White Picket Fences (2007 Series) #1

June 15, 2007

Quick Rating: Very Good

It’s the Cold War – USA versus the Martian menace!

Writers: Matt Anderson & Eric Hutchins
Art: Micah Farritor
Letters: David Hedgecock
Editor: Kevin Freeman
Cover Art: Micah Farritor
Publisher: APE Entertainment

One of the best things about working for a site like Comixtreme CX Pulp is that sometimes, when you’re not looking, someone slips you a preview of a great comic book that no one has heard of yet, and you get to be the one to tell people about it. White Picket Fences is just that book.

This bizarre little comic is a nice mixture of alternate history and retro-science fiction. Little Charlie Hobson is a typical kid in the town of Greenview. He goes to school, plays Army with his friends, and dreams of taking the fight to the horrific “Red Menace” – the aliens from Mars that pose an imminent threat to the American way of life. Anderson and Hutchins have done a wonderful job of taking what, on the surface, reads like an old-fashioned Cold War tale and turning the Soviet menace into one from the stars. The resulting tale reads like a comic book straight from the 1950s, but with an undeniably modern sensibility. This is the kind of story that Mystery Science Theater 3000 would mercilessly skewer, except the story is far too good for Mike and the bots to lampoon.

Building on a really inventive script by Anderson and Hutchins is some wonderful artwork by Micah Farritor. Farritor uses a light, textured style that gives the entire book a feeling of being done in pencil colors, which somehow is absolutely perfect for the story of an idyllic American town living under the threat of Martian extinction. This art is evocative of an animated style, but the gentle strokes of the coloring make it totally unique.

There were a few comics in APE Entertainment’s Free Comic Book Day special I hadn’t sampled before. White Picket Fences was definitely the most intriguing. Having read the first issue, I can happily confirm it’s just as clever and engaging as I had hoped.

Rating: 8/10

Richie Rich: Rich Rescue #2

July 17, 2011

Title: The Pursuit of Pesos and other stories

Writers: Buddy Scalera, Tom DeFalco, Matt Anderson, Patrick Rills
Art: Marcelo Ferreira, Armando Zanker, Amy Mebberson, James Silvani
Colorist: Dustin Evans, Jake Myler, Amy Mebberson
Letterer: David Hedgecock
Cover: Jack Lawrence
Editor: Matt Anderson    
Publisher: Ape Entertainment/KiZoic

Rich Rescue’s latest gig sends them to the depths of the jungle, hired by a museum to find a legendary diamond. The gem turns out to be magic, the team gets hurled back in time, and soon Richie and company find themselves being chased by dinosaurs. The fun starts here, folks! It’s not a bad little story, but it’s a bit unfocused. There isn’t even anything there to tell us where it takes place – they unearth a pretty generic old temple and go back to face a bunch of generic old cavemen. The adventure sequences work well. It seems like Buddy Scalera and Marcelo Ferreira are doing their best to conjure up some classic adventure tales, the likes of which we got from Carl Barks back in the day, and that’s all to the good. They just need a little work.

The back-up features are of varying quality. The first one, where Reggie “wins” the use of Irona for 24 hours, is really very funny, and a nice way to give Richie’s arrogant cousin a little comeuppance. On the other hand, Cadbury steps up next for a terribly trite story where a bunch of terrorists invade a concert screaming gibberish about the band’s “pro-environment” agenda. The villains of the piece are soulless cutouts, almost lacking even in a second dimension, let alone a third, and while you don’t expect a story of this nature to be Shakespeare, there could be at least a little thought put into giving them a motivation that has at least some form of internal logic. The funniest part is when Cadbury throws out the line “I will take formal over cliché any day.” Congratulations, Cadbury, you’re both.

I like this title, and I’m glad that Richie Rich and company are back. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

Rating: 7/10

Ape Entertainment’s Comic Spectacular #1

May 7, 2007

Ape Entertainment’s Comic Spectacular! (Ape Entertainment)
By Steve Bryant, Matt Anderson, Eric Hutchins, Micah Farritor, Troy Dye, Tom Kellesides, Collin Fogel, Jim Hankins, Matt Wendt, Brent E. Erwin, Chad Lambert, David Hedgecock, Skipper Martin & Tone Rodriguez

Out of the various small publishers vying for your comic dollars these days, Ape Entertainment has put forth some of the best, most diverse books I’ve read in a while, and this FCBD grab-bag is a nice sampler of self-contained stories featuring a variety of their characters and aimed at a variety of audiences. The Athena Voltaire story, for instance, is a typical Athena-style adventure story, the sort of thing for people who want an “Indiana Jones” type of comic without the cheesecake of Tomb Raider. The White Picket Fences story is my first exposure to the comic, but the cryptic statments of an elementary school science teacher just before he turns into a giant lizard-man are intriguing enough to make me want to read more. Fantasy fans will enjoy The Goblin Chronicles, while people who like to see the tarnishing of anything too “cutsie” will delight in the Teddy Scares story here. Go-go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew are forced to save a comic shop on Free Comic Book Day from a mob of supervillain collectors, and the book concludes with a great vignette from Bizarre New World, in which Paul Krutcher — the man who can fly — gets his inventive revenge on a nasty blind date. I already loved Go-Go Gorilla (give us more, Ape), and Bizarre New World and Athena Voltaire are also comics I’ve sampled and really enjoyed. This book has really gotten me interested in White Picket Fences as well — and if this comic has enticed more people like myself to look for comics they haven’t read before, I think it’s safe to call it a definite success.

Rating: 8/10

Haunted Mansion #6

June 29, 2007

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Doom of the Diva and other stories

An opera singer prepares her greatest performance.

Writers: Alice Price, Andy Price, Dan Vado
Art: Andy Price, Mike Voss, Drew Rausch
Letters: David Hedgecock
Cover Art: Drew Rausch
Publisher: Slave Labor Graphics

This issue is a fine demonstration of the diversity of this title – you’ve got a funny story, an exciting story and a downright scary story capping off the issue.

Alice and Andy Price begin the issue with “Doom of the Diva,” the tale of an opera superstar whose career is waning. She gets an opportunity for a groundbreaking performance at New Orleans’ beautiful Gracey Mansion, unaware that her audience was literally dying to get in. This is our funny story, even with the somewhat macabre ending you would expect from the Haunted Mansion. The final page in particular is packed with great sight gags – it’s almost like a “Where’s Waldo” page, where you’re scouring the details for the next joke.

Dan Vado and Mike Moss are up next with the final chapter of “Mystery of the Manse.” Master Gracey has hung himself and slain Madame Leota during her séance, but the determination of her spirit was so great that she continued the summoning of the spirits, even after her death. This is a nice capper to the origin of the Haunted Mansion, and Vado has managed to incorporate a great many elements from the ride. As this is one of the few Disney attractions that never really had a solid story attached to it, Vado has done a great job of finally giving it one.

“The Final Interview” closes off the issue, written by Vado with art by Drew Rausch. This continues the story of the girl who came to the mansion for a job, but who now feels compelled to come back. The Haunted Mansion is famous for its 999 happy haunts… haven’t you ever wondered what would happen if they finally accepted number 1000? The answer: a heck of a cliffhanger.

This is a really eclectic mix of stories – there’s really something for everyone in this issue, and it’s hands-down perfect for any fan of the Haunted Mansion.

Rating: 8/10

Go-Go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew Summer Fun Special #1

August 4, 2005

Quick Rating: Great
Title: The Origin of Go-Go Gorilla & The Terror of Twinchilla

When evil strikes Jungle City who can save the day? Go-Go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew!

Created By: Brent Erwin, Mike Hall & David Hedgecock
Writer: Mike Hall
Pencils: Dustin Evans
Inks: David Hedgecock
Colors: Dustin Evans
Letters: Mike Hall
Editor: Mike Hall
Cover Art: Scott Shaw!
Publisher: APE Entertainment

Anyone who’s been a member of Comixtreme for more than a week probably knows of my strange, some would say disturbing love of the 80s classic Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. For the longest time, I thought I was alone. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw this new offering from APE Entertainment, an obvious pastiche of that long-neglected gem by people who really love the superhero/funny animal genre. (And if there was any doubt that these guys were directly influenced by Captain Carrot, it was erased when I realized that the cover was drawn by Cap’s co-creator, Scott Shaw!)

When you start reading the comic, you immediately get the flavor of a silver age yarn, starting with the vision of Jungle City itself. This is a city where humans and animals evolved concurrently, and all species are at about an equal level of development – one which is comparable to that of our own world, but has a lot of unique charms, like a practice of using vines to swing above busy city streets. When a human citizen of the city nearly gets plowed in traffic, he’s saved by the caped simian Go-Go Gorilla! And with the set-up out of the way, it’s time to go into the origin story. It’s pretty familiar stuff: a humble museum janitor wiping up around a strange extraterrestrial meteor, just on the night that a pack of villains try to swipe it.

Following the origin story is “The Terror of Twinchilla,” where we’re briefly introduced to the rest of the team – Mega Mouse, Anubia, Shellhead, Quickcat and Lady Water Dragon as they converge to do battle with the menace of a gargantuan, two-headed chinchilla. If it sounds absurd, that’s because it is, but delightfully so. The story is a little weak in that there’s not really enough room for the fight once we’ve met each of the team in one-or-two page vignettes, this one definitely could have used some padding.

The plots and scripting, however, are superb, endearingly familiar to fans of similar properties and entertaining enough that you’d like to see more of these characters in future specials. These are clearly guys that love what they’re doing, and it rubs off on the reader.

The art, by Dustin Evans and David Hedgehock, is really sharp. It’s a clear, cartoony style that is practically begging to be animated. The designs for the characters, particularly the armored turtle Shellhead, are a lot of fun as well.

In the back of the book, there’s even more fun in the form of a few activity pages – a word scramble, a maze, a word search and a connect-the-dots puzzle, plus a decoder you can cut out and use to decode Anubia’s magic spells. (A lot of fun, to be sure, but you’re hesitant to actually do any of the activities, because who wants to mess up their comic in this day and age?) Plus there are plenty of great pin-ups.

This comic book is just plain fun, something we don’t get nearly enough of these days, and it’s a book that parents who were children of the 80s can easily share with their kids today.

Rating: 9/10