Comics in Melbourne

While visiting Australia in February, I took a little trip to Melbourne and visited the All Star Comics store. It’s mainly a super hero store, but they had this one huge wall filled with local(ish) comics. Next to the door, even. So I bought a stack, and now I read them all.

Here’s a few I found particularly interesting.

Let Me Be Frank by Sarah Laing

I thought the cover was really pretty, so I was somewhat surprised by the look of the interior art:

It’s a bit rough. But after reading a few pages, the artwork started to make sense. And it’s a quite funny book. I guess you’d call the genre “Auto-biography; type: Amusing anecdotes”. But there’s something more going on here than just providing amusement. She talks about issues with insight and provides a sort of emotional clarity.

I liked it a whole lot, and will be looking for more comics by her.

Snasnakes by Squires

This is very silly.

See? Very silly.

Burger Force by Jackie Ryan

It’s been a while since I’ve read any fumettis. This is quite successful — the hard thresholding makes things nice and start on the page:

I have no idea what it’s all about, but it’s kinda entertaining.

Pay Through the Soul by M. Emery

This is also quite silly.

Indeed.

Uhm… was that everything I felt the urge to note? Hm. I think so. The Australian small press (as represented in this store, at least) seemed to tilt more towards genre works, and I’m not really that interested. The couple of fantasy/sci fi comic books I did buy weren’t really… that good…

And there were really no art art comics in this stack at all.

Oh, well.