Comic Review Quick Hits

Pizzeria Kamikaze

One of the great questions of life is what happens when we die and unfortunately the only way to know is to die. Etger Keret takes a unique approach to the subject in this very odd slice of indy comic goodness called Pizzeria Kamikaze.

Mordy has killed himself only to find he now “lives” in a world populated only by suicide victims and he now works in a pizzeria and when he finds out that his girlfriend in the living world killed herself and is hanging around someone called The Messiah King he sets off to find her.

I like the artwork and how it’s black and white with highlights of silver everywhere; which give it an otherworldly feel. And I like the premise of where people go when they die being just another version of being alive.

The problem is that Etger spends all his time setting up the ground rules for his world that he doesn’t get a chance to fully explore the world. No sooner does he get his world building over with than the book is over.

Is this worth reading? I’d say the art and the story premise make this a must read even if the execution is less than steller. I do have one question I REALLY wanted answered though. When this one character decides to kill himself in the afterlife we are told that he went to a place even worse than that one. What was THAT place like?

The Supernaturalists

The now seemingly defunct Mad Yak Press put out this sexy little slice of vampire-y goodness by writer Patrick Neighly and it’s not too bad. Personally I feel like vampires are pretty well played out but every now and then someone finds a few new notes to an old tune and the result can be satisfying. 

Detective Edgar Drake is hunting a killer in 1920’s New York City.  It’s not just any killer though but one who kills his victims in the manner of a vampire.  The deeper his investigation goes the bigger the conspiracy grows until it threatens not only to destroy Edgar but the beautiful Esme who has decided to appoint herself his sidekick and lover.

The writer does a surprisingly good job of building a very believable vampire underworld society but he takes too much time to build the world and not enough on the characters themselves.  I think that if Neighly had gone on to write another couple of stories those faults would have been fixed.

Regardless of whatever faults the story might have the very idea of a 1920’s film-noir style detective story with vampires and a ton of twists is reason enough to go search this out.

Lost Girl

First off let me say this is NOT the porn comic by Alan Moore darn it.  If it was perhaps I would have enjoyed this more.  Let me say that this book was definitely worth the .25 I paid for it.  So this teenage girl keeps running into this “bad girl” while on a vacation, at least I think she does. Maybe the girl was just a figment of her growing sexuality. Maybe she was just crazy. The problem is the book is WAY too clever in the way it tries to be “literature” and I guess the author N Kanan thought it wasn’t worth his time to provide any answers. Maybe we are supposed to provide the answers ourselves.  Or maybe the ending is just unknowable.  With that said the other good thing is that this book only took 20 minutes to read because of the small number of pages so my time wasn’t completely wasted.