'Zombies Calling' is top-notch zombie comedy

Zombies Calling (Published by SLG Publishing, 2007)
Story and Art: Faith Erin Hicks
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

When a Canadian university is overrun by zombies, it's up to geeky horror film lover Joss to save herself and her roomates, armed only with the Rules of Survival gleaned a lifetime of watching zombie movies and a spork.

For about two decades, SLG Publishing (formerly Slave Labor Graphics) and its imprint Amaze Ink has been one of the American comic book industry's best-kept secrets. They have quietly been publishing high-quality, quirky comics and graphic novels that really deserve far more recognition and readership than they've ever gotten.

One such book is Faith Erin Hicks' hilarious "Zombies Calling", a breezy graphic novel that moves effortlessly between drama, humor and horror. It's a well-crafted book that entetains and amuses from the first page to the last. Writer/artist Hicks presents a cast of characters that are likeable and funny and that she gets us to care about. Like a good zombie movie, we want them to escape the brain-hungry hoards because we like them... and when Rule Two comes into play ("One person makes the ultimate sacrifice so the rest can live"), the book as as suspenseful as any zombie movie you've seen.

In fact, this book will remind you so strongly of "Zombieland" that you may think Hicks was copying that movie. The truth is, Hicks' book predates "Zombieland", and it's either proof that Great Minds Think Alike, or the writers of "Zombieland" are familiar with the well-kept secret that is SLG Publishing, and intimately familiar with "Zombies Calling".

If you're looking for some light Halloween reading, or perhaps a gift for a zombie lover in your life, you can't go wrong with "Zombies Calling".

'Halo and Sprocket' is a must-read

Halo and Sprocket: Welcome to Humanity (Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing, 2003)
Story and Art: Kerry Callen (with eight pages of pin-ups by other artists)
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Halo and Sprocket: Natural Creatures (Amaze Ink/SLG Publishing, 2008)
Story and Art: Kerry Callen (with five pages of pin-ups and guest strips by other artists)
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

"Halo and Sprocket" is the story of Katie, a young single woman, and her two roommates, Halo the Angel and Sprocket the Robot. More accurately, it's a series of short stories, each revolving around some everyday activity or social convention so commonplace that most people don't even think twice about, but which may seem baffling or downright twisted to someone who has little or no understanding of human behavior or societal conventions.


And in each "Halo and Sprocket" tale, Katie is faced either with trying to explain some "fact of life" to a pair of genuinely interested pupils, or trying to deal with problems that arise from their attempts to implement what they have learned (or think they have learned). They are short, straight-forward tales that manage to be very insightful while poking fun at social standards and commonly held beliefs without being cruel, rather sweet in tone without being sappy, and even romantic without lapsing into sentimentality. Callen also shows himself to be master of just about every stripe of humor, from the lowest of slapstick humor to more convoluted gags involving metaphysics, philosophy, and even the alphabet.

Callen presents his stories with a clean, classical cartoon style, with expert comic timing through sharply written dialogue and perfectly designed panels and pages. It's another one of the countless comics that deserved to a much bigger success that it was. It deserved to consist of twenty volumes, instead of just the two.

The stories in the books run varying lengths, with the longest ones being 14 pages and the shortest ones being as a page, and each being just the right length to deliver Callen's punch lines. The first volume also includes a a collection of sketches and early comic strips that show the creative evolution of Katie and her two unusual roommates.

For more about "Halo and Sprocket," visit Kerry Callen's webite. You can read some Halo and Sprocket strips there, although my personal favorites are "About Face" (in which Sprocket tries to find a way to express anger) and "But is it Art" (in which the gang visits a street fair and Halo and Sprocket learn about artwork) from Volume One, and "Food for Thought" (where the gang goes on a picnic and Halo uses his divine powers to temporarily make Sprocket human) and "Trivial Consequences" where Katie sets out to first trick Halo into revealing secrets of the Universe and later to simply pull a practical joke on him) in Volume Two.


I think anyone who enjoys gentle, intelligent humor and well-drawn comics will find the "Halo and Sprocket" books worthy additions to their personal library.

'Marlene' is a top-notch horror comic book

Marlene (Slave Labor Graphics, 2005)
Story and Art: Peter Snejbjerg
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

One sveltering Danish summer, police detective Michael Joergendsen is assigned to investigate the murder of a peeping tom. As the case progresses, he discovers the woman being peeped at--a radiantly beautiful model named Marlene--seems to be the center of many strange events and dissapearances. As his obsession with both the case and Marlene grows, the main mystery becomes: Is Marlene the target of a stalker, or is she herself something more sinister?

Slave Labor Graphics may be small publisher, but they put out some seriously high-quality comics--"Halo and Sprocket", "Skeleton Key", "Private Beach", "What's Up Sugar Kat?", and "Street Angel, just to name a very few. With the English-language release of "Marlene", they added yet another fabulous comic book to their catalog.

"Marlene" is a 48-page one-shot that if it wasn't saddle-stitched would deserve to be called a graphic novel. And, frankly, it's of high enough quality that it would warrant a more durable format with a spine and cardstock covers.

Snejbjerg's tale is a perfectly paced horror tale, from the first shadowy appearance of a monstrous killer, to the final stand-off between Michael and his quarry. Snejbjerg also manages to swiftly establish his main characters as fully realized, three-dimensional personalities, and, like any good example of this kind of story, keeps some of their natures in doubt until almost the end.

Snejbjerg also shows himself to be a master of the craft of a comc book artist, something that distressingly few artists that have emerged in the past 15-20 years have been. His layouts are clean and easy to follow, his linework is crisp, and he has a great command of shadow and light. What's more, he seems to have a clear sense of the finer points of pacing a comic book story. (Hint to aspiring comcs artists and writers: Pay attention to what happens between the last panel on one page and the first panel on the following page. Get that sort of rhythm going in your work, and you'll be on your way to producing a decent comic.)

I recommend "Marlene" highly to lovers of good comic books and horror stories.

Agnes Quill sees dead people

Agnes Quill: An Anthology Of Mystery
(Slave Labor Graphics, 2006)
Writer: Dave Roman
Artists: Jeff Zoronow, Dave Roman, Jason Ho, and Riana Telgemeier
Steve's Rating Eight of Ten Stars

The title character of "Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery" is the 16-year-old granddaughter of a renowned detective and spiritualist, who exists ina pseudo-Victorian world where magic is acknowledged as real an commonplace enough that Agnes makes a living partly from running a "curiosity shop" that deals in arcane items and trinkets, and by carrying on the legacy of her grandfather. Her detective business is of a very unusual sort, going beyond solving simple arcane mysteries, as Agnes possesses the rarest of supernatural gifts: She has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts and other restless spirits, so she often helps them complete unfinished business so they can move onto the Afterlife. Her gift earns her a living, but it also leads her life to be lonely... and she is gaining insight into the darkness that exists in the souls of even the kindest-appearing men and women at a very early age.


Published by Slave Labor Graphics, "Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery" contains six tales of the teenaged supernatural sleuth, chronicle such diverse cases as her helping a kindly (but deceased) old lady wrap up her worldly affairs, protecting an unsavory womanizer from being torn limb-from-limb by the reanimated corpses of dead lovers, fighting a steampunkish mad scientist who is snatching body parts not from cadavers but from living people, and even finds possible romance in a secret under city).

Rounding out the book are excerpts from Agnes' personal journal and from files compiled by a shadowy organization that's keeping an eye on her and her activities. These materials add depth to the characters and stories, and whetted my appetite for even more Agnes Quill adventures.

What I liked the most about the stories here was the low quantity of angst, high quantity of adventure, the slight touch of melancholy, and the vast potential that still remains in the characters and the world they exist in. The kind of stories that can be told here have been attempted in comics before, but writer and creator Dave Roman seems to have come up with a world and back story that's got more breadth and depth than previous similar efforts.


"Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery" should appeal to fans of books like the "Harry Potter" and "Dresden Files" series, to those who simply appreciate well-done comics. (Another sign of the sturdiness of the Agnes Quill series is the range of art styles that are represented, from Telgemeier's very cartoony style to Jeff Zornow's intensely dramatic artwork. Each vision is equally appropriate.)


I recommend this book very highly. It's $11 for a book that I believe every comics fan in the house will enjoy; . (Well, except maybe those who need to have characters in tights with impossibly big boobs on every page. But those who appreciate well-told tales with interesting characters and offbeat adventures will get a kick out of the tales here, be they boys, girls, or adults.)