New To Me Friday
I do this a couple times a year — open up the mailbag, look over new (or new-ish) comics that people have sent me links to, and read the most recent five to ten installments. It’s gut-level, it’s not deep, and very occasionally I find something that I like. This time I’m sharing it with you.
- Sketchfervor! by Amelia Altavena
Art’s a bit like Raina Telgemeier, ranging from cartoony to watercolorish. Topics range from daily life to deeper thoughts. Not much in the way of storyline, but probably worth an archive trawl sometime. - The Deadlys by Chris Cantrell
Chas Addams meets Seth McFarlane, with a family & friends circle of monsters (some under-the-bed mythological types, some, evil-that-men-do types) in a world skewed towards creepiness. Not as over the top committed to a monster reality as Monsters, Inc or Ugly Hill, it’s essentially a sitcom with the suburb having Halloweentowne set dressing — job worries, wacky hijinks, and mix-ups included. Currently running a holiday-themed story arc that will likely be more plot-cohesive than prior installments. - Rhetoric by Darrell Stark
Laugh-chuckles in a retail setting, this time a bookstore. Not much I can tell in the quick trawl about who the characters are — they don’t show clearly developed personalities across this sample, and even the physical design and color palettes assigned to them are kind of same-y. The boss is apparently sympathetic and a driven jerk? There may well be plenty of development and differentiation if you read from the beginning but I’m having trouble getting myself past the faces — they’re all sad, disturbingly so, almost Winkerbeanian in the depths of their unhappiness. - Wunderman Comics by Nate Wunderman
Comic book type stories, from alien invasions of Earth to time travel capers. Art looks and feels like 1980s 2000 AD one-off stories (Alan Moore wrote a lot of great stuff, and a bunch of up and coming artists illustrated it), with colors straight from old school Métal Hurlant. I couldn’t get the promised navigation (keyboard or mouse) to work, so a lot of clicking on one page in the archive gallery, reading it, going back, and then clicking on the next. On the up side, a lot of comics show up here weekly.
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