After Shave

You might remember how, several months ago, I reviewed a Free Comic Book Day offering by my friends at Unshaven Comics. That issue was a "Sneak Preview" of their comic "Disposable Razors," and they released the full first issue at C2E2 a few months back. I got my copy shortly thereafter, and free time shortly thereafter that, so it's well past time that I got down to reviewing the book.

The book consists of two stories, "The White," which continues into the next two issues, and "Chasing Daylight," which had a prologue in the Sneak Preview. "The White" is basically a new draft of the Sneak Preview's material, with some updates and alterations here and there, while "Chasing Daylight" is all new. In any case, I'll be doing a lot of comparison, so if you haven't read the original review, you might give it another look.

The first point of comparison is the cover. My years of dedicated practice in a remote ashram under my learned sensei Slylock Fox have given me the skills necessary to accomplish this task:

"Disposable Razors" gets a snazzy and fitting new logo for this first issue, which is a lot more distinctive and appropriate than the cartoonish text on the Sneak Preview. The basics of the cover are the same, with a guy shaving in a bathroom mirror. The "Awesome Area for Creator Signatures" has been replaced with a vanity (with an Unshaven logo on it), and some details have been added in the mirror image. The coloring is much more nuanced, making the skin coloring a little more natural (and for some reason changing the variety of Barbasol--I guess the guy doesn't need the "Soothing Aloe" anymore). While the updated coloring is generally better, there are a couple of disappointing changes: first, an unnecessary and slightly distracting lens flare effect has been Photoshopped in, and while the shaved spot on the guy's face before had revealed a subtle star field, now it's just a fade-to-black gradient. The effect looks like a more advanced bit of coloring, but loses the interesting and fantastic implications of the original art.

On a more nitpicky note, I just noticed that on both covers, the actual guy has a sideburn, while his reflection doesn't. Spoooooky.

Moving into the book, it starts with what ought to be a correction on my end. "The White," from the Sneak Preview, becomes a framing story here. Unfortunately for me, I originally thought the first page was an excerpt from "The March," Unshaven's original graphic novel. So if you're going back to that original review, my discussion of "The March" is mostly a discussion of the first page of "The White."

"The White" has been completely relettered and split into two pieces to bookend the main story. The relettering addresses some of my early criticisms, particularly the unnecessary out-of-place censorship, and the font looks a bit more expensive (and less Simpsonsesque) to boot. It looks like it's been recolored a bit too, but that might just be a quirk of printing and paper quality. The dialogue has been revised, pretty heavily in places, which is good, because it removes a bit of attempted scientific detail that I'm surprised didn't bother me before. There's less text, which provides a better flow, and lessens the infodump sensation that this story had previously.

So, for the capsulized recap: a man is caught in a thunderstorm, which leads to his transportation to The White, a dimension that acts as a nexus looking into alternate realities, similar to "The Bleed" in DC/Wildstorm. Speaking of DC, our designated protagonist is guided and berated through the dimension by a lampshaded Skeets-lookalike who (now) calls himself "VOX." The protagonist looks into the insanity-inducing surreality of The White, but his experience with sci-fi and comic books have immunized him against madness. The story--such as it is--kind of meanders until the protagonist looks into a reality-window at a character that looks kind of like him, starting the first vignette. At the other end of the book, the protagonist reacts to the events he's seen in the reality-window, and VOX changes his appearance.

While the art is basically the same, a new two-page spread has been added, which is a nice riff on the kind of surreal spacescapes you might find in Kirby's Fourth World or Ditko's Dr. Strange books. It's colorful, it's bizarre, and it looks like it ought to be a psychedelic rock album cover. It's also basically the best art in the story.

I hate to say this, but I'm fairly disappointed by "The White." The art needed precisely the same facelift that the lettering and dialogue got, but didn't receive it. Frankly, I kind of hope it wasn't completely recolored, because the pre-White page really could use it. The landscape/background looks fine, but the protagonist is washed out and pale, to the point where there's not enough contrast between his skin and his teeth and the whites of his eyes to tell if they're colored differently. That's exacerbated by the high contrast between all the light washed-out color and the heavy inks in his face.

There's a lot of inconsistency in how the character looks throughout the story. His hairstyle and length, as well as the length of his facial hair, changes wildly from page to page and, sometimes, from panel to panel. There are ways to handwave this away, since it's established about halfway through that he can change his appearance within The White, but it really just looks like sloppy continuity editing.

Similarly, somehow the header from the blue line art board got left on the third page; it could be handwaved as well (that's the first page where we really see the bizarre surreality of The White) but it really just looks like "Book: The White Issue: 1 Page: 3" didn't get cropped out of the scan before it went to the printers. It wasn't worth critiquing in the Sneak Preview, given that book's status as a Free Comic Book Day sampler, but that's kind of a glaring error to leave in the final draft--especially without any explanation.

I'm going to go off on one of my traditional pseudointellectual tangents for a moment, if you'll indulge me. "Unshaven Comics" is an anthology series. I've got a lot of experience with anthology series in comics, television, and especially movies, and they tend to break down into two groups. There are anthologies where the framing device exists purely to link together the main stories, and there are anthologies where the framing sequence is a story on its own.

To elaborate slightly, we never really knew anything about Rod Serling's characters in "The Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery." He was just there to link together the tales of interest. The Cryptkeeper didn't have plots, just puns. Most anthology TV series and comic books fall into that first category.

On the other hand, go watch "Creepshow" or "Trick 'r Treat," and you'll see the second motif. The framing device is a short story like the rest of the vignettes, with its own plot and characters. Sometimes it's separate from the vignettes, other times it weaves into and out of them with common characters or settings or whatever. You see this kind of thing a lot in movies, where the stories might come out of characters sitting around a campfire or listening to an eccentric storyteller, or whatever.

"The White" is clearly trying to be the latter. The big problem this presents is that the story continues on into the upcoming issues, so we only get the beginning here. What results is a story that kind of meanders and treads water for much of this first installment. I criticized "The White" previously for feeling like a rough draft, and it still feels that way here. The additional splash page and updated dialogue doesn't save the series of panels that feel like they were written without a real plan.

And I hate to come down on it again, but the biggest example of how unplanned this all feels is that VOX changes his appearance for no apparent reason toward the end of the story. When a character has existed for half a dozen pages, radically changing its appearance makes it feel like the creative team decided halfway through that they didn't like how the character looked but didn't want to go back and redraw and rewrite the previous pages. I know independent comics are an expensive and time-consuming affair, but in anything like this, one needs to be willing and able to go back and radically edit, even if it means scrapping existing art and eating a bit of cost. Although I suspect that all it would take is changing some dialogue and doing a bit of Photoshop magic.

It's certainly possible that the skin change is foreshadowing or establishing something (although I'd think that the protagonist's earlier discovery that he could manipulate his own appearance did the latter), and I'll be able to evaluate this better when the story is complete. However, when you're telling stories in a serial medium, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that it looks like there's a plan, and this is one element out of several that makes "The White" look quite unplanned. I suppose "not introducing a conflict in the first act" is another major one.

I'm happy to say that "Chasing Daylight" is considerably better. The original "Chasing Daylight" short in the Sneak Preview had a wildly different art style compared to "The White," owing at least in part to artist Marc Fishman. The art wasn't perfect (in fact, it's fairly flat in the last panel, though some good coloring obscures that), but it was clean and smooth. Matt Wright, the artist of "The White" and the full "Chasing Daylight" story, has a much sketchier style more reminiscent of Bill Sienkiewicz. That in itself isn't a criticism--I like Bill Sienkiewicz--but it's interesting to see an independent comic company with three creators go through a major change in creative teams before the first issue of the book.

Anyway, it's clear that there's been a lot of time between "The White" and "Chasing Daylight," because Wright's art has improved by leaps and bounds. Characters are distinct and consistent (and I'm have a feeling I know who modeled for the some of our protagonists) and expressive, and it's easy to follow the action. There are some hinky bits where a character's face gets distorted when they're drawn from a weird perspective, but they're fairly minor. One thing I'd kind of like to see is someone else inking over Wright's pencils; having another set of eyes and hands at work can sometimes smooth out those rough areas, and I'd like to see if that sketchiness could be restrained a little more by a different inker's pen. That's mostly personal preference, though, rather than an actual complaint about the art. If the whole book looked this good, I wouldn't have spent nearly as much time commenting on the style.

So, the capsulized story: four friends are returning from their "annual bro-cation," having a standard dude conversation about whether sex with your own clone would be gay sex or masturbation. It comes off fairly naturally, establishing the voices and personalities of the main characters (though "fellatio" is misspelled), and allowing the driver to give the backstory in captioned narration. The art is mostly fine in these pages, aside from the interior of the SUV they're all riding in occasionally looking massive (it's possible that they're driving the Canyonero--"twelve yards long and two lanes wide"). When they pull over to let one of the guys take a whiz, though, they encounter a person possessed by a predatory creature that wants to consume them as well. Being a sporting creature, it tells them that it'll spare their lives if they stay in the light. They deduce that this means they should try to follow the sun and stay in the sunlight. What follows is a pretty suspenseful horror standard, with the characters racing against time and trying to keep their wits despite conflicting personalities and the pressure of impending doom. I won't spoil it, but I think it works out fairly well, keeping close to the horror short story roots you might expect from an anthology comic, and making the conflict a believable extension of the characters' previously-established personalities.

At the end, we return to "The White" and get a quick note of how the protagonist of the framing story is connected to the characters in "Chasing Daylight." The book closes with a (now full-color) preview of "Ironside: Living Will," the story I unreservedly recommended the last time around, which will be in the second issue.

Overall, "Disposable Razors" is still a mixed bag. The main story is a pretty good, pretty conventional horror short. "The White" is fairly flawed, but I feel optimistic that a new issue with new material will improve on it. I've definitely read worse indie comics, but I've read better as well. I enjoyed the main story, but I can't honestly recommend the full issue without some reservations.

I guess, if I had one major suggestion for the Unshaven crew, it'd be to engage in a little more cutthroat editing (incidentally, I'd give the same suggestion to DC Comics lately too). One major mistake that a lot of writers make (and I imagine artists do too) is to become too enamored with an idea or a plot point or a turn of phrase, that they make sure to include that moment, even at the expense of the rest of the story. On the flipside, there's also the tendency to have errors or elements that could be better, but would take an even greater investment of time, money, and effort, and so they settle for what they've already done. There's a balance to strike between the two, where you're not wasting time and effort on being a perfectionist and you're not getting too wrapped up in your own perfection.

That's a general critique/patented tangent, there. I don't think anyone at Unshaven Comics thinks they're perfect.

The job of a comic editor is (or should be) to be a kind of professional jerk. Editors have to tell writers to cut off those abundantly clever bits of dialogue, no matter how good they are. Editors have to tell artists to redraw that page, that panel, that facial expression, even if it's the tenth time. The point of an editor is to have someone standing outside the project looking at the bigger picture, someone who's not emotionally invested in any particular aspect of the art or writing, but is invested in what the full package will look like. Also, to proofread, which is only a very minor problem for this book (and frankly, I see about the same kinds of typos in comics from the Big Two, because apparently no one hires a copy editor anymore).

I also realize the irony in my advocation of editing when I almost never do any editing whatsoever on this blog, resulting in things like 2,500-word reviews of a single comic issue.

"Disposable Razors" #2 is scheduled to debut at the Mid-Ohio Con in November. "Ironside: Living Will" was a pretty darn good story when it was black & white in the Sneak Preview, and even if there isn't any updating or improving on the art and dialogue, I think it'll be worth the price of admission. If you happen to be there, or if you frequent Stand-Up Comics--fine merchants of Unshaven Comics publications--check out Issue #1 as well, and decide for yourself.

Five O'Clock Shadow in Four Colors

As I'm sure I've mentioned before (such as in the "where I buy comics" section on the right), I get my books from the fine folks at Stand-Up Comics, hands-down the best comic shop in Chicagoland. It's through the fine, fine people at Stand-Up Comics that I met the also fine, if stubbly, guys behind Unshaven Comics, a very independent comic company. Some time ago (the first Saturday in May, in fact), Marc Fishman (1/3 of the Unshaven crew) asked me to review their Free Comic Book Day offering, the "Disposable Razors Sneak Preview."

As with everything I do, naturally, it's taken me far longer than it should have to get around to it. I have some excuses, and I really did want to wait until I could give the book my full attention, but I really should have had this review done a considerably long time ago. So without further ado, I present "Disposable Razors: Sneak Preview."

The issue consists of six teasers and a couple of advertisements (one of which is for Stand-Up Comics, clearly the best comic shop in Illinois and Northern Indiana), of varying length and, frankly, quality. I'll tackle them in order, with some wrap-up thoughts at the end.

Our first story is near and dear to me, featuring Stand-Up Guy, the superheroic mascot of Stand-Up Comics, the greatest comic shop in the Midwest. Stand-Up Guy is in reality Stanley Dupgui, a mild-mannered reporter and frequent Stand-Up Comics patron and spokesperson. So far, he's appeared as an action figure (with chase variant!), a trading card, and the star of two comic book stories, in that (approximate) order. You can check out his backstory for yourself, as explained on the back of his official trading card.

This makes the Stand-Up Guy story in "Disposable Razors" interesting, because it seems to take place in an alternate continuity for the character--one in which he is a part-time weekend cashier, and his origin is somewhat different (or he's confused about it, which can be No-Prized away with an appeal to the whole mindwiping thing from his backstory). I can't help but be reminded of how the 1940 Superman radio program began with an origin story that wildly contradicted the established comic continuity, which had existed for less than two years. Perhaps this backstory dissonance is a subtle commentary on comic book continuity issues, who can say?

The story itself is built around an amusing premise, where Stand-Up Guy fights his nemesis, Improf Komedy, in the Stand-Up Comics shop, while the owners and proprietors watch (and comment). There are some good ideas here, but overall the story feels like it tries too hard. The humor is too forced, and I can't help but think it might have been better for the Unshaven guys to sit down with the Stand-Up guys and just toss out crazy ideas in conversation for a few hours until something resembing an absurd plot would gel. If nothing else, the humor would be more suited to the coveted 18-25 Illinois Comic Blogger demographic.

Moving on, the second story is an excerpt from "The March," Unshaven's first published graphic novel, about the immigrant experience in America. "The March" came out a few years ago, and just moving from the first story to the second makes that clear. The art is a lot rougher here, and while it's clear that the artist has a great eye for framing shots (whatever the comic book equivalent of direction is in movies), it's even more clear that he's grown quite a lot as an artist since the work was published. The facial expressions are awkwatd, the inking lacks nuance, being largely all-or-nothing, the coloring is inconsistent on the character's skin. Where the art isn't dealing with detailed people, it's spot-on, but the character work is pretty rough. Also, it's kind of weird to see the f-bomb done in comic book censorship style in an indie comic. That's nitpicky, but it kind of sticks out as odd; there's no Comics Code to hold you back, and the current trend seems more toward the "black bars" school of censoring.

That seems overly negative, but let me repeat: just by going back to the previous story (a more recent effort), it's clear to see how much the art has grown. There's still the same eye for well-staged panels, and while some of the faces and bodies are still a bit awkward, the art, coloring, and inking is far more polished in the Stand-Up Guy story.

I apologize, by the way, for doing this review without scans of any sort. I don't have access to a scanner at the moment, but I may come back and re-edit George Lucas the post when I do.

The next story is something called "The White," and the lettering and art lead me to believe it was produced between "The March" and "Stand-Up Guy." I feel like an evolutionary biologist, trying to organize fossils by their traits--it's comic book cladistics. The story--such as it is--follows a young comic fan hipster-type after he falls through some wormhole into a dimension that functions a bit like The Bleed, with portals looking into other worlds. Our nameless protagonist is guided (and mocked) by a Skeets-lookalike robot whose name can be acronymized to "AESOP" (though he's never actually called that--although they hang a lampshade or two on the Skeets appearance) There's some great art here, although the figures and faces are still awkward. Inconsistencies in the protagonist's clothes and hairstyle are handwaved away by an in-story appeal to infinite possibilities and limited perception, but the inconsistencies aren't quite frequent or extreme enough to look intentional. At the end of the story, AESOP changes his appearance to become a floating face instead of a floating robot thing, but the reasoning is kind of odd.

I imagine that this is the pilot story for an anthology-type series, where the protagonist and The White are vehicles for alternate-universe morality plays, making this a kind of Twilight Zone-meets-Sliders concept. That much is cool, and I hope to see Unshaven Comics expand on the idea. Unfortunately, "The White" reads like a brainstorming session rather than a story. It feels like the script and art were done largely together, while the actual universe was still being built, which would explain AESOP's skin change at the end and such--it had to fall in line with the next iteration of the story. It reminds me of stories I wrote as a kid--or portions of my NaNoWriMo novel from a few years back--where I just wrote without really knowing where I was going, and worked out the kinks of the universe through the characters' dialogue. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it doesn't make for the most compelling read.

I keep ending these reviews on such down-notes, and feeling like I have to do the "criticism sandwich" thing. As I said, the idea is good, it's the execution that needs work, and I have little doubt that this idea will work when there's a story to tell, and not just a framing device to set up.

The next story is the one that stuck most solidly in my mind after first reading the comic months ago, and consequently it's the one I've most looked forward to reviewing: "Ironside: Living Will." The narration in the story is in the form of a somewhat (intentionally) rambling letter from aging World War II-era soldier-superhero Ironside, to his superhero son. Having watched his whole unit die of old age and disease, Ironside is prompted to power up and go down fighting. The characterization is spot-on, as the narrative letter moves from the news of his friend's death, to the realities of war, to advice on superhero costuming, and finally to grudging respect and a final goodbye. It's six pages, but just from the narration we get to see a nicely multifaceted protagonist.

While this is going on, the art is telling its own story. The art and narration are parallel for a page or so, but eventually diverge, as Ironside powers up and puts on his fatigues, then foils a bank robbery by some thugs from 1-800-GO-GOONS and a lame supervillain wearing the Power Glove and Mega Man's Mega Blaster. He brutally assaults the thugs, and it's at least implied that he kills the villain. I've talked about my love for this kind of storytelling device before--Robert Kirkman has used similar devices a couple of times--where the words and art tell separate stories. It's something that really only works in comic books, and it's nice to see the medium's idiosyncracies being used as an asset. The narrative/art divide drives home the apparent point: that Ironside is going to go out not like a hero, but like a soldier, brutally taking down the supervillain enemy one by one. There are some elements to the story--and not just the protagonist's metallic skin--which remind me of the "Tarnished Angel" story in Astro City, and that's a pretty positive connection to build.

The art here is black-and-white, in contrast to the rest of the book, and I think that's a good thing overall. The inking is a little heavy (as it is elsewhere in the issue), but that works out well here with the darker story and the metallic protagonist. Some work could be done on the faces in some panels, but overall this is the most artistically polished story in the book, and the most compelling one to boot. I hope Unshaven Comics follows up on this story in the future; they have at least one guaranteed customer if they do.

The next story is a four-panel comic strip called "Ra: the Happy Sun God." I really can't describe it without going far too long-winded, so I'll just say that it feels like it'd make a pretty fun webcomic. That's not meant to be a knock on it, by the way. The simplified art is well-done, and I think the rest of the stories (with the possible exception of "Ironside") might do well to take a page from this style. The linework is clean and simple, a stark contrast to the often sketchy linework of other chapters. Again, this sounds more negative than it's meant to be; "sketchiness" is a stylistic choice as well (see also: John Romita Jr., Tom Mandrake, Bill Sienkewicz), but I think a little cleanup in the inking stage would help out in a lot of places--and this little strip is proof of that. The one complaint I have is that there are a lot of faint horizontal lines in each of the panels, and I;m not sure if that's an artifact of the paper or the scanning or what. In any case, it almost makes it look like the strip was initially drawn on note paper, which doesn't look particularly professional.

"Chasing Daylight: Prologue" is a one-page introduction to what appears to be a vampire story, narrated from the vampire's point of view. The art is great here, with just the right amount of detail, just the right amount of inking, and some very good coloring. There aren't many faces here, which makes it hard to compare to the other stories' biggest trouble spots, but what's apparent looks like an improvement. The biggest flaw I notice is in some wonky perspective on a car door in the first panel, which is a pretty minor detail. There's not much to the story, just a guy abandoning his car to try to escape a vampire on foot (and naturally failing), so I can't really evaluate that. I can't say that the preview does too much for me; it's too short to provide any interesting twists or tweaks on the vampire genre that would draw me in, and I think the market on bloodsuckers is largely saturated right now. I'd certainly be willing to re-examine this opinion in light of longer stories, but I doubt I'd get as excited about this as I am about "Ironside."

The final page is an ad for "The All New Samurnauts," which looks like a spacefaring Power Ranger-style team led by "an immortal samurai monkey." I'd have to know a little more about the premise before I could say anything about the series--particularly how seriously it's going to take itself--but monkeys, astronauts, and evil dinosaurs sounds like the recipe for fun comics.

Oh, and before I forget, I really like the cover.

So, overall? It's a mixed bag. "Stand-Up Guy" is fairly fun, but with limited appeal. "The Stand" has some rough art, but I can't say much about the story based on this excerpt. "Chasing Daylight" has a nice look to it, but I'd need to read more before anything would hook me. "The White" looks and feels pretty rough, but I think it'll work well if/when it's not the focus. "Ra: The Happy Sun God" would make a fun backup feature or webcomic, though I'm not sure it could carry its own issue or series. Finally, there's "Ironside," which I recommend without reservation.

The bottom line is that the Unshaven Comics crew have quite a bit of potential. At times, that potential comes through full-force, and at times it feels rougher and less refined. You can piece together a pretty clear learning curve throughout the preview, and that bodes well for their next release.

Speaking of which, I've just received word from Unshaven Marc that said release, which follows through on "The White," "Chasing Daylight," and "Ironside," will be released in time for Christmas. "Ironside" alone would be enough to make me run out and purchase it, but I'm curious to see where "Chasing Daylight" ends up, and how well "The White" works as a framing device (by the way, I totally called that). If you're in Illinois or Indiana, it's only a short trip to Stand-Up Comics, the best comic shop in America, which is guaranteed to be carrying Unshaven Comics in December, or you can watch the Unshaven Comics website for further news. Based on the preview, I recommend giving their upcoming release a shot, and I'm curious to see where it all goes from here.