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FallCon roundup 1: Danno Klonowski, David Tea, Evan Palmer, Bart A. King
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Our four reviewees.
All right, enough time’s been wasted. Time for the first round-up of random minis and short comics I picked up at FallCon, the greatest little comics convention in the (mid)west.
Phil, the Evil Bean of Doom, by Danno Klonowski and Dan Murphy. I like this comic more for the story behind it than the story inside: way, way back in 1994 (as the comic puts it, “when the internet barely even existed”), Murphy and Klonowski got together and did an eight-page story about Phil, the Evil Bean of Doom, who gets in a poker game with Satan, Death, and Hitler, and ends up winning control of Hell. Naturally, he decides to turn it into a theme park. (Well, what would you do?) These eight pages languished, unseen, for fifteen years, until Murphy and Klonowski finally came back and finished the story this past year. Phil’s mismanagement of Hell has turned it into a shambles, and he must compete again with the three evil beings to retain control. It’s worth the price of admission just to see how much Murphy’s art improved over fifteen years. Keep your eyes peeled for the somewhat tasteless (but hilarious!) Michael Jackson cameo!
Five Perennial Virtues, issues one and seven, by David Tea. I really have no idea how to react to these strange artistic artifacts. They’re half comic, half sketchbook, half musings and meditations, and they’re as odd as you’d expect something with three halves to be. The stories in the two issues I bought are a combination of Pekar-esque introspective musings and fantastic, hallucinatory flights of fancy. I personally prefer issue seven, wherein David rides a winged horse up to a castle in the clouds and then spends a couple pages musing on the luckiness of pennies. The scratchy black-and-white pen artwork is engrossing, but the strange full-page illustrations of vines or potted plants or manicured lawns in the middle of the story tend to disrupt the flow.
The Strong, Silent Type, by Bart A. King. A dark and wordless little piece, The Strong, Silent Type shows a masterful command of light and shadow. Printed on heavy paper stock with black, white, and a strange grey-green, Type is a moody and inexplicable tale. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but I’d like to see King do something with a stronger narrative next time.
The Ashen Cat, by Evan Palmer. This lovely, lyrical book, about a cat whose family has died and its search for a new home, is one of the most beautiful explorations of the comic form I’ve ever seen. Every page holds just a single panel, but the way in which those panels are used as both image and object is just stunning. They become windows, frames; they shape the narrative and provide an alternate perspective on it. The cleverness of the design is complemented by Palmer’s lush art; the cat slinks like liquid across the page, slipping through weeds and in and out of shadows.
For more information:
(David Tea appears to not have a website. I'd link you if I could, David!)
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