Please Releaseby Nate Powell
Top Shelf, $5.00
A collection of four short autobiographical stories. The two that are most interesting concern Powell's day job working with developmentally disabled adults. Powell is a talented artist and his sense of design and layout is strong enough to make these potentially navel-gazing and text-heavy stories into works that are visually interesting to look at.
Rating: 3 (of 5)
Feeble Attemptsby Jeffrey Brown
Top Shelf, $5.00
Speaking of navel-gazing, here's a collection of short comics by one of comics' prime practitioners. Unfortunately Brown's chosen style for his autobiographical stories isn't all that interesting, and if you've read one Jeffrey Brown story about how he can't relate to his girlfriend(s) you've pretty much read them all. On the occasions when Brown breaks out of his usual mode and provides us with a super-hero parody or religious commentary the stories become interesting, but they're too few and far-between in this collection.
Rating: 2.5 (of 5)
Superf*ckers Issue 279by James Kochalka
Top Shelf, $5.00
I know that there are Kochalka fans out there who love this comic, but I really don't get it. A bunch of vignettes about twenty-something super-heroes with foul mouthes making potty and sex jokes. It's kind of like ''The Boys'' without a plot, humor, good art, or anything else worthwhile. Which maybe is the point of the comic, but it's a point I can do without.
Rating: 1.5 (of 5)
Review copies of the above comics were provided by the publisher.
