Comics - Time Out for Mam Tor
From Mam Tor Publishing, the independent publisher behind the Event Horizon Anthology, comes Four Feet From a Rat, a 16 page full-colour comic under the Mother Comics imprint.
And it's free. Well, free with the 19th March London edition of Time Out, and apparently an ongoing project. With art by a bundle of talents such as Liam Sharp, Kev Crossley, Dave Kendall and Chris Weston. The writing is by Mother.
Now that all sounds very clever, but however good your art is, you need a story in a comic, without that, you just have some pretty pictures. And to have an anonymous writer, it seems to say that the writing is very much a secondary concern, which I feel is a big mistake. This was something that permeated through Event Horizon, it too was an art lead comic. Amazing though it was, when you put it down it felt like you'd just had a very strange dream, but you couldn't entirely remember what it was about... it's the story that makes you buy that second issue.
Those concerns aside, onto the four short stories in this issue.
The Crane Gods is a three page future shock style story and provides the striking cover image of a storm wracked spaceship flying over the mostly submerged 'gherkin' building in London. I like this a lot, it looks at the history of our world from an alien perspective, something which is always interesting and it has a neat little ending too.
Routemaster is a late night tale of what happens on our buses when the passengers have all gone. It has some warm ruddy artwork, a full measure of strangeness and again the classic horror twist ending works.
Don Pigeone could be funnier (David Goodman's Chav sparrows for example), and The Little Guy is just a basic premise which threatens much but delivers little. Again, it's hard to fault the art.
However you have to hand it to Mam Tor, what a terrific achievement to get something like this into the hands of so many people. I hope it's a real success. If they could get some serials running through it, then they'd have a primed audience for the graphic novel collection.
I have a copy of the first installment to give away (sans Time Out) to the first person to send me an e-mail with their address. Update: This has gone to Dave Evans, the first person to ask for it!
http://www.mamtor.com/
And it's free. Well, free with the 19th March London edition of Time Out, and apparently an ongoing project. With art by a bundle of talents such as Liam Sharp, Kev Crossley, Dave Kendall and Chris Weston. The writing is by Mother.
Now that all sounds very clever, but however good your art is, you need a story in a comic, without that, you just have some pretty pictures. And to have an anonymous writer, it seems to say that the writing is very much a secondary concern, which I feel is a big mistake. This was something that permeated through Event Horizon, it too was an art lead comic. Amazing though it was, when you put it down it felt like you'd just had a very strange dream, but you couldn't entirely remember what it was about... it's the story that makes you buy that second issue.
Those concerns aside, onto the four short stories in this issue.
The Crane Gods is a three page future shock style story and provides the striking cover image of a storm wracked spaceship flying over the mostly submerged 'gherkin' building in London. I like this a lot, it looks at the history of our world from an alien perspective, something which is always interesting and it has a neat little ending too.
Routemaster is a late night tale of what happens on our buses when the passengers have all gone. It has some warm ruddy artwork, a full measure of strangeness and again the classic horror twist ending works.
Don Pigeone could be funnier (David Goodman's Chav sparrows for example), and The Little Guy is just a basic premise which threatens much but delivers little. Again, it's hard to fault the art.
However you have to hand it to Mam Tor, what a terrific achievement to get something like this into the hands of so many people. I hope it's a real success. If they could get some serials running through it, then they'd have a primed audience for the graphic novel collection.
I have a copy of the first installment to give away (sans Time Out) to the first person to send me an e-mail with their address. Update: This has gone to Dave Evans, the first person to ask for it!
http://www.mamtor.com/
posted by paulvonscott at 6:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home