Curator Tom Hart referred to it as something of a ramshackle version of R. Sikoryak’s Carousel—a New York indie comics institution of sorts. It’s a fairly apt description, but over the past few years, the Hart-curated Easter Sunday Comix Reading at the KGB Bar has lovingly stumbled into become a tradition in its own right, a gathering for the unreligious, the non-Christian, and the otherwise holiday orphaned members of the New York sequential art community.

The Hutch Owen artist has seemingly begun to take a certain amount of pride in the unpredictability of the show’s form, which last November, at the Thanksgiving version of the reading, produced Matthew Thurber’s now-infamous scroll reading of 1-800-Mice, a fantastic, if not especially environmentally-sound take on the show’s traditional slideshow format.

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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.

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