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TOP SHELF ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS
(Top Shelf Productions,
www.topshelfcomix.com)
This anthology's been a long time coming and with 335 pages and a stunning number of contributors, this is the biggest
Top Shelf yet. It's a pretty impressive collection of work and seeing as how most of this volume was assembled several years ago, it's a bit like reading an anthology from 2000 that I'm only just now getting to. I don't know if you consider that a good thing or a bad thing, but it is interesting.
As for content, well, there's a lot of it. Fans of European comics should be pleased and fans of the now-defunct Robot Publishing should be pleased. But there's so much more than that. Regular readers of my reviews know that I love the variety anthologies offer, but editors Robert Goodin and Brett Warnock went a step further than most anthologies by including themed sections and features that aren't strictly comics. These sections include an interview with David Chelsea (with a healthy sampling of his comics and commercial work) by John Weeks, a "Peanuts" tribute section (commentary and comics by Ivan Brunetti, Ted Stearn, Tom Hart, Dean Haspiel, Joe Matt, Eric Reynolds, Warren Craghead and others), a Martin Tom Dieck sketchbook section and a focus on the Swiss comics scene with work from a number of Atrabile artists.
I guess the most satisfying discovery for me was Joven Kerekes, who has a beautiful cartoony style that brings to mind Mark Martin (if he'd been raised in Europe perhaps). He gets a few of this volume's color pages and they certainly weren't wasted.
Some of the other standouts include Winshluss (the story of a monkey too smart for his own good told in pantomime with nicely animated characters), Mahler's "TNT" (about a down-and-out boxer), Mack White ("Bison Bill's Weird West"; you just can't go wrong with a traveling, supernatural sideshow in the Old West), Dave K (I don't know if this is his best work, but it's very nice nonetheless), Aaron Renier's funny romance and Seth's "Peanuts" tribute.
That's a lot of good stuff so far, right? Well, there's also plenty more by Tomer Hanuka (beautiful covers), Cathy Malkasian (interesting commentary on body image), Cesar Spinoza ("Pacho Clokey" strips in color), James Sturm/Ribs, Kevin Scalzo, Goodin, Ulf K, Jesse Reklaw, Kevin Quigley, Jeff Zenick, Josh Simmons, Frederik Peeters, Marc Bell and, well, lots more. The production and design are fabulous. Hell, even the handful of ads serve to enhance the thing. What else can I say? Recommended.
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