Hellcar Comix #1 Hell Car Comix #2 |
Links: ZUM! |
There are two stars here: Daniel Gallant both writes and draws Mary, Mary using a highly evocative woodcut-like illustration style. It's the tale of two children searching for clues after a religious statue vanishes, and manages to be both light-hearted fun and, on a much deeper level, a bit of an allegory on the quest for religious truth. His art on the Paul Friedrich scripted Hubie The Dead Cow is just as good, but Friedrich's script left me completely cold. Not so Onion Head Monster Attacks Ant City Part II which Friedrich both writes and draws: a hyperkinetic saga of war, monsters and gonzoid destruction, it rampages its way through the last few pages of the comic to take the prize as the best thing here.
Otherwise, carefully ignoring a woefully underwritten and ludicrously overdrawn 'superhero' 'parody', we have two Cutegirl strips by Matt Feazell which are, well, cute plus some great design work on the opening two pages.
All-in-all, a nifty looking package boosted by strong art and packaging, but let down by writing which often isn't up to scratch.
David A Simpson
Hellcar Comix #2 © EFF
I almost felt on former home ground for a moment when I opened
the pages of this zine. Music, comics, alternative culture, grungey black and
white screened photos on newsprint. At first sight it's like a blast from the
pre-Mondo, pre-web zine scene.
In fact, what this boils down to is an indy anthology
comic funded by music promotion. Good ploy. Use cash from an area where there's
relatively a lot of money for development and promotion to provide an outlet
for a medium where there isn't. Hellcar has a circulation of 8000. That's a lot
of readers for small press comics.
Hellcar doesn't feature much written
editorial. The zine's pages are mainly filled with music label display ads, plus
there's a cover CD with promotional tracks from the bands advertised. The rest
is comics, graphically sophisticated but some a little slack storywise. Reading
them is a little like trying to read Garo if you don't understand Japanese, but
I think it's meant to be irony. The standout is Witch Killers by EFF, about
a young comic reader who dreams that he's attacked by his piano teacher, in reality
a witch. Daniel Gallant's The Wedding Solution, which pastiches the style of
a children's instruction book, and E White's fine 1-page rendering Ramona & his
tepid exploits (weirdo declares love), also get an honourable mention.
The
cover CD is varied collection of 19 bands playing music in genres from techno
to country. Includes Shuggie
Otis's 'aht a mi hed' which caught some airplay in the UK not so long ago, and
a track from Jools Holland faves, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. There's also an
Onion Head Monster animation (QuickTime) by Paul Friedrich for CD's 'enhanced'
section. PC users: all the usual autorun inf and .exes are here so you don't
have to worry (perish the thought). Mac users: just locate the QT movie and click
on it. The audio section plays as usual.
Steve Edgell
| Hellcar Comix #1: Hellcar Comix 1: 36 26x17cm pages, full colour card stock cover (swanky production values) quality newsprint stock, 2 colour cover. #2: 40 26x17cm pages, quality newsprint stock, 2 colour cover. |
Price: |
Received at ZUM! HQ: #1: no info #2: 25iii00 Review Posted: #1: no info #14: 09i04 |
