Anyone fancy reviewing an Irish release? (Tommie Kelly Presents #1)

Dav

Hello all,

There's an Irish comic artist I got to know via Twitter called Tommie Kelly who's releasing a collection of his stuff on Monday called Tommie Kelly Presents. He's offered a review copy and I asked if I could get one for this forum (I'd have a look myself only I'm up the walls busy and will be AFK all weekend).

So stick your name on the list here and I'll pick one of you at random tomorrow morning and send along the PDF in an email.

The only condition is that you write up a review and post it here. You're welcome to post it on a personal blog you may have too, but stick it up here first please

Fysh

Oooh, I like this idea It's probably fairer for someone who's not a mod to get the freebie copy, otherwise it'll reveal our corrupt ways suggest that something underhanded might be going on.

*coff coff*

While we're mentioning Tommie's stuff,his Road Crew webcomic is well worth checking out.

Dav

hmmm, seems like you're the only interested party Mr Fysh, I'll send you a PM...

Fysh

Tommie Kelly Presents #1 review

Whatever else I say about TKP#1, it's interesting. I'm a long-standing fan of anthology books - I enjoy short as well as long-form stories, and I think a good anthology can cram in more entertainment and re-read value into a given pagecount than the majority of single-feature titles. There are also potential pitfalls with the format, though, and unfortunately TKP#1 doesn't quite avoid all of them.

There are 3 1/2 comic features in this issue. Three "full" features, two by Tommie Kelly and one by Viv Duignan, one half-feature/half-ad, and one interview with Tommie to round things out.

In order, the features are:
Pictures of Faith and Devotion: A Road Crew Comic
Down: A Panel Play
Joe The Janitor (Viv Duignan)
Moments

Of the lot, I think my favourite was Pictures Of Faith and Devotion; it starts off a bit oddly, with talk of gods and the nature of belief, and is obviously the setup for a longer story, but it does work reasonably well as a self-contained story of how gods intervene in the affairs of man. The artwork here is very nice, with some very effective colouring.

I'm not really sure what to make of Down thus far - on the face of it, it looks like the Epic Tale Of One Slacker's Life set against a near-future sci-fi background, but what makes it Epic or why we're meant to really get into it is not yet clear. What we're given is too brief to work by itself, which is a shame as there are some nice storytelling tricks on show here, but there's not enough actual story to get your teeth into.

Similarly, Joe The Janitor is built around a strong idea, but we don't get enough of it. Of the five pages given to this feature, one page is an entirely unnecessary cover, which is reproduced at a smaller size on the second page alongside the pitch for the comic. The pitch sounds like great fun, but the three pages of preview here don't quite live up to the pitch, and it's a bit frustrating to find that the prequel basically ends by telling you to go and look elsewhere for the rest of the story. That's not what I expect of a feature in an anthology.

I've referred to one comic as half-comic/half-ad, because its presentation in TKP#1 is consistent with the presentation of other ads. The comic is called Moments, and is an extract from a webcomic Tommie runs on his website. The hook is that each page is a single panel, often without dialogue, but which relates to previous panels and slowly builds up an overall story. As a webcomic, that sounds fine. As a single page to feature in a comic like this, it feels too much like an advert, and not enough like a story in its own right.

The interview that rounds out the book is an interesting read, if you like interviews with creators. Personally I like this sort of backmatter stuff, and I like to read about what makes people choose particular formats or artistic styles, and all of that stuff. So in that sense I think it's worth it. I can imagine some folks might look at it and see five pages of non-comics filler, though. There are some revealing comments in there about what he's trying to do with TKP as a series, for example, and I have to say that aiming to compete with something like Warrior is probably not a bad place to set the bar for yourself (although that is a formidable challenge).

Overall, there's some good stuff in here, but as with most anthologies, I think it'll take another issue or two to find the balance. Anthologies are tricky at the best of time - if you're talking about periodical publication, you want to have enough of a hook to get people to come back next time, but you need to balance that with just enough standalone material that someone who hasn't been reading from the start can still wander in without being alienated by the ongoing strips. To a certain extent I think TKP#1 suffers from the same sort of problem that Wednesday Comics #1 had - there's too much scene-setting going on and not enough in the way of done-in-one stories. There are several pages that I can't help feel could have been better used (eg Pictures Of Faith And Devotion, Down and Joe The Janitor all have 2 pages of non-comics content at the start, and the two pages advertising Road Crew art and collections could easily have been combined without losing their effectiveness) and had some of those pages been given over to standalone one- or two-page comics the issue would have felt a bit more rounded.

It's not perfect, but it's a promising start in terms of story.