The Dailies and a Belated MECAF Report

Never have I wanted to know Spanish more.

and MECAF!!!

All, right, so like a billion years ago I went to MECAF (actually I think it was three weeks ago) and, of course, it being an awesome independent comic book show I picked up a bunch of comics, and told myself I would read through them and then mention my favorites here. And then I got home and put all the minis in a pile and then got distracted and had a few dates and few beers out with friends and a couple of poker nights, and I created piles of dishes and piles of library books and piles of DVDs...

BUT Saturday I decided to finally get down to it and remove that nagging pile of MECAF comics from my list of piles (which is actually a pretty awesome chore to have)("oh, damn, I'm going to have to spend this worthless rainy Saturday afternoon listening to the Mekons and reading awesome comics")(sucks to be me).

So here we go. My favorites in reverse alphabetical order by title (because "in no particular order" is just lazy):

You're Never More at Home then When It's Time to Leave by Matt Young. An awesome collection of stories, including one called Not Band X which I wish I had written. If you were bummed out when you heard The Buzzcocks "What Do I Get" in a RAV 4 commercial, this story is for you.

Werewolf 4 and Werepups by a whole mess of people, but put together by Penina Gal, Betsey Swardlick, Josh Rosen, and Nick Patten. Awesome stuff about Werewolves. Highlights for me were Betsey Swardlick's stories in both books and Josh Rosen's old bones in Werewolf 4. Over all on a scale of Milli Vanilli to the Beatles I give the books a Aftermath Era Rolling Stones (the British, of course)(not that compromised American version).

Sugar Baby by Nomi Kane. This is just straight up great comic booking. Awesome comics that just nail childhood. She gets it right. It sort of hits all points, the good parts, the sad parts, the silly parts, the rough parts. It's all their. And she just told me it was about growing up with diabetes, which totally sells it short, because it's about so much more than that. Also, judging by the title of her website she's also a big Clash fan.

Inkbook by Bob Flynn. I think I might hate Bob Flynn because he draws so well and makes it look so easy. This is just a collection of doodles from his sketchbook and it's just great. I bet that even when Bob is putting ketchup on a burger it comes out as an awesome drawing.

Heavy Flow by Jen Vaughn. I few years ago, my girlfriend at the time had a boss who told her that she should have life consultants, specific people chosen to offer specific advice for specific situations. So you'd have a legal consultant. A relationship consultant. Whenever I thought about this I would always find myself drifting off topic and deciding on things like my Star Wars consultant or my Clash consultant. Anyway, Jen Vaughn would be my lady fluids (I believe she coined the term) consultant. Seriously, before Jen Vaughn came along the only thing I knew about menstruation came from the Kids in the Hall. Even more seriously, this is an awesome comic book that made me laugh a lot. Especially the bit about plungers and giants.

Grune by Zack Giallongo. There is a lot of sci-fi and fantasy that I hate. There seems to be this fictional history lesson at the beginning of the story, where the writer takes all this time explaining the rules of the fictional world to you, giving all this backstory and history, while nothing actually happens in the book. It's like that begat section from the Bible (I mean really, couldn't they just have written "sometime later" and be done with it?)(that would save us all a lot of trouble)(it would also mean the fundamentalist Christians wouldn't have to count all the years that people live in order to figure out the age of the earth incorrectly). Zack doesn't fall for this trap. He drops you right into the story and you the reader are left a little behind, but he tells the story so well that you know he's going to clue you in later.

Whew and I think that about covers it.

I promise I'll be faster after SPX.