As I spent all my money on books comic and art at MoCCA, I’ve been without food the last few days. I only regained strength to type when this morning, as I attempted to scare pigeons away from precious crumb-piles, a kindly plutocrat tossed a half-finished kruller at me. ‘God bless ye, good sir!’ I feebly murmured, and also blessed Ronald Regan’s trickle-down economics as I swatted more pigeons away from my bountiful repast.
While the sugar rush remains I figured I’d share my paper-goods. I purchased entertaining volumes from ‘Hark: A Vagrant!’ and ‘Cat and Girl’, both also available online for your viewing pleasure. While my retinas burn after staring at a bright screen too long, I almost prefer the online format, if only because it prevents me from rushing through the entire printed volume, experiencing the book-variant of too much birthday. ‘Cat and Girl’ particularly should be enjoyed at a more leisurely pace to better enjoy the humor; beyond the initial wordplay and jokes there’s often a pointed observation that…I was going to say ‘deserves time to breathe’ but when I start writing about comics like other guys write about wines perhaps I should step back and start editing.
As with previous years I purchased everything from the Icecreamlandia table, including their latest, ‘Trash Magic’:
Lovingly screen-printed, it delivers exactly what it promises- trashy people doing all sorts of magic.
The two artists behind Icecreamlandia collaborated on three minibooks featuring both their styles. Flip the book and you’d get the other artist’s work:
I veered back and forth as to whose half I liked better, but ultimately ‘Hunt’ won me over from ‘Hunt and Peck’, featuring pages of goofily unaware animals:
You know how some people talk about how a piece of art ‘moved’ them? I always thought that was bullspit until I picked up a small booklet and came across this image:
It’s better to let the mystery of ‘why’ remain, but at the risk of overanalyzing seeing the embodiment of everything hated about how women are perceived attacked by comfortably chunky puns made real (catty ladies) ‘spoke’ to me. Specifically it said ‘Take that, Cathy, you whiny bitch’. AACK! indeed. It came from this volume, which though more grotesque than I usually enjoy was quite entertaining:
