The Siren’s Song is the follow up to the critically acclaimed Here Be Monsters. Griff and Justine find themselves chasing a mysterious cult committed to ridding the world of blasphemers, especially Griff Gristle. They will challenge Griff in new ways as well as make him deal with the loss of his wife.
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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.
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In the British small press, there’s a lot of people self-publishing work, but I can probably count on one hand the amount of them actually doing a good job of trying to get their work noticed and actively seeking out new readers… Self-promotion (or ‘The Hustle’ as I like to call it) is key to success in any creative field, but I see a lot of guys and girls putting stuff out, mentioning it once, then sitting back expecting people to just fall over it… If you asked me to name creators doing things right, the lads from Madius Comics would more than likely be the first creators I think of.
Read MoreMadius Comics’ anthology, Papercuts and Inkstains returns with three stories this go around. Usually I don’t care how many stories are in an anthology but this time it felt like there was something missing. The first story was a humor based tale while the second is all serious and the last is a dark comedy. Maybe it was just the second story felt out of place or it needed something else to compliment it with the rest of the issues.
The first story is about video games. I can’t really tell you about it because that would spoil it completely, but it’s an accurate look at video game culture in my opinion. The art was okay. There were 
some style choices to the art that felt out of place with the rest of art, but I get what they were trying for. It’s again a humorous story.
The second story was actually pretty good. I didn’t get into it a lot in the last issue, but Vampire Wonderland delivered some interesting twists. I don’t know how long the story can go on for, but I’m curious about it now. I hope the twist is something cool, but we’ll see. The art is the best on this story, it makes full use of it being in black and white.
The third story is the longest running story, Profits of Doom. The story continues. If you’ve been reading about the group of men that started a cult and accidently brought forth the end of the world and are now trying to stop it. Then you already know what’s going on. There’s more humor, there’s action and our characters are growing with each chapter. The art also continues to improve with each chapter which is nice. It’s getting cleaner and more detailed.
That’s about it for this issue. It’s not that it’s short, but ultimately it feels like only one story really delivered a satisfying chapter. The rest is interesting and a good read if you’ve been following the series, but one goal of an anthology should be to have something for new readers to latch on to and that didn’t happen here. Since I’m five deep on this series I will be back for more, but hopefully the next installment has something to really dig into and get excited about.
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Papercuts and Inkstains #5 Writers: Various Artists: Various Publisher: Madius Comics Price: £4.00 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital
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