Well it seems I've missed blogging a bit, since I started a website of film photography, primarily of places and things here in NYC. I guess it's in my blood... Anyway, really been digging the cool comic shops here in New York.

Desert Island in Brooklyn just knocks my socks off and I love the front of it. This is a shot from Fantagraphics Flickr Page.

And of course Rocketship Comics, right down the street from my new favorite whiskey bar is always a fine store to visit.

Have to admit that I've been most impressed with Bergen Street Comics, which is just a 15 minute walk from Rocketship. I love these guys. Their store is not what you normally expect from a comic shop. Inside it's all gorgeous wood and aesthetically pleasing. When Kate and I walked in the first time, she was like, "Wow, this doesn't even feel like a comic shop." She's right. It feels more like a well stocked independent book store that just happens to specialize in comics. And EVERY time I've been there, someone gets up from behind the counter, walks over to me, and politely asks, "Do you need any help finding something?" That's it. Pretty damn simple. I tell them no thanks, and they disappear like a ghost. Back to browsing... That's really nice.

Over here in Manhattan, I haven't found as many new places. The new to me Forbidden Planet in Union Square is jam packed with good stuff and TONS of mini comics. That was a nice surprise. Plus it's really close to The Strand, which means I get loaded down with comic books and book books all on one subway trip.

So, who knows. Maybe I'll get back to cranking this rusty old thing up. It's certainly been nice to get email and questions from people still about mini-comics.

In the meantime, if you are intereseted in photos of the city, check me out over at Still Life.

Hope everyone is enjoying their fall.
Shawn

Hiatus and Contest
I'm sure this will come as no surprise as I haven't updated here since late June, but I'm going to take extended time away from posting reviews on SIZE MATTERS.

Between work, exploring the city, and spending quality time with Kate, my life is embarrassingly full right now. Last year was one of those years, and I've been seriously re-evaluating things and what's important to me. I'm working on my own comic and spending a lot of time reading books and writing.

I will keep SIZE MATTERS up as a resource. Maybe I'll revisit reviewing when winter hits and I'm not out running the streets. In the meantime, I'll probably post pages of my own stuff here when I feel like sharing.

For all of you who are waiting on reviews, I'm sorry if I haven't got to your work. Luckily, there's a bunch of other reviewers who are much more dedicated to showing your stuff to the world. I started SIZE MATTERS on July 20th, 2005 when I noticed there wasn't sufficient coverage of minis. I'm so happy that has changed.

For now, it's time to move on. I've got too many other things rattling around in my head to concentrate. I'll see most of you around. I'll keep abreast of what people are doing on Facebook and I'll still check out local shows and events.

I'd like to thank everyone who has read the blog over the years. Thank you, thank you. I'm really glad I was able to share some of these amazing mini-comics with you. And thank you to everyone who sent in minis for review. I've always been impressed with the creativity and energy that I've discovered in your work. You guys and gals are awesome.

Before I turn out the lights, here's a very quick look at some interesting stuff that I was hoping to review before I shut down. Please visit the links provided to find out more.

City Under Sand and Casual Sex by David Beyer Nine Gallons by Susie Cagle Big Un Visits the City by Brian Leonard Nurse Nurse 3 and 4 by Katie Skelley Candy or Medicine Volume Six by Josh Blair, et al Here's Blobby by Patrick Morgan Sunward by Jason Viola The Moth or the Flame by Joshua Ray Stephens This is a gorgeous hardcover book. Sam and Dan by Jeff Lok Exploding Head Man by Jason Overby Look at this beautiful envelope from Jason. I'm gonna miss that kind of shit. And one last thing - I have a huge box of mini-comics sitting in a sub 500 square foot apartment. I need to get rid of these beautiful little things. So, if you want a big box full of mini-comics (probably about 100 minis I would guess), drop me an email titled "I want that box of mini-comics!"

I'll have Kate pick a random number between 1 and the number of emails received between now and August 31st. The corresponding email response that matches the random number will win the comics and I'll ship them out to you.

I'll see you around.
Shawn

Top Ten Mini-Comics of 2008
Man, what a year. Personally, this was an eventful year that both good and bad made me grow as a person. I’m not sure I want to repeat this kind of year again, but I have to admit that I’m better for it. I’m hopeful. Globally and nationally, I’d say the same thing applies - good and bad events of epic proportions - yet we’re still standing and dare I say it, hopeful. Here’s to growth and moving on to 2009.

But before we move on, there are the mini-comics of 2008. I didn’t read as many mini-comics this year as in years past. I didn’t go to MoCCA, SPX, or APE. For the first three quarters of the year, I only reviewed minis sporadically. Still, a ton of mini-comics found their way to the SIZE MATTERS office. I’ve read a stack that I haven’t reviewed yet and there are still several minis in the review pile that I haven’t opened. But when I think back over the year, there are several minis that stand out. Here, in no particular order, are the ten minis that I enjoyed the most in 2008.

Jessica by Jason Overby I hadn’t heard of Jason before this year, but I really, really dig his style and fresh way of communicating with the reader. I don’t think you can get any copies of Jessica, but SOLIPSIST'S DOODLES should still be available from Jason’s blog.

Wigger Haircut by Zach Hazard Vaupen Same thing with Zach. Who the hell is this guy? I enjoyed Wigger Haircut and The Diary of Lisa Frank, but the former gets the nod here because of Zach’s use of color.

Shitbeams on the Loose by Various Artists through Tender Loving Empire was a standout anthology in 2008. House Party by Lane Milburn Everything looks good from ClosedCaption Comics, but I really loved Lane’s House Party.

Nurse Nurse 2 by Katie Skelly I love Nurse Nurse! What a great character. Katie’s playful and sexy style perfectly suits this interplanetary story of a nurse/hero/adventurer. The Legend of Countess Saddenbrau is nothing to sneeze at either.

Selected Comics by James McShane

Over the last few years I’ve always made sure to grab James McShane’s tiny books masquerading as mini-comics. His cramped one panel pages are glued into an impossibly thick binding and they make irresistible objects. Now, James has published a larger format mini that collects selected minis from the period 2003 to 2008. Here are a few images from James’ blog that show the format.
Are You Man Enough by Phil McAndrew A felt mustache on the cover and a 5-page drum solo within? Yeah, that’s a 10 Best Mini.

Rabbit Shadows by Jason Viola

I haven’t reviewed this yet, but it’s a beautiful little mini-comic. Each page features one panel of gorgeously shaded and crosshatched art. Rabbit Shadows is the story of a rabbit mired in the day to day routine of work and TV. Suddenly, while walking, he discovers his shadow and begins to interact with and manipulate it. Jason’s mini clocks in at 44 pages for only $3 and it has a striking brown cover with a Rabbit Shadows sticker pasted in the upper center.

Tegne Issue Two by Various Artists I discovered Tegne through David Birchall (Extricate)

There’s too much going on inside this densely packed collaboration to mention here, but look for a full review in a few weeks.

My Life in Records by Grant Thomas This is still in the review stack, but I’ve enjoyed reading it and can’t wait to share some images with you next week. Stand by for a review of this during Christmas week.

That’s it, the ten mini-comics that stood out for me in 2008. Please give these folks some love and consider purchasing their work. If you are reading this and you read SIZE MATTERS regularly, thank you for sticking around. I’m so grateful that there are people out there who love making mini-comics and I’m grateful that you love to read them.

Have a wonderful holiday, travel safe, and take care of each other. Kate, Chloe, and I are off to Michigan for Christmas this year. I’ll probably squeeze a review of My Life in Records in next week, but other than that the SIZE MATTERS offices will be shut down for the holidays.

Peace, Cheers, and Best Wishes!

Return to Regularly Scheduled Program

Sorry for the huge delay in posting. Adjusting to a new job and then moving really put a dent in my comics related activities. The good news is that the new job is fantastic, and I've figured out how to better manage my time. Other good news is that Kate and I are officially moved in to our new condo downtown. Between cleaning the old place, packing, painting the new place, moving, and then assembling IKEA furniture every night until 1am, we had no time left for anything else.

It's worth it though and kind of weird, because Kate and I both feel like we're now officially married. This is our first home purchase after renting for too many years, and it just feels so right. Our place is in the Mass. Ave Art District, so we're surrounded by art galleries and cool restaurants and bars. We finally feel like we fit in our neighborhood. I still hate all of you that can afford to live on the coast, but this amazing new space makes up for it a little bit.
I've assembled a stack of mini-comics that are waiting to be reviewed. If you're out there waiting for a review, I double dog swear I will get to it soon. My address for reviews has obviously changed. A few people already have the new address, but if you don't and you need to send something, email me at shawnhoke@gmail.com.

Not dead, just lazy.

In the SIZE MATTERS offices, a healthy stack of mini-comics waits patiently. The mini-comics, and their creators, wait for me to get off of my ass and review them. I appreciate their patience, even though I know it’s wearing thin.

Truthfully, the warm weather makes it difficult to stay inside and look at comics. And yet the comics keep stacking up. I see them creeping into the edge of my consciousness, even as I decide to take Kate out for drinks instead of scanning in pages and writing short reviews.

Damn summer.

And tonight it’s half-price martini night at Scholar’s Inn…

Anyway, I’ve got a lot of stuff to review; I know this. If you’re waiting for a review, I promise I’ll get to your mini-comic. I’ve glanced at most of the mini-comics before putting them into the stack; there are good comics in that stack. Stand by.

In the meantime, have you seen Dan Zettwoch's blog?

Happy Valentines Day
I review a lot of mini-comics on this blog, and I'm constantly telling people how easy it is to make your own mini-comics with nothing but paper, pen, and a stapler.

This is an edition of one that I made during a lunch hour. Never Trust Cats with Glitter or Glue is 16 pages and Kate has the only copy. It was done in with pen, first run, no mistakes allowed. Of if you make em' you just keep going. I did pencil the heart on the cover, but the damn eraser made it all smudgy.

Never Trust Cats with Glitter or Glue is the story of what happened when I forced our cats to make Kate's Valentines Day card this year. I didn't want to waste the bandwidth on the whole thing, but here's a couple of pages to show that anyone can do a mini-comic in a minimum amount of time.

Below I've told the cats that if they don't finish the project I will put Kate in charge of their feeding, watering, and litter scooping for a week. She's not real timely when it comes to that stuff and they're rightfully alarmed.


Uhm, they weren't allowed to use scissors, hence the chewed up edges to the card.

After all their hard work I wasn't able to use the card that they created. There was a lot of litter mixed in with the glitter...

Guest Post the Second by Kate Nyland Meow, by Jesse Reklaw, is a treasure. The cover is a delightful scrap of wallpaper with the title and a picture of a cat silk-screened onto it. Although it set me back $5, it is worth every penny. Each of the sixteen technicolor paintings of cats is a little work of art. “Cat Women,” the final picture, consists of three motley women and a little cat, all in dominatrix gear. Two pages adjacent to each other each have three cats in similar poses, but it took looking at their titles (listed on a page at the end of the mini) to really get the difference between the two. On the left, we have “Good Cats,” looking dapper as they clean themselves, sleep, and lounge about. In contrast, on the right you’ll find “Bad Cats.” They have shifty gazes and ragged ears. Most cat-owning readers will probably identify more with the latter than the former. Below are two paintings, “Pile of Cats” and “Space Cat,” to show the more whimsical side of this mini.
I appreciate The Probe by Damien Jay because although it includes no dialogue, it is visually packed. Smaller than a deck of cards, with a silk-screened cover, this mini has nine panels on almost every page. In the beginning, a rabbit wakes up and is overcome with boredom. Since the mini ends with the rabbit in a near-identical state of tedium, one wonders if the rabbit simply imagined what transpired in between. The action occurs when an alien tries to lure the rabbit out of his den, using a carrot, in order to study him.
Jamie Tanner’s Barry Pago: Crime Scene Photographer violates the mandate I always give Shawn before he passes along anything comic-related to me: no sad stories about animals. I still haven’t forgiven him for Goodbye, Chunky Rice. I picked this mini up on my own at SPX and was immediately awed by the art. There is so much texture on every page. Even the most inanimate of objects (rugs, tables, bathtubs) come to life when drawn with Tanner’s pen. The tale is equally as nuanced. The title character, an anthropomorphic penguin, has brought his son, Walt, along on a job – several gruesome murders need to be documented. Pago likes to, ahem, engage with the victims to the detriment of his son, who wants to follow in the footsteps of his dad and take a picture. The disregard of Walt by Pago leads to chilling consequences, although Pago’s callousness remains untouched up through the last page.
General Thoughts I would imagine something that prevents many people from becoming comic lovers is the feeling of not getting enough bang for your buck. I spent $30 on minis and felt as though many of them lacked substance. Had I spent that money on a good novel, I would have had hours of entertainment. More than several of the minis left me empty. They weren’t horrible, they weren’t stellar, they were just eh – barely blips on the radar. A few times, I exclaimed incredulously to Shawn something along the lines of, “$3.50 for this?!?” Some were trite; others had the uncomfortable air of an adolescent boy trying to show off how crude he could be. I really enjoyed the minis I reviewed and would have paid more for them than I did. Couch Tag by Jesse Reklaw, which Shawn snagged first but I would have undoubtedly picked up had he not, was what I wish more minis were like. Dense, thought-provoking, and memorable, it was just as fulfilling as a chapter out of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

One of Shawn’s quirks is that he does not like short stories. If his favorite author publishes a book of them, he isn’t tempted to buy it. Even compilations including many of his favorite authors get ignored at the bookstore! He feels that maybe a few of the pieces would be fantastic, but the rest don’t have enough development for him to bother. This, ultimately, is how I feel about minis-comics. I understand there is blood, sweat, and tears poured in to the making of every mini. Shawn and I made our own once and can attest to that. As much as I want to love minis to the same extent Shawn does, I don’t. I appreciate the work that it takes to make them, and will continue to read the outstanding ones Shawn passes my way, but I’d rather read a novel - or a book of short stories.

Guest Post on SPX by Kate Nyland
Although Shawn and I have only been married for a few months, we have lived together for years and thus I’ve been subjected to his obsession with comics for quite some time. I grumbled under my breath about how his long white boxes detracted from the atmosphere of our college apartment. Last summer, when he ebayed most of his collection, I was pretty disgruntled at being the post office envoy by default (as a teacher, I had a few months off). Now, my spirits perk up when I see a package in the mail (a near-daily occurrence) – perhaps it’s a forgotten-about lipstick I had ordered or a care package from Mom - only to discover it’s a parcel of comics. Lest you think I negatively dwell on Shawn’s hobby, note that I took a course (The History of Comic Art) in college that was fascinating, and I sometimes incorporated graphic novels into my lesson plans as a social studies teacher. I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Hell, I came up with both of Shawn’s column titles. However, I’m not a full-fledged comic fan and can’t imagine I ever will be. I’m ambivalent about comics due to a lot of the issues Shawn often rants about in Past the Front Racks – the gaming tournaments in the back of the store, the costumes, the objectification of women on too many covers, the comic lovers who spend thousands of dollars a year collecting statues…I will address other (less superficial) reasons for my conflicting feelings about comics in a future post.

Our idea for my guest posts this week was this: take an outsider (me) to SPX with $30 to burn and see what I think about the expo and the mini-comics I picked up. Are my musings indicative of what the general public thinks of comics? No. Do they represent what women think of this art form? Of course not. They are my personal observations and should not be extrapolated. I picked up twenty-one minis in all, but in each post I am only going to review a few of the ones I found to be extraordinary.

First of all, SPX itself. I was impressed that most of the attendees looked and acted liked regulars from our local Punk Rock Night, not The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy. Although it was crowded, I was pleasantly surprised that, unlike my other comic con experience, I wasn’t “accidentally” felt up. It was difficult to visit a table without feeling (mostly self-induced) pressure to buy something, so as Shawn instructed, if the offerings of a table looked dubious, I didn’t make eye contact and just kept on walking. (If I didn’t visit a stall it may very well have been because Shawn had told me he already had everything from it and there was no need for me to buy it again.)

I picked up JP Coovert’s Blind because of the attractive packaging (100% recycled, acid-free paper in earth tones that complemented the story) and I enjoyed the short, sparse The Giving Tree-esque tale of a guy who loved a tree and the man responsible for its demise. The beauty of this mini lies in its simplicity.
the monkeynauts by Sarah Becan is also an attractively-produced mini. Bombo the Monkey relays the true accounts of simians who were employed by the US government to test space flight. The art is a breathtaking mix of Xeroxed silkscreen images and real pictures. Anyone who loves animals (not the “oh, I love cute cuddly puppies!” variety but the “how could these wonderful creatures be used for food/clothing/entertainment” kind of animal lover) would be moved by this mini, especially when reading the chilling last page. After reading this on Saturday, I’ve thought about it a lot since. It has stayed with me, a good test for any art form.
Kevin Huizenga’s Or Else is technically not a mini, but is so genius that I wanted to mention it here. Of the little vignettes, I particularly liked “I Stand Up For Zen” and “Al and Gertrude,” stories that really resonated with me. In the latter tale, Huizenga works in an understated manner to tell a very sad and human story. In the former, the author, at the time a graphic designer for a wholesale distributor, grappled with whether or not to help advertise “Power Bead” bracelets. The example below shows the creativity Huizenga uses with page layout in this comic.
In my next post I will review a few more minis and then give some general (nameless, title-less) thoughts on the minis I wasn’t as keen on.