A while back I took a look at a chapter, the second, of Colleen Frakes’ Woman King that was assembled, offered and reviewed as a mini. I found that segment to be a fine encapsulation in fantasy of a dilemma of leadership, experienced here by a young girl chosen to rule, in time, over a clan of bears.
You know the beginning-of-the-workweek drill: more comics gathered from last year’s Maine Comics Arts Festival. No joke.
The series takes place on a broad communal plain inhabited by several diverse biological species. Collectively, the different animals appear as distinct cultures, societies or tribes, going about their ways as their environment hosts catastrophe and opportunities.
Not being a reader of detective novels or viewer of cop shows, I didn’t know there were such things as “police procedural tales” until I read the introduction to Gotham Central Book Two: Jokers and Madmen.
For a publication of aggregate interests, this slick, hefty, irregularly published magazine probably incorporates comics, both as medium and topic, more naturally and thoroughly than any other periodical I can think of.
Mini comics, q’est-ce que c’est?
Fa fa fa fa fa fa
Better read read read read read read read away.
With all the comparable in-house material available, it’s probably possible to evaluate writer Fred Van Lente and artist Ryan Dunlavey’s series Comic Book Comics by contrasts alone. As Scott McClouds’ Understanding Comics gave an analysis of comics done in comics, Comic Book Comics gives the history of the form in the form.
At their best, academic journals are driven by useful ideas devised with rigor and discrimination. Their treatments explore intriguing themes and rewarding connections unlikely to be supported in other venues. Abstract concepts are habitually framed with an exacting, developed language in order to capture with precision the full subtlety of their thought.
The More Than Complete Action Philosophers is out to prove “that philosophy is not just the province of boring tweed-clad college professors.”
Minis, joy of man’s desiring. Women’s, too!
As usual, these were gathered at the inaugural Maine Comics Arts Festival held in Portland last year.
