There's a sense of coming full circle with Daniel Merlin Goodbrey's comics. Best known for his innovation in web and 'hypercomics', Goodbrey uses his clip-arty style in the folded and stapled paper format; and it's really good!
A simple but hugely quirky tale of a crazy young Cowgirl who, "Intends to get sane" before she gets old, on a mission to rescue her brother (who's a goldfish) from his kooky captors: the inmates of a Wild West town named Insanity. (Ah, that's what you get when you go messing around with your older sister's special mescal!)
Though there's nothing hand-drawn about the book, which is where my tastes are firmly rooted, there's something really likable about Goodbrey's pixellated artwork. He keeps it simple for one thing: using black, white and grey-tone, and good balance with pictures that are well composed and dramatic: there's a strong design sense here.
The main thing which makes the project work so well, is the strength of the writing, something that will always win out in a comic book as far as I'm concerned.
Razor-sharp, it's uber-cool without trying too hard and there's an affectionate lilt to the ending which stops the cool being too superficial. It's also laugh-out-loud funny in a couple of places, a slapstick sensibility which I really like; reminiscent of the film making of Hal Hartley or (though I'm loathe to say it) Tarantino.
Ah, the Web-Wizard now trumps the world of papery small press too, by making this near-perfect little gem of a comic book.
The bar's been raised, this is great stuff.
Mardou