Good Minnesotan Episode #1
Reviewed by R. Krauss
Edited by Raighne Hogan & Meghan Smith
dot dot dot ink press, Oct. 2007
28 b&w pages, plus cover
Legal-size digest, $5
Website: www.goodminnesotan.blogspot.com
Good Minnesotan is unlike other small press comix anthologies I've seen. The first clue is that the editors think of it as an episode, instead of an issue. Maybe it's intended as a surreal comedy show in print. The words and pictures inside its covers take ordinary situations and emotions and rethink them from a unique, often twisted perspective.
The artwork for most of the episode is by Hogan, and rendered in a variety of media. Most of it is bold with heavy brush work, but there are panels with thin swirling lines too. Other places look like paint and/or wash. Maybe all the tones are done in Photoshop. Whichever—the pages are rich with tone and the highly stylized characters are often more representative of realism that actually trying to reproduce it.
The one story written and drawn by Smith, Monkeys on the Bed, is similar in its rich range of gray tonal values, but the figures are more consistent and tightly rendered from one panel to the next.
The stories in this episode are as diverse as the artwork. Cookie is a mad, dreamlike sequence of the haves and the have nots, complete with corporate sponsorship.
Teddy Bears and Time Travel is a bittersweet memoir that captures feelings of sorrow, confusion, and love.
Revenge Fantasies written by Justin Skarhus, is an edgy piece of dark humor. Its protagonist forever struggling to separate fantasy from action.
The Portraitist is a short apocalyptic comix about an outcast's battle for survival.
The episode includes a contents and contributor's page and a couple of ads. If you enjoy experimental storytelling or discovering the work of a new crop of cartoonists, you'll love Good Minnesotan.
Rating the Issue
Story: Overall 6 |
SStorytelling: 7 |
Take A Look Inside the Issue
Reviewer Bio
R. Krauss reviews small press and mini comics on Midnight Fiction, Comic Related, and Poopsheet Foundation.
Name: Richard Krauss
email: arkay@midnightfiction.com
Been reading comics: since I started reading Marvel comics in Junior High School.
Review Bio: After several years I discovered titles like Zap and Bijou at a headshop and was seduced by the freedom and variety they offered. When the new-wave comix era sprouted from the seeds of the undergrounds, I quickly joined the ranks of other struggling cartoonists with phenomenally low print runs. After almost a decade of small press comix, I retired and made a solemn vow never to return. Several years later the Internet happened and over time many of my favorite new-wave cartoonists got online. The bug bit again and I started exploring the new crop of small press cartoonists. Today's explosion of small press comics is more exciting than any time I've ever seen.
Favorites: Papercutter, Not My Small Diary, Slam Bang, Comic Eye, stuff from Main Enterprises and Weird Muse, to name a few.
Website: MidnightFiction.com
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