Thomas O’Shea’s Books, Beers, and Ballpoints quite likely has one of the longest URLs I’ve had to type out manually. And tough to remember, too. Is it Beers, Books, and Ballpoints or Ballpoints, Beers, and Books, or …? Yet, it’s worth typing it out, since this comic seeks to teach as well as humor. Where else can I learn that, in Australia, they say “noice” all the time? Or that it’s wrong to be racist against snakes?
Contemplate the title of Nathan Schreiber’s comic, if you will: Power Out. What do you think this comic is going to be about?
The more mainstream among you might theorize that this is some sort of superhero comic. I mean, look at that title! There’s “Power” in there, right? Nope. Power Out is a Xeric Grant winner, and that places it square in the camp of one particular genre: the “indie” comic. And unless you’re doing some ironic and depressing send up of the Fantastic Four or Superman, there will be no capes nor tights.
Perhaps you decided to take the title more literally. Perhaps you guessed that there’s a power outage of some sort. Good for you! That’s much closer! Power Out does, indeed, feature a black-out that envelops the East Coast as one of its central plot elements. However, while that’s probably what the title alludes to, it’s not really what the comic is about.
Now… are there any kids under the age of ten reading this site right now? If you are, please follow the next link and go directly to Princess Planet. It’s a fun, pun-filled romp that’s a delight to readers of all ages! Now shoo, you little scamps. Ah, they grow up so quickly.
Alright, so are there only adults checking this review now? Good. So, you ask, what’s Power Out really about? It turns out the comic is, in fact, about chronic masturbation.
If movies have told me anything, it’s that the Wild West was a dangerous place to be. Every corner was filled with gunslingers, bounty hunters, desperadoes, banditos, cattle rustlers, and hostile natives. Stakes are already high enough. But how about you throw some good ol’ fashioned superpowers in the mix?
That’s basically what we get with The Guns of Shadow Valley, one of the five nominees for Eisner’s Best Digital Comic. The webcomic was developed by Scar Tissue creators David Wachter and James Andrew Clark.
Couple of items you might have missed while I was chilling on the cold, cold beaches of the Pacific Northwest and seducing space hotties as Commander Shepard:
The strip, which will update every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, is a humorous look at the life of Velia, a young woman who trades her inner city lifestyle to move in with her aging Italian mother.
So if you’re a fan of the Six Chix comic strip and you want to check out some of the stuff one of the team is up to, check out Velia Dear.
If there’s an American mythology, most of us would point to the era known as The Wild West. Fueled by Hollywood imagery, dreams of wide open plains, and memorable gun-totin’ badasses played by John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, the Wild West imagines a world that is dangerous and tough and yet adventurous at the same time. The truth of the era — which is probably more mundane and not quite as perilous for most prairie settlers — gets glossed over. Part of this mythology is evident in one of Zuda Comics’ most popular efforts, High Moon (reviewed here).
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Deep South in the era of the Great Depression and beyond. This time period is often regarded with utmost seriousness, since it’s highlighted by one of America’s darkest dilemmas. The entire region was gripped by fear. White people were still smarting over their loss and humiliation at the hands of the North in the Civil War. They saw their old world of plantations as a modern day Camelot, and the greedy Northerners took it away.
But for every aristocrat, there are about 100 serfs. If the Whites thought they had it bad, the Blacks — their serfs under the system of slavery — had it worse. Blacks were specifically targeted by angry White Southerners who saw “darkies” as inferior and dangerous. The blockbuster movie of 1915, The Birth of A Nation, didn’t do much to help matters: it’s portrayal of the Ku Kux Klan as heroes and Black people as immoral villains was one of the big reasons the Klan’s meteoric rise in popularity during the 1920′s.
So when it comes to romanticizing any aspect of the Deep South in that era, there’s a very real caution in taking any risks deviating from the real life hardships. Fantasize events, and you run the risk of inspiring the wrong kinds of people to do horrible, dishonorable things. (The Birth of a Nation‘s director, D. W. Griffith, seemed horrified by the reaction to his movie. His next film, Intolerance, tried to teach audiences a lesson about prejudice.) Maybe imagination has no place in real world trials and tribulations, and everything should be taken with the same stone-faced seriousness as To Kill A Mockingbird.
Which is why I was rather astounded when Jeremy Love’s Bayou, a Best Digital Comic nominee for the 2010 Eisner Awards, proved that notion wrong. The author doesn’t gloss over the horrors of that era. There are lynchings. Black people are denied the right to a fair trial simply due to the color of their skin. Police turn a blind eye when white people inflict harm on black people.
However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for flights of fantasy. Sometimes, that’s jus the thing you need to survive.
Alright, back to work!
And yes, the above is EXACTLY how all conversations about Mass Effect go.
