Thought Bubble Anthology: 2012 Edition

The Leeds Comic Art Festival Anthology 2012: Thought Bubble
November 2012
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Once again, the cover caught me!  For those of you who don't know me, I'm writing my MA thesis on fairy tales right now and I have had a thing for the Little Red Riding Hood story lately.  You can read about that on my other blog: "Must I Write?"

The next thing I noticed was that this anthology contains stories from Kate Beaton, of Hark, A Vagrant (hilarious, and one of Christian's favorites) and Gail Simone (current writer of Batgirl).  So, I was curious and I picked it up.

There are some real gems in here.  Steve Reynolds tells a poignant but funny story about his dad's floating ear, Dave Johnson tells the hilarious story about how he met Bob Layton, and Gail Simone's depiction of a comic book store in the Victorian(?) period selling comics called "Bat Gentleman" and "Lady Wonder" is awesome.

But, I have to say that I had two big favorites: the first was Kristyna Baczynski's "Due Returns" and the second was Ivan Brandon's "I'm Through."  Apparently I also have a thing for portal stories.

Totally worth the $4!

Revival #1: Christian's Opinion on Image's Other Zombie Comic

Revival #1
Writer: Tim Seeley
Art: Mike Norton
Cover: Jenny Frison
July 11, 2012
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It's probably bad luck to release a comic involving zombies on the same day as The Walking Dead #100, but this first issue from a new series by writer Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash) and artist Mike Norton does a good job of distinguishing itself from other zombie comics on the stands.

Courtney mentioned that she really liked the female characters in this book, and I've got to agree there. Dana Cypress is a likeable, interesting protagonist, and avoids many of the cliche's used to portray female law officers in comics, or most media for that matter. More comics need strong female characters like this.

I didn't mind the use of small town aphorisms or the incorporation of modern slang as much as Courtney did, but I did think it was a bit weird that they played the "avoidance" card for so long since it is pretty clear within the first few pages that what we are dealing with here are zombies. Even if they're not the rotting, shuffling, Romero-inspired walking corpses that we've gotten used to in the past decade, they're zombies--call them whatever floats your boat.

Like Courtney, I'm also looking forward to the next issue of this. Seeley is setting up an interesting premise with this book. I'm hoping that the constant reference to the Book of Revelations in this series is just a red herring, but if the strong characters in this issue continue to develop throughout the first major story arc, I might consider reading along just to see where Seeley and Norton take these characters.

A new series with an intriguing premise, strong characters, and a fresh take on the zombie comic, Revival is off to a good start. It's not the best debut this week, but still a good comic and definitely worth your $2.99.