So I don’t usually do reviews of web comics… well heck I haven’t done a review since September 2009. Recently, I have seen some requests in my overpacked (with spam) inbox, and I realized that I should look into doing more small press and independent stuff. So I made a twitter post asking people to email me via the contact page, and this review is the first result from that post. Well, a few days ago I began the long trek through the depths of www.thinkweasel.com’s content, and here I am.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Think Weasel is an internet based humor strip written and drawn by Nick Mizgala of Georgia (I think). Like my own website, Think Weasel runs on Wordpress which is designed with functionality and usability in mind rather than style. That said, it’s a very user friendly web comic that I can see myself easily catching up with as a reader, and we can leave the style up to Nick the artist rather than Nick the IT guy.

So let’s backtrack for a minute. Like I mentioned before, I am used to writing reviews of comic book issues and graphic novels. Reviewing a web comic is a little bit different for me because I don’t have a set of criteria in my head. So I’d like to take a minute to establish the basis for my review and have a good explanation for the star rating at the bottom of the post.

The first criteria should be the quality of the artwork, and this Mizgala does a good job there. The work isn’t comic book quality (though a couple of posts prove that he is capable of it); it is pump ‘em out and get 3-5 done per week quality. It’s as good as any comic you’ll find in the newspaper, with updates coming out just almost as fast. That’s pretty impressive for any artist, let alone one with a nine-to-five. Kudos, Nick!

Secondly should be writing. Now I have to remind myself that I am not reading a comic book here but a periodical strip. The story arcs typically seem to span three or four posts in a row and mostly follow the weasel-like characters of Nick and his wife Angela (I hope I’m right on this). Other characters include Lance McWeasel (news anchor), the intermission stick people, and Larry the drama Llama. All of which add some real fun to the strip and keep it fresh. The humor is tough. Anyone who reads the funnies knows that jokes with quick setups (necessary for the format) and one-liners can be hit-or-miss. The majority of the strips put a smile on my face, but select few are lost to me either in my personal sense of humor or in the depths of geographic translation (cold weather jokes probably make more sense to Georgians than to those of us here in California where the current temperature is 70 F).

To me, the third criteria should be the website’s interface, but we already covered that. So the fourth is the frequency. If I were writing this review a year and a half ago, I would have expressed disappointment, but the dates on the past 100 or so posts seem to be pretty consistent. Who would I be to complain anyways? A very neat thing that Mizgala does is to foresee the random bits of life (vacations, head colds, etc) and draw short stories featuring the intermission stick people in advance. So if Nick is out for a week, his website isn’t.

So those are all of the criteria I can think of for a web comic, and I think they sum up Think Weasel pretty well. The website has taken the last space available on my over packed Firefox bookmark bar. The website seems like the perfect place for me to spend that half hour between class and work or a quick, stress-relieving break from either. Think Weasel is some great PG-rated entertainment that is sure to lighten the hearts of even the grouchiest of net-surfers.

(4.5/5)

For more on Think Weasel, or to read the web comic, head to www.thinkweasel.com and get your weasel on! (hit the “first” link and read your way through like I did, it’s way fun!)

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I am sure that by now we have all seen plenty of “gangster” movies, read gangster books and comic books, and hell we even listen to gangster music . Well some of us do, I guess. But the creators of HollyVOOD (http://www.hollyvoodsite.com/) claim to be reinventing the gangster story in a way that we have never seen before.

The title HollyVOOD seems to be an allusion to the foreign gangsters that fill its pages and their inability to pronounce the English “w”. But don’t worry, writers Vem (http://www.vemdirector.com/) and Steven Thadeus won’t go so far as to jumble the dialogue in an attempt to display accents. To tell you the truth, there isn’t too much dialogue here at all.

The first half of the issue spends time looking at the main character Krikor’s escape from war-torn Georgia (no not the US state) and into Los Angeles. The second half introduces a few characters including Ruzo, a greasy gang leader who likes to torture people for god knows what reason.

The story itself is intriguing, but unfortunately it is in the nature of preview issues to give a limited amount of that story before they end abruptly. The writing style takes some getting used to, as the writers seem to like to split sentences up into each frame. I know that a lot of comic book writers do that, but if you take look at this issue you will see why it jumped out at me.

And this issue definitely is worth taking a look at. The story itself is a comfortable mix of tragedy and comedy, but the bulk of its impressiveness is how it works together with the fantastic art by Anthony Diecidue (http://www.artofant.com/). Sure, it’s rough around the edges, but the style works amazingly with the vibrant colors he uses. The double page spreads really will put a tear in your eye.

As an independent group of creators, the three threw together a terrific piece of art here. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get a small-time comic on shelves across the country, so they ingeniously made their preview issue available here. Check it out!

(3.5/5)

PS- Mr. Thadeus was kind enough to supply me with a copy of the preview issue, and was humble enough not to toot his own horn. He didn’t mind tooting the horns of his co-creators, however. Vem has directed several commercials and music videos, and he is now working on some stuff for television. Diecidue is currently working with Disney and the great Stan Lee on “Time Jumpers”. $1.50 really is a bargain to get the collaborative work of a team like this. Check it out before they catch on and raise the price!

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Celebrities aren’t usually great at playing the part of Renaissance man. In my opinion, singers generally try to dabble in acting a bit more than they should. Among the many who have tried, few (such as Will Smith or Jamie Fox) actually make it big and do a great job with it. Tyrese Gibson is speedily making a name for himself among those few who can successfully transfer themselves into the acting game, but now he is taking things one step further and adding his name to the writing credits of a monthly comic title.

To be fair, I have no idea whether he actually wrote any of Mayhem, or if his name is just a sales tactic for Image. From what I can gather, it seems like he did. When Quentin Tarantino stamped his name on a movie like Jet Li’s Hero, one could easily tell it was just marketing because: 1- The movie had already been released overseas and 2- Mr. Tarantino never lifted a finger to promote the movie other than to sign the release to put his name on posters and trailers. Gibson, on the other hand, has been promoting like crazy for this book ever since its conception.

The protagonist of Mayhem, whose likeness seems to be based on Tyrese, is a man named Dante who is out for revenge on criminal kingpin who goes by Big X. From there, you can pretty much imagine what type of story this is and where it is going right? Well, not exactly. The story does seem pretty cliché. Two action scenes are broken up by a quick visit to a local church to atone for the preceding and ensuing violence. Concepts like this added to other formula ingredients like endless streams of black-suited bad guys, a sexy accomplice, and a rich old white villain might lead you to believe that this story is pretty run-of-the-mill; but appearances can be deceiving.

The first clue that Mayhem is more than meets the eye is that it is contained in the comic book medium. While the plot may seem familiar, try to imagine the last time you saw action like this on a page rather than a screen. Also consider the more original bits of plot and character. Because this is a monthly title, fun mysteries and surprises are added to the story to keep us interested enough to buy the next issue. I won’t ruin them for you, but I will tell you that they are original and genuinely engrossing. I am honestly looking forward to the developments in the characters of Dante, Felicia, and Big X as the story continues.

I won’t lie to you and tell you that Mayhem is innovative or thought-provoking. More than anything, it seems to be an exercise in adrenaline-fueled entertainment, but it doesn’t claim to be anything else. And that’s refreshing! It’s still too early to tell whether or not Dante’s character will endure and become one of the more notable and recognizable characters in this industry that eats new heroes for breakfast, but I do believe that it is worthy of its status as the newest addition to my pull-list at the comic shop.

(4/5)

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I have mixed feelings on Outsiders 20. So far I have really liked Peter Tomasi and Lee Garbett’s run, The Deep. Each issue seemed to have plenty of info, plenty of action, and plenty of surprises. I can’t say that this issue was no good just because it didn’t have any surprises. I guess when you get to the conclusion all the cards are on the table, and it’s just a matter of how you play them.

The Outsiders is a team composed of some of the least popular characters in DC, but Tomasi really brought them up to the best they can be. I said before (and I’m standing by it) that Ousiders: The Deep has been my favorite read for months. Even when I hadn’t gone to the comic shop for three weeks and came home with a fat stack of books, this was the first one that I delved into.

In this issue, we get to see a dope villain team-up with Ra’s al Ghul and Vandal Savage, the two immortal bad asses of the DCU! My one complaint is that we just didn’t get to see enough of them before the end of this arc. Issue 18 ended with a glimpse of Savage while issue 18 had him meeting up with Ra’s. Why couldn’t their plans have been included or at least alluded to in the previous issues? I can’t complain though, because I was pretty distracted in the meantime with the Deathstroke excitement.

I’m not sure if these two plan to continue their work on this title with a new story arc, but god I hope so. Tomasi has really kept me excited with the outsiders month after month, while I couldn’t see anyone drawing these characters other than Mr. Garbett. Few pairs of artists seem to work as well together as these two do, and it would be a shame to see them split up.

Ps- Long live the Creeper!

(4.5/5)

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There are more than enough problems to go around in the conclusion of Emerald Eclipse, as things start wrapping up for the emergence of Blackest Night. Just as the Alpha Lanterns were able to provide the final push in quelling the riot in the sciencells, the Green Lanterns look up to their beloved Oan sky only to see that it is beginning to fall apart. Trouble is on the way!

Soranik Natu (still on Korugar) is having trouble dealing with her daddy-issues (what child of Sinestro’s wouldn’t?) while Arisia and the newly empowered Daxamites are able to finally kick the last of Mongul’s faction of the Sinestro off of Daxam. Most of the issue however is spent on Lanterns Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner standing up to the Guardians’ execution order of the attempted sciencell escapees.

Over the past few months, I have given Peter Tomasi and Pat Gleason a pretty hard time for their (in my opinion) shortcomings on the Emerald Eclipse story arc. I didn’t care for Tomasi’s seemingly short attention span, nor for Gleason’s stretched out character faces. The strengths of these two as a team seemed to be action. In this issue (and the past couple), I have noticed that I do like how well Gleason can draw a large scene like the outdoor execution and argument sequence.

All in all, Emerald Eclipse was an ambitious story with quite a bit going on and simply not enough space in each issue to address it all. I am still fairly new to this title, so that might just be how it has to go. Maybe someone could point out to me the reason I preferred Sins of the Star Sapphire over this arc.

(3/5)