Calamity Coach by Aaron Costain Calamity Coach or alternatively titled Thirteen Reasons Not to Travel: A Non-Narrative Pictorial Sequence of Imaginary Events Designed to Discourage Even the Bravest Souls from Vehicular Travel is 16 pages of, as Aaron describes, “Uhm, Rupert Bear meets the Gashley-Crumb Tinies.” That’s a pretty accurate description. Aaron begins with a bus sinking in a river – “The chassis gave a final shiver. As it was swallowed by the river.” Each page shows a new disaster for the bus and its passengers - fire, satellites, sea monsters, trains, airplanes, a herd of caribou -nothing is too absurd or grand of a fate for the Calamity Coach. Across the bottom of each page, the cadence of a children’s book rhyme appears as a caption.

All the pages of Calamity Coach are full color. Aaron uses slick paper stock and computer generated color for every panel. Check out Aaron’s website for details. Calamity Coach is $7 for 16 full-color pages. At his site, you can check out previews of all of Aaron’s comics. To purchase his comics, contact him at acostain@gmail.com. Several fine retail establishments also stock Aaron’s comics, including Chicago Comics, Quimby’s Comics, The Beguiling, Legends Comics and Books, and Strange Adventures.

Entropy Issues Three and Four by Aaron Costain
Both issues three and four of Aaron Costain's Entropy are cat-centric. Issue three is a silent cat story that begins with a cat waking from a nap in the forest and ends with the same cat curling up on a comfy living room couch. In between, the cat stalks birds, stretches its legs over short graceful sprints, and stumbles upon another cat.

Aaron's art is very precise. The lines forming shapes and figures are very bold and deliberate. Although he uses organic shapes like leaves and bushes, he also generously uses non-organic patterns to fill in backgrounds. In one three page sequence, he moves simple black ink backdrops to tightly grouped vertical lines to four different types of foliage and then finally to tightly grouped horizontal lines. This lends the panels a feeling of movement. The reader's eyes quickly follow the cat's lithe body through these changing backgrounds.

Issue four of Entropy is less focused on art and backgrounds, but more focused on plot. Once again a cat takes center stage, but this time she interacts with an eagle and a wild boar. All three characters are mothers laden with growing broods.

Crafty as any cat can be, this cat gains the confidence of both the mother eagle and mother sow. The cat slyly plants nefarious thoughts into both eagle and sow's minds, playing on their maternal instincts.

This is a brutal story that leaves you cautiously eyeballing your own cats as they slink through your house. Both of these minis are a nice addition to the Entropy line of comics. Check out Aaron's website. You can find his comics at The Beguiling, Quimby's, Chicago Comics, and Strange Adventures in Halifax. You can also contact Aaron directly at acostain@gmail.com.

Entropy issue three is 8 pages for $3. Issue four is 24 pages for $4.

Entropy issues 1 and 2 by Aaron Costain
In issue one of Entropy, the protagonist, oddly overdressed for a mild walk along a wooded road, contemplates creation myths and converses with the woodland creatures. Costain lends a level of anxiety to his tale even before the pesky ravens assail his lone traveler. This fellow is anxious about the ravens but also concerned about creation. He tries his hand at deity to no avail (at first). Then, to mess with his peaceful day, the ravens arrive.

The art in the first issue of Entropy reminded me a bit of the art in Jiro Taniguchi’s excellent The Walking Man (Fanfare/Ponent Mon). The lines of the trees and leaves are ultra detailed, giving the setting a degree of hyper-reality. The level of detail isn’t quite as defined as Taniguchi's, but the comparison is still useful as a point of reference.
Issue two of Entropy is a bit of a departure from issue one. The cover is gorgeous enough to consider for a print; I’d hang a print of that on my office wall in a second. The departure comes from the subject matter and ultimately the reduced size of this mini.

It’s broken up into two stories; the longer, “the SHAME that made a MAN out of MAC,” and the brief “automatism 1.” In “the SHAME,” Mac keeps getting flat tires (3 of them!) on his bicycle. The first two times, he rolls his bike to The Bike Clinic for a flat tire repair. You get the sense that Mac thinks the gods are mocking him with the repeated flats. By the time flat tire number three arrives, Mac decides to take matters into his own hands, and thus he becomes – a MAN.

The art in issue two is less detailed than issue number one, especially in the second story, “automatism 1.” The art here is much looser, a function of the tiny panels (eight of them) crowded onto each page. This doesn’t ruin the art, but it forces Aaron to use less detail and rely on simple lines. It works pretty well.

I forgot to mention that Aaron get s extra points for including a Murakami reference in response to the foxes comments shown above, “You haven’t read too much Murakami, have you!”

You can get more information on Entropy and look at more of Aaron’s comics at his website.