Liberty Meadows #37

June 10, 2006

Quick Rating: Good

As Frank is stunned by Brandy’s engagement, Ralph and Jen race for their timeslot!

Writer: Frank Cho
Art: Frank Cho
Cover Art: Frank Cho
Publisher: Image Comics

After two long years, Liberty Meadows has returned to comic book shelves, and while it’s a welcome return, I can’t help but think that there could have been a little more meat to that return.

Frank the vet is still reeling from the news that Brandy, the beautiful animal therapist, has gotten engaged to her meathead ex-boyfriend, Roger. His astonishment and dismay sends him on something of a spiritual journey this issue – of course, a spiritual journey in Liberty Meadows isn’t exactly going to be the same as a spiritual journey in an ordinary book, and in fact is probably the reason this issue sports a “mature readers” label. Cho is no longer forced to sanitize his comic strips for newspaper publication, and he takes full advantage of that this issue.

The big problem is that, thanks to the Liberty Meadows Wedding Album, published back in 2001 before the title made the jump to Image Comics to fill out the newspaper run, we already know how this storyline is going to play out. That doesn’t make the strips here bad, just anticlimactic, but it seems that the comic is at least finally approaching the events of that book, so the long days of playing catch-up are almost at an end.

While he may not have written any new strips in a while, Cho’s pens have not been at rest – he’s been toiling away at Marvel and hasn’t lost a beat in his artwork. Monkeys, monsters and sexy women – Cho does all of these better than anyone in comics, and he does them all here. Liberty Meadows is still a feast for the eyes.

I’m a little disappointed that the book is still published in the top-stapled format that most other books have abandoned. While I understand the idea is to make it easier to read the strips, the problems caused in trying to display or store a book in this format offsets any potential gain.

Still, all in all, it’s an absolute treat to see some new Liberty Meadows again, at long last. We can all just hope it won’t be so long before we see the gang again.

(2010 Note: This was the last we saw of Liberty Meadows. Four years ago.)

Rating: 7/10

PVP (2003 Series) #5

January 4, 2004

Quick Rating: Great

The PVP gang is brought to the brink of doom when they encounter Max Powers, the world’s most passive-aggressive villain!

Writer/Artist: Scott Kurtz
Cover Art: Scott Kurtz
Publisher: Image Comics

Cole Richards, publisher of PVP Magazine, is distraught when his old college nemesis Max Power comes for a visit. Max was always the sort of guy who was so smarmy and annoying that you wanted to kill him, but so charming that you couldn’t raise a finger without looking like a jerk yourself – and Max hasn’t changed. After first ridiculing and belittling Cole’s dreams of running his own video game magazine, Max moves into the building and starts a competing magazine of his own. That’s the last straw for our heroes, and a battle for the ages ensues! (“Battle for the ages” is defined by the amount of flaming dog poop, bees and superglue employed.)

This is the perfect issue to illustrate why people who love the PVP comic strip should be reading the comic book as well. While the Max Powers story did appear online, it was in a different form – Kurtz has added new strips, redrawn some that were on his website and put the whole thing together under a spiffy cover. For the collector, this is the only way to get PVP in a permanent edition.

For those who don’t read the online strip and want to know what all the fuss is about, this is a good issue to come in. PVP isn’t a continuity-heavy title, new readers can pick up the roles and dynamics of the characters fairly easily, plus the introduction of who has become one of the major nemesis of the online series makes this a good point to jump on.

Kurtz often makes self-deprecating jokes about his own art style, but in fact, PVP couldn’t be drawn any other way — the clean, simple style is perfect for a comic like this. It can’t be too sharp or realistic (as a pin-up by Richard Domingez displays in this issue), or it loses some of what makes it so great. I only wish it were in color.

Plus, PVP is just flat-out funny. It works on many levels – as a parody of video games, movies and comic books, as a self-referential “geek’ comic book like Dork Tower, and as an “office” comedy. Occasionally, with the interaction between Brent Sienna and Jade Fontaine, there’s even a dash of a love story, although not so much in this issue.

In addition to the hysterical Max Powers story, we also have a few bonus strips, including the online comics poking fun at The Matrix (Skull’s Matrix Joke crippled me with laughter – not at the deliberately awful joke, but at his earnest delivery and Brent’s disdain for it), and Liberty Meadows fans will be happy to know that there are a few strips with guest-art by Frank Cho in this issue as well (in Brent’s dream sequence).

This is a funny, funny comic book, and if you aren’t reading it, you’ve got to try it out.

Rating: 8/10