks. And love Fleetwood Mac. It’s okay, kinda fun, and better than a Christmas-themed rom-com?
Little Witches – A Little Women pastiche, except the girls all have magical powers, Laurie and his uncle are witchfinders, and some sort of hex has been placed on the town. Fun for the Little Women completionist, but not standout.
Our Cats Are More Famous Than Us – A collection of Johnny Wander, a gag-a-day, slice-of-life webcomic about Yuko, Ananth, and their assorted friends/roommates (and their cats, of course) who make middling-at-best life choices. Only a few of the strips are really laugh out loud, but it’s a fun collection.
My Boyfriend is a Bear – In “weird concepts that kinda-sorta work,” this features a woman who, after a series of douchebag boyfriends, falls in love with a 500-pound north American black bear, who lives in her house and does odd jobs and speaks only in grunts. The Bear (as he’s referred to; he never gets any other name) is clearly a great boyfriend but the hibernation thing is an issue and her friends and family don’t all come around on it. The tone is “light-hearted rom-com” throughout. My best guess is that this is intended as a metaphor for queerness, but it’s also possible that it grew from a late-night drunken ranting session where someone declared, “You know what would make a great boyfriend? A BEAR!”
Overall: Goldilocks and the Infinite Bears was particularly cute. A bunch of these I enjoyed but wouldn’t go out of my way for. My Boyfriend is a Bear was a special kind of crazy.
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Date: 2022-04-24 04:16 pm (UTC)Oni press is one of those publishers that FEELS like I should like all their stuff but it's all so forgettable once I've read it that I am largely just disappointed by them.