Snakepit Quarterly Edition #1 http://www.YoungAmericanComics.com Story and art by Ben Price: $2US This is and autobiographical comic about the creator Ben (no last name given). It's in a comic strip format; 3 Panels dailies telling us his life from 11-29-01 to 2-28-02. Ben's life seems to go from interesting to boring at times as some days will be like "Today I went to work. Then I worked. Then I came home." With pictures showing him walking both ways. Ben is into ground level indy bands, gets stoned and hammered a lot and goes to parties. There might be something interesting within those, but they are summed up in three panels as well. Regardless, getting stoned and hammered all the time is pretty repetitive and loses it's intrigue after a while. Usually I love non-fiction comics, but this simply didn't do anything for me. I found it a chore to read through. Ben also has a very crude drawing style. You can make out what everything is. But due to his drawing of ears and his hair, I originally thought this was about a man with a monkey head. But considering he's doing one comic strip a day, and is squeezing it in somewhere between work, life and play I do admire Ben's discipline. A lot of artists wouldn't be able to do this. For the future I wouldn't mind seeing a more full length story devoted to funny and/or dramatic party happenings. Ben has something of a real social life, something many comic readers (including me) do not. I think he'd be more popular if he'd share more of that, then readers would live through him. I give this book a 2 out of 5 stars. Despite it not being to my tastes it gives you more than your two dollars worth.

Wild Penny #1 http://www.YoungAmericanComics.com Anthology - stories by Tod C. Parkhill and various artists Price: $2US This comic has 5 stories ranging from sci-fi, humour and mystery genres. The one I enjoyed the most was the first one called Midnight Star. It was about a crew of weird people who work for a tabloid that is writing about alien babies on Earth. I liked this because there was more story to tell and that it had some originality. The script felt like normal people talking with some swearing mixed in. The artist for that story was Steve Gomez. He has a very attractive style. He uses a thin line and simple shapes and gives room for everything to breathe - without it feeling like wasted space. At the same time, he gets a minimum of 6 panels per page which is something considering that this comic is smaller than a typical comic book. I hope to see more of his work in the future. As always with anthologies, there is a mix of stories and you like some better than others. The other stories were about friends on a beach during a storm, a spaceship crew getting into trouble and waitresses reacting to a customer who did something strange. While some of these stories are unique, I did not find them compelling. Their artists had parts of their work look good but need more development. In all I give this book a 2 out of 5 stars. The one good bit didn't make up for the bad. And on a whole, I think anthologies should be fat and not slivers stories put into a 22 page book. The small sizes limits what the creators can do, and the small amount of stories just isn't satisfying. Regards, Jamie Coville

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