Results tagged “isotopecomics”

And for fans of the woodsman sciences, a special treat: one of the band members plays the saw. Whoo!

All of our comics this week have been struck by some kind of diabolic decontextualization ray, leaving them to fend for themselves in the bleak tundra of WTF. From local artist Chris Wisnia come inside-jokes so confusing you won't be able to find your head to scratch it; from Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale come a Superman so divorced from modern superhero style we found ourselves enjoying it in spite of our deep-seated loathing of underwear perverts; and from Steve MacIsaac comes a relatively contextual story about a man lost in a country and relationship he just can't understand. And as always, the information you need to make sense of the world is available at Isotope Comics in Hayes Valley, who are kind enough to point us in directions that sometimes make very little sense indeed. Just how we like it.

Doctor DeBunko is awash in fools. The creation of local artist Chris Wisnia, Dr. DeBunko's comics follow a familiar pattern: a group of hysterical idiots, foaming at the mouth over some unexplained phenomena, are patiently condescended to by a skeptical pipe-smoking intellectual with slick 1950s hair and a passing resemblance to Vincent Price. A farmer wails over the eviscerated corpse of a cow, "it's the paranormal mystery crime of the century! Is this the work of aliens out to steal cow DNA?" And the doctor replies, "I see you've got a number of poisonous plants growing on this property. Are there many scavenging animals nearby?" Oh, what a spoilsport.

What mysteries lurk in the minds of men? Well, there's the one about the all-knowing ham. And then there's the mystery about Vincent Price insisting that someone put an imaginary shoe on his foot. And the one where the letter L was killed in a shoot-out, and who can forget when Lucky the Leprechaun had to wear white bell bottoms? Oh, what a turgid threshhold we cross when pondering the hauntings of the psyche! Well, WE don't ponder them per se, but Jesse Recklaw, author of "Slow Wave," (now available in adorable zine form!) does. You might have trouble finding the handcrafted booklet -- but as always, all of the titles that we review are available at Isotope Comics in Hayes Valley.

This week's comic reviews could easily just be a long, happy, satisfied sigh. Our recommenders at Isotope Comics have been handing us some fairly heavy titles lately, and so to make up for that, they've given us three delights. A collection of , which has experienced an on-again-off-again publishing for the last 10 years. To those all of those books we say: yay, yay, and yay, respectively.

Once again, Isotope Comics has recommended us into an edgy, scary, fractured little mood. Last week it was the impending doom of , by Madison Clell, a soul-baring autobiography of illustrations about living with multiple personalities.

You know how it is sometimes to look at photos from the 80s, where it's all cute young cheeks and happy tow-headed promise, and now twenty years later all the kids in the pictures have been worn down by their dreams falling apart and everything they love being taken away? (Or at least, that's how we feel when we listen to Bright Eyes.) So anyway, issue three of Joshua W. Cotter's "Skyscrapers of the Midwest" is like that. We'd like to thank the folks at Isotope Comics for putting us in a mood resembling that of Winona Rider in "Beetlejuice."

Before we get to this week's comic books, we must first point out that Issue 2 of Kevin McShane's has, as the kids say, hit the stands. (We reviewed Issue 1 a few weeks ago.) This latest installment sees our heros standing in line to get into a club where, it turns out, everybody sucks. Poseurs and floozies and five dollar beers deflate their enthusiasm for Los Angeles, but just when all seems lost and parking tickets are chomping at their heels, Toupydoops makes a neato new friend who somehow seems to make everything seem okay. Good times. And we're still looking forward to the day that Teeter snuggles in with the other bears at Oil Can Harry's.

It's mini-comic week! Our BFFs at Isotope Comics just handed out their annual mini-comics award, so this week we're diving into a couple modest-size graphic booklets.

This week's comics, courtesy of Isotope, involve a boy motivated by his love for God, a man motivated by a threat to his wife, and a group of kids motivated by sex. Yep, God, violence, and sex -- honestly, what other reasons are there for doing anything? Let's start with Steven T. Seagle and Becky Cloonan's "American Virgin," because that was our favorite. Adam's a charismatic college kid on a mission from God: to convince America to stop slutting around so much. He's got an earnest doe-eyed emo sort of vibe that totally suckers in the young hipsters -- he's even able to halt a rape just by making some sensitive noises about commitment and specialness. So, he's like a superhero whose power is stopping you from getting laid -- just what the world was waiting for, right?

So you're feeling macho, is that it? Well sir, you can either take out your aggressions with one of those squeezy stress balls, or you can immerse yourself in the snarling tough-guy posturing of this week's comics, all brought to our manly attention by the delightful chaps at Isotope Comics. First up: Adam Pollina's gritty and manic "Romp," a comic book series (and soon to be movie) about a titular armless up-and-coming thug just trying to scrape by on the tough streets of the inner city. That means lots of graffiti-inspired artwork, and narrow-eyed glowering, and voiceovers written in one of those scratchy fonts that looks like someone etched it by hand except that all the letters are identical so it's obvious that it's really just typed out on a computer.

Our theory goes something like this: good stories, ones that people can really enjoy, start with a beginning, experience a middle, and wrap up with an end. Call us crazy, but when a comic book (supplied, we hasten to add, by the awesome kids at Isotope Comics) leaves off that last part, it's hard to come away feeling fulfilled. Such is our lament for by Nabiel Kanan, an initially engaging tale about a wistful political aid and his family on the brink of teenage disenchantment. Ten years ago, Max turned his back on his optimistic lefty ideals to take a job working for an up-and-coming member of Parliament. His daughter Natalie feels like he turned his back on her around the same time; as her 15th birthday approaches, she bitterly recalls her own optimism of ten years ago. Meanwhile, the government has adopted a new tough stance against hobos and gypsies, and as tensions rise around them, both Max and Natalie look the the Me-Of-Ten-Years-Ago to decide where they stand.

We were on the fence, at first, about the new Mr. T comic book series. But then we turned a page and witnessed our hero entering an evildoer's lair by crashing through a brick wall, and all our reservations fell away. Sure, it's ridiculous, cheesy, and a little confusing. But it just wouldn't be Mr. T otherwise. As James at Isotope Comics pointed out to us, Mr. T's never sold out, never changed, never updated after all this time. And so there's a strangely appealing consistancy to his comics -- he's at his best when stomping around, making ludicrous declarations about drugs and The Hood. Sadly, there's also a bit more introspection than we would have liked -- contemplating the nature of his own existance was never T's strong suit.

How on Earth can you not love Doctor Strange? Even if you're not one of his fanatical followers -- as is Isotope Comics' James Sime, who first guided our attention towards the Doctor -- there's no escaping the Dcotor's strange charms. This time, the master of occult arcana faces a small army of dead supervillains who've discovered a means to temporarily resurrect themselves. Killed off by superheros in the 70s, The Pitiful One and his group demand that D.S. resurrect them permanently; but the Doctor's been fighting off his own demons lately. Like a goofy Hamlet, he's overcome with melancholy and despair which has left him feeling, well, less than spiffy. "The enigmatic Orb of Snnnr will suffice," he declares in his typical tone, then falters, "I mean, do. It'll do. Whatever." Blustery one moment, sadly aloof the next, it's a fantastic portrait of a hero questioning the meaning of his life. And the hinted-at addition of Dead Girl to future issues is a major plus, too.

. HA HA HA HA HA HA!" We do love some good old fashioned postmodern irony, and Mantooth fits the bill, from the evil robot named "World's Greatest Grandpa" to a plot to make zombies out of the world's Nobel Prize winners. And the annotations -- inspired, we are told, by an annotated volume of Shakespeare -- reveal both the comic's script and the author's intentions, both of which make for an illuminating read.

Oooooh, ... plus an internal monologue ... plus cartoons!

Okay, we're sorry, but if you're not totally in love with we're going to have to fight you. Recommended highly by the froods at Isotope Comics as well as by us, It's the first of seven volumes chronicling the life and love of a 23-year old doofy-cute shyguy in Toronto, written and illustrated by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Scott's dating a mature high school girl, but his eye's been caught by a mysterious girl he's seen skating in his dreams; meanwhile his friends attend band practice (their band: "The Sex Bob-ombs") and cook bacon and live casual, friendly, just-like-you-and-me sorts of lives; they work, they drink, they party. The characters have a Joss-Whedony ability to be sensitive and sarcastic at the same time -- such as when Scott wakes up in the morning and says, "I wish I could turn into a morphing ball and roll to the bathroom from here, instead of having to stand up," and his ladyfriend replies, "I used to know a guy who could do that. He said it wasn't that great." But it's not all hipster navel-gazing; everyone in the Scott Pilgrim universe has an uncontrollable spontaneity, so just when you think you know what's coming next, two characters unexpectedly hook up or suddenly weild mystical powers to summon a flock of -- well, we don't want to ruin the f**king awesome ending for you. It's explodey enough for your edgy friends, and emo enough for your weepy ones, and at about $12 it would be a perfect purchase if there happened to be some kind of upcoming gift-giving holiday.

Hey, remember that time all those SFPD cops robbed a bank at Market & Sansome while sleepwalking? Oh wait that didn't really happen, it's just one of the plot points of "Less Than Hero," a comic book by Jason McNamara and Tony Talbert, set right here in our own back yard and pointed out to us by the folks at Isotope Comics. Concerning itself primarily with a failed dot-com kid who tries to kill himself, an investment banker with the power to control peoples' sleep patterns, and a cult based in the Sunset, the biggest kick you might get out of the story is recognizing an intersection or local low-rent celebrity on its pages. If your favorite thing about SF is its grit and rough edges, this is a book for you -- the art reminds us of something we might see in vintage , in that grotesque/realistic, Mary-Worth-gone-wrong sort of style, and the dialogue is unadorned. The lightning-fast pace of the books match the locale in which they're set, and even though that can cause some confusion, it's a confusion to which we, as SF residents, have grown accustomed.

Stolen Hitler porn! There, we said it. Now don't even act like you don't want to find out more.

It was a day like any other, we recall, when Isotope Comics suddenly fell into our lap -- and then, in a blur of capes and shotguns, we were off on the wildest adventure of our lives. Isotope's a swanky/friendly joint at 326 Fell (that's Hayes-Valley-ish), where comix from mainstream to obscure mingle amongst cozy chairs, original art framed by toilet seats, and strange creatures suspended in jars of fluid. It's the kind of place where you could get utterly lost in stories and never, ever be seen again. And now, thanks to the support of the Isotopians, SFist is pleased to inaugurate a brand new weekly feature, in which we'll be bringing you news of the novelly graphic in the bay area.