Idle Ink #1 - Madness

Idle Ink #1 - Madness

A5, 24 pages. Cardboard cover. 

£2 + p&p

The first issue of Idle Ink is a collection of short stories and illustrations on the subject of madness. Each piece reflects different facets of the theme: insanity, self-deceit, violence, control, and power.

"With enough practice, a person can convince themselves of almost anything"

says J.L. Corbett at the start of She Outruns the Humdrum. A particularly apt analysis of all the characters in these stories. 

The zine features work by J.L. Corbett, Jenny Nolan-Lee, K.R. Tester, L.L. Kipling and Dazz. The authors' influences include Douglas Adams, George Orwell, and Neil Gaiman. But there are also touches of Ray Bradbury, particularly in the stories that walk the border between character driven narrative and sci-fi. Which is no bad thing, I'm a big Bradbury fan.

It's an engaging start to what I hope will become a long series of zines focused on new writing by emerging authors. 


Buy now via Etsy: etsy.com/uk/listing/529891809/madness

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Review by Nathan Penlington

Decadence #7

By Leon Sadler, Lando, Daniel Swan, Tsemberlidis, Jon Chandler, Dan Hallett, and Alex Payne
www.decadencecomics.com

While there are a number of different comics artists in this anthology, my two favourite are the ones whose releases from Decadence Comics I've read before.

Tsemberlidis (who drew the cover) creates another of his bizarre, beautiful, silent comics. The story (as much as there is one) is about an astronaut who lands on a seemingly abandoned barren planet. He wanders alone amongst rocks and mountains until he encounters a geometric object and the story starts getting weird (as many of Tsemberlidis' stories do). People start shape changing and bizarre shapes start emerging from foreheads, eyes, and penises. The ending is reminiscent to 2001: A Space Odyssey, both in what actually happens and that I have no idea what it means.

But none of that matters because I love Tsemberlidis' art. His pages are filled with tiny lines and details that somehow manage to add so much to the characters and their backgrounds. Mostly I'm just glad I don't have to touch anything that appears in the comic, because it all looks incredibly disgusting. Technology seems to be encrusted with the remnants of something, while his nature scenes can mange to exude a feeling of humidity and dampness.

At times this reminded me a little of Tsutomu Nihei' Blame, but mostly in that they're both about a silent adventurer wandering through bizarre, incredibly detailed backgrounds.

Lando's comic (see below) is part two of an ongoing story about a guy living on an abandoned island with a bunch of robots. This story seems seems to be more about showing what parts of the island are like, and how they robots act and react to certain things the main character does.

The main character is riding his bicycle, while accompanied by a robot. He goes on a different route than the robot tells him to go on, and almost dies. The robots of the island end up saving him and helping him afterwards. The story raises a lot of questions and makes me curious about what's going on. Who is this guy? Why is he on the island? What's with all the cyborg implants? Is he even human?

The art and themes remind me of Japanese science fiction like Akira or Ghost in the Shell, not so much in how the characters look, but rather the designs of the setting and pages. I think Lando does a good job of pacing the cycling, changing angles to create some cool visuals, and managing to convey the speed of the character. I also love seeing the strange architecture in the background, which makes me even more curious about this island and what was happening on it.

While I didn't like the other stories in this comic as much as these two they do feature some cool visuals. But, for me at least, the selling point of this anthology are the two comics I wrote about, and they both deliver exactly what I wanted.



(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Upheaval

By Stathis Tsemberlidis
www.decadencecomics.com

Reviewing this silent, dream-like comic is pretty hard. There are no words or dialogue anywhere inside, and the plot is one where events flow into each other with no explanation of what's going on or why anything's happening. My friend thought they might be stuck in Hell. I wondered if the comic was all about how circular life is and how nothing truly changes. One side wins and they become who they were fighting against. Maybe that is Hell.

The comic opens up with a groups of protesters facing off against police officers in riot gear. Part of me really thinks that this is inspired by the riots that happen in Greece fairly frequently. Tsemberlidis is (I'm pretty sure) from Greece, and he is presumably more aware of the events going on there than most people.

After that the comic becomes more metaphysical and mystical, and there are panels that wouldn't feel that out of place in some of Alan Moore's weirder comics. (Actually there are a couple of panels that wouldn't look out of place in a more popular Alan Moore comic either.)

However the story (however strange it may be, and ignoring the three paragraphs I've written about it) is not the reason to check out this story. The real reason is Tsemberlidis' amazing, though hard to describe, artwork. Each image is filled with incredibly amounts of detail and texture, and while there aren't that many backgrounds I feel that this is done on purpose, and adds to the mystery of the story. What backgrounds are there also look amazing, so it's not like he's avoiding drawing something he's not good at.

Mostly though, we're left with unanswered questions: Where did that crocodile come from? Is it actually an alligator? (I can't tell the difference.) Is that a vagina? Is Tsemberlidis ever going to draw a zombie comic? Cause I bet he would draw amazing zombies (I don't even really care about zombies!).



(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

7String Volume Zero

By Nich Angell
nichangell.co.uk

This big, glossy, full colour comic is filled with impressive art and some pretty cool action, but it is more definitively a zero issue. This means that it gives some background info about the characters, has some (really nice) pin ups, and features a couple of short comics. They all help to set the up the world that Angell is creating, but the major story he's working on clearly hasn't happened yet.

That story is explained in the opening text page, which is probably the weakest part of the comic. Not the ideas, which feature a maniacal villain trying to destroy the "eternal cosmic melody" by stealing a magic flute and an "elite group of cosmic musicians" creating a seven stringed sword instrument to save the universe. But rather parts of the text are a bit awkward and could have used one more rewrite. Generally the short comics don't fall into this problem, but I guess Angell's skills lie more in drawing some pretty awesome pictures instead of paragraph after paragraph of text.

The first comic is a three pager with the main character, Zachary Briarpatch, facing off against a cowboy type character, and the thing it reminded me of the most is the pre-credits action bit at the beginning of certain cartoons and TV shows. We're introduced to the main character, see that he can do awesome things that are beyond the abilities of normal people ("But, that's impossible... No-one can harmonize that fast"), and defeats the bad guy. The end! It's a compliment to Angell's art style and use of colour that I can easily see it as the intro to a cartoon. The sound effects make noises in my head and I'm kind of upset when the opening credits don't come up and then we head into the longer incredible adventure.

Looking at Angell's art it's clear to see that his inspirations are manga, video games, and cartoons, but his combination of all these aspects is original and looks really amazing. Part of this is down to his fantastic use of colour, which at times reminded me of the teaser trailer of Molly Star Racer (did anyone actually watch the show that eventually came out? Was it any good?).

Design-wise Angell's characters are more human than those in MSR (noses!), though they are still fairly stylized, featuring incredibly pointy knees, and haircuts that can only exist in a comic book.

The only major failing of Angell's art is that at times I find his faces aren't up to the standard of the rest of the art, being less detailed and looking a bit strange at times. Upon realizing this I then wonder if Angell has designed his main character's hair so that he doesn't have to bother drawing his eyes. Hmm...

The action sequences sing, the colours pop, the story seems like it's going to rock, and to be honest I'm having a hard time thinking up any more music related analogies. I can't wait until Angell finishes this and I can read the whole thing.



(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Metal Between Two Faces No. 1

By Michael Lomon
thenursinghome.co.uk

In serialized fiction you've got to figure out how to break your story into satisfying pieces. Each part could potentially be someone's first, but the most important part is the first. You have to get the key players on the page, explain the plot, and hook the reader to make them come back for more. This can be hard to do when you're working with limited pages, and is the major stumbling block of this comic.

The thirteen pages presented here did manage to convey that the story is set in some sort of horrible dystopian city filled with robots, radition contamination zones, and killer mutants (exciting!), but failed to really tell me what the story is going to be about. Is it a romance set against the backdrop of this strange city? Is it a crime mystery with certain characters (but which ones?) trying to track down a murderer? Will there be a rebellion against the dictitatorial rule that seems to exist? Some combination of the above? Something completely different?

There are definitely things I liked about this comic (who doesn't enjoy a good mutant-robot muder mystery?), but I can't help but think that if this first chapter had twice as many pages to set the scene it would have worked far better (and perhaps I would have understood what happened on that last page).

Artwise Metal Between Two Faces differs rather radically from the background-lacking comic I reviewed yesterday, as almost every piece of the page is covered with drawings. Scenes set outside feature massive buildings in the backgrounds, while those inside feature densely crosshatched walls and crossword style floors. The gutters between panels are solid black and rarely straight, while speech bubbles are jammed into corners and sometimes cover up artwork. This makes everything flow together, and at times it can be a bit hard to concentrate on one specific area of the drawing. Still, the larger images manage to convey the busy, chaotic city that the story takes place in and are quite nice to look at.



(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Somewhere City 1

Written by Adam Clegg
Drawn by Michael Scott
somewhere-city.blogspot.com

Noir crime stories are filled with cliches: the missing girl, the tough-as-nails hardboiled detective who smokes all the time, the feeling that even if the hero wins the battle they've lost the war, and even more that I cannot remember. While lots of people are really into this genre they never really click with me unless the creators add something extra: a science fiction or fantasty element that makes it more interesting to me because I love monsters and robots.

Somewhere City takes an idea reminiscent of Dark City. There doesn't seem to be any way out, and nobody can remember who they are or why they're there. The inhabitants seem to have been there for several years, and try to live their lives as best they can in a town surrounded by forbidden zones and filled with sketchy areas. Of coruse all of that is background info that we learn while the main missing person plot is going on, and it works well. The hints suggest that that Clegg and Scott have a whole world and society built up and they'll reveal it as the story progresses.

This first issue features the detective talking tracking down informants and trying to find some clues. I generally liked the art and Scott manages to pull off all the talking heads used throughout the issue (though how much of that is down to the female lead having a Betty Boo haircut I'm not sure).

The major problem with the art is that many of the panels are lacking in backgrounds. This lack of detail leaves the characters floating in white space, and is especially noticable because some of the pages and panels do feature backgrounds, and they're quite nice ones that help to set the scene and show you more things about this mysterious city (a stall selling "books in lost languages" for example). I guess the artist either ran out of time before they wanted to print this or just decided it wasn't worth it. I hope future issues have more backgrounds as I'm looking forward to reading them.



(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Shiny (Untitled)

By Pat Barrett
patbarrett.com

Shiny silver cover! OMG minicomics have finally joined the chromium age of comics! It's impossible to keep in mint condition, what will I do!? Nooooooo....

Really, it's just alumin(i)um foil, and the only major problems it causes me are that I have no idea what this comic is called, and the scan of the cover doesn't really look as shiny as it does in real life.

The comic itself featuers a Captain Kirk style starship captain who's crashed on a planet. He wants to sleep with all the inhabitants, seems more competent than Zapp Brannigan in attempting to contact help, and is a huge jerk. Then capitalism arrives and does bad and evil stuff. The end.

As much as I dislike modern, American capitalism this just fell kind of flat for me. I was hoping the twist (cause you knew there was one coming) would be about the sexual politics/reproductive methods of the aliens. I did like the opening/closing pages showing the planet surrounded by a black background, those looked pretty neat.



(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)