Local Heroes

 

The New Fantastic Library for Curiosities #1

Hey, it’s a comic from a local artist! Let’s review it!

This is a comic by Colin Morse, who graduated from Texas Tech a year or so ago. And I have it on good authority that he’ll be at the Lubbock Comic Book Expo, this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Science Spectrum!

Anyway, we got a couple different parts of this comic. First, there’s an odd little comic called “The Statue in Space,” starring an astronaut called the Action Man. As he’s exploring a gigantic statue floating in space, he discovers that it’s inhabited by a very unexpected variety of creatures. Second, we’ve got a straight prose tale by Morse and Jason Rhode called “The Dreadful Business of Cultists,” which focuses on a Holmesian detective named B. Henry Montaigne.

Oh, I know, I barely described what went on at all. Listen, both stories are pretty short, and I ain’t interested in spoiling them.

Verdict: Thumbs up. “The Statue in Space” is really wonderful — simple but clear illustrations, a fascinating and profoundly weird story. The coolest thing about “The Dreadful Business of Cultists” is how perfectly it replicates the style and language of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve tried to write like this before, and it’s not at all easy to duplicate that archaic style of writing.

This one is not for kids, mind you — there’s some thoroughly adult content here. But you grownups should enjoy the heck out of this one.

And again, Colin will be at the Comic Expo this Saturday. If you’re not there to tell him how much you liked this, he’ll be very disappointed.