Category: Reviews

No star-rating, no filler-content, just an explorative look at Irish comics and the things that we love about them. Is every comic perfect? No. But are there gems to be found in even the grainiest of books? Absolutely.

Brain Fetish Cover
Reviews

Review: Brain Fetish

Paul Carroll

I picked up Brain Fetish by Kinga Korska under the proviso that it had something to do with brains, boobs, or both, a classic case of judging a book by its cover. In a way, I wasn’t wrong.

Kinga Korska, a Polish writer and artist living in Dublin, has given us a remarkably candid book on relationships, philosophy, and psychology. Even without addressing the story, we already have a quick-read textbook on how to have better relationships in your life, through careful examination of how we communicate, and why people say certain things. It’s an incredibly wise book, proving Korska’s wealth of wisdom well beyond her years. But it’s more than a textbook. This is a novel, filled with love and humour and the incredible intricacies of human relationships.

I first met Kinga at the inaugural Geek Mart in Dublin, shortly after I got my hands on her book. She arrived with a table’s worth of books and magnets, dressed in full cosplay despite the heat. Memory recalls that she was a steampunk Alice Madness. She was witty and charming, and she sold her book well to prospective customers through sheet force of character. Understanding Kinga is a good way to understand her book; both come equipped with refreshing honesty and a wicked sense of humour.

Even in dealing with such a complicated theme – people are the most complicated thing that most of us will encounter in our lives, pending alien invasion or supernatural apocalypse – and through a complex style, with a detailed, continuous narrative, Korska makes the subject matter easy to understand. In a manner of contradictions, Korska paints this difficult story and teaches a powerful message all through the use of black-and-white artwork; rarely grey-scale, simplistic (albeit consistent) in style, and whole capable of illustrating a point. Few artists can embrace simplicity the way Korska does while simultaneously addressing an incredibly deep narrative.

This is a raw book, and may leave some readers feeling uncomfortable with how they once thought about others, but it represents an important aspect of comics and their power to shape the world and those of us lucky enough to share it at this moment in time.

Flare One Shot Cover
Reviews

Review: Flare One-Shot Comic

Paul Carroll

This site is new. Reviews are new to this site. Paddy Lennon graced me with a digital review copy of the Flare One-Shot comic earlier this week, and it should be said that I typically avoid reviews due to the struggle of maintaining objectivity. in lieu of an official review policy and statement (maybe when the DCC madness subsides I can get on that), please accept here and now that I will not be giving a star-rating on any reviews here. What I will do is tell you what I liked, and point out some things that I thought might have helped improve a comic, coming from someone with a storytelling background and some limited experience in design and illustration.

 

Onto the review!

One thing that should be noted about this one-shot comic is that it isn’t a single, self-contained story. This has its ups and downs. On the plus side, we get a nice introduction to three distinct protagonists. I liked the different stories told within the comic book. They were unique tales, told from very different worlds, but all by one author; they shared a voice, and it was a comfortable read. On the flip side of this, there’s a regrettable absence of depth to the stories overall. I was keenly aware that there were larger stories being hinted at within the pages of the comic, but before we were given any further experiences of the characters or the world they inhabit, the next story would begin.

Don’t get me wrong, this was a fun book. The collection was enjoyable. Paddy Lennon can certainly tell a good story – he does it three times within one issue. I only wish the stories might have been longer. (The related novels Lennon wrote before this comic, I suppose, are where we might get our fix of the longer stories.) For newcomers to Lennon’s work, there can be an absence of backstory to everything that happens within the pages of this book.

However, despite the limited length of the stories – understandable given the constraints of a single-issue comic – they work well as a set. Perhaps more significantly, Lennon and co. told these tales with different illustration styles taking control of each story. Where First Date is told as a full-colour, vibrant superhero tale, Wolfhound is a gritty, scratchy noir tale. The final story, One Day in Tokyo, is told with a mix of the vibrancy of First Date, with a nostalgic pallet during the story’s most critical points.

The creative team behind the Flare One-Shot comic say an awful lot together, demonstrating the amazing potential of this comics team. While readers may find themselves looking for more, we can rest assured that Lennon’s stories are not confined to panelled pages – Flare and Shooting Star are both also available as novels, minus the graphic elements. The book is definitely worth checking out, and launches at Dublin Comic Con 2016.