Cat Burglar Black reviewed at fuo.

I picked up Richard Sala's Cat Burglar Black for my daughter and myself at the local library.  You can read the review at file under other.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Blue Pills by Frederik Peeters reviewed at fuo.

I talk a little bit about one of my new favorite books at file under other.  Highly recommended. 

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Liz Baillie's My Brain Hurts Vol. 2 reviewed at fuo.

I just posted a review of My Brain Hurts Vol. 2 over at file under other.  Clickity clack!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Rashy Rabbit No. 6 reviewed at file under other.

I just posted a review of my pal Josh Latta's new book A Rabbit in King Arthur's Food Court over at file under other.  Check it.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Wednesday Comics #3 a Twitter Review.

Wednesday Comics #3 publishes by DC comics. Available for $3.99 at comic book shops that don't suck and newsstands in Heaven.

I've been excited about Wednesday Comics since I first heard about it. I love newsprint and newspaper comics. I love the color, texture and smell of newsprint. It makes me happy. I also love creators like Paul Pope and characters like Adam Strange and Kamandi. Throw that all together and you can bet I will want it. However, I'm not fortunate enough to make it to comic shops very often so I missed the first issue. I did manage to pick up the 2nd and 3rd issue recently. I don't really cover a lot of mainstream comics stuff here or at file under other but I though it would be fun to tweet about this one as I read it. So I did. What follows is just a copy and paste of my tweets on this issue. I may or may not do this more often or not in the future. You can follow me on twitter just in case I do. So, here's what I thunked:

Batman= great. Azzarello and Risso are a perfect Batman team.

Kamandi= Genius. Perfect script, art, lettering, colors. Perfect comics. Beautiful. Other comics bow before your master.

Superman= unreadable. Bermejo can draw but the script is like an imitation of a script. Amateur. The colors are so ugly.

Deadman= Good fun. #3 really uses the big page well. Great looking stuff. Not enough story yet to make sense of it.

Green Lantern= super cool. New Frontier style. I've never got the GL fandom but if all the comics were this good I would.

Metamorpho= missed opportunity. The Allreds give beautiful art but Gaiman forgot the story. I hope they did not pay Neil.

Teen Titans= bland. I don't like that coloring style at all. Boring. My 7 year old Teen Titan fan daughter gave it a "meh".


(All your base are belong to Paul Pope.)

Strange Adventures= Awe inspiring. THINGS HAPPEN IN EVERY PANEL! Dear comics community. Paul Pope is better than you.

Supergirl= You had me at Supergirl. Supergirl acting like, ya know, a girl? Check! Streaky? Check! + Krypto?! Hooray!

Metal Men= Ugh. I like the idea of it but the script is an impersonation of what an amateur thinks a comic should be like.

Wonder Woman= Colossal Fail. Unreadable. Wonder Woman is not even in it. Bad coloring. Worst Little Mermaid story ever.

Sgt. Rock= Yep, that's Sgt. Rock. Every thing I love about those comics made new again. Makes me want to buy old comics.

Flash= Pretty good. Fun with a laugh or two. Not the best Flash I've ready but pretty good. We can't all be Infantino.

Demon & Catwoman= Average DC comic. Formula. Nothing special. Stelfreeze draws a nice hag though.


(Do not click to enlarge because your brain will go THAKK!)

Hawkman= KA-THOOM! Now that's comics! I heart Kyle Baker. This one page has two of the best panels I've ever seen. Wow.
(Does it get better than that? Answer=no.)

Wednesday Comcis #3 conclusion= Great! Love the format. Kamandi! Pope! Baker! Wish it came delivered to my house every day.

One more thing I'll add that I did not tweet is that this thing should really cost about $1.00 but more importantly it should come out every week for ever and be on sale at every grocery store, newsstand, bus stop, etc. and it should be available for home delivery. Then, and only then, I might have hope for mankind.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Review: JT Yost's OLD MAN WINTER at fuo.

Click on over to file under other for my review of JT Yost's great anthological grapical novical. Yep.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

Review: Portals #1 at Poopsheet.

I reviewed Nic Carcieri's anthology book Portals over at the Poopsheet Foundation. Check it out.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Poopsheet.

Poopsheet Foundation
Review by R. Krauss

If you read Shannon Smith's small press comic reviews on his blog File Under Other, it isn't long before you're struck with the notion he must be a pretty nice guy. The image is only reinforced through his latest mini comic.

The book is a collection of several different projects, so while there's no overall theme, the pieces still work together and provide a varied reading experience.

Laughing Sam's Dice is Smith's contribution to a chain story created for Narrative Corpse #2. It's only a segment, but it's fun to watch as Jimi Hendrix guides the unnamed main character (Laughing Sam perhaps?) through Electric Lady Land.

In a World of Savages presents a few pages of auto-bio comic strips in which Smith highlights real or imagined slices of life.

Smith turned Superbowl Sunday into Hourly Comic Day on February 1st cranking out over a dozen comics and gags to celebrate his team's participation and eventual win that day.

Inspired by the drawings fans can pick up from cartoonists at conventions, Smith created Mailcon, a project that extends the concept—without the convention. Just send him a drawing request along with an SASE and he'll send you a drawing. Distraction concludes with a nice sampling of drawings from Mailcon.

The cartooning in Distraction ranges from sketchy (Hourly Comic Day) to polished (Mailcon). Either way, they're full of energy and humor. I enjoyed Smith's writing too. His stories and gags are playful and warm-hearted with an occasional sarcastic aside.

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction is 40 b&w pages, plus color cover. 7" x 8.5", handmade with saddle-stitch binding. It's available for $4 from his website (along with Mailcon directions). Mature readers.

ATD #1 reviewed at Poopsheet.

My latest book, Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction #1 just got a nice review over at the Poopsheet Foundation. Check out the review here. Buy the book here. Thanks!

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

You need to go buy Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures

(Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade # 6. Isn't that just about the coolest cover you've ever seen? Answer = yes!)

This is not so much a review but an endorsement and long overdue thank you to Landry Walker and Eric Jones. Regular readers of Addicted to Distraction will recall my ongoing quest to find Supergirl comics that I could buy for my daughter. Well, the quest has prevailed and not only does my daughter have all six issues of the Supergirl mini-series but she has autographs from writer Landry Walker and artist Eric Jones. Mr. Walker saw the details of our quest here on teh intronets and made sure we got the comics we needed. See, teh intronets are not 100% evil after all. So a big round of applause for Mr. Walker and Mr. Jones for making my seven-year-old's jaw drop and for making me the coolest daddy that lives in my house.

Now, just a little about the comics themselves. After prying them out of my daughter's hands, I got to read them and they are great. By far the best comics I've read from a mainstream publisher this year I would say they are right up there with All-Star Superman as the best Superman family related comics I've read in years and years. They are right up there with the stories in the Showcase Superman book. If I were to sit down and think about everything I want in a Supergirl book it would look a lot like this comic.

Each issue is it's own self-contained 8th grade adventure but the six issue story as a whole is genius. At first, I was a bit critical of Supergirl's character design. I thought she looked a bit too scruffy and boyish but when I read the comics I get it. She's not supposed to be the prettiest girl in school. She's supposed the be the clueless alien girl who has no idea how to fit in. So, in the context of the story, Jones' Supergirl is perfect. (He also draws a sweet Superman.)

Walker's storytelling is really tight. Each story has a lot of elements working on multiple levels. He is covering a lot of ground at a breakneck pace. There is a good supporting cast in the book and they are well established by the end of the 2nd issue. There are some narrative short cuts and a lot of funny yet challenging interludes and time jumps that I worried might throw a young reader off but my daughter seemed to get all of them and laugh at all the right spots. She liked them so much that she stayed up reading them in bed with a flashlight the way comics are supposed to be read.

So, if you love comics and especially if you love fun wacky Super-comics then you need to track these suckers down. Hopefully DC will have the sense to collect it. If so I think it will make a perfect holiday and/or birthday purchase for any comics fan ages seven to seventy. (And if DC has any sense at all they will make this an ongoing series.)

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Josh Latta's Redskin Rashy reviewed at FOU.

Go read my review of what I'm positive will be one of the books on my best of 2009 list.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

I bought The Deadbeat and you should too.

(A quick sketch of a younger version of The Deadbeat by Jeremy Massie.)

On Saturday I took the kids over to Cavalier comics in Wise where Jeremy Massie was signing his new graphic novel, The Deadbeat. I have reviewed most of it's contents in their original minicomic form here and here. Simply put, it's a great read and Alterna did a great job on the graphic novel version. I love the size, the print quality, the cover quality and most importantly, it smells great. Congratulations to Jeremy on a great looking book. It's really cool for me as a reviewer at file under other to see something I originally covered as a minicomic be released as a nice book and over the past year Jeremy and I have become pals so I'm really happy for him.

This is what the cover looks like. You should go to your favorite comic book shop and buy a copy today. It's really affordable at just $6.95. I think you can also buy it here. Jeremy will also be at HeroesCon in a couple of weeks. If you are going you should look him up.

Jeremy also threw in the above sketch and wrote a personal note in the inside copy of my book. It made me feel swell. Thanks Jeremy!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

My book Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at High-Low.

Rob Clough at High-Low has posted a nice review of Addicted to Distraction #1. Rob says, "All told, this wasn't an earth-shattering collection of stories, but it was one without any pretenses of such." Which is pretty much how I feel about it. It is a one man anthology book made up mostly of whatever comics I had on my thumb drive at the moment. It is mostly auto-bio sketchbook comics so the drawings look like... sketch book comics. It is what it is but I think it's a good and funny read and that everyone should go to here and buy seven copies.

As a side note, Rob's blog post also talks about John Porcellino so it's just kinda cool for me to be on the same introwebnet page as King-Cat even if only by cowinkydink. Rob mentions that John is 40 now. I can't decide if that makes me feel old or young.

Thanks to Rob for reading and reviewing it so quickly. The whole comp copy mail out review thing is weird. You shell out the postage and send your little books out into the void never really knowing if they will be read much less reviewed. Then by the time you've forgotten you ever sent them out a review pops up and you say, "hey, that's my book! Hooray!".

I'm sure Stephen King feels exactly the same way.

Anywho. Go read the review here and go buy my comics here.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Optical Sloth

Optical Sloth

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction

Generally speaking I’m against throwing your own name in your comic title, but if you’re going to go all the way like Shannon did and also picture yourself bursting through the cover, I say more power to the man. This is a collection of odds and ends, so naturally some pieces are going to better than others. Things start off slow with a baffling story of a man who runs into an all-powerful Jimmy Hendrix and gets taken to heaven with a bunch of naked ladies who preach nothing but love. Oddly, the guy can’t wait to get out of there, but seems to have gotten something from the whole experience. Then there a few one page autobio pieces, at least a couple of which I’ve already seen in his other minis, but the piece sampled below was new to me and nicely reflects the struggle to ever find a copy of The Comic’s Journal. The heart of the book is up next, and 24 hour comics folk take note: Shannon has blasted you all out of the water. He decided to do a one page comic every hour of Super Bowl Sunday, starting at 8am and ending around midnight. It’s especially impressive because the guy is a Steeler’s fan and he still took time out of the day to make a comic. Granted, the art is about as simple as you can get, and I got a lot more out of reading this hourly strip that I just about ever have by reading most daily diary comics. The hourly format really gave him time to dig into the small details. There’s waking up, dealing with a nagging headache, cleaning up cat puke, picking up toys for his kids, making unhealthy food for the big day, playing with toys with his kids, and finally watching the game. If that sounds like too much detail for you, you’re clearly not a fan of autobio. You can’t get much more “day in the life” than this. Finally there’s a pile of sketches in the back of the comic, mostly stuff he’s sent to people who’ve mailed in over the years. I particularly enjoyed Ant Man fighting an ant over a twinkie, but maybe Wonder Woman using her lasso the make the Invisible confess her true love would be more your thing. It’s a pretty nice pile of comic any way you look at it, and well worth checking out. It’s $4, and if that’s too rich for your blood at the moment there are always all the cheap, cheap minis listed below this to convince you. $4

Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraciton #1 can be purchased here.

Addicted to Distraction #1 reviewed at Optical Sloth.

Optical Sloth posted a really nice review of my new comic Shannon Smith is Addicted to Distraction. You can check it out here and you can buy the book here.

Thanks Optical Sloth!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

More reviews at FOU and Poopsheet.

I've posted a review of Patrick Dean's newest book at file under other and some books by Z over at the Poopsheet Foundtion. Check 'em out.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

New reviews at FUO and Poopsheet.

Ditkomania #71 reviewed at Poopsheet and three minis from Sliber Media reviewed at file under other. Git yer click on.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

FCBD 2009...

...or Dear Comic Book Industry I Am Trying to Give You Money part 3

...or A Tale of Two Comic Book Shops part 2

...or Buying Comics Is Hard Even When They Are Free part infinity.

This past Saturday was Free Comic Book Day. One of my favorite holidays. Last year we went to Cavalier Comics in Wise, VA on FCBD and were treated very well. Brian had most of the books I would have wanted and we were fee to take at least one of each. It was good times.

This year we headed in the opposite direction up Route 58 and went to two comic shops. I won't mention the name of the first shop because it's not my intention to throw a comics retailer under the bus. We'll just call them comic shop #1. I love comics shops. However, this should be a lesson in now not to run your FCBD event. Or, pretty much now not to run you small business in general. See, the point of FCBD for a retailer should be to attract new customers and build goodwill with your existing customers. I've managed small businesses and the main obstacle was getting customers in the door. Well, FCBD does that for you. Now, if you want those customers to spend money you have to do one of two things. Offer them a product they want or a service they want. But wait! How do you figure out what they want? Well, here is a free retail industry secret for ya. You ask them. "How ya doin'? What can I help you find today?" For thousands of years, good and services have been successfully traded for money thanks to this wonderful technique. At comic shop #1? Not so much.

Comic shop #1 is about a forty five minute drive from my house. I go in with my two daughters, ages seven and two, full of excitement. I was hoping for a couple of free comics I want and to even buy some comics for my daughter. We walk in. We are not greeted. There is a FCBD poster on the door but no table or display. I had visited the FCBD site before our trip so I kind of had an idea on what to look for. I noticed some familiar looking books on their check-out counter. They had just a few books and only one copy of each on the counter. They had the "Gold" level comics which is the bare minimum for participation. Most of what I would want would be in the "Silver" variety, but I'm not one to snub my nose at free comics. We walk up to the counter and the guy does not even look at us. I ask if those are the FCBD comics and the entirety of his communication to us during our visit is , "One per customer." He did not even glance at my daughters. He did not even glance at the future of his customer base that I have been tirelessly training to love comics for his benefit. I grabbed the Savage Dragon book for myself, the Cars book for the two year old and my seven year old picked out the Star Wars book. We quickly left having spent zero dollars.

Kind of a bummer but not to fear. I knew my pal Jeremy Massie was going to be at Mountain Empire Comics over in Bristol, TN. It is about an hour drive from my house but it is the shop where I had my first pull list when I was a kid. It is a great shop and I knew I could at least count on them to have some good stuff for my kids. We get to Mountain Empire and the staff there immediately greets us, asks questions, talks kid talk with my kids. In short, they do what any small business should do with any customer that walks in the door. There was a good vibe in the store and you could feel the comics love and excitement. Jeremy was staying pretty busy talking up his upcoming book and was even interviewed by local news outlet. Jeremy's book is apparently non-fiction because the main character, The Deadbeat was there in the flesh.

Mountain Empire had a much better selection of books and we were free to grab one of each for each of us. They also have a great selection of comics a fellow like me might actually want to pay for and gasp... they had some kids comics for sale! Wow! I spent about fifteen bucks. Jeremy also drew amazing sketches of Kitty Pryde and Dazzler for my seven year old. She loved them. I will post them here as soon as I get a chance to scan them.

All in all it was an awesome visit. Well done Mountian Empire Comics. Well done. To comic shop #1... I still love ya. And I'll drop in whenever I'm on your side of town. See, ya had me at comic books. But if ya want my money...

I've not read through all the stuff I got but I was really happy with the Savage Dragon book. The Love and Capes book was pretty impressive. A great looking book from cover to cover. I was pretty stoked to get a free reprint copy of TMNT #1. I sold off all my Turtle comics years ago so it was pretty cool to re-visit that stuff. The seven year old seemed to really like the DC Kids book. (But not as much as the copy of Supergirl Cosmic Adventures I bought her.)

And now for the shameless pandering part of the post. Unfortunately, we got to Mountain Empire pretty late so I missed out on the main books I wanted. So if anyone has a copy of the Love and Rockets, Nancy or Owly books that they could turn loose of then let me know. I'll trade ya something cool. Thanks!

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith

Iron Man: Armored Adventures is terrible.

!

That cartoon has about as much to do with Iron Man as a Ronald McDonald commercial. It's got a guy in a red and yellow suit but that's about it. And honestly, that's not the worst thing about this stinker. The worst thing is that it is boring.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say this and if I take heat for it then so be it. Consider this an open letter to all custodians of comic book properties that seek to turn those properties into cartoons:

DO NOT GREEN LIGHT YOUR SUPER HERO CARTOON WITHOUT CONSULTING ME FIRST!

I will tell you your idea sucks and that you should go back and read the original comics that made the property something people might want to see in a cartoon. I will do this for free. If you think you are so smart that you have a better idea than the idea behind the property you are looking to exploit, then by all means, go ahead with that idea. Just give it a new name cause it ain't the same thing! I mean, really. How do you walk into Marvel and say, "Ya know that big hit movie you had? We want to make a cartoon using the names of the characters from that movie but here's' the twist... it won't be anything like your hit movie?" How does that happen? BECAUSE MARVEL DID NOT CONSULT ME FIRST!
This is all.

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

A missed review of A-Symmetrical O-Possum.

I've just noticed a review of A-Symmetrical O-Possum over at the wonderful Optical Sloth site that I never noticed before. Check it out. You can buy the critically acclaimed awesome possum here.

Your best pal ever,

Shannon Smith