Oliver Gerlach 10/16/17 Oliver Gerlach 10/16/17

Review: White Ash #1

By Oliver Gerlach

White Ash #1, recently Kickstarted with the promise of more to follow, was marketed as something for people who like Lord of the Rings, Twin Peaks, or Supernatural. That seems like a bizarre list of comparisons, and not a particularly coherent one. It is, however, an intriguing list, and one which fits the comic better than expected (although still not perfectly; that Lord of the Rings comparison is a bit ridiculous and out of place).

Oliver Gerlach 10/11/17 Oliver Gerlach 10/11/17

Review: Wolverton, Thief of Impossible Objects #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Wolverton, Thief of Impossible Objects, is, as the lengthy and descriptive title indicates, a fun adventure story about a thief of magical artifacts. It’s a great concept and an entertaining story, and the title makes the premise pretty clear from the first glance at the book. It’s a bit of a mouthful, though, and that’s kind of representative of the rest of the book.

Oliver Gerlach 10/6/17 Oliver Gerlach 10/6/17

Review: Tales from the Interface #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Emmanuel Filteau’s Tales from the Interface is a strange piece, both in terms of creative content and production. The blurb for it promised giant crabs and weird adventure, so I felt I had to check it out. I suppose it delivered both of those, and the crabs were excellent, but I still didn’t love it.

Oliver Gerlach 10/4/17 Oliver Gerlach 10/4/17

Review: Knights of the Golden Sun #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Knights of the Golden Sun #1 is a biblical epic that goes far beyond any biblical epic I’ve read before. It’s really quite something, in the most delightfully over-the-top way possible. Mark London and Mauricio Villareal have created a truly ridiculous and beautiful book here, filled with levels of melodrama that make even the most dramatic anime look bland. It’s not what I was expecting.

Oliver Gerlach 9/27/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/27/17

Review: Mister Strange’s Monster Mansion #1-2

By Oliver Gerlach

Monster Mansion by Dan Wolff is a lot of fun. A classic Hammer horror movie in comic form, it wears its B-movie influences proudly on its sleeve and has a great time with them. I can’t quite tell if it’s meant to be a horror story by modern standards, but it fits that classic horror movie vibe perfectly.

Oliver Gerlach 9/27/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/27/17

Review: Velocidad #1-2

By Oliver Gerlach

Casey Quevedo’s Velocidad is a fun sci-fi adventure about a crew of space pirates raiding supply ships traveling to distant space colonies. It’s a straightforward concept that doesn’t require very much explanation or detailed worldbuilding, so it’s nice and easy to jump into. Honestly, the brief paragraph introducing the concept at the start of the first issue is entirely unnecessary.

Oliver Gerlach 9/18/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/18/17

Review: Language Barrier

By Oliver Gerlach

Hannah K. Lee’s Language Barrier is a collection that self-identifies as “zines, comics, and other fragments” on the cover. That’s an important piece of categorisation, as is the Koyama Press website’s description of it as “[an] art book”. This isn’t really a comic, and shouldn’t be treated like one. It’s a giant zine or a surreal art project or something like that. Yes, there are comics in it, but I wouldn’t call it a comic in itself. Whatever it is, though, it’s profoundly weird and unsettling, and doesn’t sit comfortably in any major category.

Oliver Gerlach 9/14/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/14/17

Review: Bumstorm: A Snake Amongst The Wind Farm

By Oliver Gerlach

The vast majority of the indie comics I end up reviewing seem to be serious high concept low sci-fi adventures about serious white men. That honestly gets a bit dull after a while, so sometimes a palate cleanser is in order. Bumstorm #3: A Snake Amongst the Wind Farm certainly cleanses the palate. It’s not grim, it’s not serious, it’s not clever or even slightly pretentious; it’s just stupid as hell and out to have a good time.

Oliver Gerlach 9/13/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/13/17

Review: The Chimera Factor

By Oliver Gerlach

The Chimera Factor is one of many comics based around Barry Nugent’s Unseen Shadows books, a spectacular self-published multimedia empire covering novels, audio, and comics by a wide range of creative teams. The Unseen Shadows website lists 17 separate print comics plus a webcomic, although it’s a little hard to find information on The Chimera Factor itself due to the link on the website directing to the wrong comic. Before reading The Chimera Factor I had never heard of either Unseen Shadows or Nugent himself, and the scale of this project was quite a surprise to me. So, as a disclaimer, I’ve never read any other part of this fictional universe, and therefore all opinions here are coming from the perspective of someone completely new to Unseen Shadows.

Oliver Gerlach 9/13/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/13/17

Review: Everything Is Really Hard Today

By Oliver Gerlach

Everything Is Really Hard Today is a collection of Kevin Budnik’s It’s Okay To Be Sad autobiographical mini-comics. It’s an odd little collection of tiny, sad diary pieces, with very little coherent narrative; just brief vignettes from Budnik’s daily life. As such, it’s a very personal piece that no two readers are likely to draw the exact same conclusions from. This makes it a little challenging to review particularly usefully, but here are some general thoughts on it.

Oliver Gerlach 9/6/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/6/17

Review: Saltwater

By Oliver Gerlach

Rick Quinn and Dana Obera’s Saltwater is an interesting issue that deserves to be noticed. It’s the story of a city split in two, with a beautiful upper half and a rusting submarine half filled with slave labour keeping the rest of it running. If that’s at all interesting to you as a premise, you might want to check this one out. It’s a very slick, visually striking work from a creative team that could well go far together.

Oliver Gerlach 9/5/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/5/17

Review: Microcosmics

By Oliver Gerlach

Microcosmics is a collection of short, wordless comics about strange alien worlds and peoples, all written and drawn by the phenomenally talented Christine Larsen. It’s an odd collection of little stories, but one that I was thoroughly saddened to reach the end of. This collection is utterly delightful, and well worth your time and money.

Oliver Gerlach 9/4/17 Oliver Gerlach 9/4/17

Review: Tales of the Fractured Mind

By Oliver Gerlach

Tales of the Fractured Mind is an anthology comic, which is rare enough. Beyond that, though, it’s a project about mental health, a topic radically underdiscussed in both general life and comics. Even more unusually, this is a large anthology by a single creative team; this is two people discussing a range of mental health issues over the course of 68 pages. I have to admit, my initial excitement at finding a comic discussing a topic I care about greatly was very much tempered on seeing that it was all by the same two people. I generally believe that serious topics, when treated in anthology form like this, benefit from the widest range of voices and perspectives possible. So, could this work?

Oliver Gerlach 8/30/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/30/17

Review: Super Robot Mayhem #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Issue #2 Now on Kickstarter

Super Robot Mayhem seems to be half way between Pacific Rim and Alien, and if that isn’t a pitch that at least sounds fun to you then I’m not convinced you have any sense of adventure. It’s a story of sinister alien histories and giant smashy robots and, although there isn’t a lot of robot mayhem in this first issue, there’s a lot to like in here.

Oliver Gerlach 8/30/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/30/17

Review: Mitch Hammer #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Mitch Hammer #1 is described by its writer as “silly fun with a splash of Nextwave, flaunting its girth in the manner of Shirtless Bear Fighter.” That’s not an entirely inaccurate description. Contained within this issue is a great deal of silly fun, clearly influenced by titles such as the two mentioned. Obviously it’s not Nextwave, because Nextwave is unique and special, but it shares a similar sense of fun and a similar use of wild balls-to-the-wall action for pure entertainment value. It’s the story of a construction worker fighting mad science at a local community college, and is exactly as serious as you might expect: not remotely.

Oliver Gerlach 8/25/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/25/17

Review: Dark Beach #1-2

By Oliver Gerlach

Dark Beach is a crime story set in a future with no sun at all. It’s a neat hook that both fits very well with the genre trappings of the murder investigation and opens up for some clever and interesting world building. This is one of those proper crime noir comics that is full to bursting with a sense of place and atmosphere, and it’s an added bonus that the sci-fi concept behind it is such an enjoyable one.

Oliver Gerlach 8/22/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/22/17

Review: Corsair #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Corsair #1, currently on Kickstarter, is an interesting piece of uniquely British horror work, for all the good and all the bad associated with that subgenre. It follows Agent Corsair, a man tasked with investigating the nastier side of the occult. It’s a sound, entertaining premise, with a lot of potential to explore a range of different aspects of both horror and Britain itself.

Oliver Gerlach 8/18/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/18/17

Review: Scarlet Rose #1

By Oliver Gerlach

Scarlet Rose is an ongoing French series of comics, currently ten years into its run, but only newly available in English. Apparently very successful in France, it’s something of a shame that it’s taken so long to make it over here. It’s a thrilling child-friendly historical adventure about a girl, her sword, and her obsession with a highwayman known as The Fox.

Oliver Gerlach 8/16/17 Oliver Gerlach 8/16/17

Review: The Demon Archives vol. 1

By Oliver Gerlach

The Demon Archives, an ongoing webcomic, is finally transitioning to print through a Kickstarter campaign, approximately two-thirds of the way to reaching its goal as of the time of writing. The kickstarted first volume will contain the first three chapters of the webcomic, currently on its fifth chapter.