Small but fun.

So, another WonderCon is over, and while much smaller than many of the cons I tend to frequent, it wasn't a bad time.

There wasn't enough programming, the WonderCon Film Festival was small, the dealer prices ranged from "I'm not paying 25 dollars for that!" to "Are they out of their minds?" and the lines for just about everyone were long.

So, how did I spend my time? Looking for the little books that I'd never find if I weren't neck deep in the Comic Book Life. Of the dozen books I bought, six stood out as the most entertaining things I had never heard of before I bankrupted myself in the Moscone Center. And I'm adding one film to the mix.

Super Hero Happy Hour by Dan Taylor and Chris Fason
I like bar stories, and if such a bar story happens to be about the bar where superheroes hang out, then that's even better. I got the Issue Three Special Convention Preview and I have to say it ruled. The art is good, and the storytelling is great for a twelve-pager. www.geekpunk.com is also one of my favorite URLs of all time.

Moo by Sandy Clark and Big A, the gal
I am not usually a fan of comic strip books. There's usually not enough follow through from comic to comic to justify not just reading them one at a time. Moo, on the other hand, is the wonderful story of a New York cow, called New York Strip, brought to Point Reyes to live with a herd of cattle on a dairy.

Behold the power of cheese.

There's a lot of the expected fish out of water jokes (after all, this is Green Acres for the bovine set), but it's funny. The jokes are smart and the push from page to page kept me reading. I laughed out loud a half dozen times as I took BART home. Good stuff. Make sure to check it out at www.mootoons.net.

Lex Taliones: A Jungle Tale by Aneurin Wright
The author signed my copy of Lex Talionis with the following words: Hope you dig gorillas, 'cause if you don't, you're screwed.

That's not quite true, as there is a lot going on in the little booklets. It's a jungle adventure that calls back to the 1930s, with the great white hunter and the band of gorillas he hunts. The art is amazing. The look is so crisp that the black and white works.

At WonderCon, Wright had the color versions of some panels and they were incredible, but even in greyscale, the art is magnificent. I hope he gets to release a color version, as it's easily the best adventure comic I've read in ages. Check out www.welsheldorado.com and see what I mean.

Dr. Ready by Curtis Broadway
Walking through the exhibitor hall, I came across a lot of art panels just put up on table top easels. And as I walked around, I found Curtis Broadway's space. Now, I have a soft spot for art history, and just seeing the work "Agent Slack & Bolohead Tie One On" sitting on the table got me hooked.

The style is pen and ink, but there is a strong etching feel, and you can't help but sense the eye of Salvador Dali watching over the whole scene. I bought the little spiral bound book and am still stunned by the style that Broadway exhibited in the tale of Agent Slack, Bolohead and Ladygrass. That, and there are banjos everywhere. A great series that walks the lines between fine and comic arts. Curtis' work can be viewed at www.curtisbroadway.com.

Pirate Club by Derek Hunter and Bryan Young
Shinebox Comics has come up with a little title that is very cool. I like pirates (take that NINJA!) and this is a book about a group of kids (well, 3 kids and a bear/kid) who become pirates. The art is very Evan Dorkin, which is a very good thing, and the story is funny, smart, and ends up with a dark punchline that I appreciated. Take a look at www.pirateclub.com for more details. This is one series that I think will be most interesting to watch develop, and may become my favorite new comic.

Comiculture from Mad Science Media, Inc
Good anthology mags are things that I thought were gone forever. The ones that remain tend to be rather bland. Maybe that's why I enjoyed Comiculture so much. The stories were for mature readers, and they were all at least very good.

The highlights for me were I Loved A Zombie by Jessica Wolk-Stanley and Gunpowder Girl and the Outlaw Squaw by Don Hudson. Both of these were very well done, and the art on Gunpowder Girl was particularly crisp and rang slightly of George Perez. I love the fact that I had a chance to find an anthology like this, as it is now a title I will continue to pick up…once I find a comic shop that carries it.

Unwound by Jeff Cioletti
The WonderCon Film Festival night two featured three films; well, not really. They showed clips from a documentary on Daredevil, and they closed the night with Welcome Sinners: The Velvet Hammer Story, which I liked better the second time around.

The highlight for me was Unwound, a documentary on Toy Robots. While not the best doc I've seen in the last month, I enjoyed the way it told the story, cutting between opposing points of view, and using one man's robot going up for auction as a thread to run throughout. Fun stuff, and for a guy who likes him some robots, I found myself going "I had that!" more than once.

Cioletti has done two other docs that have shown at WonderCon in the past, and I highly recommend Chronotrip as well as Unwound to anyone who thinks there is no such thing as a sci-fi documentary.

All in all, I've been to better cons, but the fact that WonderCon pulls so many great people will always make it a worthwhile trip.

Chris Garcia