Strange Adventures is dedicated to a kind of cartooning that I sometimes forget still exists, heroes and bad jokes and horror stuff. There’s no angst, no personal explorations, and no unrequited (wander) lust. These are comics where things still happen. Battles against dragons, complicated stories about blonde wanderers and dolphins, sci-fi big-busted space adventures…you can appreciate this for what it is, a tribute to the adolescent, largely male world of, well, cartoons. There’s some great art-work in this anthology, but most of the stories (many of which continue from previous issues and on to future issues) are extremely complicated. There’s a question of how much of my time I want to spend trying to figure out the plots that hang on these two-dimensional characters like so much tinsel. I admire the size of this project, billed as the maritimes own comic anthology, and I also admire the energy and conviction invested by the contributors to this anthology. True, these aren’t the kind of comics I enjoy, but I think it’s fair to wonder if this kind of vision of the comic ‘world’ isn’t a bit out-moded.
comic anthology / #5, 130 pages / main creators: various / publisher: Calum Johnston / $5 / Strange Adventures, 5262 Sackville St., Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 1K8 email: [email protected]