Hellcar Comix #1
Hellcar Comix #1 © Daniel Gallant
| Hellcar Comix #1 Editors: Dave Gallant/Paul Friedrich/RJ Boone/Jaki Cellini Contributors:Paul Friedrich, Daniel Galant, Matt Feazell, Dale Flattum, Thomas DeVries, Brandon Askew |
| Links: Mail:Hell Car www.alternatingcrimes.com www.onionheadmonster.com |
First impressions of this anthology comic are very good, the cover both looking quite startling and feeling rather nice, what with its stiff cars and nice toothy grain. The inside's quite good too.
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 1: 36 26x17cm pages, full colour card stock cover (swanky production values) quality newsprint stock, 2 colour cover. | Received at ZUM! HQ: no info |
$2.95 inc P+P in US (ie: add more for outside US) | Hell Car Comix, Alternating Crimes Publishing, PO Box 5425, Raleigh, NC 27650-5425 |