The third issue of Zona returns to the format of the first -- but with a twist. As with Zona #1, #3 contians four ten-page stories by four different artists, each with its own "cover", making for 44 pages of art total. The issue leads off with "Gulls" by Kurt Ankeny in full color, followed by "Alabaster Trees" by Jacqueline Huskisson, "Caught in the Light" by Paddy Lynch and finishing up with "Guilt Came Along" by Tyler Landry, all in black and white. Huskisson and Lynch work with the official Comics Workbook grids, with Huskisson mixing it up between 9-panel and 8-panel grids, while Lynch sticks with the 8-panel grid throughout, while Ankeny and Landry both opt for the three-tieir page, with Ankeny keeping the center tier of each page as a single, full-width panel, and breaking up the top ad bottom tiers into two or three panels, respectively, for a 3-1-2 beat, while Landry holds it steady throughout with a straight run of three panel pages. If the issue has a theme, it appears to be relationships -- but there is quite a breadth to the variety of interpretations on this theme on display in the pages of this issue. And then there's the cover. The special twist to this issue is that each cover is an original piece hand drawn in red, black and/or blue marker by Frank Santoro. Here too we have variations on a theme, but the theme is formal: each cover is a head shot of varying degrees of abstraction; each is a unique, original drawing. Nice!
Back in stock!
Now back in stock, we have a pair of creepy tales from Tyler Landry, under the title of Vile. The second, "Lonesome", is a nice-n'-creepy 24-page tri-color (yellow-blue-green) tale -- crisply printed on newsprint with cardstock cover -- set deep in the woods; a man alone, late at night, with a full moon and a fire...
Now back in stock, we have a pair of creepy tales from Tyler Landry, under the title of Vile. The first, "The Coward's Hole", is a 48-page, duo-tone (green) SF tale -- nicely printed on newsprint with cardstock cover -- set on some random planet somewhere...
Get ready for 104 pages of deftly delineated, black and white – modulated with a grey tone – pen and ink comics, arrayed throughout in a 9-panel grid. The history of comics is filled with examples of sewers being employed as a metaphoric representations of repressed unconscious drives and/or abandoned desires (see Frank Miller). Shit and Piss is different is baldly confronting the biological underpinnings, and so may then – perhaps – be profitably read as an exploration of the enteric nervous system, wherein cartooned neurotransmitters fight it out in our gut for dominance of our moods, actions and state of being. Suit up, head in and see for yourself what you make of it all...
Gone! (More on the way, so please check back...)
