Mome 20: Fall 2010


By various (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-365-1

Mome is a quarterly compendium of sequential narratives; a magazine that looks like a book, featuring strips, articles, graphic artworks and sometimes interviews from and about a variety of talented, dedicated creators ranging from the internationally renowned to the soon-to-be. It is where the smart kids with the sharpest pencils, shiniest pens, biggest brushes and best software go to play before they blow your minds in great big award-winning graphic novels. It is intense, sometimes hard to read and crafted to the highest production standards. This volume signals five incredibly impressive years and the eclectic graphic mix presented here augurs well for the next fifty…

After the previous edition’s brief sabbatical a number of continued features return, but before that Dash Shaw opens proceedings with an oddly disturbing short romance entitled ‘Blind Date 2’ – cited as “an adaptation of an episode of Blind Date”, followed by a quirkily affecting parable of eternal romantic triangles entitled ‘The Bird, The Mouse and The Sausage’ by Sara Edward-Corbett before the spectacular and disturbing fantasy from The (Shaun) Partridge in the Pear Tree & Josh Simmons continues in part 2 of ‘The White Rhino’ as an extremely obnoxious man also awakes in the nerve-wracking, deceptively welcoming rainbow-nation of Racelandia…

T. Edward Bak’s pictorial biography of 18th century German naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller finds the Siberian explorer reaping a few well-deserved carnal rewards for his efforts in ‘Wild Man Chapter 2: A Bavarian Botanist in St. Petersburg, part 4’ before Conor O’Keefe returns with the first chapter of another charmingly potent watercolour fantasy in ‘The Coconut Octopus’: part 1 – surreal, nostalgic, seductively compulsive…

Nate Neal (and don’t miss his recently released graphic novel The Sanctuary) goes all song-and-dancey with the magically macabre message of ‘Magpie Inevitability’ before moody World War II mystery ‘Devil Doll’ by Michael Jada and Derek Van Gieson returns with a captivating third part.

Steven Weissman utterly impresses with his time-twisting, haunted boy’s adventure ‘This Already Happened’, award-winning Italian cartoonist Sergio Ponchione reprises his marvelously enticing horror-hunter with ‘The Grotesque Obsession of Professor Hackensack’ and painter Jeremy Tinder explores ‘Time and Space’ with cunning intimacy and wild imagination.

Genteelly experimental and sadly inquisitive Aidan Koch pushes her seductive pencil to explore the transitory briefness of relationships in ‘Green House’ whilst Viennese cartoonist Nicholas Mahler ponders the life of a working comics artist in ‘Convention Tension’ and ‘Goodbye Mr. Nibs’. Fans should prepare for a bracing encounter with themselves…

Cover-featured Ted Stern’s anthropomorphic sad-sacks Fuzz & Pluck return in their ongoing nautical quest for wealth and safety with ‘The Moolah Tree’ part 4 and graphic designer Adam Grano ends this volume with a tantalising glance at his ‘$crapbook’…

Whether you’re new to comics, fresh from the mainstream ghettos or just need something new, Mome always promises – and delivers – a decidedly different read. You may not like all of it, but it will always have something you can’t help but respond to. After half a decade it’s here to stay …so why haven’t you tried it yet?

Mome © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. Individual stories are © the respective creator. All rights reserved.