Justin Decarlo’s Hyper Toast #5 is a 32 page A5-sized minicomic that is just pleasing to hold and look at. That the book’s cover has texture—that those silhouetted shapes and yellow outlines are raised—should be enough to warrant the book some consideration. The effort Decarlo has put into this cover surely reflects the effort he’s put into the rest of the comic.

by Justin Fah

MoCCA minicomics! These three comics are all delightful in their own ways. Since they are each so wonderfully unique I will review them as such.

by Jake Grubman

Marc Sobel of the Graphic Eye did an interview with Kevin Mutch a few months before Mutch’s Fantastic Life was printed with a Xeric Grant in early 2012. It came just after the book was selected for Alison Bechdel’s edition of the Best American Comics, and it is about as wide-ranging and interesting as these kinds of interviews get, for my money.

Mutch hasn’t hit the big time yet, but in that interview and on the pages of Fantastic Life and its sequel The Rough Pearl, you get a glimpse of a guy who is thinking and producing the way good artists do. These are both strong books, and they have me really looking forward to what he produces in the future.

by Brandon Beck

Forcefield Fotocomix Vol. 01 is a great idea executed extremely well. A collection of short vignettes involving the crime fighting Costumed Characters, futuristic space DJs and Kushner himself, Forcefield is a vibrant, exceedingly well-shot, and inventive collection of photographic comics. Primarily a portrait photographer (his portraits of The Beastie Boys, Jonathan Ames and Michael Moore, among others, sprinkled throughout the book are gorgeous and evocative), Kushner turned his eye towards bridging his two loves: comics and photography.

Like most people, I love a good mystery. But in my mind, mysteries tend to evoke two basic responses while experiencing them: You either ask “Who Done It?” or “What The Hell Is Going On?”.

Diana Thung’s August Moon is a work that is described by its publisher, Top Shelf Comics, as taking after “the films of Hayao Miyazaki.”

Mental health was always one of those things where people would ascribe moral weakness to describe a mental condition that might have complex or unexplained origins. People used to think sin caused schizophrenia or homosexuality, then they blamed it on masturbation or whatever else made them feel morally superior to people with different mentalities. Depression still gets that kind of treatment. “Stop being so depressed, you’re such a whiner!”—for its part, depression is typically thought of as a temporary sadness that only miserable losers prolong by dwelling on problems. It’s a lot more complex than that, obviously. There are some people who just have a bad day, and then there’s others whose brains are literally a different shape because of depression, leading to a chronic diagnosis. It’s a spectrum, really, not an either/or deal. Still, even the guys who need medication just to get out of bed get tagged as people who just need to man up and stop being a “pussy”.

A roundup of some minicomics we got at MoCCA 2013!

by Drew Mollo

I’ve been a fan of Harry Houdini for years, even writing my college thesis and the symbolism he represented to the masses. So this could not have been a comic more in my wheelhouse if it tried.

Underwire, the collected webcomics of Jennifer Hayden, is kind of like Cathy for those new-agey not-quite-yuppies you see around (that sounds meaner than I mean it to be, unless you’re really into Cathy comics, I dunno). They’re slice of life style strips about Hayden’s life as a mother/wife/woman and how she reconciles between all of these parts.

Geoff Vasile’s The Geoff Vasile Show! is a 25 page minicomic between A5 and A6 in size; it features the four panel comics posted on Mr. Vasile’s Tumblr between July 23, 2012 and January 29, 2013.

I never wanted a robot for a best friend when I was a kid. That probably stemmed from the fact that when I was six my dad showed me The Terminator and T-2: Judgment Day back to back which taught me that robots would probably rise up to kill us all until I saw The Matrix when I was ten which taught me that technology would DEFINITELY rise up to kill us all. So…. yeah I don’t get the appeal. Anyway that weird detour into my bullshit aside what I do understand is the appeal of having an imaginary/out of the ordinary friend when you’re a kid, I’ve read Calvin and Hobbes I’m hip, and at first glance Robbie and Bobby looks like it’s going to be just that. However, as soon as I started digging into this volume it became quickly apparent that the fact that an eight-year-old boy is hanging out with a robot is the least weird thing this book has to offer.