Comic review: The Fiction #1- Not much fun, and now I feel bad because I didn’t like it

Writer: Curt Pires
Artist: David Rubin
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Released: 17th June 2015


It’s not very enjoyable to write a review on something that has little impact, that is neither hot nor cold, just middling, lukewarm and indifferent.

I like to rave, and I like to moan. I like to get passionate, and to get passionately wrong about something is always a learning experience that I’ll gladly accept, sod the ego, let it get bruised, I need to banish it to gain inner spiritual fulfilment (or something) anyway.

Oh, a book that does nothing, it’s so depressing. I can barely talk about it. I’m writing a review and it feels like work. I don’t want to go to work. I want to write with freedom and passion, and say silly things. So please forgive me, because what’s coming next is a half-hearted effort, a review of a book that did absolutely nothing for me.

‘The Fiction #1’ reads like a child’s fantasy book, like that Narnia movie with the wardrobe and lion in it. The characters are childhood friends, they experience something when they are ten, one of them goes missing, now they are all grown up, and about to jump back into that childhood fantasy world once again to discover what happened to their friend.

There was a hint at the beginning of the book that the disappearance is connected to ‘conspiracy theories’ and that should have hooked me, seeing as I’m supposed to be the ‘conspiracy’ guy, but the hooks never attached, and it wasn’t enough to make me care.

So what was the problem then?

I don’t know. The characters felt a bit plain, a bit dull, nothing resonated and it felt a bit too childish for me, not serious enough, a bit too cartoon and silly, and the artwork played into that feeling as well. It was too colourful, there was no realism to it, no sense of threat or danger, or most importantly, excitement.

I’m, sorry. I hate to say mean things about new indie books, but I didn’t enjoy it, and I won’t be buying issue #2. I wish them the best, but there’s not enough here to keep me interested, and now I’m fed up, and I don’t feel good about writing this review. I shouldn’t have bothered. I feel like a bad guy because I didn’t enjoy the book. Lots of effort, and struggle and time, and passion and hopes and dreams, and here I am dismissing it like it is nothing. Ah man, sometimes reviewing comic books really sucks.


Rating: 4/10 (Dull)

Comic review: Mythic #1- Cheap book, worth it for the art alone

Story: Phil Hester
Art: John McCrea
Colours: Michael Spicer
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 13th May 2015
Price: $1.99


Mythic #1 looks great, and there’s an idea behind the narrative that I hadn’t really thought about before, but it has that same old problem that I always go on about.

The problem is that it’s not really saying anything, and therefore it’s never going to be a top-notch, essential comic book.

The idea behind the book is that allegorical myths are real, that the stories about giants or whatever are more than just moral truths and lessons boiled down into interesting campfire stories that will get the message across with a bit of storytelling magic.

No, the myths are real, and science is wrong. Giants and other scary looking monsters do exist in this world, they are just really good at hiding, and we need a special team of super agents to keep them in order and to protect us.

Yeah, it’s that specialist team of experts again, the old stand-by in comic books that tells us quite a lot about how we actually relate to the world, even though that really isn’t the point in any of the stories.

I’ll make the point for them.

We are taught by our schooling and mainstream media indoctrination programming that we are useless, helpless and unable to do anything by, and for ourselves. So, we get the expert, co-ordinator class, the politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, diplomats, soldiers, cops, scientists, food manufacturers, journalists, spin-doctors, economists and all of the other little groups that combine in their happy little club to control us, and to keep us on the corporate neo-liberal statist plantation.

It’s not good, we need to do things for ourselves, to learn new things, to stop being lazy, to stop giving our power away (as we do when we vote in our democracies) and to take back some of that power that we voluntarily give away in our lives. Being dependent is like being an eternal child, and when we choose to be dependent we end up being exploited, of course we do, we practically beg for it, so that’s what we get.

Mythic #1 is a book about a co-ordinator/expert group of superhero types, and I’m sure that they will have lots of exciting adventures against giants and dragons, and I’m sure that it will be wacky, and they’ll quip, and it will be cool, and the art is great, there’s no denying that, but I already don’t care about anything that is going on in the book.

I wish everybody involved with it the very best, and the idea to put out the book for just $1.99 is a really good one. If you have a new book, then do this, it’s a great idea as the hardest thing of all when you embark on a new creative project is to get people to give it a go, and reducing the price is the ideal way to entice readers.

The creators are doing something for themselves, they are not relying on some expert, they are putting out an indie comic, they are creating something out of nothing and doing what human beings are supposed to do.

Artist John McCrea is great and the book is worth the money just for his artwork alone, and who knows? You might enjoy the story a lot more than I did. I’m just one bloke, and I have my own particular idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.

Mythic #1 didn’t really float my anarchist boat, but give it a go, you might find it a lot more interesting, and fun than I did.


Rating: 6/10 (For the art alone)