[Above, Eleanor Davis gets Stinky. Below, the smell of Dispatch in the morning.]

• Freddie and Me creator Mike Dawson, who also has an OGN titled Ace Face on the way from Adhouse, is back at the webcomics collective Act-I-Vate on February 17th with Jack and Max Escape from the End of Time.
• Picturebox Inc. extends its celebratory Yes We Can sale for another week, ’till February 8th.  Highlights include Lauren Weinstein’s oversized The Goddess of War for $7.95, and the typically $95 Gary Panter marked down to $30.  Take advantage now before inaugural hopes and unbelievable markdowns are dashed by the march of time.
• The Louvre moves into the 21st century with its exhibition “Small Design: The Louvre invites Comics.” Currently underway at the famous French museum, it includes live digital drawings and displays of both traditional comics and manga.  Biff! Pow! Comics aren’t just for fine art philistines anymore!
• Eleanor Davis, at the tender age of just 25, was recently recognized with a 2009 Theodor Seuss Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Seuss) Award for her Toon Books beginning reader graphic novel Stinky, about overcoming prejudice towards the differently monstrous.
• The Alternative Press Fair takes place in London on February 1st from 12 PM to 6 PM, with the added bonus of being free, free, free!

–Laura Hudson

Motro #1
By Ulises Farinas

“Think about how big the world is,” writes Ulises Farinas on the inside front cover of Motro’s first issue. The brief note appears to be handwritten in every copy of the book. It’s a small print run, of course. The mini is, for all intents and purposes, something of an teaser for Farinas’s Act-I-Vate strip of the same name, pulling together the first several pages of the online series—an teaser, mind you with a fair amount of thought put into execution, with a fold-over cover that opens to reveal the titular hero lying unconscious in a pool of his blood. Closed, the puddle makes up the deep red of the single letter “M.”

The quick reveal soon proves an overarching theme for these first pages of Motro, the inside cover inscription more foreshadowing than friendly philosophical aside. Pulling back the proverbial camera to reveal a larger world is a something of a reoccurring motif for Farinas. The first few pages begin simply enough, centering around a young native in a bloody but heroic battle with a fierce lion. He takes a beating, to be sure, replaying the gorey scene hidden beneath the front cover flap, but his actions prove bold enough for him to be deemed the legendary Motro, by his father, the chief.

More forced heroic antics ensue—after all, such is the fate of a chosen one. The newly-christened chosen one is made to do battle with a giant legged coelacanth-like fish. Here Farinas truly pushes his fragile linework to its limit, packing every panel with a tremendous amount of visual detail, swirling and pushing the space to its breaking point as the young warrior tears the head off the giant fish, releasing countless numbers of spawn into the dead waters of the lake surrounding them.

And with that, Farinas give us his first major reveal, forsaking his newly minted reality for a trip to “The Bizarre Place,” a surrealist landscape far outside the parameters of the tribal world on the preceding page, but still, at least for the reader’s sake, defined by its language. Again the moment affords Farinas the opportunity to test the outer limits of his linework, and he does so admirably on the three-quarters of a page that he allots himself to set up this new world, with swirls of water and an army of fantastic new animals.

Soon, however—the next page, in fact—another layer is added to the mix. Farinas introduces himself—or rather, an artist character, bespectacled and bearded, claiming to be “the master,” as he cartoonishly surfs his “tiger of destiny.” It’s a quick leap in a meta realm that is tough to reconcile with the storyline, especially this early on in the proceedings. And it’s exactly where Farinas leaves us at the end of his mini, beckoning us to continue the story online.

It’s certainly a tempting offer. The artist has thrown a lot at his reader in an incredibly short page count, with some elements easier to stomach than others. But the story, along with Farinas’s expansive artwork, seems to make the point that Motro was attempting to make all along—the world is large. Too large, certainly, for an single mini to contain.

–Brian Heater

Fishtown
By Kevin Colden
IDW

When I first reviewed Fishtown, back in January, the artist was using Act-i-vate to publish a page a week of the book, which is based on a true story and follows four Philadelphia teens who brutally murder and rob their friend Jesse (the character’s name in the book). Now Fishtown is out in hardcover, courtesy of IDW, which means that readers can take in the rest of what began as an emotionally charged, upsetting, and incredibly well executed comic.

In the latter part of the book, Colden maintains the same narrative distance with which he starts. He reserves passing judgment on the kids, focusing instead on fleshing out the characters and approaching the tale as something of a question or a puzzle. This feat is particularly impressive given that this section of the book includes a reenactment of the murder. Colden’s drawings–whether they show the run-down Philly neighborhood of Fishtown all in inky yellow and blue and black or the horrifying scene of Jason’s slain body, stained in pink blood–are haunting. But the most affecting panels are the ones depicting the four teens—Adrian, Keith, Justin, and Angelica—committing the act of murder.

Narrow close-up panels of each character slow down the action of the boys bearing down upon Jesse with a brick, a hatchet, and a rock—and of Angelica as she stands by and watches; the staccato rhythm of these spreads points out the deliberateness, the intentionality, of the act, which fills the reader with disbelief. We want to dismiss this as fiction, but we can’t; instead, we wonder: How on earth could they do this? What possessed them?

The word “possession” seems particularly apt in some cases. Colden paints Angelica essentially as the devil, overlaying phrases from a letter she wrote to Justin while in prison with scenes of her crying in front of the police and offering a damning testimony against the boys. The letter suggests serious mental instability—if the story has not already done so—as Angelica confesses her love for Justin, swears she would never betray him, and contemplates the difficulty of crying in order to make the police believe she is remorseful. And when the boys climb into the back of a police van where she sits waiting, she flashes her breasts at them and smiles a vixen smile.

At first it seems that Colden has overdone it a bit in this portrayal, but research about the real crime will tell any reader that he actually may have underdone it—if such a thing is possible. Consider a sentence quoted in the press from the real Angelica’s (Justina Morley’s) letter: “I’m a cold-hearted, death-worshipping bitch who survives by feeding off the weak and lonely. I lure them and then I crush them.”

At the close of the book, the four murderers walk to the courthouse with photographers and a crowd yelling behind them. Angelica and Keith smirk and laugh, seeming to feel no remorse; Adrian looks ready to fight; and Justin looks like a deer in headlights. The group is a picture of disturbing ambiguity. Then, once they are inside, Keith is called into a room, the first to be questioned by an invisible psychiatrist, and the last panel of the story becomes the first.

In that moment, Colden locks the reader into a chilling cycle of violence and betrayal, and the only way out is to shut the book and push it aside. Even then, it’s too late to pretend it never happened.

–Jillian Steinhauer

[Above, Hi-Way Wonders. Below, Dispatch delights.]

• MoCCA is exhibiting Kim Deitch: A Retrospective starting Sept 9th. The opening reception’s happening onSeptember 12th. Visit the website for more information and reception time.
• Starting Sept 2nd, Roger Langridge’s Mughwhump the Great joins Act-I-Vate  with new episodes premiering weekly. Says Langridge, “music-hall ventriloquist Mughwhump the Great, with his foul-mouthed dummy Billy Woodentop, attempt to find the good life on cheap wages and cheaper gin! (Warning: this comic may contain Peruvian Brick Dancers.)”
• Fox Atomic Comics releases the second volume of The Nightmare Factory on Sept 2nd. This second volume revisits the critically acclaimed stories of Thomas Ligotti’s world by artists and writers like Joe Harris, Stuart Moore, Nick Stakal, Toby Cypress, Vasilis Lolos, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
• A new book by the University Press of Mississippi, Harvey Pekar: Conversations, edited by Michael G. Rhode is now available to order from the University’s site.  The book offers nearly 25 years of interviews, from fanzines, public radio broadcasts, and The Washington Post [Don't forget The Daily Cross Hatch!-ed.]. The book touches on everything from his biographical life, to his David Letterman show appearances in the 1980s, and the success of the film adaptation of American Splendor.

–Jason Owen